Tue, Aug 18 - Hiking at Naries

We woke up to sunshine at 7 AM with the usual fog below towards the coast.  Bob's plan was to drive to the coast to the rough diamond/shrimp town of Kleinzee.  But I pointed out that we had just had two long days of driving with two coming up, and since we were at such a lovely place, why not stay here and hike?  Since he's nobly doing all the driving, he finally saw the light and agreed.  

After another good breakfast of multiple cheeses, breads and eggs, we walked around the lovely gardens surrounding the old farm house, avoiding the Ridgeback, and drove back to our thatched dome.   From  there we set out on the road and then on the Quiver Tree Trail, heading north on the west facing slope of ridge on which the farm sits.  It was warm and balmy and we saw lots of flowers - not great masses as we had yesterday, but still many species.  A new bird was the Clapper Lark that springs up out of the foliage making a Clack! Clack! noise with its wings and then finishes its display with a loud shriek!  

We are in the Succulent Karoo,which is a semi desert area with the richest variety of succulents anywhere in the world.  It is also famous for the displays of vivid annuals we saw yesterday.

We hiked about 2.5 miles seeing tiny iris, daisies, a lovely geranium species, and finally reached the one Quiver Tree on the property and a Double-banded Sunbird landed right on top!  We had to climb up a steep slope to reach the sundowner hut, our turn-around point.  The fog had been receding, but as we started back on the road, it flowed in with a vengeance and we were hit with a cold marine wind.   Bob had wisely packed his windbreaker in his pack and as he was wearing a sweater, he lent me the  jacket so I survived!  We saw quite a few birds and Bob picked up four new species.

Bob & the Quiver Tree

Southern Double-banded Sunbird

 We were still seeing great flowers and also lots of bulb leaves emerging: two-foot long very thin leaves, wide blades, coiled leaves - in a few weeks when they bloom the scene will be completely different!

We got back to our room about 2 PM and had tea instead of beers from our mini-bar as it was so nippy.  We then took off for downtown, found a supermarket and restocked our snacks.  We haven't ben able to find the fabulous pretzels that we found in Paarl nor the Cadbury Sevens Bar we loved back in 2002.

I took a bath in the amazing 6' free-form polished concrete tube and we drove down for our last dinner here: stuffed mushroom, springbok shank, and fruit pavlova - beat meal yet.

Tomorrow we start heading south, back into Fynbos - an area similar to chaparral in the western US in appearance and in consisting of small shrubby leathery plants.  It also has winter rains and arid summers, but it has one of the richest variety of species in the world which makes South Africa such a fascinating place to visit.