Storms River

  Storms River, South Africa
Sunday, January 29, 2006

Hello Everyone,

We left Graaf Reinet and travelled back down to the coast. We drove for over 3 hours on one of the craziest drives we have ever had. There were two choices of how to get there. We could go out of our way to the west and drive down to the coast to the large city of George and then backtrack to Storms River. This was the main highway called the N9. Our map had a route from nearby Uniondale to Knysna on the R339 then a short drive to Storms River. It was marked as a main road and shorter on the map so we figured great, no problem. It was for the most part only one car width wide and entirely a dirt road. It had constant switchbacks going along side the cliff faces with no barrier. It was a little tense to say the least. It is called the Prince Alfred Pass. It was first used as an oxcart trail and hasn't advanced much since its first use. The views were incredible, but we couldn't be happier to get off this road. We made it to Knysna and onward to Storms River.

This would be the start of our trip along the Garden Route. This is the stretch of land along the bottom coast of South Africa. It goes from the town of Port Elizabeth all the way to Capetown. It is full of indigenous forests, freshwater lakes, wetlands and beautiful long beaches of white sand.

The backpackers we stayed at in Storm's River is called the Rainbow Lodge. This area is very rural and has the Tsitsikamma National Park nearby. Also the Storms River mouth is spectacular. The backpackers was run by a friendly Swiss guy. It was a very relaxing place.

We set out the next morning to go to the Tsitsikamma Park. The park has the Otter trail. It has to be booked a year in advance due to its popularity. It is a 5 day hike with stunning scenery along the coast. It could be compared somewhat to our Pacific Rim trail on Vancouver Island. You can go for the first 3 to 4 hours of the trail as a day visitor. This is what we did.

The first part of the walk was not to bad, it was along a trail that went into the trees. The landscape soon turned. The trail started to become quite steep and full of rocks and boulders. We started to come out of the woods and then had to go along the beach making our way across the rocks. This part was not too bad, the rocks were somewhat rounded. You just had to choose which ones to hop to next. Then it got really difficult, the rocks turned steep and jagged. You had to climb along them, all the way you had to keep your eye out for small yellow otter paws painted on the rocks. These would lead you in the right direction. It got to be very exhausting. We made it to the first rest stop at the opening of a cave in the cliff. We sat and had our sandwiches.





The rest of the way was difficult as well. We had a few other people come past us heading the other way. They assured us that it was well worth continuing onwards to get to the waterfalls at the end. We finally arrived at the falls. They cascaded down the rock face from high above. The thing that was unique was the pools below them. The water was a brown colour like dark tea. We were assured dispite its colour this was the purest water you could drink. The colour was from the water running through the forest and is brown from all the tannins. The pools had swirls of fine white foam on them making interesting patterns. The water eventually made its way over the rocks and down into the ocean.



It was in the midday heat by this time and very hot. You could make your way over to the falls but it would have took a lot more climbing and neither one of us had the energy. Especially since we knew what we had to go through to get back again. We found a large crevice under a rock to sit in some shade for a bit. Then we started to make our way back. It felt twice as long, it was hard to muster up the stength to get over the rocks again. We were so glad to get back and headed straight to the park shop to get the coldest drink we could get our hands on.