Year in the Wild Blog
Posts with tag De Hoop
Cape Times Newspaper – November 2011 – De Hoop Nature Reserve
My fifth column for the Cape Times, on CapeNature's De Hoop Nature Reserve, published in November 2011. (1MB size). Also check out the online version on the Cape Times/IOL website.
Leaving De Hoop on a high note!
We are sad to leave De Hoop. Like all of the wild places I’ve been, I’m always reluctant to leave. It seems like the more you find out about the wildlife, the plants, the people, the history…the more you want to learn. And I think you always leave a little bit of yourself at every special place.
I spent the second last day with Adriaan Witbooi – known to everyone at De Hoop as “Ad”. He’s
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Passionate people at De Hoop
Yesterday evening, Thandi and I went for a superb walk on the coastline near Koppie Alleen with Dalfrenzo Laing, one of the expert guides here at De Hoop. He's simply brilliant...full of information and knowledge, funny and chatty.
And his personal story is inspiring. He was working as a petrol pump attendant in Napier, a town about a hundred kays from De Hoop Nature Reserve. About three years ago, he was retrenched ("I was the
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Vultures! And the never-ending wonders of fynbos at De Hoop
Yesterday we again visited the eastern sector of De Hoop Nature Reserve. We had our video expert Timmy Henny with us, and we were hoping to get some footage of the Cape Vultures.
We hiked a short distance up the Potberg mountain, which has good views over down the mountain to the coast. The fynbos in the eastern part of De Hoop is simply WOW! It’s definitely worth visiting the so-called
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De Hoop Nature Reserve…whales, water and wind!
The big, beautiful, bountiful De Hoop Nature Reserve…that’s where we are now. It’s just east of Agulhas National Park, and is quite similar in landscape, but because it’s been a conservation area for longer, there’s a greater sense of wilderness.
And the locals say there’s no better place in the world to see
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Southern Right Whales! Making a comeback…
Yesterday I bumped into Meredith Thornton, the manager of Cetacean Research at the Mammal Research Institute at Pretoria University. Basically, she's one of South Africa's experts on whales, and she's currently in the Agulhas area flying low over the ocean, taking photos of all the whales which come into the sheltered bays along the southern Cape coast.
Southern right whales arrive from the southern oceans to give birth to their young, and their numbers peak in September and October. They
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