Today I thought I’d focus on the flora and landscape of beautiful De Hoop.
Once again, from their website:
"De Hoop Nature Reserve forms part of the world's smallest and most threatened plant kingdom - the Cape Floral Kingdom. Fynbos is the dominant vegetation group … De Hoop is important for the conservation of lowland fynbos for it has the largest conserved area for this rare vegetation type. The Bredasdorp / Agulhas and Infanta area has an estimated 1500 plant species of the approximately 9 000 species found in the Cape Floristic Region."
This is a landscape that you must really pay attention to to fully appreciate. From far away, you see the vast vistas of course -- but up close, you see tiny, vivid wildflowers, succulents you've never even imagined, and everywhere (and MUCH to Aaron's delight) bones!
These next pictures were taken on an amazing 4 hour hike that we took. And it truly was amazing. In that whole time we didn’t run in to any other hikers … which was just lovely, so tranquil … it probably helped that we went off the trail for a while! But since it was the off-season, the whole of the park was pretty quiet.
Then we went on a gorgeous drive – off-roading in a Chevy Spark? – oh yeah!
After all that sightseeing, we settled in for a quiet evening ...
We had an absolutely delicious braai ... Aaron was quite the grill master:
And then ... oh ... so LOVELY ... quiet,with just the sounds of the birds in the vlei (wetland) directly beneath our camp and a million stars above us ...
SIGH ... I could have stayed there a month ...
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