Rocherpan and the flowers not visited..

  

Hi again and please forgive delays in writing about our short stay at Rocherpan when we went up the West Coast to see the flowers last week - just been unbelievably busy, but here we go.

The road to Rocherpan was littered with temptations, as you may have gathered from my second last blog post, all good fun and no complaints, leaving me with yet another proudly South African feeling. Gotta love this beautiful country of ours and all the diverse people to which she's given rise. 

                                www.capenature.co.za
We finally arrived safely, TG as that road seems to have quite a bad reputation, after passing through Velddrif and all the little holiday village developments along the way.Winona, the camp manageress was on hand to welcome us warmly and give us the camp drill. Somewhat mistakenly (mine) I had imagined us to be residing in a floral reserve, but Rocherpan is actually more famous for it's birds, especially the endangered Black Oystercatcher and is also a marine protection area.

No worries, we simply love being out in the country and enjoying Mother Nature in her purest form and loved the view of the sunset over the vlei with all the attendant birdlife. The cottages were a true delight in design and aesthetism as designed by architect Justin Cooke. My retirement home dream come true. Clean lines, economical use of space, eco friendly, and rather sexy in terms of tiling and fittings. Not so great if personal privacy is a priority however. As an "old married couple" we coped just fine, but had we shared the cottage with another couple or our teenage children, I doubt it would have worked, as the two beds are back to back with a small half screen, and the cute little bathroom is doorless with very little recess even for the dung fuelled loo. Hmm...?

Everything else was gorgeous, with a little terrace for a braai, though it beats me why they don't lay on just a little bit of wood, or even a few courtesy tea bags for your arrival, specially as many visitors are foreign tourists who don't have a kitchen cupboard to raid for a visit.  The peace and privacy were sublime, to a point, as the four cottages are rather close to the road and during the night we could hear all the trucks thundering by. Why, when there is a whole nature reserve, are they situated there, we wondered but I am sure there are good reasons. I have infinite praise for Cape Nature and all the wonderful work they do, but I do have to query why there is a question called "Culture" on the entry form, which had already been filled in as "White" for us. Colour, my dear ones, should not be an issue or even a question within our new democracy. Would a Chinese person be required to call themselves "yellow" for heaven's sakes? C'mon, let's all be citizens of south Africa, please.

Come the beautiful morning dawning, woken by birdsong, we made our way down to the beach by car via the two bird hides. A lovely walk over the dunes brought us to one of those deliciously deserted beaches you see only in movies, but for once I was too tjoeps to swim there alone. We had to pack up to head back to the office anyway, with the excited intention of stopping in at Postberg as it was such a sunny, perfect flower viewing day.  This was, after all, the reason for our sortie up the coast was it not?

As we headed over the hill towards Postberg, Mr SQ let out an expletive, and silly old me, I thought he was exclaiming at the sight of the fields of daisies we anticipated viewing. Alas and alack, it was the road filled with a long line of cars queueing to get entrance to the reserve. Somebody had obviously blabbed (gosh these blogs can be dangerous!) that the flowers were so fabulous this year, that hordes of day trippers had descended en masse, so we took a rain check and headed back to the school run instead.

Oh well, we had had a most enjoyable time, and had been fortunate enough to enter the reserve previously without waiting in line for an hour, only to sit bumper to bumper all the way through the flowers. I think I'm going to try to do the Postberg Walking Trail next year - any takers...?

                                      www.sanparks.org

Lotsa love,

Suzy Q