Storms River Mouth Trail

I can never rave enough on how awesome the Tsitsikamma National Park.  Its an absolutely beautiful place and the amount of visitors, both domestic and international, that go there daily is proof that its one place you cannot miss when travelling along the Garden Route.  Most of these visitors do the Mouth Trail from the rest camp to the Storms River Mouth which is one kilometer away.

One of my personal highlights of the walk is the stream that flows past very close to the start of the trail next to the beach.  Drama Princess loves waterfalls and we first had to have a look at where it flows onto the beach.  She then wanted to know where it came from, which was easy because the trail passes the stream just above. 

From the beach we headed onto the trail and stopped just below another waterfall the precedes the one on the beach.  Honestly, I think if the Kidz had a choice they probably would have just stayed at the pool and played there, but there was so much more still to be seen and I had to chase them on.  Also by now we were starting to fall behind the Damselfly who was well on her way towards the river mouth already.

But another stop followed shortly after.  The trail has an open air classroom where the history and ecology of the area are depicted on boards.  The Kidz wanted to have a look at what these first before we continued on to the suspension bridges waiting for us at the river mouth.  More on that another time.

Mouth Trail lily

I know that not everybody loves arum lilies like I do, but I just can't get enough of them specially when they grow wild somewhere in a forest or next to a stream.  This one was growing next to the Storms River Mouth Trail in the Tsitsikamma National Park.   

Tsitsikamma Forest Trail Part 3: Up the old pass

The first part of our walk through the Plaatbos Nature Reserve took us on various trails through the forest before taking a halfway break next to the Storms River by the old low water bridge.  This left us with the walk back up to the village on the Storms River Pass.

 

In 1879 the famous pass builder Thomas Bain was busy surveying the area east of Plettenberg Bay and found it to consist of almost impenetrable forests and deep river gorges.  To get through the imposing Storms River gorge, Bain followed the ancient elephant trails which took the easiest and most gradual way down towards the river and built the road along those contoars.  The pass was built by convicts and completed in 1884.  Travelling down the pass some of those ancient trails can still be spotted next to the road. 

A kilometer or so before the end we crossed another stream and couldn't help stopping again for a break.  The Kidz had their shoes off immediately to enjoy the fresh forest stream.

I took the opportunity to trek up and down the stream a bit for a couple of pictures capturing one of my favorite things - a forest stream.

The end was in sight and nobody was complaining.  It was an awesome morning out and we topped it off with ice cream sundaes at Marilyns Diner in the village.

Tsitsikamma Forest Trail Part 2: Old Storms River Bridge

After a couple of hours hiking through the Plaatbos Nature Reserve we emerged from the forest close to where the old pass road crosses the Storms River.  We headed straight down to the river, kicked off our shoes and soaked our feet in the cool, soothing water.  Just what we needed at the halfway mark of our hike.

When the pass was originally built the road went through the river with the low water bridge only being build by soldiers during the Second World War (I'm just trying to confirm this as I've only heard it somewhere before but can't find anything about it on the internet).  The pass was replaced by the N2 and the Storms River Bridge in 1958 and today the bridge can only be reach on foot, by bicycle or on the Woodcutters Journey tour done by Storms River Adventures. 

In the early days many travellers camped out next to the river after a "down day" (because the pass is so narrow ox-wagons could only travel either up or down the pass on any given day to avoid them coming face to face with another ox-wagon and have nowhere to pass each other).  Just like they refreshed before the uphill trek, so did we. 

Tsitsikamma Forest Trail Part 1: Plaatbos Nature Reserve

I find forests to have some kind of therapeutic effect on me, hence the fact that I will find any excuse to go and spend some time around forests.  It's no surprise then that I found myself and Family Firefly on a family outing in Storms River Village in the Tsitsikamma.  Three days around the forest for me is probably comparable to somebody from Gauteng spending a week at the beach.  I did make it clear to the family that I wanted to spend at least (part of) one day doing a short hike in the forest and we decided on some of the trails through the Plaatbos Nature Reserve adjacent to the village.

Plaatbos Nature Reserve falls within the Tsitsikamma National Park and has various hiking and mountain bike trails throughout, most branching off the old Storms River Pass.  Heading into the forest we decided to take the very first one on the left as you enter the gate and  disappeared into the forest.  I'm very fortunate that my family loves the outdoors and don't mind going hiking, so as soon as we hit the trail Chaos Boy was off in the lead with the rest of us trailing after.

The trail through Plaatbos is a typical forest trail with very little disruption around other than the path itself.  The initial plan was to just do a short loop but on two occasions we got to a fork and opted to keep going rather than head back towards the village.  Most of the first part of the walk was spent right inside the indigenous forest and quite a few times I stopped to photograph something interesting.  One of the things that always catch my eye is bracket fungus and on this walk there were no shortage of it.  See Bracket fungus, Brown Bracket and Orange bracket fungus which I have already posted since our trip.
 

In the end we spent about 4 hours in the forest covering what I guess was probably in the region of about 11 or 12 kilometers. But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I decided to split the walk into three posts so that each covers a different part of our outing. I also didn't want to make it a too long a post cause there are many people like me out there who gets bored very quickly if one has to read too much. *smile* In the next post we head down to the historic Storms River low water bridge at the bottom of the pass.

Klein treintjies

Op die eerste Sondag van die maand stroom baie families met klein (en ander met nie so klein) kinders na die Port Elizabeth Model Locomotive Society se maandelikse oop dag.  Families staan al van vroeg af tou om op die treintjies te ry met veral die stoom lokomotiewe wat baie aftrek kry.  Die rit vat wel net 'n paar minute, maar sluit in 'n tonnel, die Groot Grasrivier brug en 'n paar draaie deur die gronde in. En die beste van alles.  Dit kos net ongeveer R6 per rit.

Addo flowers

After the rains we had in the Eastern Cape this past winter the veld is looking really good.  Its no different in the Addo Elephant National Park with lots of yellow and purple flowers all over.