Nature's Valley
After a reasonably long drive from Hogsback to Port Elizabeth we began to see why the following section of coastline was called The Garden Route. The road is sandwiched between the sea and beautiful forested mountains. We passed beside a few little towns and crossed some interesting canyons before our turn off.
Our accommodation was at the Wild Spirit Backpackers which is situated between the Garden Route National Park and Natures Valley and over looks the Tsitsikamma Reserve. The place has a hippy commune vibe and has an awesome tree house style bar/reception.
We were given a tour of the campsite and shown the pet cats, dogs and horse. We were told not to pester the horse as the place was quite busy and the horse would be overwhelmed by petters. Considering my dislike for horses I assured the lady their would be no chance of us over fussing the horse. The horse (named Miracle) had other ideas and decided to hand around by our tent or follow us to the camp kitchen and watch us eat dinner.
We were also woken up at 05:30 each morning to loud chewing noises or particularly loud pissing. Miracle also left us a present behind the car.
There were a few short walks which could be done from the campsite, but we didn’t have time for these. We did however check out the tree house (below) and sat and looked at the view from a look out called “God’s Window”.
The garden had lots of lovely flowers including lots of agapanthus and I think they grew their own vegetables. There was a free shuttle for a five hour hike in Nature’s Valley, we signed up and were ready to go the following morning.
I think I was over prepared with 2L of water, snacks, lunch, walking poles, first aid kit....
The first 6 of us crammed ourselves into the guy’s estate car, we were given some instructions along the way such as don’t feed the baboons you get a 500 ZAR fine. If you see a snake or a scorpion don’t make a fuss just let it move out your way. Oh and don’t swim in the sea as there are sharks... Apparently a whale carcass had recently washed up on the beach and had attracted quite a few sharks to the area.
We set off on the walk with our team, these were a lovely friendly set of people that we got on really well with. We followed the map given by the hostel through the forest and popped out by the lagoon. Here we stopped for a swim, I hadn’t packed a swim suit but was wearing sensibly large underwear which dried reasonably quickly. The lagoon was brackish water and quite a pleasant temperature. Suitably refreshed we walked along the beach until we reached the stop off restaurant. We had a packed lunch but had an ice cream and drink with the others. By this point we were probably running quite late for the return shuttle and needed to get a move on. It had also clouded over and was beginning to look like it would rain.
The next bit of the path involved some rock scrambling past a sign that said “unstable cliffs do not proceed”. We did proceed and were treated to a lovely secluded cove, we then had an uphill hike back to road. We were just about in time for the shuttle even though we had said we would be late.
We decided to have the hostel dinner that evening, which was Chicken a la King, I didn’t know what this was but it turned out to be very similar to what my mum cooks and calls Chicken Surprise. It was delicious and we spent the evening drinking a few beers and playing a new card game with our hiking team. In hindsight there is probably quite a lot more to do around Natures Valley and I would definitely go back.