The Southern Africa Coast
Southern Africa is without doubt the most variable region of its size in the world, so that the word 'contrast' features regularly in descriptions of it. However, this description is seldom given to the mountainous, coastal country between George and Humansdorp, along the south-eastern edge of the subcontinent, and yet it has perhaps the greatest natural contrasts in so confined an area.
Temperate evergreen forests cloak the shady southern slopes of the mountain ranges, well watered by coastal mists and year-round rainfall, while succulent desert plants cling to the blistered northern valley floors, sweltering in the rain shadow of the mountains.
Driving along the Garden Route highway which skirts the Wilderness Lakes, a grand panorama alternatively opens out or recedes as the road winds through the coastal hills, through the precipitous Kaaimans River Gorge, skirting the 'lake district' between Wilderness and Sedgefield, until it emerges into the broad valley flooded by the Knysna Lagoon, which is, strictly speaking, not a lagoon but an estuary.
The Wilderness Lakes
The Wilderness Lakes lies on a former marine terrace, trapped between high, vegetated, coastal dunes and the wooded foothills of the Cape Fold mountains. In the mornings a soft mist hangs upon the surface of Langvlei, obscuring in a silky veil the iron bridge that carries the narrow-gauge Apple Express over the Serpentine.
Bird calls rise through the fog on Rondevlei, and the fog condenses on the metal-cool surface of Swartvlei, whose jagged arms embrace the surrounding foothills. Waterfowl potter along the reed fringe of Groenvlei. Looking northwards, the Outeniqua mountains loom across the wide horizon like storm clouds that fill up an afternoon sky.
Bank upon bank of blue, grey and dark green humps catch the sun's rays in slivers along their eastern ridges. As the mist lifts the lakes are dappled with light and shadow, giving off the sheen of mercury when the soft light breaks over the hills, while later, in the afternoon glare, their surfaces reflect like irregular aluminium offcuts tossed haphazardly among the foothills. These lakes are really a series of estuarine lagoons, as they are fed by numerous streams which rise in the mountains and which have been blocked by a previous drop in sea level, leaving their mouths high and dry.
The Most Magnificent Coastal Scenery
Swartvlei still a has a limited outlet to the sea at Sedgefield Beach, resulting in some tidal interaction. All these lakes are experiencing a natural cycle of siltation that will eventually turn them into shallow, algae-covered vleis, then marshy reed-beds, until finally they will disappear altogether.
This is the natural cycle of all lakes, but at the estuary at Wilderness, and almost all the estuaries along the South African coast, the process has been greatly accelerated by erosion, which is the result of bad farming practices; by the damming of rivers and tapping off of water, which reduces river flow into the estuaries and reduces their self-clearing capabilities; and by pollution, which either kills off the filter-functioning plants or causes them to proliferate and die off quickly, thereby adding significantly to the bottom silt each year.
From Nature's Valley to the Grootrivier mouth near Humansdorp, the Tsitsikamma Coastal National Park straddles the most magnificent coastal scenery of southern Africa.
By David Bristow
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