. One of the first people involved in this pioneering timber industry was German settler Jakob Mangold, who later established a prominent engineering firm in Port Elizabeth and whose name is a familiar one in the Bay even today.We paddled on up the gorge, alternately racing and splashing and just floating listening to the echoing calls of our companions and the whistles and squawks of birds.
After half an hour we stowed our kayaks and changed to custom-made lilos, launching with a dive and skudding away over a big pool.We practiced standing up on the lilos surfboard-style until we tired of falling in and then pushed on with a different perspective, hugging the surface.The lilos gave us better buoyancy and manoeuvrability. We paddled until we hit a sandbar and then turned back to do some cliff jumping into a deep channel before reclaiming our kayaks for the exit trip.
A white-bellied cormorant perched on the bank ushered us out of the mouth and onto the sunlit swell of the sea. We weaved back in single file, pulling confidently and, in the Whizzherald distanWe paddled on up the gorge, alternately racing and splashing and just floating listening to the echoing calls of our companions and the whistles and squawks of birds.
After half an hour we stowed our kayaks and changed to custom-made lilos, launching with a dive and skudding away over a big pool.We practiced standing up on the lilos surfboard-style until we tired of falling in and then pushed on with a different perspective, hugging the surface.The lilos gave us better buoyancy and manoeuvrability. We paddled until we hit a sandbar and then turned back to do some cliff jumping into a deep channel before reclaiming our kayaks for the exit trip.
A white-bellied cormorant perched on the bank ushered us out of the mouth and onto the sunlit swell of the sea. We weaved back in single file, pulling confidently and, in the distance over my sons’ heads in the boat in front of us, I saw a whale breach.
Cliffs tower on either side of the Storms River gorge:
Untouched Adventures is based at the SANParks Storms River Mouth Rest Camp, which is the headquarters of the Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park, one of the jewels in South Africa’s complex of national parks.The park’s marine attractions are underpinned by the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area, the oldest entity of its kind in Africa and one of the oldest and largest in the world.
Established in 1964, it protects 32,300ha of coast and ocean.In December 2016 the late environment minister Edna Molewa controversially ruled, despite an outcry from the scientific and conservation communities, that 20% of this protected area must open for fishing by local communities.
A bushbuck on the Waterfall Trail:
But even with this action, the pools around the rest camp still brim with life and in mid-December when we were there dark bait balls of prey fish were drifting offshore, raising the excitement of predator species to fever pitch. From the veranda of our oceanette, we watched the dolphins somersaulting clear of the water and surfing huge rollers. On one occasion amid this display of joyousness, another, bulkier animal, a bronze whaler shark, rifled out of the water and twisted its white belly towards me.
The bustle of wildlife is equally intense on the adjacent rocky coastline and in the grey-green forest that curls like a whale’s baleen over the dunes, home to bushbuck, baboons and friendly flocks of francolin.
Untouched Adventures founder Marthinus van der Westhuizen described how three dassies, common camp residents, were loitering ahead of him on a path one morning when a caracal exploded from the bush and dispatched them all seemingly with one blow of his paw before fleeing from the human in a tawny flash.
There was something of a latter-day Great Trek about the Storms River camping area as the regulars rolled in and gathered in comfortable lagers and families who had not seen each other for the year greeted like old friends. But unlike the old exclusivity around white Afrikaner culture, the new binding force, it seemed to me, was an appreciation of nature, environmental protection and security
After half an hour we stowed our kayaks and changed to custom-made lilos, launching with a dive and skudding away over a big pool.We practiced standing up on the lilos surfboard-style until we tired of falling in and then pushed on with a different perspective, hugging the surface.The lilos gave us better buoyancy and manoeuvrability. We paddled until we hit a sandbar and then turned back to do some cliff jumping into a deep channel before reclaiming our kayaks for the exit trip.
A white-bellied cormorant perched on the bank ushered us out of the mouth and onto the sunlit swell of the sea. We weaved back in single file, pulling confidently and, in the Whizzherald distanWe paddled on up the gorge, alternately racing and splashing and just floating listening to the echoing calls of our companions and the whistles and squawks of birds.
After half an hour we stowed our kayaks and changed to custom-made lilos, launching with a dive and skudding away over a big pool.We practiced standing up on the lilos surfboard-style until we tired of falling in and then pushed on with a different perspective, hugging the surface.The lilos gave us better buoyancy and manoeuvrability. We paddled until we hit a sandbar and then turned back to do some cliff jumping into a deep channel before reclaiming our kayaks for the exit trip.
A white-bellied cormorant perched on the bank ushered us out of the mouth and onto the sunlit swell of the sea. We weaved back in single file, pulling confidently and, in the distance over my sons’ heads in the boat in front of us, I saw a whale breach.
Cliffs tower on either side of the Storms River gorge:
Untouched Adventures is based at the SANParks Storms River Mouth Rest Camp, which is the headquarters of the Tsitsikamma section of the Garden Route National Park, one of the jewels in South Africa’s complex of national parks.The park’s marine attractions are underpinned by the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area, the oldest entity of its kind in Africa and one of the oldest and largest in the world.
Established in 1964, it protects 32,300ha of coast and ocean.In December 2016 the late environment minister Edna Molewa controversially ruled, despite an outcry from the scientific and conservation communities, that 20% of this protected area must open for fishing by local communities.
A bushbuck on the Waterfall Trail:
But even with this action, the pools around the rest camp still brim with life and in mid-December when we were there dark bait balls of prey fish were drifting offshore, raising the excitement of predator species to fever pitch. From the veranda of our oceanette, we watched the dolphins somersaulting clear of the water and surfing huge rollers. On one occasion amid this display of joyousness, another, bulkier animal, a bronze whaler shark, rifled out of the water and twisted its white belly towards me.
The bustle of wildlife is equally intense on the adjacent rocky coastline and in the grey-green forest that curls like a whale’s baleen over the dunes, home to bushbuck, baboons and friendly flocks of francolin.
Untouched Adventures founder Marthinus van der Westhuizen described how three dassies, common camp residents, were loitering ahead of him on a path one morning when a caracal exploded from the bush and dispatched them all seemingly with one blow of his paw before fleeing from the human in a tawny flash.
There was something of a latter-day Great Trek about the Storms River camping area as the regulars rolled in and gathered in comfortable lagers and families who had not seen each other for the year greeted like old friends. But unlike the old exclusivity around white Afrikaner culture, the new binding force, it seemed to me, was an appreciation of nature, environmental protection and security