We drove from Cape Town to Mossel Bay. It is an amazing scenic route. Mossel Bay is a harbour town on the Garden Route in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. My brother-in-law, Zack van den Berg, invited us to stay at his place on the golf estate. What a great experience! This area is a great tourist destination with friendly people and the towns en route, extremely neat. Zack and I spent a lot of time birding.
Any indigenous field garden provides a tangible and visual experience of the unique fynbos, thicket, and milkwood forest vegetation of Mossel Bay. Aloes, bulbs, Vygies, September-bush, pelargoniums, everlastings, wild olive trees and a variety of other indigenous plants are to be found here.
During the holiday we visited Wildernis, George, Groot Brak Rivier, Mossel Bay, Fransmanshoek, Gouritsmond, and Kleinmond.
Good birding areas are the estuaries. The Groot Brak Rivier estuary hosts a wonderful variety of birds. Inland is mostly farmland with various species to be seen. I find birding in the Cape different and more challenging than in Richards Bay.
Highlights for this trip were: The Blue Crane, Cape Sugar Bird, African Penguin, Jackal Buzzard, African Black Oystercatcher, Cape Bulbul.
In total we saw 55 species.