Friday January 30, 2015- Saturday January 31, 2015

Langebaan and the West Coast National Park

You can’t see me eating!

Our first week here, we met quite a few people between sailing, AirBnB and just renting a car. After hearing our plans of touring South Africa, different people told us the same thing, repeatedly: before you leave this country, you have to visit Langebaan. One of the guys we sailed with mentioned that he lived there, and that if we wanted, we could crash at his place for a night. ‘Sweet, we’ll think about it’ we said. After a little deliberation, we decided we should take the local’s advice and do it. So after leaving Stellenbosch, we headed northwest to Langebaan. Right before you get to Langebaan, you can drive through West Coast National Park. We did a little research and saw that the park is home to flamingos, among other wildlife. Flamingos, real live flamingos In the wild. We made it our day’s mission to find, and hopefully photograph, these colorful beauties.

We enter the park and decide to go up the peninsula side before heading back around the inland side to get to Langebaan. We’re so glad we did. The road is situated up on a hill, so we could see the Atlantic Ocean to one side while clear down and across the lagoon to the other. Partway driving up the peninsula we spotted some white dots in the distance. Could they be flamingos? We park the car on the side of the road at the next boardwalk and hop out to investigate.

That water, though!

I had noticed in the car, but being out of the car gave us a whole new appreciation for how stunning the water is. It’s this perfect shade of turquoise throughout the entire lagoon. The water goes from almost a perfectly clear with only a twinge of blue to a darker, more magnified version of turquoise in the deeper parts of the lagoon. The closest thing I can think to match it would be the water in the Bahamas, and even then I’m not sure it’s the same color.

After gawking at the water for a few minutes, we checked with the zoom of the camera to see what exactly those white dots in the distance were. Confirmed, they are flamingos. Score! We make our way down a boardwalk so sloped it probably would have been easier to sled down, and find ourselves walking on the white sand shores of the lagoon, something more reminiscent of a Caribbean beach than Africa. The birds didn’t seem that far off so we thought we’d be able to get to them, no problem.

They didn’t want to be filmed today

Half an hour later, the birds are still a bit blurry in our zoom and now the beautiful white sand has turned into grass and other fauna probably trying to hide snakes. Wading into the water we go! As we make at back to a small spit of sand the birds take flight. Nick was able to capture it, but again, we were still at quite a distance.

As a bonus we had spotted a bontebok, a sort deer/horse mix with antlers, and he made quite the patient subject. He stood patiently as we photographed him, giving us various poses including face and butt shots. There were also some ostriches running around. I kept a close eye on those birds (they’re a bit intimidating to me), and it turns out I was right to do so. Our hosts that evening informed us that if a male ostrich is looking for a mate, his legs will turn bright pink, and so much the worse for the creature that stands in the way of him and his female. Yikes! We made our way through the grass and water back to our haphazardly parked car. Satisfied with this afternoon adventure we turned around made our way to the other side of the park, out to Langebaan. A group of ostriches crossed the road in front of us at one point, and we also found a little tortoise trying to do the same. We made a pit stop at the park restaurant for a late lunch, while leaving we noticed some more animals in the distance. There was a large group of Elands. They looked like cattle with long pointy horns. We walk ~.5 mile down one of the park trails to get some photos. This was finally feeling like the Africa we saw on TV.

We finally arrive to the beautiful home of our hosts for the evening, and were invited to join them for a braai. The food was delicious and the view could not be beat; we overlooked the lagoon.

We were back in the park when it opened the next morning, trying to get some photos of more wildlife. We found another tortoise, and were able to see some more flamingos. Though the flamingos were still at a distance, we were able to watch them do their dance. They alternately bend their knees, switching them back and forth to stir up the bottom and then they gobble whatever comes up. There was a whole flock doing this dance.

Kites prepping for the Downwind Dash

That afternoon there was to be a regatta called the Downwind Dash. All manner of sail sports, kiteboarding, hobies, and windsurfers, were to gather on Langebaan Beach and race downwind across the lagoon. Represented in far superior numbers were the kiteboarders, among them were our hosts from the previous evening. It was really neat to see so many kites around; there were at least twenty five in the air with minimum another thirty on the ground near us ready to go up. It was blowing 15-20 knots, but unfortunately we had to miss the beginning of the race, because they were waiting for more wind. We needed to get to Muizenberg before the sun set, which was a 2 hour drive.

We had to drive through the park again in order to leave Langebaan, and we decided to pull off one final time to get some better photos of the dancing flamingos. Our tenacity was rewarded. As we walked up to one of the bird huts provided in the park, an entire flock was walking right past it. Finally!
We have some good flamingo pictures. Actually, that’s kind of all our camera has on it now: flamingo photos.

We had a wonderful time in Langebaan and West Coast National Park. A huge Thank You to Tracy, Colin, and Matt for opening your home to us and being such lovely hosts. Now we’re off to explore a bit more of Cape Town!