Mzanzi Travel - Local Travel Inspiration (Issue 5)

Explore
will have to travel a short distance away for some trout fly fishing as the district
has no rivers. However, you could always try your hand at some bass and carp
fishing in the deeper lakes and pans of the district itself.
While Chrissiesmeer is the focal point of Mpumalanga’s lakes and wetlands
district, there are a number of other delightful towns quite close by, all with
much to offer. Among them are the small farming town of Amersfoort named
after a city in Holland; Amsterdam, which was named by McCorkindale in
honour of Holland’s support for the Boers during the First Anglo-Boer War
(1880-1881); Badplaas with its hot mineral waters; Breyten, an area rich in San
history; Carolina, known for its Highveld grassland biome and a bird watchers’
favourite; the sleepy little farming town of Morgenzon; Volksrust, where
Mahatma Gandhi was briefly imprisoned; the larger farming and commercial
centre of Ermelo; and Perdekop where Oom Gert Van Der Westhuizen’s private
Roodedraai Museum houses one of the largest collections of Anglo-Boer War
memorabilia in the country.
Garden Route Lakes
Garden Route water wonderland.
Seen from the air, the five lakes form a dramatic picture of dark, glistening
bodies of water surrounded by forests, reeds and grassland, and interconnected
by snaking rivers that meet up with the sea through large, blue lagoons and
estuaries. All of this is locked in between the towering and beautiful Outeniqua
mountain range on one side, and the sand dunes, beaches and river estuaries
along the Indian Ocean coastline on the other side. The lakes are about 20,000
years old, but the two dune ridges that originally shaped and dammed them,
are 300,000 and 6,000 years old respectively.
Much of the Wilderness–Sedgefield lakes area forms part of the Wilderness
Section of the Garden Route National Park and the CapeNature Goukamma
Nature Reserve. The Wilderness lakes were designated a Ramsar Site in 1991,
to be protected under the Ramsar Convention Treaty. The lakes here are
among only a few warm temperate coastal lake systems in Africa, and the
only one in South Africa. They are fringed by grass, reeds, coastal fynbos and
evergreen forests.
Our next stop is George, at the start of the Garden Route in the southern
Western Cape. This bustling capital of the Southern Cape is easily accessible
by air or excellent highways connecting it to Cape Town, Johannesburg or Port
Elizabeth. George also once briefly hosted a serial killer, Gert Swanepoel, or
better known as Bluebeard of the Karoo, who was hanged from a tree at the
end of York Street. The same tree was also the site of slave auctions. The tree,
with part of the chain used for the slaves embedded in it, are still there.
From George it is a short hop across the Kaaiman’s River to the hamlet of
Wilderness, and the first water body of this region’s lake district.
The lakes wetlands system here is comprised of four distinct systems: the
Wilderness system, which includes the Wilderness Lagoon, the Touws River,
the Serpentine, Elandsvlei, Langvlei, and Rondervlei; the central system
consisting of Swartvlei, the largest of these lakes, and the Swartvlei estuary at
the town of Sedgefield; the landlocked single lake of Groenvlei, which has no
connection to the sea; and finally the Knysna Lagoon and the estuary of the
Knysna River. Most scientific descriptions of the wetlands system talk of only
three systems and exclude the Knysna Lagoon, but in sheer size, beauty and
proximity travellers will most certainly view it as an integral part of the overall
The lakes, beaches and mountains together form one of South Africa’s most
popular holiday regions, filling up with thousands of holidaymakers each year
during December and January. For those seeking quiet tranquillity in the
bosom of nature, away from so many people, most of the rest of the year offers
just that.
On the way to Wilderness one passes the spectacular train bridge over the
mouth of the Kaaimans River across which the famous Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe
Train ran daily between George and Knysna until flooding destroyed part of
the railway line in 2006, thus ending the last remaining continually-operated
passenger steam train service in Africa. There have been attempts to revive this
train service so popular with tourists, but its fate remains uncertain. Along the
way you may also pass some of the numerous world-renowned golf courses of
the area, some designed by famous golf players like Gary Player and Ernie Els.
When entering the village of Wilderness you may be deceived into thinking it
is a real little sleepy hollow. Yet it is everything but. The village bristles with
eateries, pubs, and interesting little shops. Standing guard over the lagoon
formed by the Touws River estuary where it flows under the national road into
the sea, is the Wilderness Hotel, one of the oldest and grandest hotels of the
The Garden Route Lakes system/Google Earth
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