One of the main reasons to travel South Africa in September is seeing the Wild Flowers in West Coast National Park. It’s located in the Western Cape region and is known for its flora and fauna.
Day trip from Cape Town
From Cape Town you can easily make a day trip to the region. Our B&B was at Bloubergstrand and from there it took us around one hour with our rental car.
And another hour for a detour to Paternoster. It’s maybe possible to book an organized trip from Cape Town but we definitely recommend you to take a rental car. This way you can stop wherever you want.
West Coast National Park
With sunny weather most things are totally fun. It was sure a blessing for our trip to the National Park. Rich colours on a 28.000 ha large area. We recommend you not to come at weekends as it’s surely crowded and enjoying nature might be really difficult. Even during the week it’s a busy place in flower season.
Wildflowers
The wild flowers describe spring season flowers which you can only observe during a few weeks of the year. You’ll see most of the flowers in the famous Postberg Flower Reserve. It’s accessible for only this time of the year as it’s a protected area.
The sea of flowers looks totally painted and appears unreal. Especially if you come closer and see how they grow out the sand. Seeing the wild flowers is probably one of this ‘Once in a lifetime’-things. We’re really happy to have seen them live at least once.
Langebaan-Lagoon
Another attraction of the West Coast National Park is its beautiful Langebaan Lagoon.
The colour of the water is baby blue and the beach totally white. With adequate temperatures you can spend a really good time on the beach here.
Tsaarbank
On our way back from the Postberg, we saw a sign with ‘Tsaarbank’ on it. Of course, we had to see what it was. It’s an endless dune beach with rocks lying in the sea. A picture perfect beach. It’s just too windy and cold in September to go swimming here. But seriously – there are surely uglier places on earth.
Animals
You can see many animals in the West Coast National Park. We knew the park is famous for its birds.
But we didn’t expect to see zebras, antelopes, ostrichs, flamingos, pelicans and turtles. Visiting West Coast National Park was totally worth our time.
Paternoster – a little bit of Greece in South Africa
After our visit to West Coast National Park, we still had time to visit beautiful Paternoster.
Paternoster is a cute little fishing hamlet at the Western Cape and reminds a bit of a Greek village. It just has nothing to do with Greece. The village’s name means ‘Our Father’ and it derives from the prayers of Portuguese sailors while their ship overturned.
Paternoster is one the oldest villages at South Africa’s west coast and attracts many Capetonians especially around the weekend – with its endless long and beautiful beach. You can partly see some wild flowers and depending on the season even do whale and dolphin watching.
But we weren’t lucky with that here. But more about that in another post.