The area around Plett has always been a hiker’s paradise. Okay, always is forever and that’s a long, long time. But it is true that some of the first people to walk the earth, some 160 000 years ago, did so around here.
I’m at the Matjes River rock shelter, a 30-minute walk east of the main beach at Keurboomstrand, and I’m looking at an ancient rubbish heap that contains thousands of years of history. It’s a midden, a place where the strandlopers and their ancestors deposited food scraps like shells and bones from small animals and fish, as well as ash, shards of pottery and bits of tools.
Today, this rubbish heap is 30m long, 15m wide and 10m deep, and archaeologists read it like a suspense thriller. The layers at the bottom tell of a time when you wouldn’t have been able to see the sea from Matjes River. The coastline was roughly 100km to the south, until about 14 000 years ago when the Ice Age blew out its last freezing breath. Ocean levels started to rise and the original cross-country hikers became beachcombers who feasted on mussels. You can see how their diet changed in the different layers of the midden: white sand mussels at the bottom, followed by black mussels and limpets, with brown mussels on top.
Scarcely an hour ago I was in the hustle and bustle of modern Plett, enjoying a cappuccino and a croissant. Now I’m looking at a place that hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age! It’s this unique combination of modern convenience and natural beauty that really sets this trail apart. I’m hiking with a company called Venture Beyond. A year ago, they worked with Plettenberg Bay Tourism to create the Plett Trail. The idea was to mix and match various existing hiking trails – along the coast and in the forest – and create a number of multi-day hiking packages. An expert guide would be included in the package, along with comfortable accommodation, delicious food, wine tasting and even horse riding or paddling.
I’m here on a recce to test a slackpacking route designed specifically for go! readers. The walk on the first day starts at 9am in the parking area at Keurbooms. The Venture Beyond minibus drops us off with our guide for the day, Sarah Hearn. The plan is to hike about 14km from Keurbooms to Nature’s Valley, along beaches, cliffs, through fields of fynbosalong beaches, cliffs, through fields of fynbos and forests, and even across a river or two. Sarah checks if we’ve lathered ourselves with enough sunblock and that we have water in our daypacks.
It’s a balmy, windless autumn day. The blue ocean is on my right and lush green cliffs reach for the sky on my left. Ahead, there’s a long white beach unblemished by footprints. This doesn’t feel like work! We reach the mouth of the Matjes River and Sarah shows us the tracks of a Cape clawless otter that must have crossed the river just ahead of us.
Not too far away, African black oystercatchers scurry around the intertidal zone, searching for food. These once-threatened birds with their blood-red beaks and legs are abundant here: a good indication that the ecosystem is still healthy. Sarah tells us that once an oystercatcher has taken a mate, there’s no such thing as divorce or fooling around. They mate for life.
After about an hour’s easy walking along the beach, we head inland through a milkwood forest and up a hill covered in fynbos. Then we’re in the shade of yellowwoods, ironwoods and stinkwood trees. Our destination is Forest Hall, one of the oldest and grandest historical estates in the region. A picnic lunch is waiting for us, courtesy of Grahame Thomson and his sister Julie Carlisle, the owners of Venture Beyond. Taking a nap after a self-induced food coma sounds like a great idea, but we’ve still got a full afternoon of walking ahead – through a coastal forest section of the Garden Route National Park.
We also have to cross the Salt River before the tide comes in. Still, the temptation is huge to just unpack at one of the many scenic viewpoints and spend the afternoon daydreaming. Instead, Ronel and I take lots of photographs and we make it to the Salt River with the water no higher than our ankles. We climb the last hill of the day and reward ourselves with a spectacular view of Nature’s Valley, where the minibus is waiting to take us to our accommodation for the night.
Bright and early the next morning, guide Luck’z Mdzeke arrives to take us to Robberg. The whole of the Robberg Peninsula is a nature reserve, with three circular trails of escalating difficulty and distance. Our plan is to hike the longest trail, which will take us right to the end of the peninsula, around The Point. Luck’z says that it’s about 8km and should take about five hours. He also tells us that Plett’s beaches have been closed to swimmers and surfers for a few days because of all the great white sharks that have been spotted in the area. If we’re lucky, we might see a great white – or even a killer whale – hunting Cape fur seals in the aquamarine water below the cliffs.
We’re not that fortunate, but we do see a massive elephant seal bobbing around like a fat submarine. He’s far from home – maybe his GPS malfunctioned… Robberg might only be a caracal leap away from downtown Plett, but it’s a wild, isolated place with views that often slam you to a halt. Luck’z is a fountain of knowledge and tells us all about the shipwrecks, the geology, the vegetation, animals and birds of the region.
We finish our hike around midday and reward ourselves with a decadent lunch and wine tasting at Bramon, the original Plett wine estate. It’s best known for its sparkling wines and has won an array of awards. Peter Thorpe and his wife Caroline bought the farm in 2000. Peter tells us how the land was being strangled by invasive plants, which they painstakingly cleared to plant vines. Their first harvest was in 2004 and they set the trend: Today there are more than 20 wine estates in the region, as the Cape Winelands gradually migrate east. Who knows, by 2050 Grahamstown might have replaced Stellenbosch as the epicentre of the South African wine industry!
In this neck of the woods, you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to good eating and drinking. The next day, after we’ve done the Circles in the Forest trail in the Diepwalle section of the Knysna Forest with Meagan Vermaas – the official Dalene Matthee guide – we stop at Totties Farm Kitchen in Rheenendal for their legendary Sunday buffet lunch. Even though today’s route was flat and no longer than 4km, it still took us more than three hours and we’ve worked up an appetite. It’s Meagan’s fault: Her encyclopaedic knowledge of Matthee’s books, and her stories about the elephants, giant yellowwoods, woodcutters and gold miners, could have kept us spellbound for days.
As I sip a craft beer and work my way through a heaped plate of comfort food, I think about all I’ve experienced over the past few days. It’s one thing to chart your own course in a beautiful place like Plett, but it’s another thing to experience it with passionate guides like Sarah, Luck’z and Meagan. How else would I have learnt that the bidup-bidup-bidup sound in the bush is the call of a green-backed camaroptera, if Meagan hadn’t carefully parted the leaves to show me his hideout?
Yes, the new Plett Trail will definitely see me.
WORDS PIERRE STEYN
PICTURES RONEL STEYN
Hike Plett in the Garden of Eden – Go! Magazine – PDF
