6th Day - De Hoop

Today, the next leg of our journey to Wilderness was on the agenda, which was a fairly long drive of nearly four hours. However, we couldn't resist visiting the De Hoop Nature Reserve halfway. I had read a lot about the journey to this nature reserve beforehand, as it is described as extremely arduous but still very worthwhile on almost all online platforms. And that's exactly the truth! Arduous because you have to drive about 60 km (!) on a gravel road until you reach the actual reserve. Without all-wheel drive or an SUV, you definitely can't drive faster than 60 km/h. The first photo gives an impression of how endless this road seemed during the drive. But after just half an hour in the reserve, the journey was already worth it 😊 The reason for this is the proximity to the wandering wild animals. We were able to easily spot springboks, monkeys, and ostriches. The ostriches were really huge. But I was particularly fascinated by the monkeys, as they often had their babies with them.

Since the nature reserve is located directly by the sea, we were able to observe whales from the land, just like yesterday. Today, we spotted them much faster and in greater numbers. However, most of the whales only showed themselves on the surface and did not jump out of the water like yesterday. The distance to the whales was comparable to yesterday until the moment we were already on our way back to the car. At that moment, another whale surfaced about 75 m away from the land. It was easily visible to the naked eye. Due to the close distance, we also got a sense of how big these mammals actually are. Really exciting!

Thanks to the diversity of species in the De Hoop Nature Reserve, we quickly got the impression of a mini safari, and it was free of charge. We actually thought that we had to pay an entrance fee of 2.50 EUR per person, but this was not the case. The abundance of new impressions made the return journey on the gravel roads and the subsequent drive to Wilderness more bearable. This drive was actually longer than expected. We suspect that we took a wrong turn and had to completely detour around the reserve from the outside 😣