My wife wanted to go there on her birthday, and I obliged.
A beautiful place nestled among the mountains, and well worth a visit.
Always good to be outside in nature, as it is so much better than sitting cooped up in the concrete jungle. No traffic, no noise, and all peaceful and quiet. This botanical garden is packed with fauna and flora and also two lovely waterfalls further up in the mountains.
During the 1930’s land in the Hangklip area between the Palmiet River and the Rooiels River was acquired by three business partners, namely Harold Porter, Arthur Youldon and Jack Clarence. They called it the Hangklip Beach Estates and divided the area into three townships, namely Betty’s Bay (named after Youldon’s daughter, Betty), Pringle Bay and Rooiels and sold off plots to interested parties.
There are two waterfalls up in the mountains, and this picture below on a shopfront shows one of them. The tour map through the garden also shows where the waterfalls are, but due to my gammy left leg it is way too far and too steep for us to walk. So sad that I will never see those waterfalls.
Amazingly, we visited the garden in early February, and the garden was opened during the month in February, a few years ago (1958).
Here you can read some of the rules of the garden and see the contents.
A little Agama lizard came to greet us.
Two little otter sculptures at play in a pool.
An Orange-breasted Sunbird (Anthobaphes violacea) was sipping on an Erica Fynbos flower.
A lovely view up that valley, and it looks easy to start a hike. But be warned, around that corner there are some very big and high mountains.
That looked like a little female Southern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) sipping on a flower.
Here below we have the Orange-breasted Sunbird again and just have a look at the lovely red and white flower heads.
Finally, here below, is a detailed map of the hikes that are available at the reserve. We only managed to do the first circular hike, but I bet that things start to get very beautiful along the way up into those valleys and mountains.
It was, indeed, a great visit to a lovely place and I have lots more photos that I took there that I will show you in some other posts over time in the future. Now don't laugh, as for some reason I continue to call it the "Harry Potter" botanical garden, and every time when I say that my wife corrects me that it is, in fact, the Harold Porter botanical garden:))
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos by Zac Smith. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
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