South Africa tour Aug-Sep 2009

A 3-week multi-purpose holiday around South Africa. Our aim was to do some sightseeing, see lots of birds, see flowers in Namaqualand and introduce Nicola to my parents. We started off by driving to Potchefstroom and birding the OPM Prozesky bird sanctuary in town. Then we moved onto some back roads towards Klerksdorp and visited Faan Meintjies Nature Reserve. In Kimberley we visited Kamfers dam and the Big Hole before going to Barkley West and Spitskop Dam Nature Reserve. Our next stop was in Augrabies National Park before driving down to Springbok and catching our first proper flower fields in Namaqua National Park. In Lambert's Bay we visited Bird Island and then also got excellent flowers in West Coast National Park and Postberg. We joined my parents on my Dad's birthday present trip - a day out to Robben Island where we did the standard prison tour but also got to drive around the island with a local contact I had, picking up the Chukar partridges occurring only here. While In Cape Town we also visited Helderberg Nature Reserve and the Paarl Sewerage Works.

We moved onto Oudtshoorn along Route 62 and visited an ostrich farm and the Cango caves. In Knysna we stayed over before enjoying a morning at Monkeyland and Birds of Eden outside Plettenberg Bay. Towards Port Elizabeth the weather turned windy and the next few days didn't deliver very pleasant birding. Even so we birded the Swartkops and Sunday's River estuaries and then also the Nahoon estuary at East London. A long and arduous drive got us to Coffee Bay and miserable weather and we stayed just long enough to pay a quick visit to the Hole-in-the-Wall. It was wet and misty all the way to Port St Johns but when we got to Vernon Crookes Nature Reserve the weather was back to pleasant again. Past Durban we went to Umtunzini and then Richards Bay before entering Swaziland and spending a night at Hlane National Park. Then it was onto Kruger National Park and we stayed over in Pretoriuskop, Skukuza, Satara, Letaba and Shingwedzi before finally making our way back home. In total, we drove over 7700kms and identified 361 bird species.