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Western Province - Saldanha Bay |  |
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On the Western Cape's western seaboard, 150 kilometres north of Cape Town. One of the Western Cape's fastest growing towns, its prosperity and prospects based on its magnificent natural, deep-water harbour. In fact Saldanha could well have been the original (Dutch) colonial headquarters settlement, but the bay area lacks fresh water and the early navigators and their successors passed it by in favour of Table Bay (Cape Town). In recent times, however, it's become a major railhead and deep-sea port for iron-ore from the far northern interior and host to some of the world's bigger bulk carrier vessels. The past few years have seen the appearance of a vast steel-making complex and its attendant industries. Saldanha is also home to a military academy, an oil-storage site and is a major centre of the fishing industry. There are guided tours of the harbour and its loading terminal. The town is becoming increasingly well geared for tourism; it's on the what is known as the ‘Crayfish Route' (crayfish are rock-lobsters, a renowned local delicacy); the bay is popular among yachtsmen, anglers and watersports enthusiasts. And among bird-watchers: the rocky islands in the bay are home to tens of thousands of seabirds. The surrounding countryside is a bit bleak for much of the year but comes to glorious life in late winter and early spring, when the wild flowers of the sandveld briefly bloom.
Langebaan Lagoon, The lagoon, centrepiece of the West Coast National Park, is a 16-kilometre long inlet at the southern end of the bay that attracts a superb array of waders and other aquatic bird species, most of them migrants who arrive from the far north (Siberia, Scandinavia) in the summer months to feast on the myriad crustaceans and other tiny organisms of the lagoon's mud and sandbanks. This is one of the country's finest wetland wildernesses, a magnet for flower-lovers in springtime (the park's Postberg section is especially well endowed, and also serves as home to antelope and other wildlife) and, for much of the rest of the year, for anglers, dinghy-sailors, canoeists and holidaymakers of the quieter kind. Nearby is the imaginatively conceived Mediterranean-style Club Mykonos resort complex. Fishing villages Several dot the coastline to the north; among the more attractive are Paternoster (‘Our Father' in Latin, thought to have been named, following a prayer of thanksgiving, by a party of early and much-relieved shipwreck survivors); Velddrif, at the wide mouth of the Berg River (again, a popular venue among birding enthusiasts), and St Helena Bay, where Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama made a landfall in 1497. The Cape Columbine Nature Reserve, near Paternoster, is well worth an hour of your time.
Piketberg (inland); Vredenburg; Velddrif. |
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SALDANHA BAY Western Cape
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