West Coast National Park

We never made it to Paternoster and the other fishing villages on Saturday, because we stopped off at Yzerfontein and the West Coast National Park and never made it any more northerly.  I'll post some pictures a little further down.

The towering waves we had over the weekend smashed up the hulk of a Turkish bulk carrier that went aground with a cargo of coal and oil at Blouberg three years ago and has been breaking up bit by bit in the years since, sending more oil into the ocean each time, despite the fact that most of the the coal and a lot of the oil were removed by workers after the initial crash.  We just found out what this was--Bill thought it was odd to have a crane at the surf line and wondered what it was all about.  Apparently, when it broke into three pieces last winter, an oil slick traveled as far north as the nuclear plant, where the intake water had to be protected by big booms.  The owners have declined to do anything about the wreck , and the S. African government doesn't seem to be willing to pick up the ball.  So we're seeing pictures in the Cape Times of Cape penguins covered in oil--and they are working to clear oil off the beaches once again.  The hulk has also affected currents in the area, eroding the coast line.  So I'm reminded once again that dramatic seas, as thrilling as they are to watch, are a deadly force.  And I'm also reminded of the way corporations will, if they can, completely shirk their responsibilities to the communities in which and around which they make their money.

Here's a picture from our trip to the West Coast Nat'l Park visit that shows a little of what the seas were like over the weekend.

I promised pictures of flowers, so here and below are some of the flowers we saw in the Postberg section of the park, which is only open during the flower season--August and September.

The yellow flowers I think are Gasnskos, and I suspect this is an Afrikaans word for them.  The scientific name is cotula turbinata, if anyone knows what English common name might correspond.




On the left are blue flowers that looked a little like lobelia to me but seem to be something else.




Then below is a carpet of flowers that spread out on our left as we were leaving the Postberg area, where we also saw a hoofed animal that was either a bontebok or a blesbok.


By the way, there is a herd of springbok that we often catch grazing around the entrance to the plant where Bill is working; and around one of the outlying training centers, we have seen a herd of zebras hopping a fence to graze a field.  I'll try to catch some photos of both.

Here below, though, is an ostrich (also spotted in the Park) which decided to head the other way when I leaned out the car window to take its picture.  Its mates were up the hill a little way (can you tell I've been reading the Harry Potter books?).

There were also views from the rocky cliffs above the sea and Saldanha Bay, but I'll leave them for another time--the Yzerfontein pictures, too, and a few from our visit the next day to a winery in Somerset West.