Victoria Bay and Swartvlei

The caravan park and foreshore houses as seen from the railway line at Victoria Bay.

This was published in the Weekend Post's Leisure supplement on January 15, 2000.

VICTORIA Bay nestles between steep green hills like a cradled child.

It is a delightful little village with a caravan park geared for tourists wishing to get close to nature.

But it is also sufficiently developed to enable you to relax without having to rough it too much.

Having booked a caravan and site, we set off down the coast from Port Elizabeth at the start of the spring holidays.

Unlike on our trips to East London, where seemingly never-ending roadworks and potholes in the Ciskei make travelling arduous, the journey to George – also just more than 300km – was a breeze.

A pre-teen Luke, his binoculars ever-present, at the Storms River Bridge.

We stopped for lunch at the Storms River bridge and spotted a Knysna lourie in the magnificent yellowwoods nearby – a harbinger of further avian delights to come.

Passing through Plett, the ever-busy Knysna, Sedgefield and Wilderness, we finally turned left off the N2 about 8km before George.

The Tsitsikamma mountains that had graced our northern flank through much of the journey turned even more spectacular when they became the Outeniqua range and, as we meandered down towards Vic Bay, it was apparent that, like Storms River Mouth, those steep mountainous gradients continued right to the shoreline.

The one main difference is that at Vic Bay there is no river, only a pristine bay with a sandy beach a couple of hundred metres wide.

The caravan site is set above a row of guest houses and B&Bs, which front onto the ocean, with only a narrow road dividing them from the sea. A delightful little pier is ideal for lovers on a moonlit night.

As we entered the site I thought of the old Brookes Hill caravan park in Port Elizabeth, where generations of visitors woke to a panoramic view of Algoa Bay.

The view from this small site – it only takes a few dozen caravans and tents – was a sight for sore, city eyes. With waves pounding across the bay, we were bordered behind and to our right by a hill that soared steeply several hundred metres above us, covered in thick indigenous bush.

A similar hill on the east side makes the other half of the “V” forming the bay. A tunnel pierces the furthest rocky reaches of the eastern hill, and every so often the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe and other steam trains traverse this slope, their whistles sounding jubilantly ahead of plumes of dark smoke.

We met other family members at the site after booking two caravans, which were ready for occupation when we arrived around 4pm.

Having honed our bird-watching skills in Settlers Park, we were delighted to find the elusive Cape bulbul was a regular visitor to Vic Bay.

Cape rock thrush

Another joy was to tune in to the “conversation” which a male Cape rock thrush, sitting on one telephone pole, held with his female partner on an adjacent pole in front of our caravan.

Cape robin

Greater double-collared sunbirds, Cape white-eyes, Cape robins and southern boubous were in plentiful supply.

While the ablution facilities were by no means luxurious, they were adequate and – most importantly – had a seemingly endless supply of hot water. No one enjoyed this more than a group of surfers camping at the site, as they thawed out in the showers after many hours in the water.

For the three days we were there the wave was consistently good, which explains why Vic Bay is such a famous surfing spot.

With built-in braais and an unimpeded view of the ocean a stone’s throw away, we found ourselves cooking outdoors each evening, something even a light drizzle on the last night couldn’t spoil.

Regularly during our stay we caught sight of the rock-like forms of several southern right whales, secure in the protection provided by the bay.

What to do while there? Some of us opted to join the fairly large throng of bathers in the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean as others whiled away their time in the pages of a book.

We took a lengthy walk along the railway line and through the tunnel, where we were rewarded with a view of the sprawling Wilderness coastline.

There were cormorants and darters aplenty at Swartvlei. These were seen from the bird hide.

As an outing, we back-tracked about 30km to Swartvlei, near Sedgefied, where a hide set in a wide reed bed affords one an ideal opportunity of seeing fairly rare birdlife. Indeed, as we walked along the boardwalk to the hide we spotted the majestic paradise flycatcher, with its long orange tail. We were to see the short-tailed female version of this bird later, outside our campsite ablution facility.

Red-knobbed coot

From the hide itself we spotted, among others, white-throated swallows, an African marsh harrier, red-knobbed coots, dabchicks, moorhens, African darters, white-breasted cormorants, reed cormorants, African black crakes and pied kingfishers.

George itself seems to have been transformed since the last time I was there, when the freeway used to run through it. Then it had a character which somehow reflected the dour disposition of its incumbent member of parliament, P W Botha.

It is now a clean, lively place with top-class restaurants, pubs, shops and supermarkets. So, if you are unable to get what you want at the well-equipped shop/restaurant at Vic Bay, it’s just a short hop into town where your needs will be met.

Another accessible spot is the Cango Caves, about 110km away in the foothills of the Swartberge.

This was the first time I had seen this prime tourist attraction and I was most impressed with the 1,2km long display of formations built up over more than a million years.

God’s sculptural hand has been hard at work here. It’s just such a pity that over the years vandals have caused so much damage.

But the place still attracts more than 250 000 visitors a year and is well worth the trek and the hefty entrance fee.