West Coast

My mom and I went on a spontaneous day trip to the West Coast National Park to see the annual show of bright daisies after seeing quite a few people that I follow on Instagram take amazing photographs there. I particularly enjoy road trips in September because the weather is just phenomenal – while it was 28C up the West Coast, we could see snow on the Matroosberg mountains.

I had never been to the West Coast National Park before, or that’s what I thought. Before we left I asked my mom if she had ever been there, and she reminded me that it’s actually where Kraalbaai is. When I was very young I used to swim and jump off boulders at Kraalbaai with my sister and cousins while my mom and aunt tanned (well, they actually burnt even though they put sunblock on). It’s one of my fondest memories as a kid and I haven’t been back in over 15 years. I guess I was too young to know exactly where it was back then, and as an adult I just thought it was somewhere up the West Coast. So when my mom said we were going there I nearly screamed with excitement. This road trip just got way more exciting for me.

Driving through the park we saw quite a lot of wild animals: Wildebeest, Zebra, Puff Adder (eeeeeek), Kudu, Springbok, Eland, Falcon, Fish Eagle and more. I did take some photographs of the animals but they were too far away most of the time. Sadly we didn’t see many daisies. A few here and there, but the fynbos looked much prettier in my opinion.

The highlight of my trip was when we finally got to Kraalbaai. It was everything that I remembered and more. The lagoon water took my breath away – it was bright turquoise blue, crystal clear, incredibly flat and the temperature was just right. I saw the big boulder we used to jump off and remembered that one time I stood on a sand shark and got chased by a stingray. Ah, the good old days.