The Dassie End..... Traditional Geocache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
An easy shortish walk in Fernkloof Nature Reserve in Hermanus.
Yet another cache in the Fine Fernkloof Nature Reserve, this one on an easy to reach contour path which stretches from the visitor’s centre all across the face of the mountain to the Rotary Drive end of Hermanus. My opa has a cache near the other end called Zwelihle View (GC1GQHT).
With the help of my opa I placed this cache where we found a lot of Dassies sitting on the rocks enjoying the warmth of the sun, they said that they would look after the cache for me and we include a few pictures of them near to the cache site – you could mention in your log if you spot any of them!
The Fernkloof Reserve is a little gem with over 40km of easy to walk path and a host of caches to be had as well.
On the walk you will see how well the fynbos is recovering after the devastating fires which raged along this mountain side in January 2008. This is especially noticeable after the first path that goes off to the right, the upper side of the path was burnt while the lower slopes escaped the fire this time. Some plants, notably the Protea Mimetes cucullatus are re-sprouters and have grown off the rootstock of the burnt plants while other plants have had to start from scratch again.
The cache is about 850m along the Klipspringer trail (blue route) from the visitor’s centre at the top parking area, where a good display of some of the flowers you might encounter on your walk are displayed.
If you continue after the cache it comes to a T-junction – one direction it will lead you back to the starting point, the other is the path to the far distant end of the reserve ending at Rotary Drive. If you chose to walk on it will take about the same time to get back to the parking – remember to follow the path to the visitor’s centre when you get near the office.
We did not go on, but went back the way we came and I found a long porcupine quill and almost stood on a small chameleon crossing the path in front of me – opa took a picture and said he had never seen a chameleon on the mountain before.
Please note that the cache is hidden so that you don’t have to leave the path and trample any of the fynbos. I mention this as we only had 6m accuracy on the GPS on the day. This is now the fourth time we are placing this cache, last time it might have been the baboons, have replaced the small container with a micro to see if this one will last.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
n ovt boivbhf ebpx uvqrf gur zvpeb!