Hey there happy travelers and digital nomads. We travel to experience the fullness of our beautiful planet. We search for ever-fresh exciting or awe-inspiring new views along our unending journey of exploration. And today I am pleased to bring to you one of my most attractive finds yet, here on the cliffs of the Garden Route, along the south Cape coast of Africa. The photos speak for themselves.
After hiking along the rugged coastline over the past few days, I have returned to this particular stretch, with the hope of discovering still more sites for the record. And despite having been to this river before, it was only now, on my third visit, that I have been able to experience its true majesty.
I pushed on a bit further today through the bush and down the rocks, and was richly rewarded for my extra endeavor, and so I present it here to share with you all. Despite the mid summer heat, this year has seen a return of an old weather pattern from decades ago. Back then this region along the south Cape coast of Africa, particularly here in the Garden Route, used to have much more summer rainfall - even up to a week or two of daily downpours at a time. But it has dried up since then... until now.
As if returned from the dead, the climate has shifted back to an old paradigm and brought with it an entire week of daily rainfall, and masses of moody mist pouring in from the sea and swamping the cliff side shoreline in this area between the two tourist towns of Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, which are about 25 km apart.
I never expected to see this kind of rain but am happy to state that it is a life-giving gift for the region as a whole. The blessings of Mother Nature are bestowed upon us once more. And along with that, it has brought flowing waters to this seasonal rivulet that channels all the rainfall into a ravine and down to the sea.
On my first visits here, I found this trickle of a stream but today I see it in more of its real beauty, as it tumbles over the edge in a waterfall. But just at that edge it first accumulates in this epic pool that you can see here in the photos. It looks like a mermaid pool, or something out of a fantasy novel. And this is particularly so because of the perfectly harmonious rounded shape. Nature has somehow sculpted this harmonious looking rounded bath tub of a feature out of the rocks, using only water and time...lots of it.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Archimedes said – “give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, I can move the world”, or something along those lines. He was talking about leverage. And here we see that given enough water and time, nature will carve an entire valley out of solid rock and change the face of a mountain. Water – the softest of elements – can defeat even the hardest of rock, or so it seems. And the Tao philosophy says as much.
Well, today I am seeing the results of not only the power or water and gravity, but also the blind beauty in their creations. Nature may be blind but her sculptures bring joy to the eyes of the beholders, like you and I. This bath would look ideal in any landscaped garden or even indoor bathroom. When mankind creates, s/he only follow in the examples presented by nature.
By seeing the power of such a soft substance like water to erode away such a hard product like rock, we can be encouraged to remember that it is persistence that pays off in the end. Even the small efforts of our actions, performed on a regular daily basis, will – given enough time – lead to the most powerful results. Small efforts along the same lines lead to incredible changes for the better. That’s the lesson I learned and which I apply to my regular explorations as well as my regular blog posts here on our favorite blog platform.
With consistent effort we lay down, line by line, our written content and we allow it to build up into small incremental payouts in cryptocurrency, thanks to the blockchain technology we have at our fingertips today. And in time, it results in a substantial build up of profitable results in hard currency, with which to travel still further and record still more great travel blog discoveries. It’s a positive feedback loop, much like the climate.
Having rambled on across the page here, let me ramble onward across the southern African shoreline in search of new treasure locations to bring you for your traveling pleasure. This rock pool featured today is just one of numerous others awaiting my discovery, for these rocky shores are seldom traversed by human inhabitants and yet have so much beauty to reveal, so this is your tour guide, Julescape setting off on another exploratory hike, along the Garden Route shoreline, here on the south Cape coast of Africa, and wishing you well until the next episode of The Shape of The Cape.