Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden

With the Benz out of the shop, and after a lazy day indoors yesterday, we decided to go on another weekend adventure. This time, we set out for the third of the seven national botanical gardens in ZA, the Walter Sisulu NBG, which is just a little west of Jo’burg, not so far from Maropeng, in the suburb of Roodepoort. We set off after a light lunch to stimulate napping in the young ones during the drive, which was only about 45 minutes from Pta. So we decided to extend the nap by exploring another nature reserve on the map, the Ruimsig Entomological Reserve. This is only about a five minute drive away from the Botanical Garden, and is a large enclosed meadow, dedicated to the protection of a rare butterfly, the Roodepoort Copper (Aloeides dentatis: Lycaenidae). There is only a sign to indicate what the large open space is, and no entrance, gift shop, café, etc. So we admired the large hole in the middle of some very choice real estate, and headed back to the Garden in time for the girls to wake from a full hour’s nap.

I was a bit wary of visiting another botanical garden after Kirstenbosch, which claims to be the most beautiful garden in Africa. But this garden also has much beauty and I was not disappointed. We wandered about the useful plants garden, and the succulents.

Another highlight of was the waterfall, which has about a 70 m drop, and is quite impressive. This waterfall is near the headwaters of the Crocodile River, which if I’m not mistaken runs east through Nelspruit, quite a ways away.

Some rare black eagles have made their aerie right next to the waterfall, and there was a spotting scope so we could look in on a mother eagle.

We decided to drop in on the café, which was experiencing a power outage, so there were only drinks for us to enjoy, but we were able to get some limited edition cricket crisps (Caribbean onion and balsamic vinegar flavoured) and also some chutney flavoured crisps (or as Violet says, “chuntey”).

After settling up for our drinks, we headed towards the wilder side of the Garden, with some typical highveld vegetation, and over to a dam (most lakes in ZA are referred to as dams, as that is how most permanent lakes in ZA are formed) with a bird hide so we could spy on a cormorant for a bit. Winding our way back to the entrance, we wandered through the nursery and back to the Benz for the cruise home.