The Fynbos Road Meander

For all you fynbos fanatics out there the Gansbaai area offers a completely unique botanical experience: The Fynbos Road Meander

The Cape Floral Kingdom is one of the richest and most unique botanical regions on earth. With hundreds of particular plant-species that are specific only to the Cape peninsula it is a botanists dream destination.  The fynbos Road meander is an initiative of the Agulhas Biodiversity Project (“ABI”). It winds through a unique botanical area of about 100kms, with more than 9 fynbos- vegetation types and over 5 non-fynbos-vegetation types to be found in it. Many of the thousands of plant species are endemic to the area and some of the plant species are so localised that a single mountain is the only place in the world where they can be found.

Stretching from Stanford to the Agulhas National Park, the fynbos road meander is also destined to become the future home of all the animal species that roamed the Agulhas Plains until a little over 100 years ago, a future “Serengeti of the Western Cape” if you will, which is still currently under construction. The idea is to eventually repopulate it with some of the existing original species such as Black Rhino, Hippopotamus, Hartebees, Zebra and Cape Lion along with many others.

The road, which also acts as the entrance to the  Agulhas National Park, wends it’s way through the very peaceful rural vicinities of the Gansbaai area and Overberg providing access from it’s route to over 10 large conservancies and reserves which are open to the public for hiking, horse riding or 4×4 driving. The 5 distinct and diverse ecologies offer a wonderful opportunity to explore the amazing flora and fauna that belong to the fynbos kingdom, not to mention the incredible birdlife, which makes the fynbos road meander a fantastic birding route too!