Ebb and Flow - Wilderness

I have not updated this blog for a few months now. The reason for that is not because we have not been doing any camping but simply that we have been re-visiting some of the places we have been to in previous blog posts.

However we recently attended a blues music festival weekend at the Far Hills hotel between George and the Wilderness and decided to haul our trailer with us and find a campsite in the area to stay on an extra few days to camp afterwards. On the Saturday we investigated a few camp sites in the area and chose to go to the Ebb and Flow campsite, which is part of the Wilderness National Park on Sunday when our festival was over. It is sitauted on the banks of the Touw River, which is one of the reasons that we chose it as we had taken our Standup Paddle Boards with us.

Skipper Tenttrailer

As far as campsites go, this was one of the nicest we have visited, A newly paved access road off the N2, friendly reception staff, nice level grassed sites with stainless steel braais with grids, most with some shade, new electrical points and very clean and upmarket ablutions. There are double canoes for hire. The braai's and dustbins are cleaned daily.

A few negatives are the sparse number of water taps and dustbins. As I said, the ablutions are great but the location of the main ablution block is definitely not. It is miles away from the main campsite, on the far side of the self catering "Forest Cabin" cottages. Thank heavens we have a Porta Potti for No 1 or otherwise with the amount of beer and wine I consume, it would have been equivalent to running a half marathon by the end of the day! There is another very small and cramped ablution block (2 showers and 2 toilets per side) at the far end of the campsite and I showered there on the first day. It was such a traumatic experience that I opted to do the Groot Trek to the main block after that.

A few more pics of the campsite.

As far as leisure activites go, there are several hiking trails, the most popular being the waterfall trail which can be hiked from the start just oustide the campsite or partly by canoe on the river. The latter option seems very popular. We had our SUP's and also paddled up the river as far as we could. If you take your own canoe, kayak, SUP etc it does need a permit but this is issued free of charge at either the reception or Rangers office.

There is no shop on site, but it is only 3km to Wilderness village where there is a very good Kwikspar for your daily needs. There are several excellent restaurants in the area. Try Joplins at Pirates Creek for steaks!

We will definitely return sometime, despite the trek to the showers and toilets.