Clanwilliam, Rooibos world capital

This morning, for the first time since we started our trip we woke up after 7.00 am; we are so accustomed to waking up before dawn, that it seems to have slept until midday.

From our terrace we have a wonderful view of the artificial lake, formed by the dam, on the Cederberg Park and on some of the Cederberg Range; what a landscape, for a moment we want to not go out of the house, stay on the terrace all day and admire this sight, but then we decided to prepare and to leave, today a good day  of roaming around awaits for us.

We are in Clanwilliam, in the Western Cape province, the world capital of rooibos, a tea with no theine that is extracted from the leaves of an endemic plant in the area.

It seems that rooibos is an antioxidant and an accelerator of metabolism and here they drink it pure or flavored with different fruits or other herbs; at Clanwilliam there are two tea houses where you can taste it and where to buy some packs to take home.

Always in the city there is also the shop of one of the factories that packs and exports it all over the world; you can also visit the factory that is about 22 km from Clanwilliam.

We take our car and go to the city center, that is basically one street, Main Street, in what other way could it be called?

We park near the Anglican Church, an church with little of African, and it looks more like a little church in a small village in the Dutch countryside.

We go to the Nancy's Tea Room and, of course, we take a rooibos; we already know it very well because we found it a bit everywhere throughout this trip, and even in the previous ones in Southern Africa, but drunk here it has another charm.

This tea house also has a shop that sells several items and some rooibos products, not just tea, but also soaps, body and face products; it's interesting to find out how many properties this plant has.

Clanwilliam is also one of the oldest colonial towns in South Africa; certainly, of course, if we compare it to European historical cities, it cannot hold the comparison, but it does have some buildings, very Dutch or German, that is worth seeing.

Some of these buildings are on Main Street, just a few meters away from each other, such as the Flower Church or the museum, the others are in the neighboring streets; we visit the city center in just over an hour.

Just outside the city, right facing our terrace, there is the Ramskop Nature Reserve, ideal for those who want a closer contact with nature.

At Clanwilliam and in the surrounding area in the spring you can see the spectacle of blossoming wild flowers; this is in fact a semi-arid zone and throughout the year the soil hosts shrubs that are mostly dry; but with the mists formed on the Atlantic coast, due to the difference in temperature between the cold current of the Benguela and the sun-heated air, and some spring rain, the shrubs are born, bloom and give birth to a kaleidoscope of colors .

It is not easy to understand where to see the bloom, because it depends heavily on the rains of the previous days; the period ranges from mid-August to mid-September but there are often blooms in this area and in Namaqua, from early August until October.

To know where to go, you have to ask the locals, and that's what we did, maybe you get some extravagant response, but some are able to give you useful information to find the blooming places.

The Clanwilliam Tourism Office is also well informed about the blooming places, as well as the city monuments; there is also a phone number, West Coast Flower Hotline, that is active between August and September, and gives information about it (072 9388186).

We went to the tourism office and asked a little bit around and each one gave us directions to different places; this afternoon we will start exploring some of them, the others, that are further South, we will see them tomorrow as we go down to Cape Town.