Zuurberg National Park, South Africa
Zuurberg National Park, now amalgamated with the Addo Elephant National Park, spreads over the entire range of low, grass-covered mountains to the north of Addo. The park covers a vast area of steep, deeply wooded kloofs and high, rolling downs, which provide cool relief from the baking hot plain below. Among a number of day hikes several lead to remote waterfalls. The rare cycad, a prehistoric tree-fern, grows on the Zuurbergs higher reaches. Cape Mountain zebra, kudu, baboon, grey rhebok, duiker, bushbuck, grysbok, caracal and leopard are to be found.
Lying in the north western corner of the Sundays River Valley, Zuurberg lies at the foot of the mountain of the same name. The historic Zuurberg Pass, almost entirely surrounded by the Greater Addo Elephant National Park, is a narrow cutting through the Zuurberg Mountains, built in the 1850s and the original main route into the hinterland via which today you can also reach the Karoo.
The mountain overlooks the rolling hills of this part of the Eastern Cape, in the heart of valley bushveld and fynbos types unique to the Eastern Cape. The former Zuurberg National Park, on the slopes of the mountains stretching towards Darlington Lake, now lies within the Greater Addo National Park, home today to over 350 elephant and all of the Big Five, and a major draw card to travellers. An important Late Stone Age archaeological site lies at the Melkhoutboom Cave in the Zuurberg Mountains, which has uncovered artifacts dating back some 15 000 years, contributing greatly to our overall picture of the life and times of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
One of the Addo Elephant Park's mountain camps lies in the Zuurberg Mountains near the route of the original Zuurberg Pass, and is highly attractive to visitors, not only for the wonderful vistas, but the smattering of dense thickets of Black wattle trees, prickly pears in the valley thickets and breathtaking scenery. And if you have children, then taking the Zuurberg Pass through the mountains is virtually obligatory, as the Addo Elephant Back Safaris host elephant-back walks through the veld about which your children will talk for days to follow.
