Akkedisberg Pass, Stanford

Riviersonderend, lyrically translated as 'River Without End,' is a relatively young village, established in 1923 when Edith McIntyre sold her farm, Tierhoek ("Tiger Corner") to the Dutch Reformed Church, from whose fledgeling congregation the village was grown. The hiking trails walk one through the Overberg Signal Canon system, established in the 1700s to call up the local residents when war in the Cape threatened to break. The river offers excellent fishing, as well as swimming and canoeing.

Having left Riviersonderend behind you, the Akkedisberg Pass leads you on to the famous whale-spotting town of Stanford. The most oft spotted whale species is the Southern Right Whale. The month of May marks the beginning of the whale-spotting season when the whales arrive to mate and calve in the warmth of the shallower waters, with their numbers increasing all the way through to the peak-season of November. Other species of whales and dolphins include the Humpback Whale, Bryde's Whale and Killer Whale. Common, Bottlenose and Heavisides dolphins playfully patrol the coastline -- adding to the annual flood of tourists!

FACT FILE 

Use these powerful features to get the best use out of the map:

FULL-SCREEN MODEMODE: Click PLAY, then pass your mouse over the bottom right corner of the video screen. The outline of a square will appear. Clicking on it will toggle Full Screen Mode. Press ESC to return to the original format.

Note that the Google Earth vertical profile animation clip generates some parallax errors, so the profile is only a general guide of what to expect in terms of gradients, distance and elevation. In this pass's profile, the graph shows several spikes which are incorrect. The general trend line of the graph represents only an approximate guideline.