Fynbos stays
250+ results in Africa
250+ results in Africa
Fynbos is the vegetation of the Cape Floral Kingdom, the smallest of the world’s six floral kingdoms and the only one contained within a single country. It is hard, narrow-leaved, low scrub that looks like nothing much from a moving car and turns out, when you stop and crouch, to hold more plant species per hectare than almost anywhere on earth. Most of them grow nowhere else.
It also burns. Fynbos needs fire every fifteen years or so to release seed, which is why a recently burnt slope is not a disaster but the start of the most spectacular flowering you will see.
The stays here sit inside that system: farms with a conservancy on the boundary, cottages on a mountain reserve, guesthouses on the coast where fynbos runs down to the sea. Many of the causes their bookings support are clearing invasive alien trees, which is the single biggest threat to both the plants and the water they protect.
Something is in flower in every month, but the main show is roughly August to October, after the winter rain. Proteas and ericas carry the late winter and spring; the season shifts with rainfall, so treat those months as a guide rather than a date.
Mostly the Western Cape and the western parts of the Eastern Cape, in a belt along the mountains and the coast. It is the dominant vegetation of the Cape Peninsula, the Overberg, the Cederberg and much of the southern Cape.
It has a small number of species but a high proportion you will not see anywhere else, including the Cape Sugarbird and the Orange-breasted Sunbird, both tied to proteas and ericas. Many fynbos stays on Spekboom are also flagged bird friendly.
