Things To Do in LangebaanWest Coast Fossil Park MTB Trails
Cycling Sports & Leisure Cape West Coast
Where? West Coast Fossil Park, near Langebaan, West Coast, Western Cape
When? All year.
How? Call +27 (0)22 766-1606
How much? Price on request
Overnight? Stay at accommodation in Langebaan, in Western Cape
Where: West Coast Fossil Park, near Langebaan, West Coast, Western Cape
Level: easy to slightly more taxing
Type of route: circular routes (green 3.5 km, red 6 km, blue 8 km, yellow 10 km)
Best: August to October for the flowers, but otherwise all year round
The West Coast Fossil Park is an active palaeontological site, but it also offers a number of circular routes that you can tag on to one of the hourly park tours (the schedule changes seasonally).
If you arrive without a bike, the park hires them for the day. Routes start from the visitors centre and follow former mining roads through the 250 hectare park. There are a few difficult up and down hills for the more adventurous, but the routes are fundamentally for family groups.
Once upon a time four-tusked elephants and three-toed horses, short-necked giraffe and sabre-toothed cats roamed the West Coast. Today the park is dry, but formerly the Berg River swept through here in flood, depositing these creatures along its banks where they became fossilised, thus allowing palaeontologists to discover the fossils in what remained of the phosphate mine that opened here in 1943.
In the area:
Horse riding, Bird Island Nature Reserve, Dassen Island Penguins Colony, whale watching.
