Welcome Blaauw, by his own account, was not a man who looked up at trees much.
Even when he was living in the Tsitsikamma forest, he hardly noticed them. They just formed a green backdrop to his life.

After being raised and schooled in Humansdorp and completing half a course in the motor diesel trade before his family’s money ran out, he drove a truck for a road construction company. Then he found work at the Tsitsikamma National Park, mowing the lawns.
Five days a week he walked behind that whining machine, bored out of his skull. Every time a job opportunity came up, he’d apply for it but was never successful. Then he heard about a company nearby named Stormsriver Adventures and went to see them. They employed him as a driver – and his luck began to turn.
In short order Welcome was put through a local guiding course. He showed promise and, in no time at all, his new employers put his name forward for training in the brand-new category of marine guide. Five months later; when Welcome was just about to go through his final assessment for marine guide level one, we booked him to introduce us to the Goesa Forest Trail, a particularly charming section of the indigenous Plaatbos indigenous forest at the end of Storms River Village.

Walking into this forest is like stepping into a living, green hall with huge pillars holding up the distant grey-blue sky.
“Listen,” said Welcome, holding up his hand like a scout. Above us in a tall yellowwood was a lime green Knysna Turaco, scuttling from branch to branch with a furtive air. By avoiding unnecessary flying, theTuraco dodges the Forest Buzzard, ever-alert for the telltale flash of red and green when a Turaco takes wing.
The Turaco’s song, though, is hardly discreet – it sounds like a giant cuckoo clock being wound up. In fact most forest birds seem to sing through megaphones. An inquisitive Black-headed Oriole treated us to its plaintive, liquid song from a nearby Cape hard pear, and an invisible Narina Trogon gave a series of gruff hoots.
The lord of the forest is without doubt the Outeniqua yellowwood (Podocarpus falcatus), a noble giant that reaches a height of 12 storeys or more. Welcome showed us the difference between it and the slightly smaller ‘real yellowwood’ (Podocarpus latifolia) with its narrow leaves. Neither would reach anywhere near forest height in a garden as it’s the ferocious competition for light that drives them higher
Every forest plant has some cunning survival strategy. Yellowwoods deter leaf eaters with bitter tannins – which turn all streams and rivers in the forest the colour of rooibos tea. Stinkwoods (Ocotea bullata) can live for I 000 years by deploying an even more elaborate ploy. To deter insects, they display a rash of small bumps on their leaves. Goggas looking for a good place to lay eggs avoid the leaves “because they think there will be nothing left for their babies to eat by the time they hatch,” explained Welcome.

Another tricky character is the kamassi tree (Gonioma kamassi), a pretty evergreen. Its leaves contain a milky latex that fools an animal into quickly feeling full. If the grazer persists, the latex makes it feel sick and dizzy.
Things work differently for the black witch hazel, found throughout the understorey of the forest.This leggy plant is the local air-conditioner. By releasing water through its leaves in copious quantities on hot days, it cools the forest down, explained Welcome. But it grows so prolifically that insects are drawn to it. However this helps prevent too many witch hazels from choking the system.

We stopped next to the log of a Cape ash that had fallen months ago. Now the forest was feasting on it. Everything here is broken down swiftly by dozens of fungi and microbes that specialise in the job, the nutrients being taken up by the roots of other plants sprawled across the forest floor like coiled ropes. A millipede, part of the breakdown team, walked across the thick leaf litter and fell hungrily upon a fallen blossom. And we noticed a tiny yellowwood sapling springing up from the spongy fallen giant.
Welcome was delighted to be using our walk as a quick revision before his looming assessment. But he would be tested on more than his knowledge of the forest as the Tsitsikamma region crams in three separate biomes – marine, fynbos and forest.
Simply identifying the plants and animals in such a highly diverse region is a huge challenge. Fynbos comprises more than 8 500 plant species. The forest holds 500, the large trees making up 87 of them. And then there’s the ocean and rocky shore, a whole new world for Welcome.
“When I started studying to be a guide I thought it was hard work and didn’t like it,” he recalled. But his trainer Louis Willemse, was patient. “Oom Louis never just gave me an answer when I asked. He encouraged all of us to find things out for ourselves.”

Welcome, who tends to walk with his head down, vividly remembers the day he asked Louis whether a cold front was on its way. “He said to me, ‘Finally, you’re looking up’.”
“As I started to understand how everything works together; it opened my eyes. I’d lived here, but I didn’t know anything. I saw the trees, but I didn’t understand them. Now I do, and I want to protect them. I see how things work together and I’ve realised we must value all of it. We mustn’t destroy it. Everything has a purpose.”
Several weeks after our visit we heard Welcome had passed the stringent assessment, which requires a pass mark of 7596. He’s now officially a marine guide. □
Stormsriver Adventures 042 281 1836, website
Text by Julienne Du Toit. Pictures supplied by Chris Marais. This article was taken from the March 2010 issue of Country Life.
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