West2Wild – Day 5
Day 5 – West2Wild
After spending the last 4 ½ days at the YEP Haga Haga project, the YEP West2Wild road trip continued with YEPs Robyn Lighton, Kai Fitchen, Reghart Pistorius, Henko Roukema, HH photographer Steph and the Mercedes-Benz Vito crew bus on the 1 200km long return trip from the Wild Coast to the mother city (Cape Town) on the West Coast of South Africa.
With the help of a map of a completely foreign city to all of us, we took a couple of detours to reach our first stop – the Mercedes-Benz Coastal Education and Visitor Centre in the Nahoon Point Nature Reserve in East London. It was really interesting to learn about the local environment of the East London area and how Mercedes-Benz is involved with environmental education in the area.
The aim of the MBSA Coastal Education and Visitor Centre is to make exceptional strides towards education and awareness of our natural heritage and to protect a valuable heritage site and conserve the wealth of coastal biodiversity in the area. This center provides an eco-tourism facility to educate children, city residents, and visitors to the area, and given MBSA’s CSI focus on community upliftment, protecting the environment and education, funding establishment of the Centre was a perfect fit.
The Centre is providing a number of social benefits, including job creation through opportunities offered to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME’s) to become involved in the operation of the facility. The footprint found at the Reserve that scientists believe to be 120 000 years old (the oldest known humanoid footprint in the world) inspired the shape of the MBSA Coastal Education and Visitor Centre.
As ambassadors for YEP we provided flyers of the Mercedes sponsored Pangaea Project and we distributed our Shark Safety tips as provided by the Shark Spotters and also SASSI consumer pocket guides on Sustainable Seafood.
After a long drive down the Sunshine Coast we reached our pitstop for the night where there was a nice warm plate of pasta waiting for us…