Most of June / July we hung around in Cape town, alternating between having work done at Trokkie by C&A Products and parking in front of my sister’s house to spend the weekend together.
But by mid July, when we had received our first Covid vaccine, our long awaited vehicle registration and Charles of C&A Products was working on Gavin’s vehicle “Moglet”, we decided on a week away from town.
Originally we had intended to drive straight to the Cederberg and meet up with Gavin and Lee sometime during the week, but plans changed slightly: the weather didn’t look too great and Gavin and Lee got stuck with the work on their truck.
So we changed our plans a bit and headed to St Helena Bay to sniff up the fresh sea breeze on the West Coast.
We parked at the Midwest Caravan Park with a weather pattern that changed hourly between sunshine and cloudbursts. When we went for a walk on the first day, we barely made it back home before the big rain came down… we actually had to run the last few meters not to be totally drenched.
We passed a little house with the painted name “huisie by die see” (little house by the sea). It took us back immediately to our oldest son Peter, because he used to say that all the time:” The only thing I want is a huisie by die see!”. We took a photo and whatsapped it to him and shortly thereafter he responded with a soundclip of Koos Kombuis’s song with the same name.
We walked amidst the washed up kelp and seaweed and, seeing that research is done regarding seaweed as alternative food source, wondered which would be edible. Although we know Nori seaweed from the days our youngest son Johan would try his hand (very successfully, I might add) at making sushi, we actually wouldn’t have a clue what would be edible or not. We decided to rather read up thouroughly first before even trying to harvest our supper on the beaches of the West Coast.
We saw the lighthouse far away in the distance, against the darkish sky and the greyish silhouettes of containerships heading for Saldana Bay, a bit more south.
We went for another walk or two in the following few days and the beach and ocean were absolutely beautiful!
The ocean was calm and the skies a deep azure blue. The birds were warming their wings in the sunshine and the waves gently broke on the beach, leaving intricate trails and patterns. We walked along the beach over and under a rusted and crumbling pier or two and spotted the odd weather beaten dinghy looking lost on the sandy beach.
We kept an eye on the weather forecast and by Wednesday the weather had cleared up considerably and showed clear and sunny skies for the rest of the week. We heard from one of our fellow campers that it had snowed in the Cederberg so, after a last soft and pastel pinkish-purplish sunset over the Bay, we decided to pack up the following morning and drive to Dwarsrivier to go visit the mountains.
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St Helena Bay