Head South: magical elandsbaai (west coast, south africa)

A few weeks back, Jim and I spent a weekend at Eland's Bay (Elandsbaai in Afrikaans), a small town on the west coast about three hours north of Cape Town. Our friend Tina had promised a magical, mystical place, and it truly was. We stayed at an old farmstead, Uithoek, which means something like "Out-of-the-way corner" in a cottage called Langhuis (Long House), with no electric lights, a thatched roof and a view of a vlei (lake) and a koppjie (smallish mountain).

We had a sportive weekend - Tina's husband Chris practices archery, and gave us all a try. Jim also got in a good few hours of fishing, with two lovely sardines to show for his work. We fried them up and ate them with lemon juice as a pre-dinner snack one night.

My first time shooting :)

Jim is an old hand.

A view toward the vlei as the sun sets. We could hear cows lowing all afternoon and early in the morning, and walked past their dung on the way to the vlei. We took a paddle one morning in an old rowboat, poling ourselves through the shallow water. It turned out the boat was leaky - luckily we made it back before it sank!! Took about ten minutes for enough water to drain out before it was light enough to pull on shore.

Enjoying the fire and candlelight.

Next morning, Tina and I went beach-walking while the gentlemen surfed and fished.

Victorious fisherman!

Leaving the beach, nearly empty. A bus of schoolchildren from a "posh" school in Cape Town showed up while we were sitting there, piled out about 15 kids who surfed for about an hour, and then piled them all back into the bus and sped away. What a weekend school trip!

We drove a mile or two inland from the beach and clambered around to explore these caves.

These caves were clearly well-used. These shells were piled in the center of the front of the cave, and had clearly been placed there over time as hundreds of groups of San hunters came through with their sea-spoils.