Our First Cape Holiday

When we were more or less settled in our flat, Tony and I booked a five-day holiday for all of us with our time share and we were looking forward to be going on our first holiday in our new area. The place we went to is called Port Owen Marina on the West Coast just past Langebaan. We had a beautiful chalet overlooking the marina, which is filled with luxury yachts proudly bobbing up and down as if to say 'look at me, look at me', and surrounded by huge weekend mansions saying more or less the same thing! Every evening we walked right around the marina looking and marvelling at the abundance.

We found little shops selling bric-a-brac and coffee, and a few kms away, a heavenly resort where you sign yourself in and put money in a 'trust' box and write out your own receipt, all organised neatly in a little hut. There is a large dam with many different types of birds and a few bird hides scattered around the dam where you can sit quietly and observe and especially listen. Cathy and I walked up a little road which suddenly opened out onto a pristine deserted beach which went on as far as the eye could see. It felt like we were the first ones to discover this marvellous spot. We stayed a short while, breathing it all in.

Right in front of our chalet there were two geese who kind of thought this was their home too, and they slept there at night and in the morning the ground was full of goose-poo, so Tony decided that he would scare them off once and for all. Of course, they hardly paid any attention to him at all and were back moments later honking and protesting loudly! 

 Joel could only join us on the Thursday and we went to Bokkum Laan which is a road filled with Bokkum hangars where these little fish are hung to dry and eaten dried and salted, like biltong. We saw pelicans and flamingos and found a little art gallery where Cathy bought a lovely painting of the area by the local artist.

I had bought two little paintings at the coffee shop earlier, painted by the people who worked in the shops around there, quite naive paintings but I loved them and they hang in our bedroom now reminding us of our first Cape holiday.

 We sat in a little restaurant at Bokkum Laan, overlooking the river, quiet and picturesque but particularly priced for tourists, and we decided that it was a bit of a rip-off, so Cathy and I had coffee and cold drinks but Joel wanted to try one of their dishes and was rather disappointed when he got a large plate with 6 small scallops in the middle for an exorbitant price. That riles me! 

On our way back home we stopped at a beautiful little fishing village called Pater Noster and watched the fishermen reeling in their nets filled with small fish. We had a lovely lunch there in a garden behind a shop in the main road. Lovely food prepared with care in a tranquil setting.

The view at night from our jetty was gorgeous. Each house around the marina has its own jetty and each bungalow at the resort as well, and at night each jetty is lit up with a blue light making the setting quite fairy-like. The sunsets were wonderful but the wind comes up in the early afternoon most days making it sometimes impossible to sit on the veranda.

Cathy on the jetty, taking in the sun, pregnant, radiant, happy, contented and beautiful.