Coasting along, making memories

Published May 20, 2010

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I'm sitting in a Kleinmond harbour restaurant, eating grilled hake fresh from the ocean and watching the waves smash and foam on the rocks nearby.

The food has taken forever to arrive and a clumsy waitress spilled water all over the table, but none of that matters. What matters is the warm sun on my skin, the sea breeze tousling my hair and the tremendous view of an endlessly stretching blue ocean, its surface tickled with foaming whitecaps.

I'm still recovering from the cold winter I recently experienced in Canada and am too intoxicated with the beauty of the Cape to care if the chips are underdone or if the food takes 20 minutes longer than it should.

For someone who's always been a sucker for seaside towns, I'm in my element on the coastline of the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve.

Just an hour and a half from Cape Town, the R44 that winds from Rooiels to Kleinmond via Pringle Bay and Betty's Bay is a jewel, a destination rich with fynbos, spectacular views, heavenly beaches and wildlife. The drive to get there - once you leave the N2 - is like a blissfully longer version of Chapman's Peak Drive, and without the toll.

Massive mountain ranges dip sharply into the Atlantic Ocean, the highway rises and falls as it curves around the mountains and long stretches of white sand whet the appetite for perfect beach days.

Thankfully, the Kogelberg has not been overrun by tourists and the towns that dot the coast remain sleepy and devoid of artificially inflated restaurant and store prices. With relief I notice there's none of the glitz that goes with destinations where the steps of tourists are louder than those of locals.

I first came this way as a reluctant child of a caravanning family, and I remember rolling my eyes as my parents unhitched the caravan, unpacked the tent and settled into the rustic caravan parks. Twenty years later, apart from the restaurants that have changed names as the years rolled by, Kleinmond feels no different than it did in years past.

My caravanning days are well behind me, though and as an adult I'm relieved to be unpacking my bags at the Arabella Western Cape Hotel & Spa.

From my bedroom window swallows dip and dive above an immaculate, sprawling golf course that borders the Bot River Lagoon. I wake to bald eagles gliding above the water and tussling for their breakfast, and golfers puttering around the course.

My kids take one look at the hotel's three pools and their happiness is sealed. They spend three days running from the 50-person hot tub to the waterfall pool, while most parents sip tropical drinks from comfy chairs. The accents and languages are many: I hear British and Australian versions of English and try to calculate in my head what the R3 000 a night rooms cost them in their home currencies.

I'm chomping at the bit for some adventure and the Kogelberg offers plenty of it. Shark diving? Horse riding? River rafting? Yes, please! But the kids are too small for hard adventure.

So I pack the family into the car and head to Betty's Bay to check out Stony Point, a preserve for a few hundred African penguins. We follow a neat wooden pathway along the rocky coast, marvelling at the sheer number of penguins and their spunky attitudes as they cavort in the surf, their tuxedoed little bodies dodging the mounds of seaweed and moving lithely between the swells.

The Stony Point colony is one of only three land-based colonies, and though there's no swimming with the penguins a la Boulders Beach, there are many more birds here. A handful of visitors are walking the path to see the penguins, most of them ignorant that in years past this quiet spot was a place of commotion, blood and blubber.

Whale blubber, to be precise. I take a peek inside the Southern Cross Café, adjacent to the parking lot, to glimpse Betty's Bay's not-so-illustrious history. The small, stale-smelling room behind the coffee shop reveals that between 1913 and 1930 this was a major whaling station where the carcasses of some 300 Southern Right whales were hauled out of the water each season. Thankfully, those days are long gone and whale watching is the activity du jour.

Baboon watching is another activity here. It's fascinating to see a troop ambling nonchalantly along the highway when you're unfamiliar with a sight like this. My friend Samantha, a Pringle Bay homeowner, regales us with baboon stories.

She remembers coming home to a disaster after a troop of baboons lifted a sliding door off its hinges and proceeded to raid the pantry, swing from the curtains and litter the house with faeces.

Once one sneaked through the window and stole baby porridge off the counter as it was cooling. To locals they are pests, but the baboons were at home here long before their human counterparts. So it seems fitting that they act like they own the place.

Back at the Arabella, days pass quickly and the choices are decadent. The swimming pool or the ocean? The surf or the lagoon? There are beaches aplenty, between the long stretch of sand at Betty's Bay, the lifeguard-protected beach at Kleinmond and the shoreline at Pringle Bay.

That evening we're back at the seaside restaurants, trying to decide which of the ocean's delicacies will become our dinner. Whatever arrives, this magical setting adds flavour, entertainment and inspiration to the meal, lodging itself deep in memory and making us promise to return to the Kogelberg.

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