Tag: cape agulhas

Plot twist

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Look at this beautiful plot for sale in Suiderstrand, Cape Agulhas. Doesn’t it look idyllic?

And doesn’t sales agent Richard Pratt (stop it!) make it sound idyllic?

Situated within the Agulhas National Park, this vacant stand in Suiderstrand presents a rare opportunity to construct your coastal retreat. The land is level—ideal for straightforward construction. Lush fynbos to the rear boundary, offering a serene backdrop of indigenous flora and the soothing sound of the ocean. The clear sightlines to both the front and back of the plot make it possible to plan your home that captures sea views with clever orientation.

Approved house plans included.

Suiderstrand is a sanctuary for those drawn to serenity and natural fynbos.

Stunning, doll! Stunning!

What Richard has failed to mention here is that while this plot absolutely backs onto lush fynbos at the moment, that won’t be the case for very long, with 15 houses being built all over that very same lush fynbos in the new – and rather controversial – Moquini Bay housing estate, in the very near future.
And then this plot will back onto first a building site, and then a security estate, and not lush fynbos.

But then, I wouldn’t want to accuse Richard of being slightly disingenuous with his description of this place. After all, how on earth would he know about that new development?

Oh yes, now I remember.

He’s selling the houses there too.

Right.

Good things, rubbish things

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Ag, let’s get the rubbish out of the way. We’re back home (that’s ok, not rubbish), but we’ve brought some crappy virus with us. To be expected perhaps, sharing a car for several (or more) hours with several (or more) people. It’s nothing serious, just one of those things that makes you feel crap for a while and then goes away. But yes, it does make you feel crap for a while, and yes, that’s rubbish.

The rest of the trip was pretty cool, though. I played a lot of taxi and let the kids (ha!) get on with their own thing. And I think that suited all of us quite well. But we still did spend some time together, enjoying the fresh air and the wildlife that the Agulhas National Park has to offer. Yesterday was an odd weather day with occasional gorgeous light, and a pretty sunset:

We headed out to Brandfontein, on a mini self-drive Cape safari. And we saw quite a bit for a winter outing…
From the classic Ostrich (after which Struisbaai was allegedly named) in that weird late morning light:

A bit of Grey Rhebok action later on:

Not forgetting a springing bok, but not a Springbok (although we did see some of them too) – this is a Steenbok:

And one should never miss a shot of an African Black Oystercatcher passing by over a huge Atlantic swell:

Thankfully, these guys are fairly ubiquitous along the Agulhas coast, but there are three times fewer of them left in the wild than the White Rhino, (and about seven times fewer than the Blue Crane). It’s strange that we don’t hear about the plight of our birds as much as our mammals. To me, at least.

There will be a battle going on in my upper respiratory tract tonight. Tomorrow morning, I expect to be either 100% or completely broken. Leaning towards to latter, hoping for the former.

Either way – this was a great few days away.

Are you sure this is a good idea, sir?

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After doing a few jobs this morning, I’m heading back down to Agulhas, like sometimes happens from time to time, but this time, I will be have the company of several teenagers.

The teenagers in question are lovely and all, but there are several of them, and only one of me.

Ostensibly, I will be in charge, but I think that we can all see what might go wrong should things go south – which is literally what we are going to do.

Eek.

I joke, of course. I’m looking forward to taking my daughter and her friends on a quick break down to the cottage. And because we know that the internet down there can be a little iffy sometimes, I’m plonking this advance-written post on here just in case those demons rear their ugly heads once again.

Let’s hope that the winter weather is not too wintery (although we have a big fireplace for such conditions), and we can get out and about a bit.

Do look out for stuff on IG and on here, as we play at being tourists in our own backyard for a while.

The journey home

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Back in Cape Town, where the internet works [nervously checks – yes it does] and it was a lovely journey home. We punctuated it with a few stops along the way. Some planned, like this one to get some shots of what’s left of the shipwreck:

And some less planned, like pulling over to get some shots of the rainbows over the South Atlantic:

And then this guy, who was bothering the teals, ducks and geese in the flooded fields between Struisbaai and Bredasdorp.

We spotted him, pulled over, and we thought we’d missed him before we heard that haunting, spine-tingling call (if you don’t know, click here). Geese (x2), teal, ducks, stilts, ibises (x2) and a Fish Eagle, all within 20m of the highway. All you have to do is stop, get out and look. It’s all right there.

He even went and sat on a nearby power pole (one of the ones that burned down here, I think) for us afterwards.

Sponsored by Kodak, as they used to say.

The rest of the journey was less exciting, but the Overberg is already showing signs of spring with the canola fields starting to erupt in colour.

Just another two months of rain to get through…

A trip full of hard work, but with just a bit of leisure time at the end, and a sparklingly clean cottage to look forward to for our next trip.

What happened?

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OK. Let me quickly fill you in a few details.

We abandoned Agulhas on Friday afternoon. There was no power, no internet, and little hope of either being restored anytime soon. We were lucky enough to have somewhere to go (home), the roads were open, and so we took the chance.

There was a lot of fire damage on the road back up to Bredasdorp, and the situation was too risky to pull over and take photos like we had done on the way down. But here’s an image from the car window of the same place that we got the second shot in this post.

So we’ve been home since about 7:30 pm on Friday evening, and the electricity was only restored to Agulhas at 6pm this evening: an outage of about 74 hours. That makes even loadshedding look like a minor inconvenience.

The fire is now contained:

Which is obviously great news for those who have had no power for three days, and for those whose property was threatened by the actual flames, rather than the lack of utilities.

As for us: a disappointing end to a few days away, but we’ll be back – hopefully for a less eventful visit – sometime soon.