19th March – Monday

Spent the morning at the harbour in Lambert’s Baai where there is a breeding colony of Gannets. At this time of the year the fledglings are almost ready to leave home; these darker birds were practising taking off by running a few metres and flapping their wings vigorously. Once they actually manage to take off there is no going back. The young birds make their first flight to a nearby island of rocks, rest and then take off to far distant shores or the mouth of a hungry seal. Watching the adult birds flying out for food and then circling to find a place to land was fascinating and reminded us of circling around Heathrow.

Around lunch time we headed north via the Clanwilliam dam for the throbbing metropolis of Garies where we had booked to stay at Agama tented accommodation. At 20km odd dirt road leads to a collection of very sophisticated tents with their own showers. The tents have no electricity and rely on hurricane lamps for light. We were the only on the night we were there so had the lapa, fire, splendid food and pool to ourselves. We believe it is very different in the flower season, but guess those guests do not experience evening temps of 35 or flies in the early morning.

18th March 2012

The big trek northwest begins with a detour to 74 Wale Street for a discussion on future visions. Eventually we get on our way and the first stop is Paternoster. A sleepy fishing village where selling under-age crayfish at ridiculously low price of R8 seemed to be a local pastime. We learnt later that most of the larger ones were in fact pregnant and the bright orange eggs have been removed which makes it even more serious for the sustainability of this delicacy. Luckily our suspicious SA characters kicked in and we chose to eat fatty fishy and chips at the local instead of freshly cooked baby crayfish. After checking out the local B+B options we decided to push onto Lambert’s Baai/Bay – mainly because the fresh breeze made swimming less than likely.

Of course it would be easy to find a place to stay in Lamberts Baai as it was the end of a normal weekend – no public holidays in sight nor school holidays…. Mmm well maybe that is an ideal weekend for weddings. After a few ‘sorries’ we were referred to La Paloma which turned out to be a very comfortable two-bed room upstairs flat right on the beach. For dinner we wandered (by car) down to the harbour and Isobella’s for a real fish meal.