|
And did you know that our very own Madiba, Nelson Mandela,
was escorted on a secret outing to the West Coast whilst he
was still incarcerated?
A
victim of weather changes and notoriously fickle seas, the
Britannia, which sunk in 1826, lies buried beneath the waters
of the so-named bay, as do the wrecks of many other old sailing
ships, offering up a challenge to the underwater diver.
On
2 June 1971, en route from the East to Holland and carrying
a cargo of reinforced steel, the 'Sea Trader' fell prey to
sea mist and ran aground at Duykereiland, home to Corrie van
Zyl who was awarded the salvage licence. A restaurant of the
same name caters for groups and functions where guests dine
on Corrie's famous mussel soup and his wife's pickled fish
(you try wheedling the handed-down recipe out of Bessie!).
From the tables one of the ship's piston heads still can be
seen
but better to hear the full story from your hosts,
Dries and Corinne.
West
Coast cuisine ranges from kingklip to kabeljou, lobster to
limpets or, as Cape Times journalist John Scott writes in
his P.S. column of July 7, 2007, "Moerse T-bones"
and
'bledie lekker scones
". Some of the more adventurous
may want to get their palates
around bokkoms - traditionally served with apricot jam. Maybe
not everyone's taste but,
hey, you should try everything once in life, not so?
But's that enough to whet your appetite for now. To experiment
with these and other
delicacies you will simply have to come and try for yourself.
No
trip to the West Coast is complete without a visit to the
Fossil Park where one of the world's richest palaeontological
dig-sites provides a peek into the past - a sub-tropical paradise
that once was. In more fertile times the short-necked giraffid
rubbed shoulders with other sivatheres and herbivores that
relied on trees for food. And did you know that the first
bear found south of the Sahara once lived here? Today, only
their bones remain, a record of the past 20 million years.
Whether
it be kayaking or boardsailing, casting a line into the cold
Benguela current to hook a Galjoen (in season, of course),
or simply sitting on the beach taking in the African sun -
doing as little as possible - the rewards to those who visit
are many: glorious sunrises, still and safe waters and a culturally
rich and entertaining townsfolk.
|