West Coast musings

During August we made one of the 2 or 3 trips we make each year to the SA West Coast.

Anywhere that is West in the world seems to be hippy/anarchic/uncultured. Anywhere actually on a West Coast even more so. Don’t get me wrong  but we actually enjoyed our trip to the coast. As we all know, South Africa isn’t like the rest of Africa and The West Coast is… well….even less like.

Come to think of it the SA West Coast is probably nearer to the West Coast of Scotland e.g. Largs, or maybe even my own West Cumbria’s beloved Silloth, in the 50’s. If you factor on top of that what you can imagine a West Coaster thinks of as being hip and stylish then you have it.

We took the dirt road from Elands Bay to Lamberts Bay. The dirt road is a Toll Road. R20 is required to make the 50 kilometre dash alongside the railway line dicing death at crossings with 2 mile long iron ore trains. We cannot directly pay the lady on the toll bar! It turns out that ‘in the new (how long can we be new?) SA’ the general paranoia is that the ‘girl’ will become a target for craam (crime). Her takings from 30 cars a day (R600) will become too much of a temptation for her or her friends. No wonder she looked weary as she stood there in the middle of nowhere. The sowester (surely noreaster?) helmet and the driving rain might have had a little to do with it –aswell.

So, in search of toll dues, we had to make our way to the Elands Bay Hotel (next to the fish factory). (see: website - note the 'old boat' in the restaurant and very neat (just wide enough) curtains and an old tube TV to watch whilst you eat).

The smell of stale lager, fags, floor polish, and dripping rain… overwhelms the fish factory. A man at the bar - a chap in shorts of indeterminate age (the shorts that is) and skin (the chap!) like one of those new grapefruit things, directed me beyond the drip catching buckets, through some sliding doors which had long since stopped sliding (but have a nice appliquéd dolphin on them to indicate the sea theme nature of the establishment) to the sand lopper bar.

It was 9.30 in the morning but the dimly lit bar was already in business. The barman- a dead spit for the lead singer with Dr Hook - except he has 2 eyes (both equally blood shot)..oh and 3 teeth; laboriously wrote me a receipt in quadruplicate. I get 1 copy, he files 1 copy and he puts the remaining 2 in the overflowing ash tray. I thanked him in - and make my way back through the colander of a hotel.

At the other end of the dirt road and many stops for viewings of flamingo, plovers, heron, seals, iron ore trains we presented our receipt to a younger version of the chap in shorts and a few clicks later we arrive at Lamberts Bay.

Lamberts Bay is a lot like Elands Bay with a much bigger fish factory and a very large colony of Cape gannets and a very large pile of gannet guano. The fish factory is now a potato processing plant – needs must?

The viewing of 1000’s of gannets, jack-ass (aka new African) penguins, seals, dolphins and whales took us 2 days interspersed with culture tours. Brunch at the Lambert’s Bay Hotel was uneventful apart from my 2 mile hike to the guest toilet. There was a detour to pick up a key from the chap in shorts again. And while I struggled with the local currency and the add 10% stuff for the R128 worth of coffee, toasties, and chips (chups), the team had found ‘Nanas’!!

How I wish this woman had a web site. Nana is, let me see, a cross between a short biker’s moll and an American west coast hippy. She had a fixed expression and even more fixed painted on eyebrows. Nana’s is a Gift and Curio Shop; Hairdressers; Pet Groomer and - uh - a taxidermist. Actually: a novelty taxidermist. What attracted my immediate attention was the stuffed Blue Crane (the national bird of SA) on the front step of the shop, held upright by a dowel of wood through the eye sockets and strung from the ceiling.

The stuff inside was much more gruesome. Apart from most of the endangered birds of SA, she exhibited fantasy animals made up from the assorted pieces of other animals: Duck feet, porcupine body, and antelope head with the teeth of the Dr Hook guy at Elands Bay. Yes she does dentistry too. There was no getting away, as she explained in a dead pan how she made each of the items in her exhibition.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to buy anything?’

We locked the car doors and floored the accelerator. As I looked back she was fondling a door knocker made from a Springbok’s scrotum. ‘Viree poplar wuth the faarmers waarvs’.

I still wonder which Springbok and how badly he must have played to have his scrotum nailed to a piece of driftwood.