CEDERBERG & PATERNOSTER
the mountains and the seaside
AFTER THE SEVEN DAY WEDDING FEAST IT WAS TIME FOR A CHANGE OF PACE.
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Into our hire car and drive north to perfect tranquility in The Little House on the Prairie......​ Picked by yours truly, with only limited and conditional approval from the other half of the team. I had taken a straw poll of where was the best place to take my darling for perfect peace and quiet, and a detox. The unanimous vote from all our South African friends was - THE CEDERBERG. A mountain range 150 miles north and about 100 miles inland. Accessible only by 30 miles of dirt road, remote as is sensible, but with Cederberg Winery within spittoon distance (highest vineyard in the Western Cape at 1100 metres).
Also near to the Cederbeg Atmospheric Observatory. Apparently the Cederberg has the lowest light pollution for miles around and so is perfect for stargazing. The really big observatory at Sutherland was sold out for their occasional public access nights so I bagged tickets for the smaller (but local to us) Cederberg equivilant. I was sold on the stargazing idea by Kelly, one of our best advisors at the wedding.
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Sara, not so sold. No sold on the hut. Not sold on three days in the wilderness, Not sold on the 30 miles of rutted dirt road. Not sold on the self catering aspect with the nearest shop some 50 miles away. Definitely not sold on the fact that I sort of cocked up the supplies issue and ended up with just stuff from a petrol station.
That's our place, the little roof you can see in the centre. remote is it not???????
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And on the right is a picture of just a small bit of the 30 miles of rutted, battered, dusty and striated track it took to get there. Its the striations that get you.
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For those of you that don't come across 'striations' in your daily lexicon. Striations are a long ridge or groove on a road surface, often one of many parallel marks. And a lexicon is your vocabulary, and vocabulary is a body of words in a particular lauguage, should I could go on?
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Striations are a pain in the bum, literally. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, should I could go on? The recommended solution is to drive over them at a steady 45 mph so you literally fly over them. It sure does stop the incessent banging, but on a track made up mainly of curves and blind brows and a surface of loose stones which have zero grip - it engenders a slight degree of nervous tension in one's passengers. Especially if the passenger in question is questioning the point of the whole damn exercise from square one. And the judgement of the driver.
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But it all turned out OK...........................
Our little cabin was idyllic, and thankfully Sara loved it, just the spot for two days relaxation. It was on the Dreihoek Guest Farm and was a bonus at £70 a night for up to 6 persons. The farm itself had a little shop that sold everything. Everything BUT the things you might need a million striations from home. It sold myriad types of local wines, it sold sweets, crisps, it sold one jam. It sold coke, fanta, and water and some weird biscuits. It did not sell bread, butter, eggs, any form of vegetables or salad, no meats, no tinned food, no packet food, no beer, no - should I could go on?
So having settled in to our Little HUIS in the BERG (my attempt at Afrikaans) we set off to drive another million striations to the aforementioned Cederberg Winery, which also has a shop, which also stocked NONE of the things a badly provisioned dickhead may need to survive. So we drove on again, another trillion or more arse bending bumps later we arrived at an actual restaurant, which also had a shop, and, you've guessed it, NONE of the things any normal shopper in the outback may require. No essentials. Just more sweets and for some strange reason tinned corn beef and tinned baked beans. TOMORROWS DINNER!
BUT, and this is a big but, they sold me my manna from heaven, BUTTER, to go with my toast and marmite in the morning. To be honest that would do me for breakfast, lunch and dinner!! Not sold from the shop, no, why on earth would you stock butter in a shop? I had to persuade them to sell me some from the restaurant kitchen, mainly by dint of looking so desperate the lovely manager took pity on me.
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My delight knew no bounds - which is why a picture of a slab of butter made the cut.....​​
As did a picture of me hiding behid an odd shaped rock and our twee little observatory before it got dark, and cold, and a bit weird, stumbling round trying to spot Saturn through a lens of a telescope.
But stumble around we did. Did I mention that there was no light pollution in these mountains, and that on this night there was no moon, and that when you looked up it was AMAZING!! Never seen the like before, millions of stars.
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My problem was that in the pitch dark you had to climb a small set of steps to reach the eye piece, which weirdly is painted black. I spent at least a minute looking hard into the handle until the astronomer gently moved my swede into alignment with the correct bit of the 14" telescope.
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Now which of the photos do you think best represents what we could see of the night sky from our observatory? The answer is your £5 ticket gets you the lower one up on the Cederberg on a freezing cold night miles from your cabin. The top one I saw through my binoculars. Not, But still, we have actually seen Saturn and its rings, and the remarkable beauty of the sky at night when it really is proper dark out.
So a very interesting drive back in the dark including a short cut recommened by the farmer which took us through a deep ford and along a track seldom used by hire cars. I know the old adage. "What type of car can go anywhere? - A hire car". But this was taking the piss. Bushes scraping the sides and grass in the middle long enough to cause a loud 'shoooshing' sound inside the car, but we persevered. Mainly becasue there was no way of turning round.
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The second day was sheer relaxation, just walks in the surrounding countryside, then a romantic diiner by candlelight and some of the most foul tasting corned beef and baked beans it is possible to imagine.
Monday dawned with us up in the morning for another 130 miles drive west to the coast. After 30 bum battered miles to get down from the mountains it was a lovely drive through massive cornfields reminiscent of the American mid west. Really high quality roads, no traffic, just cruising through the prairies......
ONWARDS TO PATERNOSTER
Another change of pace. Arriving at the seashore on the Atlantic coast we were met by mile after mile of deserted beaches backed by mile after mile of deserted dunes, driving along mile after mile of arrow straight roads with no traffic at a steady 100km/hr. The suddenly out of nowhere are these little white house, all identical, all in communities, as far as the eye can see.
Paternoster is part of an area that has thousands of holiday homes, all painted white and blue, all neat, tidy and attractive, despite looking just a bit as though they have been dropped from space directly onto the seashore. Big, big beaches, freezing cold water (sadly, it comes up from the Antartic so swimming is out, out, out!), lots of top quality restaurants and art galleries, and as always, prices to die for. Dinner is a delight as you peruse a mouth watering menu and realise you could eat everything on it for the price of three courses at home. I will so be having to be rolled off the plane home.
So another day of persusing art in the galleries and imbibing the wines and scoffing the local sea creatures. This is the life!!!
Apparently Paternoster alone has a capacity for 10,000 souls if all the house are full but an actual population of under a thousand. Plus a short season running mostly from December to April. Very, very pretty but not a lot going on once you get outside the city limits.
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Lord alone knows how many holiday homes there are in total in the surrounding towns and areas, but it is a shedload. Most of the population of South Africa must own oat least one each. Personally we both felt it was not a patch on Hout Bay, but then I doubt the prices were a patch on those in Hout Bay either.
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So back on the road for the return run to Cape Town, this time we are heading for the centre of town and a hotel inside the famed Vicroria & Albert Waterfront, Cape Town's trendy harbour development.