The West Coast

Almost straight west from Cederberg are the towns of Pater Noster and Langebaan and the West Coast National Park. Pater Noster is a quaint fishing town (or was before it became a vacation home development) with Greek style white-washed houses and a huge beach that stretches for miles around the bay. There were incredibly few people on the beautiful beach. The feeling of the place is almost like an American beach resort off-season, but the weather is again 75 degrees with not a cloud in the sky.

Langebaan is a much more active beach resort town with lots of water sports (especially kite surfing) and a lot of restaurants. The owners of our B&B are another Scottish couple who moved to SA for his career, worked in Cape Town, and went into the B&B as a retirement move. He was a contractor so he built the B&B with beautiful views of the ocean, large rooms, and very nice tile work in the bathroom (I have noticed a lot of not-so-good tile work along the way). It turns out that they stayed at the Duff Cottage B&B in Franschoek a week ago with other Scottish couple we stayed with. The wife has been in the US many times since her sister lives in San Francisco. She even has been to Williams and our part of MA a long time ago. Small world.

The West Coast National Park encompasses a huge bay with wetlands that has a large bird population, including wild ostriches. We had also passed more ostrich farms near here, but seeing wild ostriches run full speed in the park was quite a sight; they could easily keep up with the car going 30 km/hr.

We were happy to see a herd of Eland (the largest antelope variety) and some Duiker (one of the smallest antelopes).

The next room at the B&B is occupied by a Japanese business man. The B&B host explained that there is a large iron ore mine inland that ships the ore via rail to a port near here. Toshiba sold 40 engines for hauling the ore so they have had numerous Toshiba men here related to the deal. Guess where the iron is going: China. We are jealous of the Toyota diesel SUV with big tires that the guy has. Boy, would that have been great on some of the roads we have been on.