My birthday in Cape Town - 10th February

This was the third time I've celebrated my birthday in Africa: in 2007, I was travelling with our family on February 10th, from Cape Town to Zambia, so not much time for celebrating; in  2008 we visited an interesting place called !Khwa Ttu, learning all about the San people of Southern Africa; and in 2011 we had a lazy afternoon in Langebaarn, on the West Coast, about 90 mins drive from Cape Town.

                                     


We had only visited Langebaarn once before and had never been to the fishing town of Saldanha, further round the bay.  It's only a small place, with large fish processing plants occupying much of the harbour, but we finally found a little place, called Slipway, for a drink and spent an hour reading local papers and folk lore about the restaurant's owner, who had sailed around Africa in a homemade sailing boat (made for fishing), with his young family in the 80s. They had devoted a corner to newspaper cuttings, maps and photos from that time:

                                                  

 It was fascinating reading and we got the impression that the family are still local heroes in Saldanha, as the most recent news items (2009) were about them selling plots of land specifically for eco-farming.

                                         

The restaurant is an eclectic mix of seafaring paraphernalia, but we found it very friendly, once we had gotten over the surprise 'welcome' of the waitress, who said "I hope you've not come for mussels, as there aren't any!" We said we only wanted a drink, but did look at the menu, quickly realising that mussel dishes are their speciality, along with snoek (a very South African fish), served with jam!

Another interesting feature at the restaurant were lumps of granite sticking out of the paved floor. They weren't signed with a warning or fenced off and would definitely NOT be allowed in UK.

 We weren't rushed, in fact we had to ask eventually for our bill, as it was now 4.30pm. We found a shorter route down to Langebaarn, which is situated on the edge of a large lagoon and part of a nature reserve. Had we left Cape Town earlier we might have ventured into the reserve, and also to explore some fossils, marked on the map, but decided to walk along the beach instead.

The bay forms a natural harbour, which is sheltered from the fierce currents along the Atlantic seaboard and later we discovered that mussel farming is one of the main industries (hence the waitress's remark).

Nevertheless the water was still quite cold and I had a very short paddle:

 We walked along the beach to some rocks,

 and then found evidence of the mussel beds in the bay:

Andy wished he had brought his fishing rods with him, as it was just approaching high tide and the rocks would have made an ideal place to fish from.

We walked back along the soft sand, looking for interesting shells and then made our way to the restaurant we had booked for our evening meal.

                                                 
 ...not this one, which is called Lekker by die see (lekker is a very popular Afrikaans word meaning, great or good), and has this enormous concrete duck sitting in the middle of the lawn...

 ...but the one next door called Boesmanland, Plaaskombuis, which means farmer's kitchen.

 It faces the beach so we had a spectacular view of the setting sun.

                                       

All the food is cooked in huge cast iron pots, so the meats and casseroles (called potjies - pronounced poikies) were delicious and very tender .

                                        

Here we also had mussels in garlic and snoek. They served jams to have with fresh, still warm, hunks of bread, and I noticed that Andy had taken a spoonful on the same plate as his snoek. He thought it maybe was chutney, so after tasting and realising it was very sweet apricot jam, we laughed, remembering the menu from earlier. For dessert there was icecream, SA melktaart (similar to egg custard, but denser & sweeter) and koeksisters (which is a deep fried syrupy mixture, often twisted together to form a plait). I decided to try a little jam with my icecream! 

Again, this was an interesting venue: quite rustic with homemade tables and 'seats' (logs covered with pieces of blanket) and in-house entertainment.

 When the two musicians approached us for our request, Andy commented that they'd got the best pair of Elvis hips he's seen in a long time.  So they quickly went into a rendition of Elvis' song Blue Suede Shoes, complete with lots of hip twists! It was really entertaining.

                                  

 Growing in the middle of the restaurant was this large tree with green fruit (looked unripe), and I have no idea what it could be.  If anyone knows - do let me know.