21 Buffalo Bay

Pictures
Route
1 Windhoek to Joburg
2 Views and gold
3 Kruger bound
4 Elephant and rhino
5 To Olifants
6 To Blyde River
7 Swaziland beckons
8 Ezulwini Valley
9 To Dundee
10 Zulu battlefields
11 To Hluhluwe
12 Hluhluwe & coast
13 to Winterton
14 Wits End
15 The Sphinx
16 Bus day north
17 Kimberley mine
18 Through the Karoo
19 Plettenberg Bay
20 Pootling about
21 Buffalo Bay
22 South of Africa
23 On to wine lands
24 On to Paarl
25 Wine and port
26 Cheetah and eagles
27 Paarl and Stellenbosch
28 Paarl to Cape Town
29 Museum and art
30 Robben Island
31 Cape of Good Hope
32 Around Cape Town
33 Table Mountain
34 Going home

South Africa

Buffalo Bay

Tuesday 9 May 2006

Something goose (?) at Buffalo Bay

Today we woke up to see the colours of the sun rise spreading across the sky before us, more fabulous reds and pinks to wake us up for the day. A layer of mist hung like a blanket over the sea, slowly burning off during the day as the sun warmed up. The light here is fabulous and clear. It is uninterrupted by buildings and wraps itself around you creating a special effect similar to the light in St Ives in Cornwall. The waves rolled in to shore creating a surprising amount of noise for their size.

We have both relaxed into seaside mode and decided that all we would do today was go for a stroll along the beach. The village at Buffalo Bay is on a small peninsula with a wide sandy beach stretching out in front of our flats and a smaller rocky bay on the other side of the peninsula, which then becomes a sandy bay further round. We started over at the rocky bay hoping to find some interesting things to look at in one of the many rock pools that dotted the coast. The pools were pretty large but only full of very clear sea water. If there was animal life within them the animals were too small to see with the naked eye.

We walked as far as we could around the peninsula before having to cut through the village to get back to the sandy beach. The peninsula point is private property and home to Buffalo Bay’s campsite. It looked like a fabulous site to stay at, with wide open views and what looked like pretty modern facilities blocks too. The benefit of cutting through the village though was to see the different styles of the houses and to enjoy reading out the names of some of them – “looking in the cooking pot”, “this is enough”, “ as solid as a rock” to name a few. The village had a very sleepy air with most houses being closed up for the winter. The people we chatted to yesterday told us that there are only 22 permanent residents in the village.

There were a couple of information panels on the beach explaining about the different types of whales and dolphins that came along this part of the coastline. Neither of us had realised before that whales had evolved from land based creatures in effect taking the cycle of evolution back to its sea based routes. This whole area is a marine conservation park where they are trying to protect some of the local fish species which in turn then regenerates a wide sphere of sea based plants and life.

Beach games

We made our way down onto the sandy bay which runs for about 7km round to the next village. It was soft sand all the way, not as good as the sand in the Malay Perhentian islands but pretty good as sand goes. Dotted all along the bay were friends we had first come across in Ecuador, some sort of shell that lives beneath the sand. In Ecuador we had only seen very small translucent ones but here they seemed to be a wide variety of ages. Some were small and translucent but most now had a hard shell, some with vibrant colours. They still made us squirm though as you could see them sculling over the surface of the sand all seeming to be heading to the same place. It was quite a creepy sight but not as creepy as the big splodge of jelly we found further up.

It was a beautiful walk along the bay in fresh clear air and warm sunshine. High dunes bordered the bay and at one stage we caught glimpses of dolphins out to sea. A game of jumbo noughts and crosses marked the end of our outward walk and we turned around and headed back to the village. All the way we’d been paddling off and on in the sea. Considering it’s the Indian Ocean and meant to be warm it was pretty freezing cold numbing your feet within seconds. It must have been cold because even Stef wasn’t tempted to go in for a swim.

We stopped for a late lunch at the café beneath our flats making the dangerous mistake of having a glass or two of wine while we ate. It was simply a relaxing place to be. As the afternoon wore on more people came out to enjoy the beach but none seemed to stay very long. A couple of chaps turned up in their Land Rover, donned their wet suits, grabbed their surf boards and headed out into the water. The waves weren’t really big enough to surf on though and they gave up after about half an hour.

Our lazy afternoon by the sea merged into a lazy evening by the sea and we both had a very relaxing day.

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