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Published: December 17th 2007
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ELAND’S BAY
I was unaware that my right thigh was being microwaved. Only later would I see the unusual splash of pink across my leg. It looked as if a master Japanese calligrapher, using a wide brush and red ink, had applied it. It was quite beautiful against the otherwise flounder belly white of my skin.
As we drove across the baked landscape towards Eland’s Bay, the sun slanted through the driver’s window and etched my right quad with a precise and dangerous mark. It was one that my dermatologist could certainly use as ammunition to bolster her directive. During my last appointment with her she said, “You should live in the basement.”
I went instead to South Africa.
We drove through vast expanses of fenceless fields where enormous hay bales were stacked in block-like strictures the size of airplane hangers. There were no houses, only unnamed thready dirt roads branching off the paved. A ranch, hopefully nestled next to a water hole, was out there somewhere behind the dip of a hill. It felt like you could make biltong (jerky) here in about seven minutes. Porterville, Piketberg, Het Kruis, Redelinghuys. “TAR ROAD ENDS.”
Then the red earth slowly whitened and there was the sudden incense of ocean. Through the open window the air temperature dropped. A sharp spine of naked mountains ran east to west to our left. At its base an estuary appeared, green grasses and reeds shaking and swaying. A heron. An eagle.
Before we could check in at the Eland’s Bay Hotel we had to wait while a thick man scooped up the six-inch scorpion that was standing at attention on the office floor. It had just stung one of the four grungely dressed young girls who were smoking at the hotel’s entrance. It was just a finger attack, nothing serious apparently. The man was bent over with a black Wellington in his hand, trying to coax the scorpion into the shaft of the boot. The scorpion kept flicking his sizable stinger, annoyed as you might imagine, until finally he was gathered in and secured. They probably didn’t release him into the wild.
The Eland’s Bay Hotel sits right on a horseshoe shaped beach, with dunes and nothingness to the north, then mountains and a rock lobster processing plant to the south. A few years ago, after a
bad red tide produced a black tide (oxygen-less water), about forty-seven gazzilion tons of rock lobster and shrimp washed up on the shores of Eland’s Bay. It’s famous for that stinky event.
The hotel feels like a living monument to the 1950’s. It’s more motel than hotel, like two low-slung Route 66 beauties stack on top of one another. You can get a room facing the sea, or one facing the police station, open town square, and the Eland’s Bay Drankwinkel, where you can buy a quart of Black Label for a buck. You can also belly up to the Ladies Bar in the Hotel. In there it feels like Truth or Consequences New Mexico before Bob Barker.
The December wind blows here about 99.9% of the time, according to the owner of the Taum Langer Restaurant, a sandy floored affair that serves nine differently prepared hake dishes, from almond crusted to gooseberry enhanced. The wait staff is so attentive here that you have to hang onto your food, your napkins, your wine, or else they will smilingly and good-naturedly swipe it off your table before you’re finished.
You innocently say, “Dankie,” while they pluck your serviette
right off your lap. But the fish is top shelf, and they give you a nice finger bowel with your shrimp skewers.
The wind was curiously non-existent when we were in Eland’s Bay, causing the farmers and locals who were gathered in Taum Langer to wonder. It allowed us to stroll the miles of beach without getting sand blasted. There’s a big tide here, and it’s a hotspot for surfers in the winter when the swell is consistent. The water was 58 degrees, an ankle numbing current coming straight from the South Pole. One of the farmers, whose land is about twenty kilometers from the coast, said that the temperature at his place can reach 47 degrees (116). No wonder he’s here with his a bottle of white in the ice bucket and his toes buried in the sand.
The sun set in the sou’west, behind the mountain, and stringy clouds reflected in the unusually calm tidal pools. Blush. Pink. Red. Then gone.
At dawn a fog bank stood offshore. It approached slowly, tumbling ahead of a light breeze. The shoulder of the mountain that muscled into the sea was gobbled up first, it’s ancient cave paintings
washed in mist. Then a bit of beach. Then all was lost to the cool smoke.
However, you could still hear the sea behind the gauzy curtain. It was there, creeping in slowly behind the fog.
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