Triple Play

On a long weekend escape to Africa’s southernmost tip, stay in a heritage cottage to explore the fynbos and coastline. Three different trails, all within a 45-minute radius of your base at Rhenosterkop, beg to be hiked.

- Peter Chadwick

A gap between the ancient and gnarled milkwood trees indicated the turnoff to the Rhenosterkop Cot-tages and the start to three days of exploration while also enjoying the peace and tranquillity away from all of the complexities of life. As we drove down the short sandy track, an inquisitive grey duiker with huge brown eyes watched us for a few moments before scampering away into the undergrowth.

Birds were seemingly everywhere, with bokmakieries, southern boubous, Cape bulbuls, speckled mousebirds, metallic green malachite sunbirds and Cape spurfowls providing a kaleidoscope of colour and activity. Alighting from our vehicle at the main four-bed cottage, we breathed deep the fresh air recently washed clean by a light rain. A slight breeze carried the mesmerising sound of waves crashing against a nearby coastline. This was indeed bliss.

After unpacking and with the shadows of afternoon lengthening, it was time for us to put in a quick exploration of our surroundings. A short five-kilometre drive took us down to the Brandfontein beach where ocean rollers smashed against a long stretch of wonderfully isolated sandy beach interspersed with rugged rocky outcrops. Suné and Xanté, my two daughters, are ever keen to keep fit for hockey and were soon striding out along the beachfront. Sonja, my wife, and I took the easier option of watching the African black oystercatcher pairs, white-fronted plovers and the kelp and Hartlaub’s gulls as they all fed among the stranded piles of kelp that lay on the beach. We were additionally spoilt with a sighting of a pod of bottlenose dolphins out to sea as they rode the waves and even further out a southern right whale showed itself briefly with a tail slap before disappearing back into the ocean depths.