Pack Your Sails
At Friday Island, in Langebaan Lagoon on the West Coast, they say life is one long weekend, and it certainly seems like it with its endless stream of wind catchers gathering there to play. Some come for the sailing school, others to ply the trade wind. Some people even choose to get married there; there's cosy accommodation and a small casual restaurant right on the beach.
You can canoe on the lagoon, and you can windsurf, but most people who come here these days come to kitesurf. Because Langebaan is such a long, narrow, shallow sea inlet, conditions are pretty constant. It is probably the safest place anywhere for kiting. For endless flat-water reaches and fairly consistent winds, pack your sails and head to Langebaan Lagoon. Try the shallower upwind reaches, as these tend to offer warmer water than the more exposed main beach areas, but beware of shallow banks and submerged reefs.
Die Strandloper
Indulge in a seafood feast as you sit virtually on the beach at Die Strandloper restaurant near Langebaan on the Western Cape's West Coast. The menu is bursting with the likes of bokkoms, mussels, angel fish, crayfish and potbrood — all cooked in front of you on an open fire. This beach eatery at Langebaan is not so much a restaurant as a jumble of old rowing boats, fishing nets, wind shelters and other flotsam and jetsam that seem to have landed here in a storm.
But on the table d'höte at this historic tavern of the seas, seafood and the local culture are the specialities. Just remember, this is the West Coast boet, and they go big here. You sit on the sand or your cooler box and you eat. as much as you can. It's salad-dodging heaven: dig into mussels, haarder, paella, snoek, angelfish, stumpnose bream and crayfish, alongside roosterbrood with apricot jam and bokkoms for the fortified. Like in the Bible, the fish just keep on coming.
By David Bristow
Langebaan, few towns in South Africa exude as much of a beachy-breakaway feel as this spread-out dorp shimmering along the West Coast shores...