Daytrip up the West Coast: Kraalbaai & Postberg

Sat 15 September 2012

Taking advantage of the blue skies, the West Coast flower season and the annual open period for the otherwise restricted Postberg section of the West Coast National Park, Jess, Leon, Kath & I took a lovely daytrip up the coast last Saturday.

My family had a house in Langebaan till I was like 6 or 7, so we used to spend a lot of weekends up there; we also used to visit Kraalbaai pretty often though the last time I’d been was probably close to 5 years ago.

It was great to be back, it’s a really beautiful place. There were a lot of people in the park but luckily for us, the section of beach we claimed was pretty empty.

I actually hadn’t been to this part of the lagoon before so was really surprised by all the strange rock formations, and saddened by the crazy number of names scraped into all of them. Still, it was pretty cool that Leon could pose by his name…there were 2 to choose from so Kath stood by one too.

I think we missed the height of the flower season, so sadly didn’t really see the carpet effect. Still, there were some beautiful flowers all over the place.

When the tide started coming up we headed to the other beach, with the houseboats and the jetty. There wasn’t much sand exposed when we got there and water was really high against the jetty. My last memory was at much lower tide.

The houseboats also looked different from what I remembered, well, at least the one did… It looked kinda disheveled, with seaweed and a flock of seagulls adorning its roof. We wondered what it did for the property values of its aquatic neighbours…

Just beyond the houseboat beach is the Postberg reserve area, closed for 11 months of the year and only open to the public during flower season. Again, there wasn’t a huge lot of flowers, but we saw herds of Springbok and Bontebok as well as 2 tortoises and a bunch of birds, which was pretty cool.

Unfortunately you’re prohibited from leaving your vehicle aside from at the lookout point, so when we got there we joined the other tourists admiring the view of the lagoon and nearby towns of Langebaan and Saldanha Bay.

By the time we made it up to the top of the huge rocks over-looking the lagoon, the loud group before us (and their wailing children) had mercifully returned to their cars, and just like that we were surrounded by silence. It was really peaceful, that awesome kind of peace that makes minutes feel like hours. I honestly hadn’t felt so relaxed in I don’t know how long.