The Garden Route’s ‘ugly duckling’ may just make you want to stay, warns Jazz Kuschke
As the proverbial ‘ugly duckling’ of the Eden District, Mossel Bay is often overlooked for its more glamorous Garden Route neighbours. But, like JAZZ KUSCHKE, once you see it you may never leave.
‘ When you return to your mundane lives on Monday,’ beamed Sean Megannon to the eclectic mix of locals and tourists assembled around the wooden tables of his seaside eatery, ‘remember these four words: This. Is. My. Office.’ The locals and returning clientele smiled knowingly and continued their conversations. They’d heard it before, many times, yet it had not lost its charm. An insider joke of sorts.
It was somewhere after 1 pm on a Friday afternoon, some of the locals had come for a quick bite before heading back to the office for the obligatory few hours of the working week. Others were installed for the longer haul.
As offices go, Kaai 4 Braai restaurant is not a bad place to toil. Weatherdependant, it’s often my office too (the Wi-Fi’s pretty good). On that glorious spring-tide Friday, it was the ideal place to be plugged into the fast-paced outside world. The overnight breeze had cleaned the air and groomed the sea to a Champagne crispness. Across the temperate Indian Ocean bay, the peaks of the Outeniqua outlined the horizon. When I squinted hard enough over the flickering glare of the water, the hamlets of Great Brak River, Tergniet and Glentana were lit in late-spring sunshine.
After nursing two coffees – brewed over the coals in a blackened kettle – and a hot dog which comprised boerewors in a fire-baked roosterkoek, some locallycrafted tipple seemed an apt way to bring in the weekend. At dawn I’d fly-fished for spotted grunter in a nearby estuary and the surf forecast looked pretty decent. I needed a toast to my good fortune in being able to call this place home. And have Kaai 4 Braai as a satellite office.
My pint of Glenhoff Draught came in a plastic cup (to be recycled, of course) and agreeable local wine from the vineyards of Jakkalsvlei near Herbertsdale is served in tin mugs. Food is prepared on an open fire and cutlery is optional, as are shoes. There is sea sand underfoot and shade is provided by reeds and a Bedouin-style tented roof. When the tide is up, it feels as though the water might lap at your feet. To call Kaai 4 Braai ‘unpretentious’ would be flattering, and to me, that epitomises this town and its residents.
I’m a country bumpkin at heart and grew up in St Francis Bay, so to me Mossel Bay is a big centre. But it still embodies many of the characteristics of your typical dorp – there aren’t traffic jams (out of prime season), the crime rate is low and sense of community high. You can still ask your neighbour to water the garden when you go away and while ordering your morning coffee the barista will ask after that mechanical issue with your bakkie. That type of thing.
In truth, Mossies is a rather sizeable commercial and industrial centre and, on approach, not very easy on the eye. That’s perhaps the reason those who don’t know simply put foot up the N2 towards more verdant happenings on the Wilderness-Plett-Knysna strip. But they’re missing one of the very few north-facing sea towns in the country, with a temperate climate that has been favourably compared to Hawaii, and an extensive range of sea and land activities.
There’s a notable new energy in town. The past two years have seen an upsurge in trendy (but still unpretentious) cafes, restaurants, Airbnbs and the like. Artists
and freelance creatives are flocking to the area. Or is it an old energy resurfacing?
I might be connected to the fast-paced world via Wi-Fi, but in Mossel Bay I feel as though I’m connected to something else. Something bigger. In the precious memoirs of my great grandfather, there is evidence that the head of our family tree – one Hermann Friedrich Ludwig Kuschke – came to South Africa via Mossel Bay, stepping ashore here on 18 October 1877.
There’s deeper history here, though, and I feel it. Fred Orban, the doyen of tourism and conservation in the area, does too. ‘What Mossel Bay has, which distinguishes it from everywhere else, is that the first “modern” humans come from here. It’s been archaeologically proven,’ he claims, referring, of course, to the Point of Human Origins cave system at Pinnacle Point Golf Estate.
Artifacts unearthed at 28 sites suggest that it was here that humans first started displaying modern behaviours such as using ochre for decoration, creating complex tools and making fires to cook food… Could our caves be the first place where humans used make-up, made knives and braaied? Not everyone agrees, of course, but braaiing certainly became entrenched as one of the town’s most beloved pastimes.
‘We go right through history,’ said Orban. ‘From the ancients, through Dias and the seafaring age, right up to the present day.’ The Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex portrays that part of the town’s history – and it’s still possible to send a letter from the 500-year-old Post Office Tree.
The much-retold story goes along the lines of this: sometime in the year 1500, a Portuguese navigator – one Pedro d’Ataide – left a letter in a shoe (or more likely a boot), hanging from the branch of a milkwood tree. It was found by the commander of the third East India Fleet, João De Nova, in 1501 on his way to India. This tradition continued until the tree became an informal postbox and so the local mail system was born. A bootshaped postbox still stands on the spot.
‘Your letter will receive a special commemorative frank – and that brings you into the modern postal age,’ Orban says. Today Mossel Bay has two fine golf courses, several beaches, good surf, game reserves on its doorstep, cafes, restaurants and hotels. ‘It’s a pretty unique spread.’
And Wi-Fi. Good Wi-Fi, with local beer. I think I’ll stay. And braai.