Blue sea dreaming
Mountains, forests, deserts, bushveld – and a coastline without equal that smiles for 2 800 km from the mouth of the Orange River to Kosi Bay… South Africa certainly has its challenges (mostly us, the people), but as far as natural splendour goes, we were at the front of the queue when favours were dished out.
As we gingerly shed our coat of lockdown, it seems like we’ve found a renewed appreciation for the beauty within our borders. Just in my small circle of friends, there have been some classic road trips already. Many were nostalgic trips to places that held treasured memories; others were journeys of discovery to points on a map once only dreamt about.
The cover feature this issue (p 30) details some of our readers’ favourite coastal spots, and reading it reminded me of a personal expedition I undertook about 30 years ago – an expedition that ended on a miserable pier jutting into the North Sea…
I was backpacking through the Netherlands – young and on my own, my first time overseas at the tail end of a European winter – and somehow I had got it into my head to research the history of the Steyns; to see for myself where my ancestors had uprooted themselves from to make new lives on the southern tip of Africa.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into a genealogy that I don’t know enough about, but I had read that most of the Steyns were descended from one particular patriarch, Douwe Gerbens, who arrived in the Cape somewhere around 1669. He came from Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. So that’s where I went – first to the city of Groningen, then west to Douwe’s home town of Leeuwarden. Now, if that old settler had enjoyed playing in the ocean as much I do, his nearest beach would have been 30 km to the west, at the fishing village of Harlingen.
And that’s where my quest ended: in Harlingen, in the rain, on a grey pier looking out over an angry, grey North Sea, splashing and spitting at low grey clouds that stretched to the horizon.
That’s when it hit me: I knew exactly why Douwe had hopped onto a southbound ship. He wanted to feel the hot sun on his skin, feel sand between his toes and swim in a blue ocean with dolphins.
Thanks DG, this Steyn owes you more than one!