The above photo is my entry into the #seaphotograpy contest week197.
Whenever I get the chance I love doing mini road trips from my seaside home town in Muizenberg along the beautiful & rugged route between the ocean on one side and mountain range directly on the other side until reaching Cape Point at the southern point of the peninsula and then back along the coast on the opposite side of the mountains.
I have travelled this route 1000+ times and never tire of it, the natural beauty or the new show put on each time.
For this post I am going to concentrate on a nearby village (3.7 kilometres/2 miles away from home) called Kalk Bay. It is an old, colourful village enriched in character & old history. For now though I am going to concentrate on Kalk Bays fishing harbour. (I will do a blog about the village in another post soon.)
Initial construction of the harbour began in 1913 and is one of the last operating fishing harbours on the Cape Peninsula,
It also houses three restaurants.
Two of the restaurants are housed in a double storey building which borders right on the sea on one side and they have amazing views of the sea for diners (above photo). Naturally the menus are based on various seafood dishes and they are fairly pricey in my humble pocket view. The third restaurant (my favourite) is based on the waters edge inside the harbour in a separate building from the other two.
It is called "Kalkys" (Kalk means Lime in Afrikaans/Dutch but I will go into the history of that when I do the blog on the village.). It is authentic and is a cafe' type restaurant serving takeaways as well with wooden tables & benches outside for patrons to sit at while eating. It is also locally seafood based in it's menu with great food and is a lot cheaper than the others....a favourite with local & international visitors.
Above are some photos of the boats and inside area of the harbour.
When conditions are right for it then the ocean occasionally shows who is really boss.
On these "angry" sea days the sea facing restaurants aren't spared the wrath of the angry ocean and sometimes suffer broken windows and flooding (even the one on the second storey and the windows definately aren't glazed with straight forward glass.)
Some locals enjoying the area inside the harbour.
The entrance road to the harbour leads from the main road across the public transport railway line.
To get to the village and harbour one has the option to travel along the main road which hugs the ocean (or train which is slightly closer to the ocean) or to travel along Boyes Drive which is a mountain road that passes above the town and then descends into the the village. The above photos are of the harbour from the mountain road above,
A few views of the harbour from outside the walls.
An artist selling his art and curios inside the harbour.
It's a long blog but I hope you enjoyed it.
All photos taken by myself.