West Coast Stoke

Strandveld.

West Coast Stoke

Justin Fox packs his surfboard and takes to the West Coast road on an old-style, soul-surfing safari.

Written by: Justin Fox Photography by: Justin Fox

Back in the 1990s, when I was a student in Cape Town, a West Coast surfing trip offered the Great Escape. A long weekend up to Elands Bay, with ‘boards and beers and babes’, was the holy grail, especially after year-end exams. For many Cape Town youngsters, E Bay meant the first kiss, first babalas, the first green tube of eternal stoke.

Three decades later, and still a surf acolyte, I planned a road trip with my partner to the Weskus haunts of old. I loaded the car with surfboard, braai grid and tent; Tracey packed hampers of food and weird, practical stuff like sunscreen and mozzie spray.

It was a bright, early summer’s day as we hit the R27, Californian rock filling the car and our grins as wide and carefree as 18-yearolds’. We paused to check out the breaks at Blouberg and Bokbaai, then pressed on to Yzerfontein where we rented a self-catering cottage on the beach. Boogie-boarding grommets were splashing about in the shore break and I joined a few silverbacks riding a large, fast wave until sunset – a decent first sortie to get me in the groove.

North we drove, bound for legendary Elands Bay, the best surf spot in the Western Cape. We crossed the Berg River and hugged the coast past Dwarskersbos, then over a rise and down to lovely, reed-rimmed Verlorenvlei where thatched langhuises line banks aflutter with every waterfowl under the Weskus sun. We checked into Elands Bay Hotel, an old-school establishment that’s been around since the surf toppies were grommets. It’s no nonsense, no frills, and lies just above the beach and caravan park where we used to camp on student jaunts.

A decent swell was bending into the bay, so I suited up and paddled out. A steepling set hove into view and I paddled hard to catch one: into a crouch and down the line, smacking the lip and tearing clean bottom turns, then carving my signature along the face before peeling off. ‘Witblits for the soul,’ I thought as I paddled back into the line-up.

Later, as the sun slipped into the drink and stained the land all naartjie, Tracey and I walked along a rocky, mussel-strewn ledge and climbed the bluff to a cave filled with San paintings. A giant eland adorned the rock, like a totem to the surf god of the point. Beside us, a group of dreadlocked surf rats smoked zol and gazed at the pearly dusk.

We retired to the Wit Mossel Pot, a beach-style backpackers and restaurant that serves salty fare and delights the surfer crowd. The decor was old surfboards, dream catchers, flotsam and sea wrack. Supper was proper hake and calamari and slap chips washed down with a workmanlike Two Oceans white (why bother with two: only the icy Atlantic counts). The music was deep, mellow trance; a sign on the wall read: ‘You book out but you never leave.’ Damn, I thought, if I had a spare year to burn, I could easily mislay it here.

Weskus Hokkie.

Weskus Hokkie.

Yzerfontein.

Next day, the road led inland around the rim of Verlorenvlei, then north past Wadrifsoutpan. When I was a lad, Farmer Burger’s was talked about in hushed tones: a secret spot on a private farm. Legend. These days, Farmer Burger junior (a surf devotee called Albert) rents out a bunch of surf shacks on the family farm, Steenbokfontein. The best of them is Weskus Hokkie, which has the whole Robinson Crusoe thing down pat with seashells and driftwood, a bathroom embedded in the rock and a home-made Jacuzzi fed by donkey burner. This is as close to surfer heaven as the West Coast gets. As the boerie and tjops sizzled on the braai, we wallowed in our outdoor tub, frothing with rooibos foam, and watched the stars surfing that long, long Milky Wave all the way to the horizon.

In the morning, we moseyed into the sleepy fishing dorp of Lambert’s Bay to squiz the surf. As it happens, Yo-yos was cooking. It’s a reef break in front of the caravan park that goes both left and right. I duly suited up and joined a pod of dolphins and whooping teens shredding the wave. Hell, I could still just about do the schoolboy thing, despite my two-score years and some.

We pressed further north on a bit of a flier, looking for uncharted surf spots. At Garies, we turned off the N7 onto a gravel road that led through bleak, semidesert country. After an hour, we came to the mouth of the Groen River – dark blue ocean after so much brown earth. This wild stretch of shoreline is called Groen-Spoeg, a coastal section of the Namaqua National Park that offers wilderness camping.

Our engine droned in four-wheel drive as we crawled north on sandy tracks. The lime green shallows on our left were thick with the nodding heads of kelp. Skittish ostriches trotted beside us, keeping pace with the car for long distances, their feathers streaming and legs a high-kicking blur.

Wit Mossel Pot.

Weskus Hokkie.

We reached a lovely cove called Varswater – a beach with rock pools at one end, tall boulders at the other and an empty campsite above the sand set amid rich Strandveld vegetation. Waves pounded the shore in an unending harangue, churning the foam into yellow planktonic soup; the air was still and fragrant with fynbos and kelp.

We unpacked our things and erected a small tent. Braai grid, charcoal, cooler bag, foldout chairs: within five minutes we were the proud owners of a new home. How to fill the long evenings, we wondered? We needn’t have worried. Looking up, we stared at the great celestial television screen where the first stars began to glitter in a sky still rimmed with shades of salmon and purple. The hiss of meat on the grid matched the sound of tidal surge racing across the beach.

The next day was devoted to surf exploration. We struck north, following a web of old mining prospectors’ tracks, staying as close to the shoreline as possible. After kilometres of dunes, we reached Boulderbaai, which lived up to its name, followed by an outcrop called Policeman’s Helmet, which did the same, especially when viewed from the seaward side.

Eventually, I found a promising break –unnamed, unsurfed, unsullied – beside a rocky promontory near Skuinsklip. I was a little nervous about this off-piste surfing lark, but Tracey called me a wuss and that did it. I pulled on my suit, hobbled over mussel beds and squishy sea anemones to the edge of the shelf, waited for a set to pass, then dived in and paddled through the kelp. Soon, the Atlantic’s anaesthetic took effect and I lost contact with hands and brain.

For hors d’oeuvres, I caught a long, walling left that wasn’t half bad, then settled into scratching the shelf and jumping clear of nasty shallow sections that sucked almost dry after take-off. The kelp heads made kissing noises around me as they rose and fell on the swell. It felt as though I was sitting in the canopy of a forest like an aquatic primate, not taking many rides but loving the sensation of ‘wilderness surfing’.

At last, a big set steamed over the horizon like a herd of eland. I paddled fast out to sea to meet it, then swung round. Three strong strokes and the water hollowed beneath my feet. Then I was up, cleaving along a vertical face, white water crunching behind, my head flush with the wall. I tore along, spray whipping from each turn, fins dug in for purchase. Nearing the rocks, the wave began closing out and I carved off. Yes.

Over the ensuing days, we found our grip on time and things of the city beginning to slip. There was so much freedom; the kind of freedom most South Africans have lost. To be able to leave your stuff on a beach and disappear for a day on a surfing mission, only to return and find it still there. No thieves in the night, nor by day, save the odd hungry jackal. There was precious little fresh water, so the ocean was our bath. Swimming was a twice daily ritual; salt caked our skin. At times, the surf was big and unrideable, pounding the beaches with a vicious shore break. We were sucked and pummelled, tossed about like marionettes to emerge on the sand invigorated, our flesh singing.

We grew possessive of the solitude. A peace of sorts had grown inside us and it matched our surroundings. This was coupled with a diminishing need for the things we’d normally have considered necessary, or even essential. There was not the slightest hint of boredom. In fact, boredom seemed a symptom of too much, rather than of lack. Nights were the fullest: full of beauty and emptiness.

But it couldn’t last. We were low on provisions, the surf had turned to mush and Cape Town was calling us back. On our last night, the westerly increased to a gale and buffeted our tent canvas so loudly we couldn’t sleep. With the first glimmer of dawn, we got up and packed. The arc of Groen River Lighthouse, more than 20 kilometres to the south, scythed through the gloom like a great blade of light.

Before leaving, we stood for a long while looking down at our cove. The beach was burnished steel, the sea and western sky were sheets of grey. Arrow lines of cormorants, fired in salvos from the deep, approached the shore. We waited until the moment the sun lifted above the rise and rinsed the beach in clear light, then climbed into the car and drove south along the sandy track that led to Groen River, to Garies, and back down the long and lovely West Coast road to the city.

Our wayward week had filled us up with surf and stoke, calamari and boerewors, and a home-made Jacuzzi under the stars. We’d be back.

‘How about next weekend?’ said Tracey.

GLOSSARY

BABALAS: hangover

STOKE: excited, thrilled

GROMMETS: young surfers

LANGHUISIES: ‘long houses’, typical West Coast thatched cottages

SET: group of (large) waves

WITBLITS: moonshine spirits or firewater

ZOL: marijuana cigarette

BOERIE: boerewors

TJOPS: lamb chops