Everybody leaves a place with different impressions of / feelings which they get from that place. I could give you the 'touristy' version of Hout Bay, I could give you details about the demographics, the details of the hotels and holiday accommodation, etc., but I am not going to. I am just going to tell you about my experiences of / feelings about Hout Bay. You know, when you do not have a car, even the places closest to you may feel like they are a long distance away. Well, this is how I felt about Hout Bay. In my youth (and those of you that actually know me - do not laugh at that expression :) ) I recall going to a disco (yes! I know what you are thinking) one night in Hout Bay. I recall us having to drive along a road with lots of twists and turns and no street lights. Having this memory of the place left me with a sense of trepidation if I got the "urge" to go to Hout Bay. Then, in my 20's / 30's - we would drive along Hout Bay Road for family outings and I recall thinking what a beautiful area it was to drive through. The road would keep going until you drove past the Hout Bay Manor Hotel on the left until you reached the beach. Driving through the area made me feel that we had left the "city", the lush greenery, the tall trees, the fresh air, the odd sign showing where the driveway was for some mysterious grand house - all these feelings made we want to go visit and explore Hout Bay. Years passed and then it was the time for visiting and exploring. The thought of walking along the shore with my feet in the water was too tantalizing to ignore. Sadly, I cannot even begin to tell you how disappointed I was at how the condition of the area leading into Hout Bay had deteriorated. The feeling of cleanliness, freshness, lush greenery had disappeared and in its wake was just dirt, grime and filth. I was left with the feeling of desperately wanting to have a shower. A sense of danger. Even stopping to take this picture of a beautiful Cape Dutch styled house, built in 1800, I had to ensure that my car was locked and that I was on high alert the whole time. Having said that, despite how the area looks before reaching it, to not visit the beach would be plain stupid. Hout Bay beach has soft white sand and the water is pure magic for sore, tired feet. Exquisite! There is an ice-cream van. No visit to the beach would be complete without having a soft serve ice-cream with a flake! The bay is watched over by majestic mountains and I can only imagine what an adventure it must has been many many years ago to trek to the beach for a day of pure fun and family time. If you look to the right of my picture below you can see the masts of the yachts in the harbour. To the left of the beach is a statue the history of which I found very fascinating. It is a bronze statue of a leopard looking out over the water. The bronze was donated by Pepsi-Cola and the statue was sculptured by Ivan Mitford-Barberton as a memorial to the wild animals that roamed the mountains of the peninsula. The statue was placed on its pedestal on 14th March 1963 - during my lifetime! I kid you not!! A final bit of information - the last leopard to be seen in Hout Bay was in 1937, when my mother and father were 5 and 7 years old respectively. Imagine sitting on the beach building a sandcastle and you look up into the eyes of a leopard!
I will leave you with that thought ..... until next time.
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