The Arniston Spa Hotel: Home, Sweet Temporary Home on the South Cape Coast

The Cape countryside is a patchwork quilt of rolling fields dotted with cows, sheep, blue cranes, and the occasional ostrich. Amongst the cultivation remain untouched stands of the Cape’s indigenous flora or taller tree imports from Australia. Winding through this tranquil, timeless scenery en route to Arniston, I mused that John Constable himself couldn’t paint a more bucolic landscape. And it’s in landscapes such as these, framed by the stoic, craggy mountains of the Cape peninsula and escarpment that the Cape Country Routes’ constellation of properties is located.

The Cape Country Routes is a loose coalition of hotels and activity-based experiences sprinkled across the southwestern Cape (in concentration) but that extends as far up the east coast as Port Elizabeth, and as far north as Hanover, the halfway stop between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Our destination, however, was the Arniston Spa Hotel, a large luxury four-star hotel right on the beachfront in the quaint 120-year-old fishing village of Arniston, and whose bright façade gazes into the East over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Arniston Spa Hotel

We arrived fairly early in the day and as the Arniston Spa Hotel and its spectacular coastal surrounds came into view, we all pressed our faces eagerly against the car windows. Eyes aglitter, we could scarcely believe that this would be our address for the next 24 hours. The Arniston Spa Hotel offers pretty much everything one would need/want to enjoy a long, leisurely stay on the southern coast.

There is ample accommodation with four exclusive room options to choose from, all of which are kitted-out with luxury furnishings, satellite TVs, minibars, coffee and tea-making facilities, and complimentary Wi-Fi. There is also a full-service restaurant (more on that later), bar, Ginkgo Spa, and picturesque pool in a central courtyard so that even the rooms that don’t face the ocean afford guests desirable views.

With her aspect towards the east, I hoped for a sea-facing room, imaging just how beautiful it would be to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. But before we could settle in, we had somewhere urgent to be and so we deposited our luggage and made a 180-degree turnaround. The tide was rising.

Arniston AKA Waenhuiskrans

Typically HORRENDOUS view

Surveying this tranquil, cheery little fishing village today, it’s hard to imagine that Arniston was named after one of the worst naval disasters in South African history but indeed it was. In 1815, the British East Indiaman Arniston was bound for England. Aboard her were 378 passengers, many of whom were wounded soldiers. Tragically, a furious Cape storm – and perhaps a bit of a boo-boo on the part of the captain who miscalculated her longitude – smashed her onto the shore and only six lived to tell the tale.

If that story is a little macabre for you, there’s always Arniston’s other official name of Waenhuiskrans, which literally translates to “wagon house cliff” or “wagon shelter cliff”. This name is derived from an immense nearby tidal cave that was said to be big enough to accommodate an entire ox wagon team, the popular mode of transport several hundred years ago. And this was exactly where we needed to be before the rising tide rendered the sea cave inaccessible to us.

Coastal walk to Waenhuiskrans Cave

After a brisk walk alongside craggy ocean cliffs, past odoriferous colonies of cormorants, pristine coastal scrub, and dune systems that beckoned to our inner children, we finally arrived at the village’s namesake attraction. Waenhuiskrans cave was large, cool, and dank with its recent tidal bathing and was surrounded by rock pools riddled with brightly coloured sea life like anemones, sea urchins, and skittish fish. We took our photos, delighted in the sea spray and the reflections of the cave off its subterranean pools, and then, a whole morning’s walking under our belt, headed back to the Arniston Spa Hotel to check in, relieve our feet of their sodden shoes and socks, and finally appraise the views from our rooms.

Our guide explains the history of the area, as well as some tidbits on local flora, fauna, and geology.

These coastal succulents contain powerful anti-inflammatory properties, making them useful for treating sunburn, among other maladies.

Home, sweet temporary home

We were all lucky and secured sea-facing views. The suites were filled with natural light and spectacular views of the ocean and embracing coastline. I did a quick appraisal, which culminated in some seriously smug satisfaction, and then headed down to the restaurant, where I enjoyed a lunch of chicken and prawn Thai curry with a glass of Arniston Bay Sauvignon Blanc / Sémillon. That afternoon was taken at leisure with the exception of an hour-long massage at the Gingko Spa, from which I emerged pickled with pleasure. Mystified by how my fellow media people manage to use their afternoons productively for work, I sprawled out on my king-sized bed and snoozed.

We concluded a perfectly hedonistic day with a slap-up dinner of fresh wild oysters harvested from the bay at Arniston and washed down with a glass of the delicate and elegantly perfumed Theuniskraal Riesling 2017, followed by a melt-off-the-bone lamb shank, which I savoured with a glass (or two) of the exceptional Strandveld (Rhône style) Syrah 2016. Unable to choose, we ordered three desserts to share: the baked cheesecake with sour cherry compote, iced nougat parfait with toasted almonds and maraschino cherries, and good old-fashioned pavlova with green peppercorn mascarpone cream and fresh fruit. Judging from the alacrity with which those desserts disappeared down our gullets, it’s safe to say that we all enjoyed them immensely.

Now THAT is what I call a quintessential South African feast!

That night, I was lulled to sleep by a belly full of home-style cooking, the region’s beautiful cool climate wines, and the gentle sigh of the waves on the coast.

Kassiesbaai and breakfast

As tempting as it was to remain swathed in sheets, I extricated myself from bed to go on a fresh, early morning walk through Kassiesbaai heritage fishing village, which sprawls right next door to the Arniston Spa Hotel. This is how Arniston began really: as a fishing community and it’s wonderful to see that the rustic, lime-washed, and thatched homes with their colourful doors and window frames remain standing, unspoiled, and inhabited by friendly fisher folk. We meandered through the 120-year-old village, enjoying the company of free-ranging dogs and the views of the sun making its escape from the eastern horizon.

The colourful fishing village of Kassiesbaai, Arniston

Our final indulgence for the trip was a full-out assault on the most epic continental style breakfast buffet you could ever imagine. Quite literally, no breakfast item was left unrepresented, from fruit salad, yoghurts, cereals, and muesli to croissants, scones, flapjacks, cheeses, charcuterie, and smoked salmon. There was even a hot station where you could order your heart’s desire for an on-the-spot breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, tomato, and any and every combination and iteration thereof. I ate like food was going out of fashion and it was good.

A little brimstone canary welcomes the day

Your next getaway

What began as a colourful fishing community has since soared in reputation and popularity for its incredible natural beauty, whale watching opportunities (June to November), and human heritage and history. Chief amongst the draw cards to this rather remote neck of the Cape is the Arniston Spa Hotel, which offers travellers a quintessential Cape country experience and a luxurious and comfortable base from which to explore the region’s charming, breath-taking surrounds. And if you are yet to visit Arniston, you now know where your next weekend getaway should be.

Sunrise as seen from the Arniston Hotel

The Arniston Spa Hotel is located at 1 Main Rd, Arniston, an approximate 210 km drive from Cape Town. For bookings and enquiries, please email info@arnistonhotel.com or call +27 (0) 28 445 9000

 www.arnistonhotel.com www.capecountryroutes.com

This article was originally written for Southern Vines Magazine, the largest lifestyle and leisure publication in the Western Cape of South Africa: https://www.southernvines.co.za/2019/05/24/the-arniston-spa-hotel-and-cape-country-routes/

Journey to the Southernmost Tip of Africa

The Cape (of South Africa) is brimming with attractive hotspots for tourism. These have become regarded as the epicentres for our dining and art scenes, our heritage and history, and the thrill that is to be found here, whether it’s from dancing in a thrumming nightclub or abseiling down the stern countenances of the peninsula mountains.

Yet, between these hotspots, a little off the beaten track, perhaps along a secondary road that few people know of and even fewer tourist establishments thump their chests over, you’ll discover the Cape countryside and the Cape Country Routes’ constellation of hotels. These offer quintessential country-style accommodations and hospitality, and it was to experience this beguiling offering that we journeyed to the southernmost tip of Africa, to the Agulhas Country Lodge in the town of l’Agulhas.

The Agulhas Country Lodge

With one eye on the l’Agulhas coastal road before me and one eye on my GPS, a spectacular-looking building loomed into sight and I whispered to myself: “Oh please let this it!” If you somehow didn’t know where on Earth you were, approaching the Agulhas Country Lodge, you might very well believe that you’re in the Scotland. The hotel perches on the rocky limestone hills adjacent to the shoreline and its construction from natural limestone blocks gives it the presence and grace of a castle.

Inside, the hotel has been jigsaw puzzled together using materials salvaged from such enchanting origins as shipwrecks and old railway yards. Bare stone walls, dark timber ceilings, bespoke décor, and low, romantic light lend the Agulhas Country Lodge a tangible touch of history without being gloomy.

My humble abode for our two-day stay in L’Agulhas

Not too shabby, eh?

Definitely not!

The suites, while gorgeously ‘country’ in theme and feel, have been considerately put together for the modern traveller, and feature mini-bars, tea and coffee stations, free Wi-Fi, and, in my case since I somehow landed the honeymoon suite, an enormous Jacuzzi bath. I also had a private balcony with inspiring views of the hilly coastline and its thick coat of Fynbos vegetation, the winding l’Agulhas coastal road, and the glittering ocean beyond.

Dinner is served

After an afternoon spent with my feet up on possibly the most comfortable hotel bed I’ve ever had the luxury of sinking into, I met my fellow media people in the cosy bar/lounge area for a drink before supper. Here, we met the lovely owners of the Agulhas Country Lodge, Sue and Phil Fenwick, whose multi-decadal love story is an inspiration to us all, whether single, engaged, or married. We also learned that the bar’s air force and maritime theme was informed by Phil’s rather dashing history as a pilot in the South African Air Force.

The restaurant at the Agulhas Country Lodge – positively medieval!

With cheeks warmed by romantic tales and a glass of red wine, we headed downstairs to the Agulhas Country Lodge’s small and intimate restaurant where, with a roaring fire warming our backs, we sank our teeth into a delicious, three-course meal home-cooked by none other than Sue and her lovely daughter Chelsea. A heart-warming starter of tasty vegetable soup and crisp homemade bread was followed by a sumptuous seafood potjie (we all continued to rave about for days afterwards), which went beautifully with the First Sighting Shiraz 2016, a peppery yet silky smooth, black fruited red wine from Strandveld Winery. We concluded the meal with what was advertised on the chalkboard menu as “the best carrot cake in the world” and which, I’m very happy to report, was no hyperbole.

Falling asleep has never been so easy!

Cape Agulhas historic walking route

The following morning, after a breakfast of homemade muesli, fresh fruit, boiled eggs, and my daily-required dose of caffeine, we hit the road to explore Cape Agulhas, a region of immense historic and geographical significance. Our walk began at the Agulhas lighthouse, a sad reminder that modern technology is fast robbing our culture of the need for these stoic and romantic maritime structures.

Morning coastal walk along the southernmost tip of Africa.

We then walked along the coast through fynbos vegetation atwitter with canaries and bejewelled sunbirds to the southernmost tip of Africa, where the warm Indian Ocean clashes with the cold Atlantic. From here, we hiked to the boardwalk at Rasperpunt, which offered blessed respite from the hard-to-walk-on sandy and pebbled beaches and lead us along the coast past the Meishu Maru 38 shipwreck, a Chinese fishing vessel that ran aground in 1982 (allegedly on purpose…for insurance purposes).

Male Southern double-collared sunbird

The Meishu Maru 38 shipwreck

Our walk even took us past the lagoon at Pietjie se Punt, where cormorants gathered along the pool’s edges and plovers ploughed the sand for morsels. With the brisk sea air invigorating our lungs, our feet ate up kilometre after kilometre of beach terrain and, before it was even noon, my Fitbit counter registered 12,000 steps. Is there anything better than a well-earned lunch?

Seafood buffet and bubble bath

Our reward for our rather epic morning walk was a seafood buffet of fried calamari, hake, prawn cakes, and chips washed down with Springfield Estate Life From Stone Sauvignon Blanc 2018 at the Sea Shack in Struisbaai, a casual seafood eatery located right on the beach. We then atoned for the fry-up with a short walk along the coast to the harbour of Struisbaai before returning to the Agulhas Country Lodge to enjoy our suites and a little solace.

Being located on porous limestone, l’Agulhas is in the fortunate position to have vast underground reservoirs of water at its finger (toe?) tips and so while the rest of the Cape languished in drought, the tiny coastal town remained flush with fresh water. And so, I treated myself to a guilt-free bubble bath in my suite’s enormous Jacuzzi tub, whose jets churned the water into froth and blissfully buried me in fragrant bubbles.

That night, we dined at The Michael Collins Irish Pub, which delivered a satisfying pub dinner.

The Cape Country Routes

The Agulhas Country Lodge is just one of the Cape Country Routes’ properties, a loose coalition of hotels sprinkled across the country but that exists in greater concentration throughout the southwestern Cape. Together, these establishments offer visitors a quintessential Cape country experience, which is all about tranquil settings, sweeping vistas of nature, hearty dishes crafted from fresh, locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, a heady blend of luxury and comfort, and good old country hospitality. The Agulhas Country Lodge does a fabulous job of upholding this philosophy, sending us away positively glowing with all of the above, in addition to the extraordinary beauty and history of the Cape Agulhas countryside.

A lone fisherman

The Agulhas Country Lodge is located at 9 Main Road, L’Agulhas, an approximate 220 km distance from Cape Town. For bookings and enquiries, please email info@agulhascountrylodge.com or call +27 (0) 28 435 7650. 

www.agulhascountrylodge.com, www.capecountryroutes.com

This article was originally written for Southern Vines Magazine, the largest lifestyle and leisure publication in the Western Cape of South Africa: https://www.southernvines.co.za/2019/05/24/agulhas-country-lodge/ 

Travel Memoirs of the Wanderlust-struck, PART 5

Located on the Cape peninsula, Hout Bay was named by the first settlers for the thick forests of valuable wood found there – “hout” means wood in Afrikaans. This breathtaking valley is where I grew up.

Although my family had a beautiful home in Hout Bay (my father is an architect), we weren’t what you’d consider a wealthy family. Our travel philosophies were a testament to this: we’d rarely fly anywhere, we’d almost always stay in our caravan, and lunch was taken on the road and more often than not consisted of soggy jam sandwiches, floury apples, and sweet coffee. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for these early thrifty travels, though, because they defined my perception of luxury.

To me, as a kid, luxury was a hunk of biltong to chew on for hours during our long, tiresome road trips around the country. It was getting to sit down and eat at a restaurant, even though my concept of haute cuisineat the time was a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. But the very pinnacle of luxury, the Mount Olympus of all treats, was getting to stay in a hotelroomwhere my parents’ snores could be shut out by a door, rather than bundled into our tiny cots in our tiny caravan.

Living large

Maybe a slightly embellished representation of the kind of old hotels we’d stay in…

On the odd occasion we did overnight in hotels, they were ancient budget establishments, usually named something like “The Standard Hotel” or “The [insert one horse town’s name] Inn.” These were places with creaky wooden floorboards, ancient paintings of forgotten people, furniture that would belch out decade-old, musty air when you sat in them, and cracked porcelain bathroom basins.

In other words, they were in desperate need of an accidental electrical fire so that they could be burned to the ground, completely redesigned, rebuilt, and refurnished.

To me, however, they were luxurious and the excitement of sleeping in a hotel superseded any kind of miserable reality that might entail. In other words, I was taught to be happy with what I needed rather than what I wanted.

My parents were and are not misers. My father is one of the most generous human beings I know and will never, ever turn down the opportunity to buy you a chocolate bar whether you want one or not (or a cheeky shot of tequila on a trip to Hollywood, Los Angeles).

But to my parents, traveling is about spending 14 hours a day on the road, in the bush, or tramping through foreign cities. It’s about feelingthe climate – the humidity and the heat – rather than banishing it from your experience, and eating where the locals eat for a fraction of the cost of some fancy restaurant. To budget travel is to live like the majority of locals live and it’s to leave that city or country with a lasting impression of its supreme beauty, charm, culture, and cuisine…but also its struggles.

There’s a lot to be said for staying in a luxury hotel – to be sure, I’d likely choose that over slumming it – but it does provide somewhat of a sterile travel experience. And what could be better than playing pool, drinking tepid beer, and getting to know fellow budget travellers in the rec room of a hostel?

Disaster

On a caravan trip up the Garden Route – so called because of the region’s lush, verdant forests – along the east coast of South Africa, disaster befell us. Cresting a particularly hilly hill a few tens of kilometres from the epitome of one-horse towns, Heidelberg, our caravan caught a tail wind and began to fishtail violently from side-to-side. It felt as though my mother, who happened to be driving, was yanking the wheel from left to right, which she was but out of sheer desperation to counteract the forces of the fishtailing caravan on our little red Toyota corolla.

Totally out of control, the car lurched sickeningly from one side of the highway to the other before the caravan swept right around in a massive arc, ending up at right angles to the car and forcing us into a deep ditch on the far side of the road. I remember my mother’s hysterical concern over her precious cargo on the back seat juxtaposed by my dad’s eerie calm, who immediately set to work rationalising what had just happened to us.

To my mother: “We must have caught a tail wind. You should have hit the accelerator instead of the brakes – that would have pulled the caravan back into a straight line behind the car.”

I don’t recall my mom’s precise words but they were probably something along the lines of “gaan kak”, the Afrikaans equivalent of “get fucked!”

Sitting there on the back seat, emotionally rattled but physically unharmed, the strangest thing happened. Our high drama on the highway began attracting an audience but not of people – we were in the middle of nowhere after all. From far and wide and seemingly out of the crackling white horizons, tall, comical-looking birds materialized and began loping over to the fence to ogle unashamedly at our appalling situation. Ostriches! Before long, we had drawn a crowd of the world’s largest birds.

Silver Linings

Our caravan, which was bent at a torturous angle to the car, was quite simply and totally fucked. There was no way we were going to make it to our holiday destination. To make matters even more uncomfortable than having just been in a potentially fatal car accident – not to mention blatantly stared at by a gaggle of stupid-looking birds – we found ourselves stranded under the blistering countenance of the African sun. Oh, and being sometime in the 1990’s, none of us had a cell phone to call for help.

I don’t recall precisely how we got out of that mess but I believe that another car arrived soon after our accident and kindly offered to drive my father to Heidelberg, where he could hire the services of a tow truck. Thereafter, we found ourselves in this tiny Karoo town with nothing other to do than languish, for three days and three nights, in a hotel room. My parents were in hell – the trauma, the expense, the boredom.

I was in heaven.

Rags to riches

I unpacked my entire suitcase into the closet as a way of claiming my new space, had a greasy cheeseburger and undercooked fries in the nearly deserted hotel restaurant for dinner, and drifted off to sleep trying in vain to read the Old Testament bible (the ones that were always nested in the bedside drawers of hotels).

To this day, staying in hotels excites me, although my perception of luxury has changed somewhat. I’ve had the privilege of landing a job that sends me to wonderful places in and around Cape Town to stay in luxurious hotels and guesthouses, all of which are four stars and higher. One such assignment sent me to a five-star luxury resort in the Welgevonden Nature Reserve in the Limpopo Province (northeast South Africa). Another to a five-star guesthouse in Paarl, one of South Africa’s oldest towns, where I drowned in expensive sheets and delicious local Méthode Cap Classique (our equivalent of Champagne).

Yours truly opening a bottle of MCC, a South African sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and/or Pinot Noir grapes in precisely the fashion as Champagne.

In spite of this unbridled, exquisite assault upon my senses, I remember how excited I was as a kid to be able to stay in a hotel for three nights, even if it was a terrible car accident that landed us there in the first place. I have, however, given up on trying to read the Old Testament since then, or any bible for that matter.

Unless I’m in need of a sleeping aid, that is.

 

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