Cape St Francis - If an observant Zululand sugar farmer hadn’t noticed an advertisement in the Farmers’ Weekly more than half a century ago, the chances are one of the Eastern Cape’s most beautiful beach getaways might never have seen the light of day.
The advertisement read: “Fisherman’s paradise – lonely and isolated, well wooded and watered with two miles of private beach.”
The temptation was too much for avid fisherman Leighton Hulett, who bought the land for £1 750. It was transferred into his name on December 24, 1954 and Cape St Francis was born.
Why St Francis? While Hulett was the modern discoverer of this surfers’ paradise, 400 years earlier explorer Manuel de Mesquita Perestrelo from Santarem, Portugal, spotted this part of the coastline on one of his voyages around Africa.
It was so exquisite that he decided to name the area after the patron saint of animals and the environment, St Francis of Assisi.
Go back further, 60 000 years, and you will find that it is the oldest known place where skeletal remains of homo sapiens or modern man exist.
Today two distinct areas make up Cape St Francis. One is St Francis Bay, where you will find the fanciest homes and boats, spectacular beaches and a network of canals that rival Venice.
The other is the less fashionable Cape St Francis itself. The beaches are equally spectacular with swathes of golden sand that feel like velvet underfoot. But there is a more rustic feel to the geography, which I prefer. It’s a place where nobody is trying to outdo anyone else.
You won’t find designer bikinis and flashy brollies, just simple folk having a wonderful beach holiday where worries are as far out to sea as the distant albatross.
Talking of birds, there’s one thing you should not miss if you are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time: the setting free of rescued African penguins, which at one point during the Christmas holiday period are released into the sea below the Seal Point lighthouse.
There are many reasons penguins have a tough time. At certain times of the year the shoreline is treacherous. Finding food is getting harder. Penguins are often tormented by seals and their wings get clogged with oil from passing ships.
The sanctuary is home to as many as 50 penguins at a time, cared for by dedicated staff and a group of volunteers.
On release day, about 15 of them are taken to the nearby beach in special boxes where hundreds of visitors are there to wish them well on their journey.
Watching them bob up and down in their new sea home is amazing, evocative and heart-warming.
But it’s not a great occasion for all the newly freed penguins. According to volunteers who help look after the rescued penguins, some don’t want to leave home.
“We have one called Rock Four we have released four times,” said one. “He hits the first wave and then comes straight back to shore. We’ve given up, so he is now a permanent resident.”
I can’t help thinking that St Francis would have approved of such caring and compassion.
Of course you come to St Francis for the beaches, surfing, sun tanning and peace and quiet like no other. But that is just a part of this holiday story.
This is calamari and crayfish country, so the seafood is out of the top drawer. And because there are days when the weather can turn nasty, the quaint shopping precinct is geared to making visitors happy.
A few years ago, frequent visitors tell me, getting supplies was a nightmare. Unless you hit the only store at sunrise, you’d be lucky to go home with a loaf of bread.
But things are different now. The main shopping area has a bustling supermarket, stocked with everything you might need plus a wide variety of local produce.
There are a number of coffee haunts, where “home-made” is well up there, along with some very unusual shops.
Billabong has to be there, because the label was born in Cape St Francis. But there are also unexpected finds, such as Verandah, a gift and interior shop you might find on the pages of a glossy magazine by the same name.
Around the corner is a tie-dye magic kingdom run by a man who looks as though he has emerged from a flower-power movie.
There’s a wool shop like no other I’ve ever been to, called Novula’s. Thobeka Petse, who runs it, says. “We have the most beautiful home-grown wool in the world.” It’s part of a large job creation industry.
“We train our knitters to make designer garments which we sell to boutiques throughout South Africa. For many of these women, knitting has been a way out of poverty and despair.”
As you cross the main Da Gama Street, a group of bike riders passes. On the other side of the street, runners make their way up the hill out of the village.
It’s an impressive spectacle, but equally breathtaking is to think that within an hour you can be sipping a glass of ice-cold champagne, sitting on one of the most beautiful beaches, staring out at a blue sea and a cloudless sky, thinking of very little.
Liz Clarke, Sunday Tribune