Brett's trip to Kalk Bay

Easter morning. I got up fairly early this morning, went for a short run, and now I am chilling in the spare room. We have a nice big brunch planned for us today, and an Easter egg hunt following that. The air is getting a bit brisker. The sun is still strong, but one can tell that winter is coming.

Yesterday, we spent the day at Kalk Bay. After a 50 minute train ride, we got off the train to a small fishing town. Walking across the street, we went into the small shops. The shops had a bohemian flare, with lots of homemade clothing and jewelry and small nick-nacks. There were dusty bookshops and Adam and I walked into one. It had rows and stacks of old, very old books, with brown cloth covers. On the floor was the head of an antelope, meant to be mounted on the wall but staring up from glass eyes. I walked into another room to see a whole assortment of mounted heads lying all over the floor. There was a wildebeest head, and various other antelope. There was also an assortment of animal skulls, along with some ancient maps. 

Another store housed strings of jewelry, hung with homemade beads. Adam and I were fiddling around amongst the trinkets when we noticed a small man behind the curtain of beads who was busy at work making the jewelry.  The stores smelled of incense and dust.

For lunch, we walked over to the pier on Kalk Bay. The pier extended out into the ocean, protecting a line of small colorful fishing boats in the harbor. Rachel and I walked over to the edge of the pier to see several seals swimming in the harbor. The seals were just chilling, protected against the waves, and peering up at the people looking down at them.

On the dock, some tarps were laid out on the ground, and fish, recently caught were lined up on the ground. It crossed my mind to purchase one, but they were at least two feet long, a bit too much for me. Also, only a few days before, I had bought a fish from the back of a pick-up truck near my work, a foot and a half snoek for R30 ($4.50). It was a good fish, and a great price. The only problem was that it was way too much for me, and food here goes bad a bit faster.     

For lunch, we ate at Kalky’s, a shack of a restaurant. The fish and chips were quite fresh, and cheap and delicious. A full plate of fish and chips cost the equivalent of R34 $5.00, something that in the states would easily be $15.00. We had a nice assortment of fried food, Leah and Sarah got the calamari, Michelle, the crayfish, Rachel and Brittany the snoek, and Adam and I the hake, on top of nice piles of French fries.