Knysna Re-discovered

Text: Michael Bertram
Images: © Knysna Tourism

Must be, oh, fourteen years since last I drove down the Garden Route. That was when I was taking that last holiday between finishing varsity and starting work. I borrowed my old lady’s hand-me-down Volla, loaded with a heavy tent and that girl, what’s-er-name...

Coming here this time was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I flew down to Cape Town on Friday for our monthly meeting and hadn’t planned on staying the weekend. But, what with one thing and another, it turned out that I was going to have to be back on Monday. Shelly had her mother visiting (again). Rather than fly home just to fly back again, I decided to accept Clinton’s offer of a weekend in Knysna. You’ll forgive me for thinking that Knysna was still the laid-back little dorp that I remembered.

So it was that I came for a couple of nights R&R and a round or two of golf, not to have my life changed – which is precisely what’s happened.

Friday lunchtime was just over once I’d fought my way through the Cape Town traffic to climb the pass into the mountains above Somerset West. Ah, summer in the Cape! It was still broad daylight, and the Bay sparkled and danced before me.

I wound my way past Swellendam, and by four o’clock I was pulling in at Heidelberg to mark my territory and drink a quick cup of cardboard coffee. Now I was getting impatient and I sped up, enjoying the power of the vehicle as I flew through the chicanes above Great Brak River.

The sun was setting and night was coming on as I drove into Knysna, but I realised immediately that this was Hicksville no more. As I took the steep sweep of road up to Pezula, the cliff-top estate where Clint has built his pad, I stopped to look at the most awesome sunset. The water was black and there were more colours in the sky than I’d ever seen.

I could see why Clint had returned from the States to buy a pad here. I found his house but nobody was home. The place was wide open and the lights were on. My sense of humour had soured with the service station coffee and I get ratty when I’m hungry. Just then, my cell phone rang: “Where the hell are you?” It was obvious from the noise and the laughter in his voice that the Clint was already having a jol. “Get yourself down to 34 Degrees!”

Nothing is very far away in Knysna. Geez, I do more mileage at home, just driving to Sandton. And they say that rush hour here starts at 5 o’clock and ends at five minutes past. I pulled into the local One-Stop and picked up a map, brochures, advice and some ‘have a nice day’ hospitality. I was reliably informed, “Awesome restaurant 34 Degrees South. You gotta see the place! It’s at the Waterfront at the Knysna Quays.”

Local hospitality was right – you gotta see 34 South. It’s a pip of a place to drink, and just chill out. Sitting right on the edge of the water, complete with yachts and canals that are lined with duplexes, townhouses and tourist shops – more like Port Grimaud than St Tropez, very hip.

The boys had found a table outside (boys’ night out is still strong in this part of the woods), and I settled in for a meal of fresh oysters that did Knysna proud. They grow the things right here in the lagoon. I only had eleven of them, though. Apparently everything you’ve heard about oysters is true, but you have to have twelve for them to take effect. And I didn’t want that to happen because I was here without my Shelly.

We chased the oysters with a few delicious things from the deli counter, as well as a plate of impossibly succulent grilled prawns. And if any of that had stuck to my palate, there was plenty of Knysna’s local brew, Mitchell’s Bosun’s Bitter, to ease my throat. They also make a Forester’s Lager but bitter is better, as they say. For such a small town Knysna really buzzes over a weekend – we ended up seeing some great acts from the Cape Comedy Collective at Zanzibar’s.

Clinton had booked an early game of golf for the next morning. Pain that he is, he had us all up at six for a huge breakfast he’d ordered in from Forest Picnics. Picnic in the forest – now that I can understand! They deliver anywhere in this part of the world, in old-fashioned wicker baskets, and by 6:10 am we were swanning it on the balcony with fresh breads, cheeses and pates. Clinton by name and Clinton by nature – the oke would build his pad at a place like this!

Pezula – it means ‘to the top’ – is the estate that surrounds the Sparrebosch Golf Club. Clinton’s house overlooks the second hole with a view across the rough to the Indian Ocean beyond. And by the way, oh great brother with the impossibly low handicap, the second is a fairly technical par 4 with a long, narrow water hazard that runs almost the length of the fairway. You have to understand that the rough is really rough at Sparrebosch, but it’s also a conservationist’s delight – pure fynbos, as natural as the day it was made.

Golf here is pure class. From the huge, airy clubhouse with its spectacular views, to the brand new club cars complete with cooler boxes full of drinks. I won’t tell you my score, but, I’ll admit I did play a lot of golf. Sparrebosch isn’t the easiest of courses, but then again, you wouldn’t want it to be, would you? We play golf for the challenge, don’t we?

With his euphemistically labelled ‘boyish energy’, Clinton was hustling us to hurry up even before we’d finished the last hole. “Come on, we’ve gotta get to town before they close. You got to see this outfit,” he said referring to Frost Brothers, which has to be the most unusual used car dealer in the country. These cars are all classics and vintage, long considered dead or exported by most accounts. 

Still there was no rest for the wicked suffering from a bit of the old self-inflicted. Boykie had booked us on an afternoon’s tour of Featherbed Nature Reserve, home of the esteemed mathematician and TV celebrity, William Smith.

Our Clinton has clearly caught the ‘fitness’ bug since he’s moved to Knysna, and had arranged for us to try the ‘Awesome Foursome’ with Seal Adventures, named no doubt after the American Navy seals: by canoe across the lagoon, kit up with harness and gloves and then hike. Up. And up. And up – to their abseiling site at the southern end of the peninsula, a place called ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, for Pete’s sake!

But I will say, abseiling down a cliff 120m above the ocean isn’t something I’ll forget for a while. Leaning backwards with a little rope around your waist, after nearly fifteen years of business lunches… you’ll understand the dilemma.

Our Boykie, of course, couldn’t confine himself to the easy, conflict-free alternative of abseiling (which basically means tying yourself to a rope and walking backwards down a cliff for no reason other than to prove to yourself that you can). No. Boykie had to rap jump – run down the blimming cliff, face-forwards.

The best though, was still to come – because high up on the Western Head, they’ve built this spectacular quadbiking track. Now I was in heaven. I’ve never been short of a word or two, but even I was rendered speechless. By now, I had fallen in love with Knysna. How to describe the feeling of riding through the forest and fynbos with those spectacular views, across the Lagoon, and all along the magnificent Indian Ocean...

I wanted this lifestyle. Here, in this beautiful place. Today, not in twenty years time.

The wind had dropped by the time we got back to the beach, and we paddled back across the glassy lagoon in silence. I was starving (Shelly says I’m always starving) and we had an early supper at the Oyster Catcher, one of the Knysna Oyster Company’s working jetties at the Knysna Quays yacht harbour. I felt like I was in a post card – sitting at a picnic table and looking at the sunset through a forest of masts, kids of all ages playing around us, their parents happily raising the decibels and a three-piece band belting out some fine jazz and more-than-passable rock. The city felt like a million miles away.

I realised that I was tired – not of the day and its excitement, but of the way I live at home. High walls and electric fences, a long commute in outrageous traffic. Fourteen years ago, I visited here and I felt free. Then with the demands of living in the city that feeling disappeared and I didn’t even see it leave. Now I wanted it back.

I spent a most enjoyable Sunday morning with Bob, an estate agent and friend of Clinton, looking around Knysna, mostly talking golf. With the kind of money I can spend, there is no shortage of investment options in this exquisite place (amazing that, just two days ago, it was Hicksville to me). I could buy on Thesen Islands, hell I could buy one of the islands! At the Knysna Quays, I could have my boat moored at the end of my property and walk to 34 Degrees South. I could look at a property on the golf course at Sparrebosch, or I could look at the new section of Pezula – which might just prove to be my final choice.

I like the way they’re restoring the natural fynbos and the fact that they’re planning a really low housing density. But can I do this – live here and still achieve what I wanted in my career? Shelly and I had been thinking about that offer to go to Perth... “What do you want to go to Perth for?” Bob asked me. “Some of South Africa’s most successful (he means wealthiest) men live here in Knysna and commute to Johannesburg and Cape Town. Think about this, the developer of Thesen Islands is a South African who lived in the States for years, and the guy who’s putting Pezula together is an ex-Zimbabwean who also made his money in the States. Both of them have come back here because they know it’s safe. You can’t get this quality of life anywhere else in the world.”

I haven’t exactly signed the offer to purchase, but by the time Bob left I was pretty certain that I would. Soon. Clint and I sat up talking late into the night and when I finally weaved my way to my room overlooking the ocean, I knew that this was going to be one of the easiest decisions of my life.

I’ve come a long way from those early days with my old lady’s Volla. I now have a beautiful wife and children, and I want them to grow up knowing what it is to play without burglar bars, palisade fences and fear all around them. I want quality of life – a South African quality of life.

So, it’s time to call Shelly and tell her my mind is made up.

Clint’s arranged for me to fly out from George. I’ll get to my meeting in Cape Town in good time before flying home this evening.

And tomorrow, as soon as I get into the office, I’m going to call that Perth crowd and tell them “Thanks, but no thanks”.