Kalk Bay in South Africa : NPR
Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence by which NPR’s worldwide staff shares moments from their lives and work all over the world.
The colourful outdated wood fishing boats rock gently on this harbor, the place wild — and suspiciously plump — Cape fur seals bask within the solar, awaiting the entrails from the day by day catch as fishermen deftly intestine the snoek and yellowtail they’ve introduced in that morning.
Kalk Bay, a small village on the Indian Ocean with a bohemian vibe, about 40 minutes’ drive from central Cape City, is one in every of my favourite locations. It is nestled within the shadow of fynbos-covered mountains and boasts some atmospheric seafood eating places and bars the place, at excessive tide, the waves smash towards the home windows as you eat — and sometimes, an unfortunate diner will get soaked!
There’s additionally an impartial bookshop, a few artwork galleries and a inhabitants of devoted surfers and growing old hippies (together with my dad).
Like a lot of the Cape area, Kalk Bay is a melting pot with a posh historical past. Within the 1700s, Dutch settlers arrived at Kalk Bay, and it was later occupied by British colonists who turned it into a significant whaling heart.
But it surely was the arrival within the mid-1800s of emancipated slaves — who the Dutch East India Firm introduced over as laborers from what are actually Malaysia and Indonesia — in addition to Filipino seamen who jumped ship, that made Kalk Bay right into a fishing business hub. A few of the fishermen in the present day are their descendants.
Regardless of how gentrified and touristy in the present day’s Kalk Bay is perhaps, the harbor continues to be an actual working one — the place the weather-beaten fishermen smoke, joke and swear as they throw scraps to the corpulent seals.
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