A walk back in time

A cool southeast breeze welcomed us as we made our way from the Kom along the bayside path and boardwalk to Slangkop lighthouse, a beacon of warning to shipping for over 100 years of the treacherous reefs along the coast where many a captain has steered his ship to shore. The sea was a deep shade of blue after a few days of offshore winds and only a small shore break belied the ferocity of yesterday's massive surf. We passed beneath the lighthouse on our way to the Soetwater campsite/bird sanctuary (an oxymoron, I suppose) and headed down a sandy track along the fence where a sign warned of an otter with pups in the area and requesting no dogs to be allowed. It is such a privilege to live where these beautiful creatures still exist in relative safety and are sighted regularly by early morning and evening strollers.
Once in the Soetwater conservancy, we were horrified by the amount of plastic polluting the shoreline, tangled in clumps of kelp or just general jetsam on the sand, and we busied ourselves with picking up as much as we could with the bags we had brought, but would clearly have been able to fill innumerable black bags if we had set about a serious clean up. So sad to see what mankind has done to our only home.
As a prime breeding ground for shorebirds, and with the highest density of African Black Oystercatchers along this stretch of coast, we were not surprised by the calls of alarm from a number of Blacksmith Lapwings who did their best to distract us from whatever they were protecting - either eggs or juveniles - and we took care to all follow in each others' footsteps to minimise our impact on the vegetation.
Our purpose on this hike was to visit the Soetwater Enviro Centre, where wonderful work is being done to educate children (and any adults who care to be) on the environment through school camps (good accommodation and activity programmes ensure that this is an outing to be remembered, I'm sure) and we were given a slide presentation on the work done at the Centre, followed by a tour of the bird rehabilitation area and a small selection of snakes. Our host, the amiable and very knowledgeable Lappies Labuschagne, took us further down the coast to look at a Khoi midden from long, long ago when this was a veritable paradise for the early inhabitants of this land. A fascinating and informative talk, peppered with humour, made for a memorable outing and one to be repeated, as there are many more stories to be told. I highly recommend a visit to the Centre (just phone first so they can be prepared with tea/coffee and biscuits and a suitable date) for anyone interested in our natural world and heritage. We were relieved to learn that schoolchildren did a huge beach cleanup from the Centre down the coast to Witsands recently, but had not gone towards the lighthouse. Hopefully that will be on the agenda soon!

Ancient whalebone

A small section of a hill of shells, bones, pottery

Picking up plastic