Rocklands Bay

We wake up with vim and vigour. We’ve planned a late breakfast/brunch, followed by an improving walk through Tokai Forest. We *might* stop at a Constantia wine farm on the way back to Sea Point. Showering, I discover yesterday’s sun-based queueing has left me with a hell of a t-shirt tan.

Arriving to our brunch booking, we discover that Blockhouse Kitchen is located ON a wine farm - Constantia Uitsig. We have a lovely feed, and decide that since we’re here already, we might as well have a wine tasting. Our host is a jaunty chap from Zimbabwe. He is generous with his pours. Some of the wines are stellar. We both love the Chardonnay Reserve, and the Estate Red is sensational. We’re going to try and be well behaved, and not buy tons of wine along our travels. It’s tempting to cast these good intentions to one side.

We quickly abandon plans of a walk, and take a lovely little drive to Buitenverwachting - brilliant name. Correctly pronounced, it’s ‘Bay-ten-vare-vack-ting’ We visited back in 2019, and had a sublime oaked Sauvignon Blanc. I’m very excited to try it again. We are, however, foiled. The estate is closed on a Sunday… Not to be deterred, we head onwards to Groot Constantia, where we have a tasting of the estate’s red wines. Again, we could buy several. We’re going to head up and over Constantia Nek to get back to our hotel, and accidentally stumble across an estate with which I’m unfamiliar - Beau Constantia. Reasoning that it would be rude not to, we stop in for a quick glass of wine, and some pretty good Dim Sum. The views across to Muizenberg are stunning. We sit back, and ease our way through a happy half-hour of watching the world go by.

The drive back along the coast is beautiful - even moreso heading North than it is when driving South towards Hout Baai. Camps Bay is packed - an actual traffic jam. Back at our apartment, we’re not 100% sure what to do with ourselves. We have some biltong, and I decide a nap is probably gonna work for me. An hour later, I wake up feeling refreshed, but a little less than fresh. A Savanna and some Drowoers later, I’m ready to go out.

We go to the Codfather - not our first time, but maybe our last. They do fish, really REALLY well. They seem to both of us to have become a little greedy since our last visit. The tables are packed SO tightly that we basically share a conversation with our next door table. Anyone gets up, and they have to run the gauntlet past our table, and invariably bump into us. The concept is brilliant - you choose your fish of choice from a beautiful, market style array. There is a host from which to choose. There is some confusion when I ask for a crayfish, and what turns up is clearly a lobster. The food is really well cooked, but there’s just a sense that we both have that the restaurant is now more about profit than enjoyment. I recently recommended it to some friends visiting Camps Bay - I’m not sure I would do so again.

We walk down the Camps Bay beachfront as the sun sets, and are struck by the beauty of the place. We stop in at Tiger’s Milk - half way between a pub and a bar. There’s a DJ banging out some pretty decent progressive house. We both comment that we’d love to see a DJ playing this kind of music in the UK, but it’s SO tough to find these days. What was going to be a quick post prandial turns into something quite a lot longer. We finally pour ourselves into an Uber just after 23:00, which based on our trip so far, is VERY late. Arriving back to our apartment, we crack open the bottle of Amarula sitting in the bottom of the fridge. We have nothing to wake up for tomorrow, so will deal with Monday when it arrives.Read more