Grotto Bay

I don't know if it ever happens to you that you occasionally wonder about what your life would have been like if it had taken a different path. Today we took a drive out to one of my favourite places in the world, Grotto Bay, outside Cape Town. It is an estate on a nature reserve right on the coast. There is a brand new house (photo below) that is not quite finished and that has been for sale for a while and it always reminds me of the pictures you see in books of Cape Cod in the US. If Carmen and I had stayed in SA it is what we would have bought. This house has a fireplace and nestles in the wild unspoilt fynbos of the West Coast, with nothing but beach sand between you and the sea about 75 metres below on a pristine white beach. And then my aunt who lives there told us of a spate of of break-ins that had been occurring in the reserve - mercifully unknown up until relatively recently. Once she started outlining the upgrading of the security arrangements that had become necessary in the wake of these incidents, I remembered again that we had considered purchasing houses similar to this one prior to our move to Aus, but realized the futility of trying to outrun the blight that the scourge of criminality has brought upon this land. It makes no difference anymore if I am angry or sad at it all... it's just the way it is... and in a few days I go home to Aus...

If you click on the image to enlarge it, you can get a sense of how special this place is.