I sat overlooking the bustling little harbour. Oilskin-clad men were milling about a ski-boat that had just been pulled out of the water. One of them was haranguing the skipper on some issue while the rest looked on enviously as their peers tossed their silver and red treasure into crates on the quayside. The crew would eat well tonight.

I too was eating well. The rustic little restaurant overlooking Still Bay harbour had just served me a late lunch of delicious grilled calamari and chips and I was washing it down with a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc. Life really doesn’t get much better than this, I thought as I continued to watch the comings and goings of the fisherman and their mixed fortunes.

I was in no particular hurry to get to my lodgings and there were two reasons for this. The rugby game I was looking forward to watching was only starting in an hour’s time and the place I’d eventually managed to secure didn’t hold that much appeal for me. From the photographs on the internet site, the holiday flats I was to stay in looked more utilitarian than sumptuously welcoming. And they had no view of the sea, so I ate slowly and savoured the panoramic seascape in front of me.

Of course, having few accommodation options open to me was mostly my own fault. At the last minute, I had decided to meet friends at the Plett Adventure Bike Week and stop over at Still Bay en route. Unbeknown to me, it was a long weekend and most of the accommodation was either full, beyond my budget (hefty single-supplements make travelling alone pricey) or required a minimum stay of two-nights.

But when I arrived at Muir Holiday Flats, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I receive a warm welcome, the complex and it’s gardens were neat as a pin and my ground floor flat  (more like a townhouse, really) was clean and had everything I needed for a pleasant self-catering stay. Sure, it wasn’t the Ritz and it lacked the warmth of a more upmarket guest-house’s décor, but there were ice-cubes in the freezer for my scotch, the couch was comfortable and the TV showed the Stormers playing with passion. I was as happy as Larry.

The two-block walk to the edge of the bay took me just five minutes the next morning. And as soon as I stepped onto the beach, the reason for Still Bay’s name was obvious. The sea in the horseshoe bay was as flat as a pond of mercury; and with the clouds filtering the sunlight white, almost as silver too. From what I can gather it’s predominantly the shallow waters found here (deposits of silt from the Goukou River over millennia have caused the coastline to shelve very gradually) that make the bay so “still”.

Threading my way through clumps of lace-like red seaweed and glistening black rocks exposed by the low-tide, I stepped around a beached jellyfish and took in the all-sorts architecture on the beachfront — my favourite, by far, was a tatty, green clapboard cottage. I eventually landed up at the harbour and took up station near the jetty. Here I spent a pleasant half-an-hour watching the animated backs of heavily swaddled fisherman, their long fishing rods bristling and bending like the antennae of giant insects.

With no road to the resort in the 1800s, holidaymakers made their way to Still Bay by ox wagon to a point upstream. Having loaded all their luggage and provisions onto a boat, they then travelled to the river mouth, a significant distance down-river. According to travel writer, TV Bulpin, “…the farmers of the Little Karoo travelled down during March when the grape harvest was in, with their wagons always loaded with barrels of wine, brandy and witblits (white lightning). Their holiday camps were jolly affairs, with the old folk gossiping and the young people dancing all night…”*

On my way out of town, I parked my motorbike near the bridge over the Goukou River and appreciated the peaceful river scene. I thought about one of the much-loved characters of Still Bay’s past I’d read about in Bulpin’s writings earlier. Not only did Eepie operate the pontoon across the river for 25 years before the bridge was built in 1955, he apparently always remembered your name; no matter how long you’d been away.

*Discovering Southern Africa by T.V Bulpin (2001)