Arniston and Waenhuiskrans

Kassiesbaai, A Village Of Lime Washed Fisherman'S Cottages Declared A National Monument And Still Lived In By The Fishing Families Who Built It, Beside A Sea Cave Large Enough That Its Afrikaans Name Means Wagon House Cliff REACHABLE ON FOOT AT LOW TIDE ONLY On A Coast Named For The Arniston, Wrecked Here In 1815 With The Loss Of 372 Lives · Arniston, Western Cape

The village has two names because it has two histories. Waenhuiskrans is the Afrikaans one and means wagon-house cliff, after a sea cave south of the village large enough that the comparison is not an exaggeration - and which can only be walked into at low tide, a detail people have discovered the hard way. Arniston is the English one, taken from a troopship wrecked on this coast in 1815 with the loss of 372 lives, most of them soldiers and their families going home from India. The village itself is Kassiesbaai: about seventy lime-washed fisherman's cottages with small windows and thick walls, declared a national monument and, crucially, still lived in by the fishing families whose ancestors built them. That makes it a working village rather than an exhibit, which is the single most important thing to understand before you walk through somebody's yard taking photographs of their own front door.

On the Overberg coast 25 km south-east of Bredasdorp, between Cape Agulhas and De Hoop, Arniston, Western Cape, South Africa

A village rather than a site, open at any hour and free to walk. KASSIESBAAI IS LIVED IN - the cottages are people's homes, the lanes between them are not public thoroughfares in spirit, and the right thing is to walk the edges, ask before photographing anyone or their doorway, and buy fish or craft from the village. THE WAENHUISKRANS SEA CAVE IS REACHABLE ON FOOT AT LOW TIDE ONLY, over rocks, with roughly an hour either side of the turn - CHECK A TIDE TABLE, because people have been cut off in there and the sea does not negotiate. The beach and the cliffs are open always. There are two or three restaurants, a small shop and one hotel; Bredasdorp twenty-five kilometres north has fuel, a supermarket and a pharmacy. MALARIA-FREE, and 200 km from Cape Town.

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