You sleep where the keeper slept
The assistant keeper's cottage at Bakenkop Point · Cape south coast · sleeps four · two nights minimum
The cottage
Two bedrooms, a kitchen with a gas stove, and a stoep facing south into open water. Built in 1911 for the assistant keeper and his family, and not changed much since.
Sleeps four. Beds are made up before you arrive. Bring your own food — the last shop is twenty-six kilometres back.
Finding it
Turn off the coast road at the Bakenkop sign and follow gravel for eleven kilometres. A normal car manages it in dry weather; after heavy rain we phone and ask you to come the next day.
We meet you at the gate at four and walk you through the place. Nobody arrives after dark, because the last kilometre is not lit and neither are we.
What it costs
R1 850 a night for the whole cottage, two nights minimum, four people or fewer. June through August it drops to R1 450.
Half by EFT to hold the date, the rest on the day you arrive. There is no card machine, and there would be no signal for one.
House rules
- Two nights minimum. One night is not worth eleven kilometres of gravel and you will end up cross with us.
- The gate stays shut behind you. There are eland on the reserve side and an open gate costs somebody a whole afternoon.
- No music outside after dark. The reason to come here is the sound the place makes on its own.
- The tower is not ours. It is automated, it belongs to the ports authority, and nobody goes up it — not for a photograph, not for a proposal.
- Everything you carry in comes back out with you. There is no bin collection at Bakenkop and the crows are organised.
- Braai on the stoep, never on the dune. That vegetation took forty years and it burns in four minutes.
We drove all that gravel arguing about whether it was worth it. Then nobody said anything for two days.Rethabile Mokgatle · Cape Town · her third stay
Ask about a date
Marlize reads these herself, usually after supper. If nothing comes back in two days it is the signal and not us, so send it again.