Langebaan for the second time

During the Cape Town rush hour, I pick up our new hire car at the airport, which is a good hour and a half away by bus. We move over to the nearby Saltycrax Hostel. In recent years, the owner has set up a programme for volunteers in the townships. There are currently a whopping 70 volunteers accommodated in the hostel and nearby houses.

Fortunately, our room is overbooked. This gives us the opportunity to shorten our time in Blouberg considerably. The waves are too rough for me, the water is really cold at around 13 degrees and I don’t need more than 25 knots of wind. Blouberg is a white luxury ghetto with no charm. The volunteers dream of world peace, the kiters of the waves and the rest of us of safety.

The Cape Doctor finally gets going and blows at 20 to 30 knots on Blouberg beach for two days. We make another two-day trip to Langebaan, a good 100 kilometres away. On the first day, the wind is just enough for body drag. The second day was really bad. Even on the approach to Shark Bay from Langebaan, we see lots of kites.

At high tide, the beach in Shark Bay is just five metres wide. Today there are 80 kites lying around on these five by 200 metres in 17 to 22 knots of wind. Around midday I count another 80 on the water, almost all of them on an area of 100 by 300 metres. That would still be bearable.

But some Rambos who have travelled from Cape Town are ruining the day for many kiters today. The highlights include photo sessions for jumps just a few metres off the beach – in winds of 75° onshore. Some of the Rambos are constantly riding into the lee of clearly recognisable students at a minimal distance. Everyone wants to launch from the five-metre-wide beach instead of the water – when a four-year-old child plays in the sand two metres from the lines, the father gets a “I live here. I know what I do!”.

The cracks land quite aggressively on the small beach. Right onto the other kites and over all the lines. A beginner was allowed to take out his ready-to-launch lines a whopping five times under new kites that had landed – hardly anyone wrapped up their lines. Of course, the half-strengths also want to land their kites directly on the beach. But they ended up hitting the thorn bushes directly behind it a few times.

Don’t get me wrong: Langebaan Shark Bay is a great training spot with plenty of standing room and generally excellent conditions. But it can also be downright rubbish, as it was today, because a few kiters don’t give a damn about everyone else.

We drive back to Cape Town on the wide N2 motorway. Slow cars drive on the hard shoulder. If they make way for you at 120 km/h, you thank them by flashing your warning lights. The overtaken car says “Please” by flashing its lights briefly. Verena is as happy as a soya bun about anyone who follows South African etiquette.