The Hidden Charms of Riebeek West The discerning traveller will go to great lengths to avoid places that are 'touristy' and, every travel writer, however modest his or her ability, wishes to stumble across a place that is undiscovered, which is to say, one that has not been featured in travel guides or glossy magazines. When I drove to Riebeek-Wes, I too entertained the absurd notion that I would stumble across some undiscovered place, a little corner of the world few people knew about and so, after a mere hour's drive from Cape Town, I burst upon the scene wide-eyed and keen, camera at the ready. This notion I had was soon to be dispelled. The town had already been discovered. It was populated with celebrities. I recognised a former television news reader having lunch on the terrace of the Taverna. Someone told me the writer, Ashraf Shamal, had bought a house there. When I took some photographs on the terrace of the Royal Hotel it turned out that the gentleman on the edge of the frame was Guy Willoughby, who has lived there for three years. When I told him I was writing an article on the town, he was quick to inform me that he had already written several pieces about the town and concluded, with just a tinge of regret, that he was probably to blame for the town's popularity. Then, indicating my camera, he asked if he'd been in the shot. I said he was whereupon he issued a firm instruction that I was to mention his name. He lost interest in me and found something that preoccupied him somewhere just above my shoulder, as if he'd seen a little bird. I had been dismissed. I do not care much for 'arty' towns or communities but, having said that, nothing can detract from the charm of this Swartland town. Riebeek-West is very pretty indeed. It nestles among rolling hills covered in ripening vines and the farmland starts right on the edge of town. Built on wheat and vines, It is blessed with fertile soils and there are flowers everywhere, especially bougainvilleas. Each tidy house has its own neat little apron of a garden and so dazzling is the display of colour that it floods the weary soul of the city dweller. At least this one's. The air is fresh and clean and fragrant and even the diesel fumes of the occasional passing truck has little affect. It is a town well-contented with itself and it is this quality that tempts the casual visitor to be envious, perhaps because deep down one suspects that life is elsewhere, never here, but that it is waiting nevertheless to embrace us around the next corner, just on the other side of the hill, or along a deserted farm road we take on impulse. Perhaps this was why we took the turn-off. We had no reason to, if you think about it, for it seemed unlikely to yield anything of interest. But then we came across a house that was huge, with an old hayloft and was partly obscured by a wild garden of trees and shrubbery. If houses had personalities, then I imagined this one to be endowed with the quality of shyness, or embarrassment, perhaps, at its own crumbling beauty, its need of a new coat of paint. Inside would be commodious rooms, and large comfortable sofas with fading patterns, roses perhaps. So my thoughts ran on and I wondered who lived there. The wide front steps led up to a stoep which appeared inviting in the coolness under the old veranda. The front door was closed and seemed as if it would remain closed forever and the windows too were shut. Who paced the rooms behind those closed shutters? We hovered outside the gate, as envious as orphans. The house was at once beautiful and secretive and, somehow, one feared the time of its renovation, the telling and inevitable hand of the decorator - for all that was surely to come. At that moment, the house was just so right, and so very, very nice. The garden, the plants and the trees were silent and we too had fallen silent as though we had both recognised something mysterious. But if not mysterious, then it was, at the very least, private. And just for a moment I was tempted to open the gate and enter this immense privacy. But I did not and we turned away and got back into the car once more. Driving back I wondered if this is not what we seek also, as travellers. Not so much to enter into an experience, not always, but rather to experience from a distance and to leave what we think of as mysterious intact. Of course, there is that. - Back -    - Menu -    - Contact -