Cape Point: The Coves ...

The Coves: Click to enlarge ...

Redolent of every sea novel you've read, The Coves evoke works as diverse as Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped and William Golding's Rites of Passage. Pirates, poachers, smugglers, mountains, wrecks, coves, peaks, caves and sea conditions conducive to every mood meld to shape an ever-fascinating, devastatingly dangerous coast.

I'm not kidding. Based on a visit yesterday, don't walk north of Venus Pool. Winter and summer have pooled forces to ensure the path is little more than a desperate tragedy awaiting an unsuspecting, solitary walker. I visited the Visitor's Centre, reported the trail's condition and was told I could e-mail my concerns to the ranger in charge of Cape Point.

I left wondering whether a fire is similarly reported.

If you negotiate the rim of the third 'beach' from Venus Pool, your next challenge is Christinasgang — blogged last week. Don't go there. Having worked a decidedly dodgy course around the island, you'll find a hole in a spot you'd least expect it. A bush, grown lush through summer, covers the edge of the cavern roof as effectively as any camouflage. And that'll be the end of you. Broken legs, excrutiating pain, and an incoming tide.

Nobody deserves that ...


The Coves: Click to enlarge ...

I know the place extremely well, but I still get nervous walking there. Everything about it is far larger and immeasurably further than it appears to be. Before reaching two coves that mirror each other and give The Coves its name, i.e. both, split by a peninsula, have a tunnel to the one side and a cave to the other, you'll walk a stretch bearing testimony to the ages. Rocks of every hue, type, shape and size continue to crash like meteorites from the high hills above and their jagged, crystalline remains — immense and minute, if not moulded to smooth contours by the sea, colour the coast as vividly as would any floral profusion.

You'll pass myriad boats being towed to Millers Point and Buffels Bay along the Simonstown road if you set out for the Point before sunrise. And as day breaks with blinding clarity across the silvered sea, an armada of vessels throbs and roars its way towards the Cape and beyond. It takes me ninety minutes to walk to The Coves and the last stop on this particular route, Kelp Cove — about two or three inlets away from Batsata Cove and the brutal cliffs plummeting with seemingly evil intent to the sea from Judas Peak.

Suddenly you're there. The boats have long gone and you're alone. Isolated and unreachable. It's a powerful, awe-inspiring and humbling feeling. It's one which, if lived with for a day, leaves you feeling there's far more and less to all this than we're able to comprehend. And, like a drug, that feeling keeps you coming back for more. There is no time or space or Other out here. But, hey, if you put a foot wrong ...

I've been trying to reach Batsata Cove for two years and have launched several assaults on it to no avail. Yesterday, I figured out the reason. As I turned to leave the impassable Kelp Cove and return to The Coves and their caves, I glimpsed something at the base of the cliffs high on the slopes. Snapping off a shot, I later discovered I'd captured a picture of a doorway into the mountain. That particular hill, a final fold in De Boer, is an alien portal peopled by the Giant Flying Lizards that run our world from their bases beneath our international airports.

I kid you not. Have a look at the evidence and make up your own mind.

This particular gateway — the force field of which has resisted my approaches, must be the entrance to their Cape Town base. I assume a subterranean skyway runs from the Southern Tip to Cape Town International from where they link with their headquarters beneath Denver International. Well, it's Denver or San Diego or one of them. David Icke knows all about it. Read his books.

And all this time I've been taking these strange beings to be tourists. Who woulda thunk otherwise?

As good as it gets, a walk to The Coves is tiring. A return to the insanity of the city is inevitable and, I guess, beneficial. Besides, I know what's out there and it's all good.

Even Visitors are welcome.

Were you to enlarge by three times the picture of Batsata Cove to which I've linked, you'd just be able to discern two people in a rubber duck tied up to the rocks south of the cove. They're invisible at this resolution — showing something of the scale of the place. Quite what they're doing there, I've no idea but, as it's a marine reserve, I doubt they're minding the law.

Walk rating: About ninety minutes from the car park at Booi se Skerm, this walk is extremely dangerous. Please do NOT attempt it.