Every December, we plan a small summer holiday. This year, after 9 months of lock down, we really needed a change of scene. And we love to be beside the sea; it helps us relax. We like both coasts but find the West Coast so much more affordable than the East Coast. We also don’t like very busy places. We had a holiday at Yzerfontein a few years ago and found a wonderful apartment there back in August on Booking.com. We booked for 12 nights in early December, paid in full on November 23rd and happily headed off with the car piled high with all our essentials for self catering, lots of reading matter, our lap tops and a few casual clothes
As we drove the hour and half to our destination, we heard Pippa Hudson on Cape Talk, talking about people finding that their booked and paid for accommodation did not exist when they arrived. We knew where the house was, but couldn’t quite find the place which was pictured on our booking form. It had changed colour from white to blue and was looking a bit run down. Very, very different from the pictures on Booking.com. We drove in; a window opened and a man said "What do you want?" "We are booked in here tonight", we said. "Someone will come and talk to you" he said and his wife appeared. "We are booked here for a holiday'' we said. You can’t be" she said, "we have leased the whole house for a year. This is no longer Breakwater self catering". SO, Please warn all your friends and family not to trust on line bookings this year. I had used one of the largest on-line booking agencies, which we have used locally and internationally for years. "It is strange" she said ''we had two girls from Robertson yesterday, called Lindy and Michelle, who said they had also booked and paid to stay here". Panic. We had the owner’s number, so we rang - no answer. She had another number, no answer. The penny dropped; we had been scammed. One bit of advice we can offer is contact your host before you come and if you get no answer or response, contact the booking agency immediately
So what do you do? We were in an area which has no cell phone reception, so we couldn’t make any calls to the booking company and no internet access. And we had nowhere to go, except home. But Lynne doesn’t give up that easily. We have worked with the local tourist agency, so headed for them. We stopped at a small shopping centre and saw an estate agency open. "They will know where it is", she said. And we found heavenly, helpful Magda Botha, who was an absolute star. She managed to connect us with Booking.com, who tried to contact the owner - no answer. They then told us that they would send her an email and if she didn’t respond in 30 minutes we would get a full refund. Nice, but where were we going to sleep tonight?
Several phone calls were made by the tourist office, we went to see one place which was not suitable. one room and a noisy building site behind it. Back to Magda who found us a place to stay for 2 nights, it was really good. We may stay on we thought and we did. It turned out to be perfect. And Booking.com is refunding us in full, plus any extra expenses we might incur and they are very apologetic
THE SOLUTION!
The large grey house in the middle of this picture on the top row is where we stayed; it is called Swept Away
The house is managed by Inge Thomas for the German owners and she took such good care of us. For the first four nights, we had a lovely large room on the top floor with superb views and, realising our situation, she allowed us to store some of our fresh food in her own fridge and use the kitchen. The public rooms are also open to all guests; they are large and all have great views. Then we were able to move down to the small self-catering unit at the bottom of the house, also with stunning views. Inge cooks a huge breakfast if you are doing Bed and Breakfast and she will also cook dinner for a small fee if requested. The house is spotless and she runs it so well
Lynne enjoying breakfast in the sun room, our favourite room in the house
The spectacular view from all the front windows of the house
We walked on this beach and the 16 mile beach, which is on the other side of the town
and on a clear day you can see our Cape mountains, from Devils Peak and Table Mountain
all the way down to the Llandudno mountains
There is a bar area
A spacious dining area next to the open plan kitchen
Sitting area with a TV, although all the rooms do have TV. We suspect that the top floor area is disabled friendly
The glass door is the acces to the staircase down to our self catering unit
and there is a large garden in the front with a braai area and a covered porch
It is lovely and cool on the porch and you can watch the sunbirds flitting in and out of the flowers
We saw a mongoose a couple of times
A female Southern double-collared sunbird feeding on the lavender
Our bedroom in the self catering unit. We also had access to a deck outside
Even the Shower room has views!
The small kitchen area is perfectly adequate, although we had so much hospitality from the people we know in Yzerfontein and Darling that we did not need to cook much
and the dining area, where we could use our laptops
The California Poppies were attracting lovely navy blue ended, black and white striped bees
John took a series of photographs from the house, at half an hour intervals, showing how the light changes at sunset
Here you can quite clearly see the Cape Peninsula
As the sun sets, it throws up pink and opal lights on the sea and sky and the mountain starts to disappear in the mist
And when darkness falls, you can see the glow of the city lights across the sea,
enhanced by the two lighthouses at Milnerton and Mouille Point
What a lovely place to stay, we thoroughly recommend it. Normally they would have many guests from Germany
There were so many of them and they were all beautifully marked; some look just like glass paper weights
Our view across the cold Atlantic Ocean toward Table Mountain and our home on a perfect 'blue' seaside day
