Khwa Ttu # 3: The Restaurant

The best place to start learning about !Khwa Ttu is to visit the restaurant where everybody you meet will be willing to tell you more about the place and about themselves. We had happy chats with Michael who is so forthcoming with amazing stories about the San, and we also had conversations with trainee cooks and waiters. Everybody here is always friendly! You can meet many of the staff by clicking on the official !Khwa Ttu website.

For the children and adults living at !Khwa Ttu both traditional and formals skills are taught. Ancient crafts and skills are thus preserved, but a sense of direction into the modern world is also instilled and with it the dignity that comes with a good education and the chance of gainful employment.

I loved the shy-friendly and serene personality of Magdalena (we share a name as that is my middle name), who was very helpful and efficient at our table. In this portrait I tried to express the personality of this shining star. The photos show detail of the large cool restaurant.(Breakfast and lunches offered). The lovely "wildlife" light fittings of papermache are well chosen. Before I go, I want to recommend the pear-and-blue cheese salad. A last note: This is the 150th post and my blog is 2 years old!

Next week we will enter an interesting walkway......to be continued!

Cafe Felix at Riebeek Kasteel

My painting takes you to Cafe Felix, nestled in a house built in 1856 and named for a real life cat. I was instantly bowled over by the soothing music, the hand-carved chairs reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh and the oversized orange linen serviettes. Soft from washing, they invite you to sit down and inspect the blackboard menu of Mediterranean-like food.

Or wait, there is such a wonderful courtyard linked to the main dining room and dappled in sun-and-shadow from the enormous trees, where you can eat al-fresco. It is furnished in rusted-looking cast iron furniture and has tables laid in various printed cottons with the same large serviettes. I would recommend the chorizo salad made with pears and chilli-flavoured olive oil, but the menus change all the time, and new wonderful dishes will appear every few weeks. We are not leaving Cafe Felix, because I am on a mission of finding Felix, the stray cat who adopted the restaurant....so watch my next blog for that elusive cat!

West Coast Icons

These little boats, donkey's years old, rest at the entrance of Strandlopertjie in Langebaan. This is a very popular lunch venue where guests sit on large round boulders or underneath a shelter. They help themselves to lots of seafood, homebaked bread, homemade preserves ..... Informal to the extreme.

We are West Coast people and boats have iconic status. Throughout my West Coast Chronicles I will show many different types of boats. These two are probably the oldest I have seen, with not a speck of paint left on them. I will also paint the humble brightly painted fishing boats at Paternoster, the cheeky motorised fishing vessels of Yzerfontein, the peaceful sailing boats at Langebaan and the glamourous yachts alongside them. We will look at the cute tugboats of Saldanha which look like something out of Noddy. At Laaiplek we will find large fishing trawlers and then I will paint the diamond barges at Lambert's Bay. Then there may always be surprises waiting on the beach, like a boat displaced by a storm.... I hope there will be many boats I can paint along the coast!