Dorje and I were washed up pirates today as we took a walk from Noordhoek to the wreck of the SS Kakapo. We hadn’t planned to go to sea, but Silvermine is still closed, even to walkers, so we ended up on the beach.

Our wreck was a lot less successful than the Kakapos, with much loss of life. Being pirates, the locals were immediately on the hunt, and we had to flee, armed only with our cutlass (Dorje, as captain) and club. Besides the two of us, there were two other survivors, but sadly our shipmates couldn’t outrun the hunters on horseback.

The cutlass came in handy when a tentacled sea monster grabbed hold of Dorje’s arms, and he barely got free, but the sea monster came in handy for slowing down the rampaging horsemen. We fled into the waves so that our followers would lose our trail, but the threat of sea monsters, and the even more immediate threat of actual bluebottles, soon had us on the sand again.

After the previous day’s storm, the beach was quite wild. A newly-dead seal, with a fly coming out of its eye-socket sent our brave captain running.

What was our loot? A rich supply of kale chips, of course…