Thirty years of summers: why we finally opened Gans-te-Ver

Suiderstrand has never been on the way to anywhere. The gravel road runs past the lighthouse, through the reserve, and simply stops — and at the end of it, in 1990, my father bought a stand. There was not much here then. There still isn’t, thank goodness.

We started building the following year, and the house grew the way family houses do: five bedrooms, eventually, because the family kept growing; long tables, because everyone kept coming; and braais everywhere, because this is, after all, South Africa. It was never just a property to us — it was where the children, and then the grandchildren, learned what summer means.

For more than thirty years this was simply ours. Christmases with sand in everything. Whales breaching while the chops sizzled. Children — then grandchildren — learning the rock pools at low tide. The kind of holidays that don’t photograph dramatically but hold a family together.

Friends who visited always said the same two things: first, “I had no idea this place existed,” and then, quietly, on the last evening, “when can we come back?” That second question is the reason you are reading this.

In 2024, I opened the doors. Not because the house stood empty — it never really did — but because I kept thinking about that question. Let me give other people the same luxury we’ve had all these years: to be in the middle of nature, a few metres from the beach, with absolutely nothing demanding your attention.

So the house works the way it always has. You bring the food and the people; it provides the rest — the five en-suite bedrooms, the pizza oven, the braai wall, the main-suite balcony where the whale watching happens. There is no reception desk and no checklist culture. You message me on WhatsApp, and you deal with the person who built the place.