Wys my jou Kreef! - Take me to your Crayfish!

It’s been a busy month; the past week was no different. Wednesday saw the arrival another two friends from Jhb. Last year, we decided that we just had to experience the Lamberts Bay Crayfish festival. I booked our accommodation back in January, no easy task as every where I tried was already full. Eventually I found two rooms at the White Sands Bed and Breakfast in Lamberts Bay. Our other guest offered to take care of the house and dogs for us, so Friday morning, we made sure our developers were settled for the day and we were off.

Hubby grew up in the West Coast area, so he was really keen to re visit his old stomping ground. After a very hot 5 hour drive, courtesy of our Navigation losing its mind and no less then five “stop and go road work” areas on the N7 we rolled into Lamberts Bay. The first thought that sprang to mind was “time warp”. Our B&B turned out to be just around the corner from the Lamberts Bay hotel in the town center. For some obscure reason, I have pictured a quaint seaside town, with lovely white beaches, boy was I disappointed…

Our B&B had a very questionable nautical theme and furniture that had survived the Great Trek, the rooms we bland and very basic. But hy ho we didn’t come there to sit in the room the whole weekend. In fact, we popped into the town information office and couldn’t help but over hear a lady complaining about the “damp smelly room” she had at the Lamberts Bay hotel, so in a way I think we had the better deal, nautical theme and all.

Friday was hot, very hot and we decided we would go out on the town and leave the festival till Saturday. We asked some locals where we could eat, and were directed to Isabella’s, a small restaurant at the “waterfront” which basically amounts to some old boats and a pier you have to pay R30 to walk round as it ends up at a bird sanctuary “really its just an enormous flock of seagulls” We opted for an outside table as inside wasn’t air conditioned.

Yummy seafood salad

There was none of the famous Kreef on the menu, so I decided on the seafood salad, it was delicious, and well presented. Hubby had the calamari and Kingklip combo, which was equally yummy, our friends had the mussels and seafood platter and both enjoyed their meals. 

Isobella's

Belly’s full we headed back to the B&B. Later that afternoon we headed to the beach for sunset pictures and exploring. There were some lovely self catering units on the beach front. The “beach” itself was very rocky and definitely not somewhere you could put in any serious sun tanning sessions. I believe the beach on the other end of the town had the white sand I'd heard so much  about.

After our sunset outing we were bored… we ventured towards to “waterfront” again and found a little gem called, Die Kreefhuis. The atmosphere is warm and friendly with fantastic staff to take care of your every need. Now these guys did have Kreef, but we were still rather full after our late lunch so we opted for the delicious snoek pate, fantastic fresh oysters, plenty of refreshments and a large dose of random chat. 

Saturday saw us up early, keen to get a head start on the festival. Our B&B has one more surprise for us. Breakfast was a do it yourself affair! When I inquired as to where we eat breakfast, our host told us in no uncertain terms we should head for the shop over the road, buy what we wanted to eat and cook it. I’m not kidding! We decided we would head out to the festival and eat Kreef for breakies. 

We called the “KreefTaxi” one of those funny looking half a loaf of bread tiny vans with a very friendly driver. For R5 a head we all trundled the 3km to the festival gate, nice one.

It was only 11am and already the heat was unbearable. We were all sweating from areas we didn’t even know we could! A rather steep R150 a head got us in to the event, sporting a neon yellow wristband and a copy if  Die Burger newspaper. We were revved up and ready to go… but this enthusiasm didn’t last. We set off round the market stalls, a sad assortment of flee market type stalls, nothing out of the ordinary and defiantly NO Kreef.  We had seen them all within 30 minutes. Try as we might all we could only find burgers and wors rolls to eat. It seems only Muisbosskerm had any Kreef and they weren’t open yet.

We begrudgingly gave breakfast a miss and grabbed a table at the main tent. Inside the tent was a huge bar very obviously run by Graca, tables, bench like chairs, plastic garden chairs and a stage. We had arrived during the Miss blue jeans competition, which was an endless procession of little girls, not so little girls and boys walking very strangely. The stage was hopelessly too small and the MC'- Zain Johnson's favorite line was “let’s see them one more time” Tell you what “Let’s not! All the prizes were sponsored by Vredendal, we didn’t hear a single mention of Lamberts Bay – Silly me I thought this was the Lamberts Bay Crayfish Festival.

The heat became unbearable, there were no fans or misters in the main tent, and as the numbers grew so did the heat level. Just after 12 we decided it was too much and beat a retreat in our bread van to the splash pool at the B&B.

Later that evening the hot wind gave way to a wonderful cooling wind so we decided to give it another go.

The Kreef / Large Prawn

DJ Ossewa was on the stage and was doing a great job of getting the now much larger crowd on their feet. We headed for the Muisbosskerm stand, keen to get our hands on the elusive Kreef. We all order the Kreef and salad R80 each, and couldn’t wait to sit down in the main tent to tuck in. (We were warned by a fellow guest at the B&B not to have the Paella as it was mainly rice and very bland) My heart sunk when we opened our take away boxes. To call these things Kreef was an insult to real Kreef every where, they were at best over grown prawns, served with some limp green salad and half cooked potato salad.  Did I mention there were no knives and forks?

 

DJ Ossewa entertained us with some awesome songs, they were bursting with energy and it was infectious. There was one absolute stinker called something like “Jy is weer gesuip”. But other then that, they were great, loved the “Gans Dans” at the end of their set.  

Next on stage was Robbie Wessels. Personally I love his music and really enjoyed his set, which ended with the Leeuloop.

These people were serious about their Graca

The crowd loved it and the Graca was flowing. Robbie was followed by Pieter Smith met MD Greyling, and then finally it was the turn of  DJ / Rapper dude Snotkop, great fun and very talented. He was the last act for the evening so it was off in the “breadmobile” night caps and bed for us.

"Gans Dans"

We didn’t bother going for the Sunday session, we woke to a refreshing rain and decided to head home, this time ignoring our stupid Tom Tom and knocking 2 hours off the journey by following the West Coast road.

Will we go again next year? Definitely no. Are we disappointed?  Yes Very. We really expected so much more. I believe this was the 10^th Anniversary of the festival, but I certainly didn’t experience anything “special” about it. Without the SA music talent the whole thing would have been a disaster. The festival, like the little town of Lamberts Bay was shabby, tired and in desperate need of being brought into the 21^st Century. But sadly what it lacked the most was the whole point of the festival, and should have been the star of the festival , Kreef, Kreef and more Kreef