TREASURED COAST

A traveling Dutch schoolmaster, Hermanus Pieters, herded his sheep along an elephant path through the Hemel-and-Aarde Valley in the 1830s and decided to set up camp at a freshwater fountain on the shores of the Indian ocean. He could not have guessed that his name would live on through this little settlement where the fish virtually caught themselves. The first fishermen to launch their boats from the Old Harbour simply called it Visbaai, or Fish Bay, as the fish were so plentiful. It was not until 1857 that the hamlet was named Hermanuspietersfontein, which was shortened to Hermanus in 1902. The length of “Hermanuspietersfontein” proved too cumbersome for Mr. Gift, postmaster at the time, who decided his mail sorting would benefit from the shorter form.

I must confess to wondering “why Hermanus?” on hearing that the town garnered this global accolade for gastronomy. There was a time when Franschhoek was seen as the gastronomic centre of South Africa and many believe that Stellenbosch has carried the culinary crown in the past decade. The fact of the matter is that Hermanus applied and became the first in Africa to be honoured in this way.

STAMP OF APPROVAL

“It was a massive task to meet all the requirements,” says Frieda Lloyd, head of Cape Whale Coast Tourism and a member of the team that submitted the application. “We had two breakthroughs that set us apart from other towns, such as Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, that could potentially have qualified for the accolade. Firstly, our municipality had the political will to empower the application. And secondly, only when we started documenting the area’s culinary treasures, did we realize the abundance of