Unlocking the Cederberg

The suddenness of this abrupt lockdown has caught the world by surprise and this certainly includes Saint du Barrys. After almost twenty-five years of successful trading in hospitality, we've had to rethink and recalculate our way through the quietness since lockdown was announced in South Africa. Our last guest to leave was caught out, and had to stay for longer than intended, but we enjoyed each others' company, sharing meals, sundowners and conversation. It's been such an unusual time, and meeting a great character has been an adventure in itself.

Our attitude to the change itself? I need to speak for myself. Money is helpful but health is prime. One useful insight that I've come across, having more time to read now, is that you can spend, invest, lose, make, save and fritter away money, but you can do only one of two things with time: waste it or invest it. This doesn't mean that you need to frantically create fruitfulness in each second: resting and recuperating are also good time investments. The living body, as well as the living planet is a miracle, and by now many more humans recognise and appreciate the gift and the value of being alive.

Restriction and confinement aren't enjoyable, and nothing will be the same as before, and no mountain range is lockable, but if you change perspective, and re-imagine the door of what feels like a prison door to be the door to the treasure-trove, you'll get the sense that I have when I'm up making coffee in the early morning, or walking in the garden in the last light, looking away to the Cederberg. I imagine, fondly and romantically, that there is no virulent menace basking on the rocks, that leopards are moving with less stealth and more rapidity across hundreds of the country's kilometres to reach these cracks and crevices, that whatever roams this realm does not really have to change that much, because not so much was spoiled, here in the Cederberg, before lockdown. Lockdown is a man-made response to a critical situation. My idea is this: as you unlock your mind, your imagination and your appreciation of life as we gradually enter our new economic, ecological and less egocentric era, it will be good to touch home again.

Perhaps folk will say that they're truly sick of home. That's not what I mean. Home is also whatever helps you to recover. In many ways, we're all heading for a new sense of home, and I've no doubt that Saint du Barrys is able to add to that newness.

Here's how we are preparing: we've taken down and cleaned overhead mosquito-nets and curtains, and stored them, ready for new seasons. We've used our time to read new recipes, and how to re-imagine breakfasts. We're doing our best not to drink all the wine, but that depends on lockdown rules  over which we have no control. More seriously, if we are obliged to take medical and hygienic precautions such as screening for temperature, and sanitising, we're ready for that, too.

In case the picture doesn't impress you, or looks scary, we have more sanitiser, a bigger digital thermometer, and we don't believe that the blood pressure monitor or the stethoscope will be necessary.

We also have loads of toilet paper.

To be honest, we're using this time to consider how traveling will be different, what will reassure and rejuvenate guests, how re-costing the new lives of all will have to be frank and fair, how to ease the likelihood of keeping registers of so much more, how the communication of a simple handshake will mean so much, when one feels safe to do so.

We're not really unlocking the Cederberg, we're unlocking ourselves, our general human selves, guests, suppliers, community, context and culture, and we're so very blessed to have the enormous silence of the Cederberg as backdrop to our small yet significant participation.

It makes us ask what new roles a guest house might have?

I sense that there are many fruitful answers to this, but in the next few days, we'll do what we can:

open doors,

and wait.

And prepare.