Around the coast of Simon's Bay

If you take a drive from Simon's Town, the setting of my book The Girl from Simon's Bay, towards the iconic landmark of Cape Point, you will come across many less famous - but no less spectacular - spots. Don't whizz by but rather stop, like I have done, and take in the pristine coves, the bobbing kelp and the tumbled rocks that make this section of the coast so distinctive. Past Miller's Point, you will find several lookouts where you can pull off the road. If you have a pair of binoculars with you, scan the flat rocks rising out of the sea. There are several that are home to heaving colonies of seals. You can see them, lumbering about, and occasionally slipping into the sea to snap up a tasty penguin or two.

And, on a darker note, I always check the seas foaming around those rocks in case a bigger predator is about. You've probably seen extraordinary footage on television of great white sharks doing a little light snapping of their own... a seal makes a tasty lunch. But so far I've never been there at the right time. What would I do? Shout from the shoreline as the shark heaves itself up towards its hapless prey? I suspect it would all be over before I could focus my binoculars... It's nature, and let's keep it that way.

Louise, the heroine of The Girl from Simon's Bay, loves to swim with her childhood friend, Piet. But when he starts to avoid her, she must swim alone. Something we always vowed not to do because you never knew what could happen, a freak wave rising out of a flat sea, a shark gliding close to shore...

New Year's greetings to you all from near the southwestern-most tip of Africa!