Koelbaai
James told me that Koelbaai is the perfect location for surfing. Swells made off the coast of South America travel northeastward to the South African coastline where they smash into False Bay. Koelbaai sits on the East side of False Bay, so the swell creates perfectly straight waves there. They sound like rolling thunder, and they punish the coast all day long. In addition, part of the coastline reflects the waves, so you get an occasional peak where two waves intersect: all the better for surfing and boogie-boarding.
This photo shows two waves, one in front of the other. The nearest wave has already broken, but the farthest wave was breaking just as I released the shutter.
The colors in this set of photos from Koelbaai are a little softer than the previous images from Crystal Pools. There are two reasons for this. First, our Crystal Pools hike was done early in the morning, and the light was fantastic in the canyon. Our Koelbaai outing was closer to noon when the sun was very bright and absolutely straight overhead: not good conditions for making photos. Second, I used my long (75-300 mm) lens in these Koelbaai photos, whereas I used my 18-55 mm lens for the Crystal Pools photos. The long lens is old and has worse color rendition. The 18-55 mm lens is a new design and produces brilliant, contrasty colors. There's a third reason why this was a challenging place to make photos, but I'll discuss that later.
