The main point of traveling, I have always felt, is not to follow someone else’s footsteps but to find your own way. It makes discoveries that much keener. The exception to this is flea markets and bookstores. Recommendations required. A potent example is Quagga Rare Books and Art, in Kalk Bay, South Africa, a palm-sized town snugged into the surf coast of the Indian Ocean, just a few miles from the delicious Constantia wine country.
Unlike the Atlantic coastline, located about 20 miles east and ripped by tiger winds, the Indian Ocean side of Cape Town’s peninsula has gentle tide pools and rolling surf. And, Kalk Bay with its saltwater air, coral blue skies, white sand beaches, ice cream, seals, and penguins.
Stumble into Quagga Rare Books. Look, you have to like this sort of thing. Explorers, scientists, adventurers, writers of every kind have come through these parts since Magellan (1520) and Sir Francis Drake (1580), so respect the unexpected. A warthog skull resting atop a bookcase. A footstep carved into marble. A complete history of the late rebellion (dated 1716). On the wall, a sign reads, “Every word is a bird we teach to sing.” Maps, maps, maps. A terrifying voodoo figurine embedded with nails: bad juju in the land that invented juju.
Imagine a worn leather chair where Stanley and Livingstone or Sir Richard Francis Burton might have plopped down. A naturalist’s drawings from another century. A wooden box filled with ephemera — the outside of the box is stenciled with the words “Penguin Eggs Handle With Care.” A Pokot shield and spear appropriated somewhere, somehow. These things mingle well with hard-to-find books on craft, design, architecture, cooking, literature, and poetry. Books fit easily into backpacks, suitcases. Once in a lifetime.
