When viewed from Lighthouse Road below, the home is scarcely visible, the now-greying garapa wood of the cladding blending in perfectly with the natural surrounds of trees and mountainscapes.
The top-story master bedroom’s bay window affords spectacular mountain views from the bed. Fitted with cushioned inset seating, it’s the reflective space in which to enjoy the peaceful energy of the property.
During one of these countrywide roadtrips, while waiting for his family outside Fisherman’s, a popular restaurant in Kommetjie (a 45-minute drive from Cape Town’s CBD), Jens, a German cardiologist, happened to meet Willi, an Austrian estate agent in the area. Conversing in their common lingua franca, the two men hopped into Willi’s car and went for a quick coastal drive. ‘I wasn’t interested in buying anything. I was just enjoying Willi’s company,’ Jens insists. ‘And I certainly didn’t want to live in an estate,’ he says, referring to the way in which some South Africans reside in walled-up security complexes. An open piece of land did, however, pique his interest. ‘But Willi said it was “complicated”. It was not suitable for construction and had a peculiar triangular shape,’ Jens explains of the 388-square-metre plot that sits in the middle of a large piece of protected land vegetated mainly by indigenous milkwood trees. Jens’ wife Marie, a French midwife, was equally struck by the property when he took her to view the plot a few weeks later. The couple was determined to turn this ‘complicated’ piece of land into its dream escape for family and friends, and their offer to purchase was accepted.
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