The Kiteshack

A small garden apartment attached to the main house but with its own entrance, on the quiet side of town where the reserve begins. You wake to birds rather than traffic, and the windows look toward the West Coast National Park.

The path into the neighbouring reserve starts at the front gate. Five minutes' walk — longer if you keep stopping for wildlife — brings you to a lookout over the lagoon that is worth timing for sunset. In spring the reserve is thick with flowers. It is five minutes' drive to the park's Langebaan gate, which makes it a good base for early morning birding, and a ten-minute walk downhill to Shark Bay if you have come to kite.

Inside it is small and well thought out: a queen bed, a kitchen adequate for a proper dinner, a shower over a full bath, and a little fireplace that earns its keep in winter. Two things to know honestly. The front garden and the laundry are shared with the Treehouse upstairs, which is let separately. And the garden is wild and unirrigated by choice — it changes with the season and it has plenty of creatures living in it.