Vleesbaai

Vleesbaai is a seaside vacation town, situated between Mossel Bay and Gouritsmond in Western Cape, South Africa.HistoryAlthough the native Khoi people inhabited the southern shores of Africa long before it was discovered by Europeans on their seafaring expeditions, Vleesbaai, like many other South African coastal places, is known today by the name it was given by European explorers. The first European to set eyes on the bay now known as Vleesbaai was Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. Dias would have come into the bay, as he discovered the southern shores of the African continent en route to the East, in the process of establishing the spice route.It took more than a century after the Bartolomeu Dias expeditions for Vleesbaai to get this name, and the bay was christened by another explorer, the Dutchman Paulus van Caerden. It was due to bad wind conditions on 14 July 1601 that Van Caerden was forced to seek refuge in the protected bay. He was pleased to discover that many natives ashore were willing to trade their well-fed livestock for scrap metal and other fancy Western articles and goods – he named it Vleys Baeye, the Old Dutch word for Vleesbaai, directly translated into English as “Bay of meat”. Van Caerden was also the man responsible for naming the neighbouring settlements in the vicinity, including Visbaai to the west, and Mosselbaai, known as Mossel Bay in South African English, approximately 30 km to the east of Vleesbaai.