by SFT | May 5, 2026 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
Eating Well in Indo
Travel settles into a rhythm quickly in Indonesia. The days lean toward simple decisions, and food becomes one of the more enjoyable ones. On this trip, moving around with my son, meals have become the anchors. Between surf checks and short scooter runs, we keep circling back to the same thing. What is on the plate, and what comes next.
Two dishes stand out early and keep pulling us back.
Nasi Campur
Nasi campur translates loosely to “mixed rice,” which sounds modest and slightly underwhelming. In practice, it is anything but. A central portion of rice anchors the plate, and around it gathers a selection of small dishes. Chicken, fish, tofu, tempeh, vegetables, sambal. Each element is prepared separately, each with its own flavour and texture.
It has roots across Indonesia, with regional variations shaped by local produce and preferences. Bali leans one way, Java another. The format stays consistent, but the details shift, which keeps it interesting.
Sitting in a small warung with a local family one afternoon, plates arriving in no particular order, it becomes clear how this dish works. A bit of this with a bit of that. Adjusting combinations. Finding a balance between spice, sweetness, and something slightly smoky from the grill. It feels generous without being heavy, and it solves the eternal travel question of what to order. The answer is, effectively, a bit of everything.
Beef Rendang
Rendang comes from West Sumatra and carries a more serious tone. This is a dish built on time. Beef is slow-cooked in coconut milk and a carefully blended spice mix that typically includes lemongrass, galangal, garlic, chilli, and turmeric.
The process gradually reduces the liquid, leaving a thick, rich coating that clings to the meat. What starts as something resembling a curry ends closer to a dry, deeply flavoured braise. The colour darkens, the texture firms slightly, and the flavour intensifies.
There is history behind it. Rendang developed as a way to preserve meat in a tropical climate. The long cooking process removes moisture and concentrates everything that matters. The result is bold, layered, and quietly addictive.
Shared between us at a slightly wobbly table, it slows things down. There is less talking, more focus. It pairs naturally with rice and asks very little else of the moment.
A Brief Pause for Curiosity
Cheese tea has found its way onto Indonesian menus via Taiwan, where it began in night markets before spreading across Asia. It is usually green or black tea topped with a whipped mix of cream cheese, milk, and a touch of salt. The result lands somewhere between drink and dessert, with the salt lifting the sweetness in a way that works better than expected.
Avocado cheesecake follows a similar path. Smooth avocado folded into a dessert that feels both familiar and slightly unexpected. It looks good, it sounds interesting, and it appears often enough to suggest strong local support.
Both deserve a mention. Both can wait until we get brave enough.
For now, nasi campur and rendang carry more than enough weight.
Read more: Long Haul, Light Feet: From St Francis to Lakey Peak via Half the Planet- Notes From The Editor
by SFT | May 3, 2026 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
Departure Line
We left St Francis Bay with boards, bags, and a loose plan. My son and I aimed for Lakey Peak, which sounds simple until you plot the route. First stop: Gqeberha. From there, we jumped to Johannesburg, then on to Dubai, followed by Bali, then Bima, and finally a two-hour taxi ride to Lakey Peak.
It reads like a riddle. It felt like a mission.
Distance Covered
We travelled roughly 13,500 kilometres by air and another 350 kilometres by road. In simple terms, that is a third of the way around the planet. We crossed time zones, climates, and food groups.
First, a coastal drive. Then a domestic hop. After that, a long-haul stretch. Then an island shuffle. Finally, the classic Indonesian taxi leg where the road bends just enough to keep you awake.
Long Haul
Airports were busy. Planes were fairly full. Every leg carried a steady flow of people moving with purpose.
At Dubai International Airport, the world passed through in every direction. Families, workers, surfers, business travellers. Everyone carried a version of somewhere else.
Through it all, travel held its rhythm. Indonesia, on arrival, felt exactly right. Warm air. Quick smiles. A smooth return to familiar ground.
War in the Background
There was a quiet undertone to it all. News cycles carried phrases like “ceasefire” and “uncertainty.”
At the same time, back home in South Africa, things seemed to gather pace. Fresh talk around Thyspunt, a noticeable drop in temperature as winter started to settle in, and the usual flow of daily life all stacked into a few short days.
From a distance, it feels fast, angsty. Compressed. Like a highlight reel running a touch quicker than normal.
Step away and look back, and everything seems to accelerate. Live inside it, and the same days feel measured and steady. It might be timing. It might be perspective. It might just be distance doing its thing.
Somewhere in that mix, my wife and daughter carry on back home, school runs, cooler mornings, and the steady rhythm of daily life, all ticking along, with my wife quietly underwriting the entire mission, which is how two surfers end up across the planet without too many questions asked.
Flying during a time like this sharpens perspective. You see how many people rely on things continuing to work. Airports become proof of continuity.
Bima Arrival
Sultan Muhammad Salahuddin Airport has a reputation. Tight, busy, energetic. It delivers. The system runs on local rhythm, and it holds together.
Step outside and Indonesia lands properly. The smell of clove cigarettes drifts through the air. Heat settles onto your shoulders. Thirty-four degrees is the standard in Sumbawa.
Final Stretch
The last leg stretches just enough to build anticipation. Then it opens up. The off grid drive rolls through villages and roadside warungs.
Lakey Peak sits there, doing its thing. Lines wrap down the reef. Warm water holds you in place. Time finds a slower pace.
After all that movement, the stillness is so good.
What It Means
Travel like this strips things down. You leave one small coastal town and arrive at another, on the far side of the world. Same ocean. Different mood.
Distance adds perspective.
It reminds you that movement continues, even when headlines feel heavy. People go. Planes fly. Waves break.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, a father and son cover 14,000 kilometres to go for the surf trip of a lifetime.
—
by SFT | Mar 3, 2026 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
There is a particular morning in St Francis Bay when the light changes. It sharpens. The air carries a cleaner edge. The sun still lifts over the canals, and the thatched roofs still glow honey-gold, yet something has shifted. It happened last week, the morning after the rains. It felt gentle. It felt considered. Then, almost abruptly, it felt as though winter had begun her route march toward town.
The Preparations Begin
Ugg boots will soon reappear with confidence. Beanies are already being located and dusted off in advance. Happy hours are quietly assembling new winter specials at both the nice bars and the remaining dives.
Actually, there are no dives left in our area. Stix was probably the last of them. A great deal of fun was had there. Apparently. Allegedly. Memory, as always, is selective. Who remembers Stix?
Glühwein will edge onto menus with sudden cultural importance. Oxtail will return with slow-cooked authority. Words like “hearty” and “robust” will begin to circulate with conviction.
The local wood sellers will experience a brief and predictable crisis. They will appear surprised. They are not surprised. They had six months.
Old Brown Sherry sales will rise, particularly the plastic bottle version. Plastic bottles bounce. Useful when fishing off the rocks or watching surfing in a crosswind. They sometimes bounce straight back into your hands. It has happened. Possibly.
The temperature will dip a few degrees. The storytelling will rise by at least ten.
Growth in a Beanie
While we rehearse our seasonal resilience, the town keeps moving. Building plans circulate. Coastal protection discussions continue. Infrastructure advances one approval at a time.
The Links hums through June. Remote work stretches the calendar. The quiet season feels increasingly theoretical.
Progress in St Francis Bay does not pause.
When It Actually Arrives
And then winter stops being an idea and becomes weather.
Car parks thin out. The beaches stretch long and uninterrupted. The wind carries more salt than usual. There are no umbrellas. Fewer declarations about lifestyle. Fewer people insisting it is still summer if you stand in the sun.
The houses remain. The builds continue. The spreadsheets circulate.
But winter has a way of clearing the stage, and what remains is quiet, cold water and space. You can hear your own thinking again, which isn’t always comfortable.
by SFT | Feb 18, 2026 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
A Disclosure
Before I go any further, a disclosure. I use AI all day, every day. I pay for multiple GPT subscriptions and AI platforms with the enthusiasm of someone who once collected surf magazines. I test them, compare them, push them. Video. Images, Words. Marketing. Design work. Invoicing. Also, I work from home, so it is essentially just a growing panel of very efficient systems, agents, with voices, and me. So, like a team.
When deadlines tighten, I switch on the voice module and go for a walk. Astra, a synthetic voice interface agent I use, activates in my headphones. Her tone is steady, neutral, stripped of inflection. We dismantle paragraphs. We interrogate structure. I bounce ideas. She squashes many that are impractical.
She challenges assumptions before I finish articulating them. I answer out loud while passing joggers, dog walkers, and people who assume I am on a normal call. It is efficient. It is focused. It is faintly disorienting. She assisted with this article. The tone shifted where it began to assign blame.
Astra. She made this image of herself. Sometimes she fully hallucinates.
As a writer, a communications professional, and a publisher, I have found these systems to be the most effective assistants I have ever had. They do not drift. They do not lose context. Also, they respond instantly. Occasionally, they hallucinate with startling confidence. Humans do that too. Just try psilocybin.
The Surf Video
Which is why the surf clip unsettled me.
I was watching an edit the other night. Long, clean wall. Light offshore. The surfer looked solid. Composed. Fast. Sections seemed to line up perfectly. Turns connected without hesitation. The board looked super responsive underfoot.
There was something weird. I watched it a few times. Not dramatically wrong. Just. Slightly. Off..
I ran the clip through a basic playback analysis tool. The speed had been increased by roughly five per cent. I checked in with Astra.
Five per cent.
Almost imperceptible. You would not notice it unless you were looking for it. Yet that small adjustment made a good surfer look very good. Reaction time sharpened. Flow intensified. The board looked sick. Performance elevated just enough to look proper.
Subtle Inflation.
AI does not need to fabricate entire realities to shift perception. It only needs to refine them. A slight speed increase. A cleaner voice, a smoother image or a more dramatic sky. Subtle optimisation that improves what already exists.
We tend to imagine AI deception as theatrical. Deepfakes of politicians. Synthetic celebrity apologies. Entirely generated news segments. Those exist. But the more destabilising shift is quieter. It lives in enhancement rather than invention.
When a video is sped up slightly, performance improves. When vocal cadence is polished, authority increases and when lighting is corrected, mood deepens. None of it announces itself as manipulation. It simply raises the standard.
Over time, that raised standard becomes the new normal. Authentic human rhythm starts to look slow. Real conversation feels messy. Genuine imperfection feels inadequate. We compare ourselves to a reality that has been optimised.
That is the five per cent lie. It is not an outright fabrication. It is a subtle inflation.
Editing Erosion
What unsettled me about that surf clip was not that it had been edited. Editing has always shaped storytelling. What unsettled me was how invisible the adjustment was, and how commonplace it has become. Enough to sharpen impact without triggering suspicion.
Trust does not collapse in dramatic fashion. It erodes in increments.
There was a time when you could just enjoy something. A good photo. A strong speech. A well-written paragraph. You admired it and carried on.
Now there is often a brief pause.
When something looks impressive, a small part of the mind checks it. The idea that it might be enhanced or assisted quietly sits in the background. Admiration still happens, but it shares space with a quick mental double-check.
It is not distrust. It is simply the way we have learned to move through the world.
That reflex protects us. But it also changes us. Awe competes with analysis. Inspiration shares space with scepticism. Every single piece of media now carries a faint, persistent question mark.
Solution Based
The solution is not to abandon the tools. They are here, and they are powerful. The solution is to insist on transparency. If a video is enhanced, say so. If a voice is synthetic, label it. If AI assisted in the writing, acknowledge it. Trust does not survive perfection. It survives clarity.
In the AI era, trust will not depend on what looks real. It will depend on who is honest about the five per cent. (Astra wrote that line.)
by SFT | Jan 6, 2026 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
We are not quite at the finish line yet, but with one more busy weekend to go, it is already clear that this season has been a good one. Possibly a very good one. Final numbers will come later, but the signs are everywhere. Full restaurants, packed accommodations, steady foot traffic, and a town that has felt lively and optimistic for weeks on end. Add an extended run of exceptional weather, and the St Francis Bay area has enjoyed a meaningful and much-needed boost.
Visitors have, for the most part, loved their time here. Local businesses have worked hard and, in many cases, been rewarded for it. There has been a genuine cash injection into the area, and that matters.
What Has Worked Well
There have been plenty of highlights. The Flash Float once again proved to be a crowd favourite. Music nights across town drew strong support. New Year’s Eve delivered exactly what it should have, with memorable parties and a festive but generally good-natured atmosphere.
The beaches carried a great vibe throughout the season. The Cape St Francis Blue Flag beach looked particularly good, while the new stretch of beach that has formed in front of the Spit as a result of the groyne project was hugely popular. It helped spread beachgoing crowds and gave people more space to enjoy the coastline.
Sunset Rocks in Cape St Francis has also become something of a phenomenon. Night after night, people gathered for sunset photos and selfies, creating a shared ritual that felt quietly special. There was some traffic congestion at times, but nothing serious.
The food and service at the restaurants, despite intense crowds, have been world-class and a real credit to the people behind them.
From Complaints to Practical Fixes
As always, the Facebook pages have been busy. Long posts, detailed complaints, and plenty of frustration. What has been less common are workable solutions.
Litter has been one of the more visible issues. One practical idea is to install additional waste bins in high-traffic areas, with local businesses sponsoring them and providing discreet branding. Reckless driving, isolated incidents of teenage aggression, and frustration over motorbikes tearing up the cycle tracks have also featured, along with isolated incidents of thoughtless behaviour in the canals and on the river, to condense the Facebook multi-scroll grievance posts.
Rather than continuing the moaning, this feels like the moment to get ahead.
So, if you feel like getting involved, here’s an idea. Identify one issue, problem or irritation from the season. Then, offer a reasonable, practical solution. Put your thoughts in the comments.
In a town this size, small, sensible steps can make a real difference.
by SFT | Dec 23, 2025 | Notes From The Editor, St Francis
© Richard Arderne
St Francis Bay does not need an introduction. If you live here, you already know how it works. The wind, the water, the way the bay looks calm right up until it decides it isn’t.
Manuel Perestrelo passed by in 1575 and named the area Bahia de Sao Francisco. That detail tends to surface occasionally, usually in trivia form. It changes nothing about the fact that this stretch of coast has always felt more permanent than most of what has happened around it since.
Before the Movie, Before the Noise
Some things arrived quietly
The Seal Point Lighthouse was already standing long before anyone cared about waves. Construction started in 1875, the light came on in 1878, and it has been doing its job ever since. It does not ask for attention. It just keeps watch. Most days, it barely enters the conversation. That feels about right.
In 1963, a small crew of surfers walked into the bay and found Bruce’s. That story has been told often enough that it no longer needs embellishment. The wave was there, it did what it does, and everything that followed came later. Three years later, The Endless Summer came out, and the rest is surf history that locals have heard a thousand times.
Bruce’s is still Bruce’s. Some days it is generous. Some days it is not. Nothing about that has changed.
Life Between Sets
Canals, routines and familiar characters
Away from the water, the bay settled into itself. The canals became part of the daily rhythm. Boats moved when they moved. People waved when they felt like it.
Groups like FOSTER have quietly carried their share of the load over the years. Environmental work, community pressure, behind-the-scenes effort. It has never been glamorous, but it has mattered.
The Bit That Actually Matters Right Now
Sand, structure and the long view
This is the part worth paying attention to. The groyne project now underway is one of the most consequential developments to have happened to St Francis Bay in decades. It is already changing how the shoreline behaves. Sand is doing things it has not done for a long time. Banks are forming. Beaches are holding.
It is not a talking-point project. It is a results project. In time, it will probably be taken for granted, which is usually how you know something worked.
Same Place, Slightly Better Equipped
Still recognisable
From Perestrelo’s passing mention in 1575, to a lighthouse built out of necessity, to a wave found on foot, St Francis Bay has never chased relevance. It has simply carried on.
Now it is doing the same thing with better coastal defences and a clearer long-term plan. The bay still behaves like the bay. It just has a bit more support now.
And that, for most locals, is more than enough.
Have a great holiday, see you in 2026.
—
The editor
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