Plettenberg Bay has always had lore status in the Liebenberg family. My late parents, Mike and Rosa, often regaling us kids with fantastical stories of how they’d met in Plett.
My mom, a looker at 19 and on holiday from Jo’burg, was strolling along the beach in her bikini just as my dad, a handsome, if older, spearfisherman, emerged from the waves in his wetsuit.
It literally was love at first sight: their first kiss was on the Robberg peninsula and on the day they met Dad asked Mom to marry him. She said yes and five weeks later they were wed.
What can I say? It was the Sixties.I was reminded of that story on a media visit to Plett earlier this month. Looking across the water to Robberg from the iconic Plettenberg Hotel, where we would spend the night, I wondered if the beach below could have been the one that sealed my parents’ fate in life and love.They are both long gone now and there’s no one left to ask.Just then, a big, barnacle-encrusted whale popped its head clean out of the water, right below the rocky headland where we were standing, in what seemed incredible timing.
The best time for spotting southern right whales in South Africa is from June to November along the Cape south coast, Plett being one of the hotspots.
The day was June 2 and Wiida Swiegers, assistant GM at The Plettenberg, told me this was their first sighting of the season.
I imagined Mom and Dad, life-long lovers of the sea, getting a kick out of that somewhere on a sunny beach in the sky.
Plett (and The Plettenberg) is undeniably one of the most romantic settings you could ask for, even in winter. Or perhaps that should be especially in winter, for who can resist some loving on an icy day or night, wind whipped up into a frenzy and the sound of the sea pounding in your ears?Not that we knew it was winter, mind you, for our Saturday was beautifully clear and warm. We were out on Lookout Beach – a short walk from the hotel along a fragrant fynbos path – at 4pm and still there were loads of surfers and families about; kids playing on the sand or tentatively dipping toes in the water just as we did.
Our carefree late afternoon was followed by a chilled evening at the five-star Plettenberg and its superb restaurant which is simply called Seafood.Here we met head chef Ritchie Rorich, who has fully embraced the philosophy of his mentor, the Liz McGrath Collection’s Peter Tempelhoff, while also finding his own signature as a rising star in the industry.
Much more than just another fancy hotel, The Plettenberg was a beloved passion project of the late Liz McGrath, hotelier extraordinaire, who bought it in the 1980s and turned it into the stunning showpiece it continues to be.
“Mrs M”, who died in 2015, also owned the equally iconic Cellars-Hohenort in the Constantia Valley and The Marine in Hermanus; her children continue the legacy.The Plettenberg has 35 guest rooms, including 12 suites as well as two villas ideal for families. There’s something unassailably elegant and old-world about this hotel and its wonderful location, which is not to say it is stuffy in any way. Rather it is as if the infinitely stylish Mrs M is still around to discreetly keep an eye on things, living on in the memory and attentiveness of the staff, many of whom she had hand-picked.

The Plettenberg is at 40 Church Street. Contact (044) 533-2030 or reservations@collectionmcgrath.com. Louise Liebenberg was a guest of The Plettenberg...