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When sailing to the East Indies, the Dutch merchantmen did not hug the African coast, but swung wide to the west, sailed along the South American coast and then caught the Roaring Forties to sail eastwards to the Cape of Goed Hope and New Holland (Australia), from there northward to Batavia on Java Island.
It is obvious why the Cape area, even without lucrative spices, was settled with farmers as restocking place.
But what if the VOC (the Dutch United East India Company) had decided to settle the area af OTL Uruguay or Rio Grande do Sul with its huge lagoons. (The most plausible time would have been in the mid-1670s when the Dutch West Indian Company (who held the monopoly for the Americas was bankrupt). These areas weren't strongly colonized either by Spain or Portugal before 1700, so the Dutch in their Golden Age could probably have made a visible change here. Note that the reason for any settlement would not have been to gather riches (even if they would have been welcome) but to provide a place where ships from the Netherlands could have been repaired and restocked before sailing east - another Cape Town, basically.