Karoo Stops on the road to Cape Town

Rise really early and hit the road as the dawning sun battles for light space with the grey Gauteng curtain, pass the mills of the Vaal Triangle and suddenly, just breathe it in, you’re in the champagne morning air of the Free State.

You’ve got a dinner date with a Scottish stockbroker in the Falsch Karoo town of Springfontein. You will gather in the trademark-red dining room of Springfontein House and be regaled by the legendary Graeme Wedgwood over a supper of red wine and excellent Karoo lamb.

An hour before all that, however, you find yourself up at Blackie’s Blockhouse, toasting the passing parade of the Great N1 Highway with something cold and friendly. You’re on Prior Grange, belonging to Blackie de Swardt, former Junior Springbok pentathlete and current farmstay host, and he has a genuine Anglo-Boer War blockhouse all to himself up on a hill overlooking the highway.

The next morning you’re filling up in Colesberg, and you take the time to visit the local museum and find out about the “Donkie Karretjie” (donkey cart) people, a nomadic clan that used to wander about the vast Karoo like gypsies in the dust.

You telephone ahead and book a night at No. 3, Darling Street, in the town of Hanover, your halfway point on the journey south. Once there, you check in and immediately make for the highpoint of Hanover, the Trappieskoppe overlooking the small town.

Freedom in the Round

This is “freedom in the round”, a 360-degree view of tanned lands, distant hills, the creeping lights on the N1 Highway, all happening here at the bottom of a very old ocean that dried up and left a legacy of embedded fossils.

The Karoo in winter is the answer to world problems. This is where you really want to be – alone with yourself, your thoughts and perhaps a nip of Old Brown Sherry to keep the chill out. How about a game of gin rummy? Tonight, right there by the fireside?

The next morning, pop in to Coffee & Books at the end of Darling Street. Leaving town, you may be lucky enough to catch the Painters’ Club in action.

Your drive is short today, because you’re staying over at the Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West. So stop over at Richmond, visit the Saddle Horse Museum and savour the ambience of the historic buildings.

The Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West has excellent Cape Dutch-style accommodations, and if you’re not self-catering there’s a restaurant available. There’s also a caravan park and camping ground, known to be among the best-maintained in South Africa.

The Fossil Trail at the Karoo National Park outlines clearly how the region was transformed from swamp to desert. It deals with the formations of typical Karoo rock, movements of glaciers, drying of the floodplain and the Great Gondwanaland Split that took place about 150 million years ago. Along the walk there’s a complete fossil of Bradysaurus, a reptile that used to live here in huge numbers at one time.

Where the Cape Lion Roamed

Not far down the road is Leeu Gamka where, in 1842, the last Cape lion was said to have been shot. Breeders have been trying ever since to bring back some genetic remnant, clone or lookalike of this magnificent beast, whose great black mane used to almost reach the ground.

Your overnight stop is Matjiesfontein, so you have time to call in at Laingsburg where, on January 25, 1981, a killer flood swept through the town.

If there’s enough time for a detour (200 kms there and back), then head north from Matjiesfontein to the town of Sutherland to spend a late afternoon moment up with the large telescopes on the hill as they prepare to sweep the skies for quarks, quasars, black holes and, possibly, the inevitable restaurant at the end of the universe.

In a bold initiative, local authorities have begun to use the Observatory and its fame, by tying in empowerment projects and poverty relief programmes. During recent solar eclipses, disadvantaged Sutherlandians made 1,5 million eclipse viewers for the consumer market. Crafts, tour-guide training and astronomy-themed model-making have all been supported.

Back in Matjiesfontein, you find yourself in the arms of colonial history as you settle in for a drink at the Lord Milner Hotel bar. Visit the transport complex, walk around the village, go down to the river and return for another drink – you’ll find out just why the likes of Cecil John Rhodes and Olive Schreiner loved this place so much.

Chances are you’ll watch the Blue Train arrive, stop for a while and speed on through the Karoo. The next morning it’s a short 240 km hop into Cape Town, where your favourite Waterfront restaurant awaits, with all the welcome that the Mother City has for its visitors…

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Karoo Stops on the road to Cape Town

Freedom in the Round

Where the Cape Lion Roamed

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