It’s with a fair degree of anticipation that we bid farewell to The Commodore and Cape Town after breakfast, jumping in an Uber to the Avis car rental office at the airport, which is on our way to the Little Karoo – the desert heart of the Western Cape Province.
We know very little about this part of South Africa other than it’s beautiful, hot and home to the ostrich farming community which enjoyed enormous wealth around the end of the 19th Century. Our tour company Trailfinders had suggested we visit it before we drive the more famous Garden Route, so with a little bit of research we’ve taken them up on it and with a big red Kia SUV to ferry us along, we’re off on an adventure.
Our wheels for the next few days
Cape Town airport is south of the city and we take the N2 highway, which leads straight along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth, and eventually on to Durban nearly 2000km away. Soon the motorway narrows to a dual carriageway as we ascend up over the mountains with incredible views of Cape Town behind us, becoming a single lane highway through very different scenery of orchards and vineyards once we reach the other side.
About an hour into our journey the landscape becomes a strangely familiar vast, open yellow grassland and Coman asks me if this is where I’d been previously with Corinne Bailey Rae for the ‘Put Your Records On’ video shoot at the start of 2006. And sure enough we soon pass the turnings for Oak Valley farm and the town of Grabow where it was shot almost exactly thirteen years ago, just one week later.
The grasslands at the start of the Garden Route
We stop for coffee at a shopping mall in the town of Caledon and shortly afterwards pass the turn off to Cape Agulhas, the southern most point of Africa, just 97kms due south of us. But time is of the essence as we have a huge distance to cover today and can’t make any detours. By the time we reach our lunch stop of Swellendam, an historic pioneer town, we’re already behind schedule and, following our guidebook’s suggestion, head into the pretty town centre to try and get a table at the riverside restaurant La Belle Alliance.
Unfortunately the unhurried waitress tells us we’ve got almost an hour’s wait to be served so we wander down the street and buy a takeaway salad, opting for a quick picnic under the shade of a big tree instead. Fifteen minutes later and we’re on our way again, turning off the N2 and leaving the first stretch of the Garden Route for the more dramatic landscapes ahead of us on Route 62.
Picnic in Swellendam
First up is the Tradouw Pass, a steep and winding crossing of the first mountain range with fabulous views, before we join the R62 at the one-horse town of Barrydale. At the next settlement along of Ladismith we’re pulled over by the police along with a few other cars, to have our driving licences checked, before being waved on our way.
From now on, we’re in desert country and the scenery is both rugged and astonishing. The temperature gauge is already climbing into the 30s and the road shimmers with heat. We’re heading due west across the shrub and rocky plain while to the north of us sit the Swartberg mountains and to the south, with clouds on their distant peaks, lie the Langeberg and Outeniqua ranges.
The Langeburg Mountains
The road twists and turns, sometimes straight as an arrow, at other times rising up and down, with very little traffic and breathtaking vistas. It really is a stunning drive, although we agree it’d be an unforgiving place to break down. Passing through the town of Calitzdorp we take the opportunity to fill up with petrol, arriving in our destination of Oudtshoorn, the heart of the Little Karoo an hour later at just gone 5pm.
At the main crossing, next to what looks like a church but turns out to be a museum, a group of women are sat in the blazing sun, selling brooms and dusters made of multi-coloured ostrich feathers. The vivid display is gloriously, unintentionally camp and we pull over, sensing our chance to bring a bit of Kloof Street House kitsch to our living room. After a bit of discussion with one of the ladies, we purchase a broom adorned with a huge display of bright pink ostrich feathers, and she chops the long handle off for us, so we can stuff it in our suitcase and pop it in a vase back home.
Ostrich feather dusters
Five minutes’ drive further along the road we pull into the driveway of our lodgings for the next two nights, the Rosenhof Country House Hotel. It’s gorgeous, a tranquil oasis with pretty bungalows to stay in and an elegant pool. We drop our bags without further ado and head out to sit beside it, a well-deserved cocktail helping us relax after the seven-hour drive. However the work emails that start to intrude remind me that back in chilly London the festive break is coming to an end and reality exists outside our hot summer bubble.
We’ve still got a week of South African indulgence to go though, not least in the hotel’s restaurant tonight where we are served a five course dinner with a specially made vegetarian menu in our honour. The restaurant, like the rest of the hotel, is in the style of an English country house, with beautiful furniture and decorative touches, and sits near the library, next to a manicured garden where we hear frogs croaking as the night draws in.
By the Rosenhof pool
Maureen, our waitress, sits us at a table by the window, and lights candles for us, while classical piano music enhances the ambience, and two Scottish couples seated together on the other side of the dining room natter away in a soft burr. She pours us substantial glasses of Le Lude Reserve Brut from Franschhoek and comes back with our first course.
We’re both served a delicious cold mint and melon soup to start, with a nectarine and goats cheese salad to follow. So far, so light and refreshing, but our main courses of brown mushroom & thyme risotto, and penne primavera with creamy young vegetables, are enormous and we can’t finish them. Maureen looks disappointed when we say we only want to share one dessert between us, suggesting the honey scented nougat parfait with strawberry sauce, and is even more surprised when we decline the final round of coffee and truffles.
Dinner at Rosenhof
She does however whole-heartedly approve of our choice of a Nederberg Reserve Pinotage 2016 from Paarl, which is absolutely delicious. She pours two HUGE glasses, and looking at Coman’s startled expression giggles and says “it’s hardly going to kill you” and then puts her fingers to her lips so we don’t let the owners know she’s served us practically a whole bottle of wine in one go.
We sleep very well tonight!
