Through golden sunlands
Botanist and author Eve Palmer, a native of the Camdeboo, described her world as “a country flooded by sun”. It’s a great description of the treeless plains between the Sneeuberg mountains in the north and the Grootrivier mountains in the south.
It’s also where the Murray missionary family found fertile soil for sowing the seeds of the Dutch Reformed Church. Quite a number of towns in the Camdeboo have the Murrays and their contribution to the religious revival in the 19th century to thank for their beautiful churches.
Around 200 million years before the dawn of man, mammal-like reptiles made their home in marshes of the Camdeboo. Yes, it was a wetland once. Fossils discovered here point to animal species that didn’t follow quite the same evolutionary path as the dinosaurs, but rather became the ancient ancestors of all warm-blooded animals.
There are are two circular routes here: each takes about eight hours and together they will add 800 km to your vehicle’s odometer – 500 km of which are dirt roads. One route takes you through the mountains and hills of the northern Camdeboo, and the other leads you across the southern plains.
On these two contrasting routes, you will pay an exorbitant price for a statue of an owl, drive through a ghost town inhabited by monkeys, and cross the historic Sundays River 11 times.
Pack meatballs and hard-boiled eggs in an empty ice-cream container, fasten
