Long before our planned Karoo breakaway, we started plotting and planning our route on ’Google Maps’. After an early start from Strand, we would stop for coffee and home-baked chicken pies at Ou Meul Bakery in Riviersonderend, before pushing on to the Karoo National Park. After a few days’ stay we’d head to a remote Karoo farm in a conservation area, then take the gravel roads to Nieu-Bethesda.
There, we’d spend a few days visiting a friend, exploring fossils and resting our souls in Helen Martins’ Owl House. More gravel roads would take us to an agave tasting near Graaff-Reinet, and we’d stay there a while before – heads cleared and many Karoo chops later – heading coastwards to the Addo Elephant National Park. After enjoying its serene beauty for a few days, it would be just over two weeks’ break, and time to head home on the N2.
And here we are. Our little Hyundai Creta is packed to the brim, with barely enough space left for a single jar of pickled green figs or a bottle of wine. Why mention it? Because when you have to unpack that area behind the front seats in the middle of a dust storm in the middle of nowhere, after trashing two tyres on the unforgiving Karoo roads, it is important to mention! But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was just after 13:00 on the first day of our adventure when we turned left off the N1 into the Karoo National Park, a stone’s throw from Beaufort West. The sudden change in speed from 120km/h to 40km/h was quite a contrast after five hours of driving, and we realised
