From Alice in the Eastern Cape, the R345 turns north and starts climbing into the Amatolas. The higher you go, the closer the forest creeps in. At the top of Hogsback Pass, the canopy barely lets any sunlight through. Soon the tar fades to dirt at a sign with a bush pig on it – welcome to Hogsback's Main Road.
You won't find cute shopfronts or traffic lights here. The pavements are overgrown and you have to park somewhere between the blue gum, pine and stinkwood trees.
In fact, you can't tell the guesthouses from the restaurants or the shops, because the driveways to most of Hogsback's residences vanish even deeper into the forest. It's all so mysterious… and that's what makes it such a fun place to explore.
My girlfriend Sam and I roll in on a Sunday afternoon in July, as a queue of vehicles snakes back out – a wedding party retreating from The Edge, one of Hogsback's most popular function venues and accommodation spots right on the edge of the escarpment. From a viewpoint on a cliff, you look out over the Tyume Valley below. Oh, look! There's the road we arrived here on, disappearing into the forest…
Sam and I head back to the town centre and walk through the Arboretum, an assortment of trees planted by the British colonial government in the late 1800s to determine which trees would grow here for forestry purposes. Later, it became
