The house where DF Malan began his short career as a dominee has been deserted for years and is reputedly haunted. A flying saucer appears to have crash landed in SA during lockdown. And the old aircraft parked next to the N1 on Cape Town's northern fringe is a portal into a world of automotive wonder.
These are some of the seeds that took root in my infertile lockdown brain on a roadtrip that delivered a couple of more significant lessons: If you think you know your own country, you're wrong; and while it may be diminished, the tourism industry is alive. All it needs to get it kicking again is customers.
Most of the places my group of 12 visited on a three-day tour of the Klein Karoo were virtually empty. True, the Karoo is always relatively quiet, but in a normal November it would have been dotted with outbreaks of Germans, Brits and Americans in dusty hire cars.
This year there was none of the above. Instead, it was wall-to-wall locals at the two busy spots we experienced, both of which delivered calories in such astonishing quantities that it was clear many South Africans have not yet made the well-established link between expanding waistlines and nasty cases of Covid.
Our trip might have been high-fat but it was also low-tar, thanks to the desire of our hosts, Ford and Goodyear, to show off their Everest SUVs and tyres on the countless kilometres of gravel roads that criss-cross the Karoo. "Unpaved road near Hessequa" is the best the GPS could do for hours on end as our convoy alternately thundered and crawled across the vast landscape.
The crawl almost became a standstill on the P6402, slightly better known as the Gysmanshoek Pass but in reality hardly familiar to anyone apart from 4x4ers and adventure motorcyclists. The 18th-century oxwagon track over the Langeberg is steep, rocky, twisty and breathtakingly beautiful. Just don't try it in your city hatchback.
Plenty of Karoo and Cederberg gravel roads can be negotiated in a regular car though, and our high-fat meals began with lunch at the Laird's Arms in Matjiesfontein, which is as close to a Victorian English pub as you're likely to find.
It continued that evening at the Rooiberg Lodge near Van Wyksdorp, which was the unexpected find of the trip for me. Having traversed the Karoo on four wheels and two for many years, I'd somehow managed to miss the lodge, its 14,000ha of stunning veld, a lush, manicured campsite overlooking a lake, and accommodation of several other types and levels of luxury and price.
Now I know about it, and next time I won't oversleep and miss the 6.30am game drive, which produced talk of a family of klipspringers scaling a sheer rockface but mainly of the incredible profusion and variety of flora that covers the reserve.
We arrived at the lodge via Calitzdorp and the Rooiberg Pass — another road impassable to regular vehicles — and headed to Barrydale the next day, arriving in time for thousands of lunchtime calories at the packed Diesel and Creme Diner, where the menu is loaded with gourmet milkshakes and fabulous burgers.
Happily, dinner that evening was nothing more than canapes in Montagu's Joubert Park, and it followed a ghost tour of the town. Nothing we learnt — not even the link between the town and Malan, SA's first apartheid prime minister — was quite as scary as the back-pedal brakes on our vintage bicycles. But the experience was tremendously entertaining, thanks to tour guide Marchelle van Zyl.
The Montagu Country Hotel has been heavily spruced up since my last visit and retains its stunning art-deco character, but our stay was fleeting because we'd heard a flying saucer had crashed in the Tankwa Karoo and time was short.
Among Karoo connoisseurs, Ronnies Sex Shop and the Tankwa Padstal tend to fall into the same characterful mental compartment, but the latter is streets ahead when it comes to eccentricity and fascination.
Witness owner Hein Lange's lockdown brainstorm, a 1.6-ton, 10m wide, 7m high-flying saucer sticking out of a koppie next to the shop. Definitely not something you see every day, and well worth risking your tyres on the notorious shale gravel that covers the R355.
The gorgeous Katbakkies Pass returned us to what passes for normality, in this case Ceres, and our tour ended where it began, at the Wijnland Auto Museum, home to that 1950s Convair 580 parked by the N1.
Like so many Capetonians, I've often sped past and wondered but never investigated further, so it was a pleasure to chat to owner Les Boshoff about his passion for old vehicles and his flourishing business in the film industry.
Boshoff showed us a relic he was in the midst of restoring for a commercial, and we drooled over his collection of shiny classics and heaps of rust, which he prefers to call "potentials" awaiting nothing more than the right storyboard from a filmmaker.
It seemed appropriate to end our idiosyncratic tour at Boshoff's quirky passion project. Just about everywhere we went and everything we experienced was the product of independent, creative thinking by slightly off-the-wall but delightful individuals.
It's this taste of the unexpected that for years has kept tourists coming back to SA for more. In their absence, they're ours for the enjoying.
• Chambers was a guest of Ford and Goodyear.
IF YOU GO ...
ROOIBERG LODGE
Whatever your budget, this family-friendly reserve about 10 minutes' drive from Van Wyksdorp will suit you. Hiking and cycling trails cover the property and you can walk around the olive grove before touring the olive-processing plant and sampling its products. Giraffe, nyala, zebra and klipspringer roam the 14,000ha reserve and graze on its abundant plant life.
Rates: Campsites cost from R300 a night for up to four people. Loft rooms for between one and eight guests cost from R250 per person. Luxury suites for two people start at R1,500 and one-bedroom and two-bedroom chalets start at R1,900 and R3,000 respectively. The lodge restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. See rooiberglodge.co.za.
MONTAGU COUNTRY HOTEL
As a base to explore the town of Montagu and surrounds, this is hard to beat. The art-deco building is full of authentic character and is on the town's main street, within walking distance of restaurants, shops and galleries. The hotel has a spa, and you can take an "American dream car" tour in one of its vintage Cadillacs for R750 an hour.
Rates: Self-catering rooms start at R1,250 a night for two people. Hotel rooms, with breakfast included, start at R868 per person sharing. See montagucountryhotel.co.za.
GHOST TOUR
Marchelle van Zyl offers walking and bicycle outings in Montagu — including the ghost tour — through her business Flying Feet. Hikes in the countryside surrounding Montagu are also on offer. See flyingfeet.co.za.
WIJNLAND AUTO MUSEUM
Entrance costs R100 for adults and R50 for under-12s. See wijnlandautomuseum.co.za.
