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Little Karoo
( 10 items )
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Valleys where distant lights twinkle, dirt roads that sweep you past
folded mountains that look like goblin castles, tiny mission stations
where traditions hold fast and roadside cafes that serve the finest
carrot cake in the southern hemisphere. Now you’re talking Little Karoo.
Ostriches with astoundingly long eyelashes, proteas that burn with
colour, the ring of a Sunday church bell summoning the faithful, the
call of a shepherd in the evening and the all-night parties during
festival season. That’s the Little Karoo.
Climb up on the back of the bakkie. Get comfortable amongst the
mealie bags. We’re going on a look-see whirlwind ride on Route 62…
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Great Karoo
( 22 items )
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From the sweaty northern climes of Bushmanland to the southern
mountainlands of the Swartberg, from Xhosa frontier country in the east
to the diamond ports of the northwest coast, you’re looking at the
Great Karoo in all her vast splendour.
No one with any sense of adventure ever speeds through the Karoo
anymore. The modern trend is to spin out a cross-Karoo journey into a
week-long trip rich in encounter, eccentricity and old-time
stylishness. In the Great Karoo, the accommodation is more affordable,
the smile of welcome is more genuine and the dawn colours are more
vivid than anywhere else in South Africa.
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Succulent Karoo
( 15 items )
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In spring, Namaqualand bursts into exuberant splendour, all gussied
up in a party dress of pink, orange, yellow, white flowers and purple
flowers, all fresh from the soft winter rains.
Hemmed in by the Fynbos Kingdom in the south, roughly bound by the
Orange River in the north and sashed by the red sand Kalahari in the
east, the succulent Karoo owes much of its energy to the neighbouring
Atlantic Ocean and its sea mists.
But in summer and winter, the land’s deeper, more austere beauty is
revealed, along with ingenious tiny succulents that go by whimsical
names: donkey ears, little buttons, fat fingers, chicken feet, goose
droppings, butterflowers, baby’s bums and lizard tails. |
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Grassy Karoo
( 18 items )
 On the Karoo’s eastern flank, grass flows back and forth like a slow motion tide in a narrow band stretching from Jacobsdal in the southern Free State to Somerset East in the deep Eastern Cape.
Unimaginative ecologists sometimes call it the False Karoo, but under that sea of grass, you’ll find the usual suspects – a supporting cast of hardy knee-high, fragrant shrubs.
You’re in the heartland edging onto Xhosa Frontier country, a place of level-headed hills, historic settler towns, fields dappled with backlit Angora goats and blue cranes, a land studded with aloes and unzipped by rapid brown rivers.
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