Kamieskroon, Northern Cape

As you approach the Namaqualand village of Kamieskroon on the N7, it presents a picture of rural tranquillity that makes one dream about living here some day in the future.

Kamieskroon nestles snugly into the foothills of the Kamiesberge, and if you come here in the spring months of August through October, there’s mostly always a flower party going on.

The wild flowers run like garlands about the village, but that’s not all. Take a drive 20km to the west and you’ll find the Namaqua National Park, where the daisy fields are so vast the intense colour floods the senses.

But, says the famous local photographer Colla Swart, Kamieskroon is an all-year attraction.

“The spring flowers are only the lipstick on the face of Namaqualand. I love it all. It’s like seeing my father’s face. But I didn’t just love his smile. I loved all of him.”

The Swart family own the local Kamieskroon Hotel, and it is from this base that annual Namaqualand photographic workshops are held. World-class photographers teach you how to capture the local beauty – in landscape and macro form – with your cameras. The workshops – which accommodate only 15 people at a time – have become wildly successful and people book them well in advance.

The hotel has expanded its excursion options to include a two-week mainly outdoors adventure that takes in the coastal part of the Namaqua National Park, a remote kloof deep in the Richtersveld and short stay-overs back in Kamieskroon. The photographic fortnight is the kind of experience that appeals to a growing base of adventure travellers. All the organisers ask is that you be “reasonably fit, healthy, accustomed to walking and willing to rise early”.

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