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Karoo Roads IV – In Faraway Places
Jul
By Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
When you book into a guest house deep in the Agterveld and a wolf joins you for dinner, you may well raise an eyebrow in astonishment.
When you’re tootling along on a specially organised Kleinzee Tour and you come across a horizon filled with armed and illegal diamond miners toiling in the midday sun, you’re allowed a gasp of surprise.
When you gaze across Verneuk Pan and see a gaggle of leprechauns dancing above a shimmering lake in the distance, do not despair. It might be your very first mirage.
Focus hard on the black rock castles you pass on the way between Carnarvon and Vanwyksvlei, and you could very well find yourself in the middle of an exquisite display of Bushman etchings.
On the fringes of the Karoo – Kalahari crossover zone and deep into the Hard Man’s Land, the adventures grow more exotic as the days pass and the journeys continue.
In this fourth edition of the Karoo Roads series of heritage tales, we bring you reports from crazy, wonderful places like Putsonderwater, Hondeklip Bay, Verneuk Pan, Brandvlei and Merweville, a neat little settlement in the Koup that still glows from the attention of a TV series.
We drive the Great Western Highway, follow the majestic Orange River as it snakes through the desert, and we dig up the legends of the early pioneers, indigenous clans and scoundrels who lived on its banks.
We chase ancient elephant sign right across the Karoo and end up in a restored Cederberg village, where the veldskoen crafters are hard at work on your next pair of shoes.
- Karoo Roads IV – In Faraway Places (360 pages, black and white photography, R350 including taxes and courier in South Africa) to be launched in September 2024.
- The Karoo Quartet consists of Karoo Roads 1-4 – more than 60 special Karoo stories and hundreds of photographs in black and white. Cost for the four first edition, author-signed volumes is R960, which includes taxes and courier service in South Africa. Enquiries for both offers: contact Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za – stock up early for that great Christmas present!
