A Road Through South Africa's Karoo

LinkedIn Twitter Facebook A Karoo road trip on 35mm film Ten days, 1 700km, and a cheap pocket camera through South Africa’s semi-arid interior By Andrew Thompson When my email pinged with a notification that 74 film photographs from a solo 1 700km cross-Karoo journey were ready for collection, I felt an odd pang of excitement. By then, the trip was long over. I had scraped the remains of dead bugs off the bumper, told the odd tale to those interested, replied to the most important neglected emails, and reinstalled the deleted social media apps. The 1 229 phone photos and videos I had taken along the way had already disappeared deep into the camera roll. My route took me on 1 700 km of Karoo backroads and highways. Then the film photographs arrived. They offered an imperfect record. Many were bang average. Several did not come out at all. One frame I had been looking forward to featured little more than my misplaced thumb. Others, though, returned memories I had almost lost. Of an abandoned church on a rural hill, a windmill turning noisily in an icy breeze beside a rutted dirt road, a shy but inquisitive horse in a green field, and the first spring flowers catching the last rays of sunlight beside seldom-used train tracks. Developing a contact sheet of the negatives may cost extra, but it delivers a full dose of 35mm film nostalgia. Carrying a budget 35mm Kodak through the Karoo changed the rhythm of the trip. I stopped for things I might otherwise have driven past or snapped through the window. I took fewer photographs because each one would cost money. And when I did take one, it came with the cheap thrill of a mechanical clunk, the whirr of film advancing inside the plastic body, and no idea whether the picture would be worth the cost of developing. The camera was Kodak’s Snapic A1, a modern 35mm point-and-shoot that sells locally for about R2 000. It has a pocketable plastic body, a glass lens, two focus zones, automatic film advance, built-in flash, and a fun double-exposure mode. I shot on Kodak Gold 200 film, which suited the bright roads and open landscapes. The photographs that follow are unedited and uncropped, exactly as the lab delivered them. A car driving down a road with yellow and white stripes, surrounded by lush green grass and plants on either side. In the background, majestic mountains and a clear blue sky can be seen. The road after Montagu's Hole in the Wall feels like the unofficial start of Route 62. CAPE TOWN TO CALITZDORP Onto Route 62 Ronnies Sex Shop, a roadside bar that fell victim to a prank, is a quintessential Route 62 stop. Barrydale seems to have bottled the mood of the Klein Karoo road trip. I pulled into Diesel & Crème, the closest thing South Africa has to a classic roadside diner, and ordered a hot dog from the caravan outside. It arrived quickly, and generously sized, and I ate it among a smattering of midweek tourists speaking French and German on road trips of their own. Barrydale's Diesel and Creme is the quintessential road trip stop. A quick pause as you leave Barrydale on the far side offers a view over the valley. But this was not my overnight stop. As charming as the restaurant and a few other quirky establishments are, I wanted to head deeper into the quieter, less curated country beyond it. And shortly before Calitzdorp, I found the solitude I was after at River View Cottages, a quiet farm stay overlooking the Gamka River, with the Swartberg rising behind it. Walking in the foothills of the Swartberg mountains near Calitzdorp. The view from the stoep at River View Cottages. With no cellphone signal, the fire and stars became the evening’s entertainment. By day, the river, mountain paths, and a hammock offered a gentle introduction to a week on the road. Flowering aloes are a common winter sight in the Karoo, their thick leaves holding water through the dry months. Canoes set aside for guests beside the dock at River View Cottages. CALITZDORP TO PRINCE ALBERT Over the Swartberg A lone horse at the foot of the Swartberg Mountains. After a weekend of tranquillity, I steeled myself for the drive up Swartberg Pass, officially opened in 1888. It is a classic road for good reason. As I geared down at its foot, the look of relief on the faces of the passengers in a rental car coming down towards me said everything I had forgotten since I last drove it a decade earlier. The drive up from the southern side of the Swartberg Pass is just a taste of what's to come. I emerged through the mist at the summit into perhaps the most daunting part of the drive. Ahead lay the long descent towards Prince Albert, a dirt road damaged in places by recent floods, with only dry-stacked stone walls offering a rough suggestion of protection. If this were in Germany, I imagined my Diesel & Crème compatriots saying, it would be uninsurable. But here I was, feathering the brakes and white-knuckling the steering wheel down one of the world’s great mountain roads, grinning broadly. A dirt road winding through a canyon, with a stone wall on one side and hills in the background. The sky is filled with clouds, creating a peaceful atmosphere. Stone walls edge the gravel descent from Swartberg Pass toward Prince Albert. PRINCE ALBERT A perfect pit stop A view of the Swartberg across Gay's Guernsey Dairy farm, on the town's outskirts. Prince Albert, at the foot of the Swartberg, has long been shaped by its position between the Great and Klein Karoo. The town grew from an 18th-century farm, and its old Cape Dutch, Karoo, and Victorian buildings still give its streets a settled, prosperous air. De Kleine Prince, more homestead than guest house, also exudes this, and a stay there allowed me to fall into a slower rhythm before the wide-open spaces of the Great Karoo that lay ahead. Prince Albert from above, seen from its nearby koppie. Also from the koppie are views of the vast, wide-open Great Karoo. From the koppie above town, Prince Albert sat below in a neat arrangement of streets, whitewashed houses, and trees, with the Swartberg rising behind it. To the other side, the land opened into scrub and soft oblique winter light, with the vast Great Karoo still ahead. A slow walk through the quiet back lanes of Prince Albert offers glimpses of tranquil farm life. PRINCE ALBERT TO SAMARA KAROO Backroads of the Eastern Cape A lone windmill sits stationary on a Karoo backroad. Although there was a temptation to become one of the many Capetonians who visit Prince Albert and start plotting a permanent move, I pressed on into the Eastern Cape towards a game reserve Samara. I ignored the recommended routes on Google Maps and chose, perhaps somewhat foolishly, the thin, faded grey lines that soon turned to long stretches of isolated dirt. For hundreds of kilometres, there was so little traffic that I could stop in the middle of the road to take photographs. Many roads are so quiet and remote that you'll likely not encounter a bar of signal or another vehicle for dozens of kilometres. The town of Willowmore is a common pit stop for road trippers from upcountry heading to the coast. Occasional small towns, like Willowmore and Steytlerville, offered intrigue and a chance to stretch my legs and click a few photos. But the real pull was out on the open gravel roads, corrugated and empty for long stretches, with creaking windmills, disused railway lines, and even an abandoned church on a hill breaking up the drive. Avoiding the recommended routes delivers long stretches of classic Karoo driving on scenic gravel roads. An abandoned church sits on a hill somewhere between Steylerville and Robert Sobukwe Town. A set of long-unused railway tracks runs along the road in parts. SAMARA KAROO TO ROBERT SOBUKWE TOWN Into the Great Karoo Few Karoo drives are as atmospheric as the one to Nieu-Bethesda. Eventually, I had little choice but to rejoin the tar, though it was no less dramatic. The Karoo has a way of making you feel very small. And as the plains opened around me and the kilometres slipped by, I had the strange, overwhelming sense that I could keep going for days, maybe weeks, and never tire of it. A view over the plains at the Karoo reserve Samara. The Owl House in Nieu-Bethesda is a classic Karoo stop. A lone tree beside the road to Nieu-Bethesda provides the only shade on a warm winter's day. ROBERT SOBUKWE TOWN An old town with a new name The Dutch Reformed Church is a prominent, long-standing monument in the centre of Robert Sobukwe Town. Graaff-Reinet may have a new official name as Robert Sobukwe Town, but there is an unflappable familiarity to one of South Africa’s old Karoo stopovers. The church at its centre still anchors the streets around it. As does the recently refurbished historical Drostdy Hotel. But from above, from the surrounding Camdeboo National Park and its Valley of Desolation, the Karoo once again snaps into perspective. The Valley of Desolation in Camdeboo National Park, where dolerite columns rise above the plains outside Robert Sobukwe Town. The view over Robert Sobukwe Town from Cambdaboo National Park. ROBERT SOBUKWE TOWN TO MATJIESFONTEIN The national highway home Distant mountains from an N1 picnic spot, as the Karoo gives way to the long road back to Cape Town. Roughly 1 000km into the trip, two days behind schedule, and still 700km from home, I realised it was probably time to return to reality. I pointed the car towards the crisp white and yellow lines and roadside stops of the N1. Classic roadside picnic spots line the busy road, but are often all but abandoned outside of peak times. But for decades, I had wanted to spend a night at the historic Lord Milner Hotel in the Victorian railway village of Matjiesfontein, now in its 142nd year. So despite being behind schedule and still hundreds of kilometres from home, the temptation to pull in and ask for a balcony room overlooking the old station proved irresistible. The historic Lord Milner Hotel, with its balcony suites and railway views, make an overnight stop in Matjiesfontein hard to pass up. With orange daisies lining the road, the seldom-used railway nearby, and one last night in an old Karoo hotel, it felt like a fitting send-off to nearly two weeks of blissful bumbling through the region’s backroads, passes, highways, and occasional eerie stops at roadside picnic spots. Weeks later, when the scans arrived, this imperfect version of the trip stayed with me. The soft edges, blown highlights, vibrant colours, and missed frames were part of it, along with the memory of standing in the middle of empty Karoo roads, pointing a cheap camera into the distance, and hoping it would do the scene justice.