Graaff Reinet Guesthouse/B&B/Accommodation

A ver very very long drive today across the vast landscape to Graaff-Reinet, the “Gem of the Karoo”. I have made a reservation to stay at “Camdeboo Manor” Guest House this evening, and hope to reach my destination before nightfall. What does “Camdeboo” mean? Or “Karoo”? These are strange names with an ancient ring to them. Khoi-San words I suppose?

Approaching Graaff-Reinet from the south, after the long “flat earth” illusion, I slowly became aware of a substantial presence on the horizon directly ahead of me. It gradually grew as the day’s light ebbed, and then suddenly it took shape - perfectly clear, though still very distant (as if I had been blessed with an eagle’s eyes): a looming chain of mountains. After the great expanse of “vlakte”, I was now parched for dramatic relief, and this “vision” (it so seemed) was soothing and pleasurable to the sense of sight, much as the first drops of rain after a hot, dry spell are to the sense o f smell. As the distance between us closed, I became aware that I could no longer sense movement, and wasn’t sure how it was that this closure was being accomplished: whether it was I that was moving, or the mountains, or both. (Einstein would have said both; Muhammad would have said the mountains.)

Graaff-Reinet sits in the middle of an alluring ring of mountains but lies open to the south; the “Horseshoe” sector is twice embraced: the Sunday’s River loops around the old colonial town, offering a second ring of protection, open to the north. This geographic layout was no doubt an important strategic consideration when the town was founded (in 1786): it was the last outpost of the Cape Dutch East India Colony, and these lands on the eastern frontier were (and were long destined to be) hotly contested: the indigenous San (hunter-gatherers), Khoi herders, Trek-Boers, in-migrating Xhosa and finally a wave of 1820 English settlers, all disputed ownership rights to this great, empty land. In the end, “might made right”, and the British prevailed.

The mountains around Graaff-Reinet are ancient relics of the deep past: layers of hot magma which welled up some 320 million years ago and were subsequently buried under great deposits of shale and sandstone now lie exposed as impressive columns of dolerite (most famously in the nearby Valley of Desolation). I believe that “Camdeboo Manor” offers picnic baskets which their guests can enjoy whilst overlooking this landscape of steeply-rising slopes with sheer cliff faces, topped by flat or undulating tablelands. Here and there you see isolated, conical hills or “koppies” separated by sharply serrated ridges. When you have penetrated these Karoo mountains, you find yourself in a land of beautiful, broken country, presenting sharp, every-changing silhouettes against the clear sky.

The mountains and valleys around Graaff-Reinet are apparently also full of fossils, including some of the most ancient forms of multicellular life. It contains ample examples of a huge group of animals (first discovered just outside Graaff-Reinet) that reveal the connection between reptilian and mammalian life forms. Many species, even whole families, of these animals are found nowhere else in the world.

I finally enter the outskirts of Graaff-Reinet, then cross a bridge over the Sunday’s River, and turn left into the western part of the Horseshoe. This charming residential area still has an “old world” feel about it: colonial houses, broad streets, peaceful neighbourhoods. I feel it is almost sacrilege to drive over these empty, tranquil streets; I should be walking, or maybe riding a horse.