We fly the 2 hours from Durban to Cape Town, where we picked up our 2nd car and out onto the N1 – destination: Matjiesfontein. Along the way we passed lots of wine, agriculture and mountains until the land flattened out to the desert of the Grand Karoo.
The entire town had been purchased in 1968 by hotelier David Rawdon who made major refurbishments to the hotel, which was renamed the Lord Milner Hotel. The town had been established back in 1884 and the hotel built in grand style in 1899. From the website:
The grandeur of Matjiesfontein stretches back to a heyday when the village was a fashionable health spa that attracted visitors from all over the world, including Lord Randolph Churchill (father of Winston), Cecil John Rhodes, Rudyard Kipling and of course, Olive Schreiner.
Today, the town remains in family hands and it was made a National Heritage site in 1975.
We entered the grand hotel and went up to our room.
We had 90 minutes to fill in until our 17:30 tour, so we walked around the town. There is only a main street + one street, but we walked those. There was a small motor museum with an eclectic collection of vehicles including the cars used during the 1947 visit to the town by King George and family .
With town explored we retired to the Lords Arms bar to sit in front of the fire. We sat talking with a young couple from Stellenbosch before all four of us were the only guests on the 17:30 bus tour. Described as the shortest bus tour in the world we tripped around Matjesfontein in 5 minutes along with a funny commentary by the guy who had previously been serving our drinks. It was all good fun.
Tour complete, we returned to our rooms for a short time before dinner in the very, very dim dining room. I thought it would be brighter in daylight, but it was about the same the next morning. So with all lights on, we dined by candle light. The staff wore black uniforms and the ladies little white caps, while the wine waiter was resplendent in a red cost and hat. This is a little anachronistic to keep doing this colonial thing, but it is what they are doing. The food was excellent and we both had the famous Karoo lamb (in the form of loin chops). They were absolutely delicious, followed by Malva pudding. Malva pudding is a South African comfort food and is along the lines of a sticky toffee pudding. The next morning we returned to the dark dining room for an excellent breakfast.
The next day our drive was about 3 hours but we broke it up with a couple of stops. The first was in Laingsburg to visit the flood museum. In 1981 the town was devastated by a flash flood following heavy rain. 104 people were killed, but only about 20 bodies were ever found. The museum was very low key, and all of the stories on the walls were only in Afrikaans, so we didn’t really get the flavour of the personal stories displayed.
Our second detour was 40 km off the N2 to the quaint town of Prince Albert. Here we wandered up and down the main street and had an excellent lunch at the popular Lazy Lizard café.
Refuelled in body and in petrol, we rejoined the N2 where things went well for the rest of the drive until we were slowed down for a short time by single lane around an overturned truck lying across the middle of the road. How it over-turned on a straight road was totally unclear to us. But soon, on the same road not much further along, we had a 30 minute delay. while a larger articulated truck, which appeared to have overturned and had been in the roadside ditch. Traffic was backed up in both directions and people were walking out of their cars waiting for everything to be cleared. 10 minutes later we were at our destination, Karoo National Park.