Silence and space make Karoo special
JM Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, once said: “I do believe that people can only be in love with one landscape during their lifetime. One can appreciate and enjoy many but there is only one that one feels in one’s bones.”
For Coetzee that landscape was the Karoo.
Some years ago my son asked his future wife to marry him at The Karoo Pandok in Bethulie and he suggested that I stay there on my way to Bedford recently, in the Farmer’s Cottage which is remote and peaceful.
The cottage has a large verandah and a tin roof. The one concession to modernity is an air-conditioner, but the springbok skin on the floor and a cream enamel jug and bowl are more in keeping with its character — as is the Lifebuoy soap.
I wondered whether the local “algemene handelaar” only stocked one soap and pictured a small stack of Lifebuoy next to the Vaseline and Grand-Pa headache powder stored on a shelf behind the counter.
I enjoyed the Karoo Pandok and felt my 1988 bakkie and Jack Russell fitted in well. My cooler-box had beer, a piece of steak, a fresh tomato and a can of Koo sliced peaches … all selected to challenge the offerings of a restaurant.
The landscapes between Bethulie and Bedford, a fourhour drive, are splendid. It was frighteningly dry and there were blue skies all the way to the mountains and no sign of a cloud. With frequent droughts it is difficult to make any money out of farming in the Karoo. That seems to me to dictate a culture of authenticity which is unusual and attractive.
I went for long walks at my next destination, a game farm in Bedford, and my dog was introduced to a variety of new shapes and smells.
Sitting on a rock with springbok on the plains and with crowned cranes calling overhead and emphasising the silence in an immense landscape without people, as the sun sets, it is easy to understand the attraction of the Karoo.
On the way home I stopped at a butcher in Hofmeyr to buy some meat for a braai at the Farmer’s Cottage where, once again, I had booked to stay. The butcher had no beef because of the drought but offered me blesbok steak or fallow deer sausage that he had made. I took his advice that the blesbok would be too dry for a braai. The sausage proved to be delicious.
That night I was woken by a gale-force wind and an alarming rattling of the new roof and then, sometime later, tumultuous rain. It was exhilarating listening to the rain on the tin roof and thinking about the life-saving relief it brought to the Karoo.
If you really like the landscape when it is dry and dusty you will like it even more after it has been washed and there are sheets of water soaking into the veld and everything is celebrating the sudden and dramatic change from despair to hope.