2 The Forgotten Route
CAPE TOWN TO MATJIESFONTEIN
It’s hard to decide what to look forward to most: the wine tastings, the train trip or its destination. But first our journey starts on foot in the centre of Cape Town, regaled with tales about historical figures and landmarks that will eventually all connect into a great story. After coffee and issuing of ‘passports’ at the Kimberley Hotel, we are driven to the Breedekloof wine valley. A guided tasting at Kirabo Private Cellar of seven wines includes one called Cupcake – and real cupcakes to go with it. We’d love to linger, but we have a train to catch in Worcester, and arrive in the nick of time to board the Shoshaloza Meyl. The last time I travelled on this train was many years ago, in high school, and I must have been smaller then because the train seems narrower than I remember, and the compartments tinier. But what hasn’t changed is my sense of excitement for a real train journey. We’ll be leaving the Boland behind, beyond the mountains and into the Karoo – a two-and-a-half-hour trip, with ample time to relax, eat lunch and watch the changing scenery flashing past the windows. There are thrilling bits where the train goes through gorges, tunnels of rock that unexpectedly enclose us, and through actual tunnels, with no sense of when we’ll exit. Our arrival at Matjiesfontein is a big deal: local children cluster around, curious to see who will be disembarking today. With our tour guide, Riaan Renke, dressed in late-19th century attire, and welcome drinks waiting on a silver tray on the platform, we do feel like honoured guests, like the Victorians who flocked here a century ago for a little R&R and socialising. I think arriving in Matjiesfontein by train is really the only way to do it – the station itself is lovely, and the first sight of the ‘town’ hidden behind the station building, with its 200-metre-long main street and gorgeous old hotel, is fantastic. It feels a little like stumbling onto a film set. There’s not much to it. Just beyond the last houses, as you look left and right down the road, miles and miles of Karoo nothingness stretch in both directions. We’ll be staying overnight at the cottages at Rietfontein Nature Reserve, just outside town, but first we have a town tour at dusk on the famous old red London bus (it takes no more than 10 minutes) and then congregate for drinks at the Laird’s Arms. After supper (more wine) we have special late-night access to the Matjiesfontein museum – this is important, because that’s when the ghosts come out. I am so sucked in by what’s on display at the museum that I completely miss the appearance of the ghost. But the next day, just after breakfast, as I snap a picture of
‘It feels a little like stumbling onto a film set. There’s not much to it’
the hotel from across the road, I glimpse in my viewfinder a child holding two balloons on the top balcony. Except when I look up, there’s no one there. I ask Teagan, standing beside me, whether she saw anyone up there. Nope. I check my photo and there it is: something that wasn’t there. We leave Matjiesfontein by road instead of rail, which seems a pity but as it turns out, driving through the Karoo back to the Cape offers spectacular scenery – up close if you want to pull over and soak in the views, which we do fairly often. We head through the Koo Valley to Montagu, where there’s a Saturday morning market (with pannekoek), and more wine tastings and lunch at Platform 62 in Ashton. Our final stop is Marbrin olive farm, where it’s almost impossible to leave my perch on the gloriously chilled-out stoep. I return home with several bottles of wine and Wildebraam aniseed liqueur, and a yearning to go back to Matjiesfontein as soon as possible – by train, of course, and preferably in midsummer, because I’ve discovered the hotel has the most wonderful swimming pool in its back garden oasis.