W
HEN I was a wee lass, not much taller than a gnome, I remember a family holiday to the vaporous mountains of the Eastern Cape. I have excellent memories of smelly forests, icy streams and flat Coke. My parents probably recall it even more vividly: all three of their offspring had a stomach bug and were sick, sick, sick.
We stayed in Hogsback and at the more isolated Katberg Hotel, a mountain range or two away. There are snaps in the family album of the latter: mountain peaks, us lot on a donkey cart and a pony with a barrel belly, the youngest daughter slitty-eyed and inexplicably clutching a quart of Castle. The colours are soft and kind; the forests look endless. Good times.
In one of these otherworldly images, the Katberg Hotel peeks from a coat of foliage. It was first a sanatorium (“SA’s premier pleasure place”), then a hotel. I remember little more than log fires and corridors and my sister’s thumb being slammed in a door, but the name has always stuck.
In reality it’s probably linked to the Kat River, which flows through the Katberg Pass and was supposedly home to wild cats back in the 1800s. I came to associate it with a children’s story about a dragon called Katla, and mysterious felines, and forests. And my grandmother.
She too was a Katberg enthusiast, back when it was the Katberg Sanatorium. My mom has a certificate dating back to the 1930s, awarded to Miss Van den Heever, Katberg’s “Danish Princess of Lover’s Lane” for being “Katberg’s most graceful, accomplished & wonderful dancer”.
It lauds her for mountain climbing, and for “walking in Fairy Park by moonlight” and being the “most bright sparkling charming & wonderful lass”. Safe to say, my gran made an impression.
So when I recently found myself in Hogsback, it felt like the time had come for a little revisiting. The Katberg Hotel, I was told, was closed for now, but there were selfcatering