Wednesday 28 July 2010

The Great Calm Karoo



(The Owl House Garden)




(The Brewery and Two Goats Deli)

Hmm, this is the entry I wanted to write while there, in situ. But no, as reported previously Vodacom thingymajig did not work as promised. So now our visit to Nieu-Bethesda and Helen Martin's (and to be fair Koos Malgas's) Owl House seems like a long time ago... But our road trip was wonderful. The is something magical about the Klein and Groot Karoo. It's seeming desolation, it's stark beauty. It's haunting silences. One full moon night in Nieu-Bethesda, we were walking the streets with Max, when the local donkey cart and driver clip-clopped past. And on a sunny morning Jacques wound up the clock in the clock tower of the old impressive Dutch Reformed Church.
We walked the dusty roads, explored the graveyard and missed our friend, the artist, the late Adriaan van Zyl whose painting of graves are so very very beautiful and so very very sad. And we read books. And drank wine. And were in bed by 8 o'clock ever night, because the nights were cold, and that is the way of the Karoo. The Simple Life.... Where you breathe differently. Deeply.
And we had a memorable afternoon at The Brewery and Two Goats Deli, where Andre brews his own beer, makes his own cheeses and roasts his own coffee. Where the milk served with the coffee is sweet and creamy and delicious and quite unlike any milk I have ever tasted before. His fare was authentic. Perfectly presented, with homemade relishes - his beetroot relish is sublime - freshly baked farm bread. And so we lazily spent the faternoon there, dinking cold beer in the hot sun, and watching Max play in the water of the lei voor. Perfection.

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