My earliest memory of the Karoo is driving with my parents from Johannesburg to Cape Town through its parched, dusty emptiness. I was six years old and it was not a pretty sight. The Karoo is South Africa's Outback, a vast wilderness of thorn bushes, scrub and rusty windmills that covers most of the Cape Province. The only respite from the heat was stopping in its small towns, conservative Afrikaner "dorps" hundreds of miles apart, where white men in khaki shorts eyed strangers suspiciously from their porches and the signs above the hotel saloon swing doors read "Men Only". Sane people raced through the Karoo in eight hours, ears back and air conditioner on, but my parents would take their time, stopping for days in towns such as Hanover, Colesberg and Oudtshoorn, soaking up the quiet, the space, the creak of the windmills.
It has taken me a while to see what all the fuss was about. Like learning to appreciate fine wine, I've come to love the Karoo. And I am not alone. Foreign visitors might still restrict themselves to the game parks, the Garden Route and the beaches of Cape Town, but in-the-know South Africans are heading to the Karoo like gold rush pioneers to California. Wealthy urbanites are buying up its sprawling sheep farms; artists are settling in its dusty dorps to paint the swirling landscapes, and creative couples from Pretoria to Port Elizabeth, tired of the chaos and stress of city life, are opening up galleries, guests houses, restaurants and wine farms in its hidden valleys. The Karoo is positively hip.
My most recent visit was with one of the artists. My friend Herman Niebuhr produces surreal Karoo landscapes that fetch five-figure sums in the galleries of Johannesburg. For the past five years, he has lived in the sleepy Small Karoo town of De Rust at the foothills of the Swartberg mountains. We met up in Cape Town in late February to plan a drive back along the R62. A former ox-wagon trail built in the 1820s, the R62 is now marketed by canny Karoo folk as a cool alternative to the Garden Route. "It's like Route 66," says Herman, "except with weirder characters."
Some geography is needed. The Karoo has multiple personalities but it can loosely be divided up into the Great and Small Karoo. The Great Karoo stretches deep into the northern Cape; a vast, desolate empty quarter that is not for the uninitiated. The Small Karoo is a sliver of fertile semi-desert nestled roughly between the Swartberg and Outeniqua mountains, 50 miles inland from the coast, and the R62 runs through it.
The gateway town is Barrydale, two hours north-east of Cape Town. We arrived there on a Saturday morning to find it sleeping off a hangover. A few years ago, even my parents would have driven straight past Barrydale; today, though, it has restaurants, galleries and a row of pretty Cape Dutch and Victorian-era guesthouses facing out on to a valley of vineyards and fruit farms. Instead of suspicious Boers eyeing us from their "stoeps", we met Leon and Dennis, a gay couple from Durban, owners of the Tradouw Guest House. "We came here six years ago and never left," said Leon. "Who would live in a city when you can wake up to a view like this?"
I asked whether, as a gay couple, they experienced any prejudice in the town. "At first, there was suspicion but then the locals saw how much business we brought in," he said. "Now there are so many gays in Barrydale, they call it Fairydale!"
The swankiest landmark and best spot for a cocktail was The Barrydale, a plush inn of baroque antiques and velvet drapes run by a gay Afrikaans antiques dealer from Pretoria. However, it burnt down recently and is currently undergoing restoration. Instead, we settle for a glass of R62 Merlot from the local Joubert-Tradauw Estate and sat in Leon's guesthouse garden listening to gossip about local farmers and "a big crowd of lesbian ladies" who recently moved into town.
Barrydale is borderline Karoo, though. Climbing out of its valley, the R62 flattens out to a wide plane of scrub and sand, distant hills mutating between shades of purple and quartz. I had my foot flat on the pedal, staring at this horizon, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a white bungalow with the words "Ronnie's Sex Shop" painted on its side, popped up by the road. "An R62 legend," chuckled Herman. "Come and meet Ronnie." It turned out to be not a brothel but a bar. We entered to find sun-beaten farmer Ronnie Price - long grey hair tied in an unlikely ponytail - dishing out cold beers from behind the counter. "It used to be my farm store," he tells us. "Then some drunk friends painted sex into the title. I was furious. But, of course, people began stopping so I turned it into a bar. Now no one drives past without coming in for a drink!"
The walls were covered with graffiti and business cards, and Ronnie's Sex Shop T-shirts and postcards were on sale behind the bar. Outside, he posed for a shot on a rusty tractor and, a few brandies later, invited us to a party at Warmwaterberg, a hot springs resort a few miles down the road. We spent the night dancing to Boer folk music and soaking in a natural hot-water spring under a sky of Karoo stars.
It is impossible not to be awestruck by the space of the Karoo. The sky grows so big and glassy here that it takes on the curve of the earth; if you shook it, tumbleweed would float across the sky. An affinity for such harsh, rugged land is close to the soul of the Afrikaner but it is not just white Afrikaners who inhabit the Karoo. One certainty while driving through is that on some dead straight road you will pass a black man standing alone with a suitcase; or a family riding by in a donkey cart. Going where? No one asks. Descendants of the original Khoi who inhabited these hot plains, blacks have long been the faceless nomads of the Karoo. And yet, in the new South Africa, they are finding an identity.
We come to Zoar, an old German mission station and black farming town where the most beautiful 1850s Cape Dutch house is now the thriving Aunt Carolina's B&B; and the gospel-singing from the Lutheran Church at the end of the street is in Afrikaans. I'm reminded, too, that South African musician David Kramer recently produced Karoo Kitar Blues, an album of Afrikaans blues sung by ageing black musicians he found in the remote farms and townships of the Karoo. White South Africans are discovering blacks are Afrikaners, too.
East of Zoar, we stopped briefly in Calitzdorp, a fruit-bowl town in a lush valley where water from the Swartberg allows olives, grapes and wheat to grow in abundance. The locals bill it as "the Port Wine Capital of South Africa", and the flashes of green in the barren rocky wilderness reminded me of Andalucia. We motored for another hour, to Oudtshoorn, the biggest town on the R62.
I remember Oudtshoorn from those childhood journeys: hot and depressing. Today it is booming: Baron Van Reede Street bustling with restaurants, craft and coffee shops run by the new pioneers. We lunched at Jemima's, a gourmet Karoo experience where Cecilia and Annette, daughters of a prominent De Rust wine farmer, served up ostrich steaks and lamb cutlets in muscadel wine sauce, and plied us with glasses of Jeripigo, a grape-based aperitif taken with lemon and ice. "Like Pimms but better!" said Cecilia. And we popped into a museum housed in an Ostrich Palace, one of the magnificently ostentatious stone mansions built by millionaire Karoo ostrich farmers during a previous economic renaissance: the great ostrich feather export boom of the 1880s.
The R62 continues to De Rust, 30 miles away but no Small Karoo journey is complete without the majesty of the Swartberg Pass so we veered on to it, the mountain a swirl of vibrant red as the sun set. Built by Thomas Baines using convict labour in the 19th century, the pass is a 20-mile heart-in-mouth miracle of engineering; hairpin bends and cliff edge curves towering over deep valleys of cactus and fynbos. And at the top, the plains of the Great Karoo reveal themselves, stretching endlessly, hauntingly to the horizon. You could turn left here, too, and follow a dirt track for 50 miles all the way to The Hell. Not really hell, rather a remote farming hamlet deep in the valley where a few Boer families lived in virtual isolation for nearly two centuries. You would need a four-wheel drive to get there though and we played safe, meandering down the other side, into the pretty bougainvillaea-splashed town of Prince Albert.
With its wide streets and historic Cape Dutch bungalows, Prince Albert has attracted all the new pioneers. De Bergkant is a classy boutique hotel; the trendy Museum Gallery exhibited work by Herman and other hot young South African artists; and at the Karoo Kombuis, three former air stewards served hearty meals in their own home. But for all its fancy new ways, there was still a rugged, unfussy Karoo timelessness here, and I noticed it best in Alta Rossouw, a magnificent tree trunk of a Boer woman. Back in the 1960s and 1970s (when buying property in this part of South Africa was about as fashionable as feminism), she snapped up dozens of houses on Prince Albert's dusty streets. Now, 40 years on, the boom has arrived, and she sits on a real estate gold mine. Yet she refuses to sell to investors or to charge more than £4 per night at her guesthouses.
"The Karoo is for everyone," she said. "Greeks, Jews, heathens, they can all come. And they need somewhere cheap to stay." She was like one of one of those Karoo windmills: towering, unbowed by the sun.
Where to take the weight off your feet
Barrydale
Tradouw Guest House (+28 572 1434)
Cute, homely property with four en suite rooms, secluded vine-covered garden, restaurant with home cooked meals (fillet steak; Afrikaner poitjie stews) and a cosy bar selling local Joubert-Tradauw wine. £5-£12pp.
Sanbona Wildlife Reserve (+44 349 2400, sanbona.com)
Game lodge and wellness centre in Warmwaterberg. Guests stay in one of six luxury open-plan suites; the reception and dining room is in Tilney Manor, an elegantly restored 1898 Cape Georgian homestead. Just like the Wild West. £160pp.
Warmwaterberg Spa (+28 572 1609, warmwaterbergspa.co.za)
Cheap and cheerful hot springs resort with camping and prefab chalets on slopes of Warmwaterberg. £4-£8pp.
Zoar
Tante Carolina B&B, Amalienstein Farm (+28 561 1000)
Beautiful Cape Dutch home with basic amenities and simple rooms in small mission town. Take coffee and cake in the lush tea garden next door. Approx £10pp but call ahead for prices.
Calitzdorp
Port Wine Guest House (+44 213 3131, portwine.net)
Historic 1830s thatched roof building that can boast five lavish rooms, a beautiful terrace for meals and a large dining room with winter fireplace. Overlooks a vineyard, and a short walk from town centre. Doubles from £25pp.
Oudtshoorn
Oasis Shanti, 3 Church St (+44 279 1163)
Six basic rooms (plus a dormitory for backpackers) in a house owned by Alan Reynolds, craft shop manager and storyteller. Double room £10, dorm £4.
The Hell (Die Hel)
Gamkaskloof (bookings can be made at the owners' office in Prince Albert +23 541 1107 or +23 541 1737)
Self-catering in one of three rustic 170-year-old mud brick farmsteads in the remote valley of The Hell, so-called because a Boer War commando found it hell to get to. The four-room houses have been refurbished by Annetjie Joubert, descendent of the original Boer families who settled in the valley in the 1830s. Braai (barbecue) meat, beers, preserves and breakfasts available at the main house. Also camping. From £7pp B&B.
Prince Albert
De Bergkant Lodge and Cottages (+23 541 1088, Bergkant@iafrica.com)
Magnificent Cape Dutch building with eight suites furnished with Cape antiques. Large swimming pool, garden and al fresco catering make it the most stylish and sought after hotel in Prince Albert. Double rooms from £50pp B&B sharing. Self-catering cottages from £33pp.
Alta Rossouw's Guest Houses (+23 5411 455)
A selection of basic, self catering guest houses from £4pp.
De Rust
Oulap Country House (+44 241 2250 oulap@mweb.co.za)
Beautiful stone farmhouse on a hilltop overlooking a desert valley near De Rust, and owned by Jans Rautenbach, a revered 1970s Afrikaner filmmaker. Fine home-cooked Boer meals, great company and superb views from the swimming pool. Half-board £60pp.
Way to go
Getting there: KLM (08705 074074, klm.com) flies Heathrow-Johannesburg from £570 return inc taxes. A 12-night South African Cape fly-drive with Sunvil Africa (020-8232 9777, sunvil.co.uk) starts from £1,345pp.
Further information: Wine farms: Joubert-Tradauw Estate, Vleiplaas, Barrydale (+28 572 1619); Boplaas Wine Cellars, Calitzdorp (+44 213 3216); Doornkraal Estate, De Rust (+44 251 6715). Bars: Ronnie's Sex Shop, On R62, 20 miles outside Barrydale (+28 572 1153). Restaurants: Die Dorpshuis, 4 Van Riebeeck St, Calitzdorp (+44 213 3453). Jemima's, 94 Baron Van Reede Street, Oudtshoorn (+44 272 0808). Karoo Kombuis, 18 Deurdrift Street, Prince Albert (+23 541 1110). Blue Fig, 61 Church Street, Prince Albert (+23 541 1900).
South Africa Tourism (satour.co.uk).
Country code: 00 27.
Flight time London-Johannesburg: 10hrs, 50mins.
Time difference: + 2hrs.
£1 = 11.13 rands.
