Cole Porter could have been thinking about the Northern Cape when he penned the line “don’t fence me in”. Turn off the N12 at Victoria West and follow a route that celebrates the best of what the province has to offer suggests Peter Frost

The town of Victoria West shrunk in the Mercedes- Benz Vito’s rear-view mirror, giving way to an immediate emptiness. To the left, a few merino sheep under a bent Southern Cross windmill blurred into a woolly overcoat. To the right, a fence held back a hurry of tumbleweed. And ahead, the fine grey-black shoelace that is the R63.

In the USA they call these routes blue highways, tarred back roads linking the past with the present. Many of them, just like South Africa’s R63 out of Victoria West, go unused by the majority of people. The perception is that just beyond that tantalisingly decentlooking turn-off, the road deteriorates into a gravel nightmare that will scare the kids and irritate the car’s internal organs. But often in South Africa that’s not the case. During that bad-hair decade, the 1970s, it was a priority to link rural communities with larger towns. The result is a network of solid tar roads.

The R63, from Victoria West to Calvinia, through Loxton, Carnarvon and Williston, is just such a road. Instead of careering down the N1 or the N12 to Cape Town then, turn off onto the R63.

Arabians in Loxton, crowded sky in Carnarvon

The sheep and windmill left behind in Victoria West, the first port of call is Loxton, a town that seems to get smaller as its overweight church gets bigger. If you judge Karoo towns on the Pep Stores scale – how big the store is and how loud the music blares – then Loxton is miniscule: it doesn’t even have one. What it does have is the African-Arabian Wildlife Research Centre, run by husband and wife team Chris and Tilde Stuart. The pair, authors of several field guides on African mammals, base themselves in the tiny town. They also founded the African Carnivore Research Programme. It’s an unlikely place to find science.

It’s safe to say that, in this hidden, empty part of South Africa, air traffic is not usually an issue. That is, unless you time a visit with the Carnarvon Fly-In. For one weekend every winter the tiny town, 64 km from Loxton, hosts a swarm of microlights and small planes that fly in from all over the country. It all happens in winter because the air’s calm then, and it happens in Carnarvon because it’s got a Heathrowsized airstrip.

The town itself is a two Pep Stores kind of place, fairly large, brooded over by an Anglo-Boer War fort on top of Carnarvon Koppie. On Market Plein, next to the old market bell, the 147-year-old Rhenish church sits firm. Well, sort of – as local entrepreneur Henk van den Bergh relates, the cockerel weathervane is skew, thanks to a brawl of hunters who got drunk on the balcony of a nearby hotel and decided to play target practice with the unfortunate fowl. It hasn’t been fixed since and now the cocked cockerel is something of a landmark, along with the rebuilt corbelled house next to the museum and the Blik Bar, with its 4 000- odd beer can collection. Very odd indeed.

Henk’s a character. He runs the Ou Kraal collection of budget guesthouses scattered throughout the town. When he’s not behind the counter at the Ou Kraal café or serving plates of Van Wyksvlei lamb in his, yup, Ou Kraal Kombuis, he keeps busy running a popular see-the-Northern-Cape 4x4 tour, which meanders all round the province.

Carnarvon is one of those onion Karoo dorps; peel back the layers to find the good stuff. Go and look at the abandoned railway station’s mural; find the hidden antique shop in Church Street; ask Henk to take you to the immense but forgotten railway graveyard just outside of town.

Ever east – Williston calling

The 128 km stretch of R63 from Carnarvon to Williston is vintage Karoo – beautifully empty, best driven at sunrise when the whitewashed corbelled houses along the route (there are four of them) glow in the new-day light.

Williston, when it arrives, is quite a surprise: it’s hidden behind a large koppie up from the Sak River and bigger than you’d imagine. But not that big. The Pep Stores, however, thinks it’s downtown Jozi, blasting out Skop FM to an unimpressed street. Increasingly the sound of small-town South Africa.

Apart from the rather bizarre tombstone route (sandstone gravestones styled – beautifully – by the town’s craftspeople) there are two things to recommend Williston. The funky hotel with its ancient phone-by-the-bed system is getting a revamp, care of the recently arrived Grant family and, if it’s your cup of rooibos, the Neerde Gerevormeede Kerk activities hall. Hidden there in this most unlikely of dorps is an important example of modernist design. Among the Victorian frontages and Pep Stores 80s aluminium cladding, it’s remarkable. The irony is that few travellers have a clue of its architectural importance.

Heading for THAT postbox

If Williston is forgotten Karoo, Calvinia is very much remembered. The Hantam Mountain, no tiddly koppie, looms large in the Calvinia rear-view mirror. In its amphitheatre, the Akkerendam Nature Reserve hosts two hiking trails which are great for birding. The dorp, rapidly morphing into a tourist destination of note, has taken up the mantle of gateway to the flowers. Come late August for the wildflower spectacular, and this town pumps.

The high streets – there are two – bustle, the Pep pomp is drowned by yelling traders and even the bottle stores are outnumbered by real shops. You can’t get a table at the Blou Nartjie without booking and forget about trying to get a room at the 151-year-old Hantam House unless you booked in January. Only the allegedly largest postbox in the world remains untouched – literally. It really needs a coat of paint.

I can see the sea!

The road beyond Calvinia and onwards to Nieuwoudtville, Vanrhyns Pass and ultimately the sea, changes its name to the R27, and the area might as well be another country. The wild emptiness of the R63 is replaced by a startling vegetative abundance. As you approach Nieuwoudtville, nine different veld types vie for dominance. In that wildflower window between late August and September, it can seem as if you’ve stepped off the moon into Kirstenbosch. It’s mind-blowing, the Namakwa Karoo, but it almost seems busy, compared to the clean, pure Bo-Karoo.

It’s true, you have to be a certain type to appreciate the Karoo. Like the finer things in life, it’s best appreciated over time, an acquired taste. And once you get its minimalist, expansive appeal, the instantgratification destinations can no longer hold you. You’re completely smitten and that’s when you start to explore the Northern Cape, the best province to go get your fence-free fix of land, land and always more land.