Time Holds on Longer Here

Do not blink as you take the R62 that runs through the Eastern Cape Langkloof, warns OBIE OBERHOLZER. You might miss the strip of tar to the tranquil village of Haarlem

My quest to pictorially associate South African towns that have Dutch names with their older, bigger and wealthier brother and sister cities in the Netherlands continues with relentless enthusiasm. If you pack up and go, you’ll get.

The back of my Isuzu’s canopy has been painted Springbok green and all I have to add now is the # StrongerTogether bit. Lynn, my wife of almost 50 years, adds that it’s a bit like a happy marriage. I roll my eyes and lift them up to the Tsitsikamma Mountains. Where does my help come from?

I am standing in my front yard in Nature’s Valley looking almost directly north to the South African ‘Haarlem’ in the Langkloof, just over the mountains. Crows are not endemic to the area, so I ask one of the Haidas pecking around on the lawn to fly there to measure the distance. Ha-ha-ha, the prehistoric creature answers, or rather didah-dah’s me.

In a direct line across the mountains it’s only 25 kilometres. If you are not a bird, driving west along the N2 and then over the Prince Alfred Pass to Avontuur and then east along the Langkloof on the R62, it would tick the distance up to around 200 kilometres. Being so in tune with Lynn, I am already thinking what she’s going to say. “What a fascinating country of contrasts.” And pats me knowingly on my head.

After a few hours of driving we spot the village, set back from the R62, cuddled by the same Tsitsikamma Mountains to the south and the Witteberg in the north. The Witteberg hills form a prelude to the taller Kouga Mountains that, in turn, looking north, line the rugged Baviaanskloof.