East, west, local is best

How do you fall in love with South Africa again? One way is to travel on dirt roads from Lambert’s Bay to Morgan Bay and back! Come, rediscover your homeland.

- PIERRE STEYN

The desire to travel – to discover new places and meet new people who live different lives to yours – doesn’t get extinguished by a pandemic. Quite the opposite. That urge to explore becomes stronger.

But what do you do when the overseas holiday you’ve been saving for gets postponed while the world waits for alpha, beta and delta to run their course? You rediscover your own country. That’s exactly what many South Africans have done on some epic journeys during 2020 and 2021.

Each journey needs to start somewhere. Ours starts in Lambert’s Bay. We’re on a road trip with tour company, Live the Journey. The owner, Jurgens Schoeman, decided he wanted to fill a bottle with cold Atlantic water here in Lambert’s Bay and empty it into the Indian Ocean at Morgan Bay, 2000km east. In between are back roads, mountain passes and characterful towns like Victoria West, Philippolis and Bethulie, ready to welcome us with open arms…

The best in the west

My wife Ronel and I meet up with the rest of the touring party for supper at Bosduifklip Restaurant, about 4km outside Lambert’s. To feast at the table of Kobus and Aletta Engelbrecht, surrounded by wind-sculpted rocks, is a world-class experience. The restaurant is on the farm Albina, which has been in Kobus’s family for four generations. Aletta and Kobus have been making food together for more than 30 years: lamb on the spit, potatoes from the Sandveld, tripe potjie, freshly baked bread, seafood…

“My grandmother gave Bosduifklip its name because there used to be a big colony of speckled pigeons that nested in the cliffs,” Kobus tells us between the different courses. “My father built this kraal in 1941 – the one we’re eating in.”