10 Things The Karoo Taught Us

For the making of the new TV series Weg Agterpaaie Karoo, journalists Erns Grundling and Toast Coetzer explored more than 5 800 km of back roads in the South African hinterland – a journey that took six weeks. Here are 10 lessons they learnt.

- Erns Grundling & Toast Coetzer

1 The prickly pear must be celebrated

The humble prickly pear is one of the Karoo’s lesser-known delights. In Laingsburg we bought prickly pear jam and in Gamkaskloof we were taught how to pick prickly pears and then how to preserve them.

Picking them is no easy feat because they’re covered in microscopic thorns. Thankfully we had a pro to help. Tannie Annetjie Joubert, who was born in the kloof and has lived there for most of her life, showed us how to rub farm butter over our hands and then scrape out the thorns using a knife. (Read an interview with Tannie Annetjie on p 60.)

Often, when we arrived at a new guesthouse, a bowl of fridge-chilled, peeled prickly pears would be waiting. We had prickly pears for breakfast, for dessert and even on a sosatie stick at a braai.

Long live the prickly pear!

2 All sheep are not created equal

Karoo sheep have an edge. They eat a special blend of six very specific bossies, which gives the meat from a Karoo-raised sheep a distinctive flavour, making it the undisputed number one choice for many a South African braai.

The six species of bossie have even been officially recognised: silwerkaroo (Plinthus karrooicus), skaapbossie (Pentzia spinescens), kapokbossie (Eriocephalus ericoides), rivierganna (Salsola glabrescens), ankerkaroo (Pentzia incana) and perdebos (Pteronia glauca/Rosenia humilis). An organisation called Karoo Meat of Origin now endeavours to make sure that when you buy something labelled “Karoo lamb”, it really is from the Karoo and it ate the right sorts of bossies during its wild and free life out there in the veld.

We ate so much lamb and mutton during our Karoo travels we eventually started bleating. We had chops on the braai, leg of lamb, ribs, burger patties and even sheep on the spit one glorious night near Springfontein.