I ♥ Colesberg Because ...

I ♥ Colesberg

Hi, I’m Jurie from Toverberg Guest Houses and Carl Gronum from Traveller’s Joy Guest House  in Colesberg.

Colesberg IS BEST KNOWN FOR being a con­veni­ent stop­over between the interior and the coast. Here the N1 and the N9 meet.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT the wrought iron lamp at the corner of Paul Kruger and Ventershoek Streets – erec­ted in com­mem­or­a­tion of Queen Vistoria’s 60^th Jubilee.
THE BEST sun­set PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN DOWN the road passing the golf course.

OTHER HAPPY SNAPS AT a num­ber of 19^th cen­tury build­ings and the Colesberg Sloot. Continued

A new field guide joins the Tswalu Team

The latest addi­tion to the team of field guides at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve is Cameron Pearce, an exper­i­enced ranger and man­ager who joins Tswalu with nearly five years’ exper­i­ence at three excep­tional South African game reserves, namely Kapama Private Game Reserve, Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve and Lion Sands Private Game Reserve ... Continued

Tswalu Kalahari introduces the unique Truffle Safari

Truffle Safaris

Tswalu Kalahari is offer­ing an excit­ing and innov­at­ive pack­age for food­ies and adven­ture lov­ers who would like to search for the elu­sive desert gold – the Kalahari Truffle (formerly Terfezia pfeilii, now known as Kalaharituber pfeilii).

Called !nabas by the San, these truffles are dis­tantly related to French truffles but are not as aro­matic and have a smooth brown skin. Like the French truffle, which is always found near the roots of oaks, the Kalahari truffle has a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship with a plant — the desert melon. Continued

Tswalu named one of the world’s most romantic hotels by Travel + Leisure magazine 2011

Tswalu Kalahari, South Africa’s largest privately owned game reserve, has been voted one of the World’s 50 Most Romantic Hotels by Travel + Leisure magazine. According to Travel + Leisure, one of the most pres­ti­gi­ous and highly regarded travel magazines in the world, “.. there are as many ways to define romance as there are humans, but this list of the world’s most romantic hotels has some­thing for (almost) every­one.” Continued

New manager for renovated Tswalu Kalahari Spa

Corli Schoeman

Corli Schoeman has been appoin­ted man­ager of the newly ren­ov­ated Tswalu Kalahari Spa. Corli comes to Tswalu from the award-winning Pezula Spa & Gym, Knysna, where, as Spa Manager, she headed a team of 25. Previously she man­aged the Wellness Centre at Marlin Lodge, Mozambique where she intro­duced a col­lec­tion of nat­ural, island inspired products and treatments.

“With her inter­na­tional exper­i­ence and extens­ive train­ing Corli will provide an out­stand­ing spa exper­i­ence to guests, indi­vidu­al­ised to exceed expect­a­tions,” says Tswalu MD, Russel Binks. “I’m pleased that she has joined us at the same time as we have com­pleted our out­door treat­ment area and indi­gen­ous spa garden to expand the spa and offer guests another dimen­sion to the exper­i­ence.” Continued

Tswalu guides excel

The team of five guides at Tswalu Kalahari Private Game Reserve have writ­ten and passed their FGASA Level 3 exams, says Managing Director Russel Binks. This means that the guides are qual­i­fied to “point out and explain in terms of sci­entific the­ory and cul­tural belief, the fea­tures of the nat­ural envir­on­ment in which s/he is oper­at­ing, and put it into broader eco­lo­gical context”.

According to The Field Guides Association of Southern Africa (FGASA), which provides edu­ca­tional oppor­tun­it­ies to pro­mote the con­ser­va­tion and rehab­il­it­a­tion of the cul­tural and nat­ural her­it­age of Southern Africa, the know­ledge and insight expec­ted at Level 3 is unlikely to be obtained without at least two years of act­ive guid­ing in the field.  “A gen­eral dis­tinc­tion between the com­pet­ence at this level as opposed to lower levels is the abil­ity to explain phe­nom­ena by means of valid and well-motivated sci­entific the­or­ies and the con­com­it­ant use of appro­pri­ate sci­entific ter­min­o­logy.” Continued

Where have all the flowers gone? Flowers out of season in Nieuwoudtville

Nieuwoudtville Bulbs

Sanna and a few of her co-workers are sit­ting in the shade of a large ware­house that, when it is peak pro­duc­tion time, is prob­ably filled with trays of bulbs. They're all in royal blue over­alls and begin­ning to think about pack­ing up to go home when we show up. They appear to toss a coin for who gets to show us around, not lit­er­ally of course, but there is a subtle con­fer­ence dur­ing which Sanna stands slowly, and smil­ingly tells us she will take us through the nursery.

Nieuwoudtville is fam­ous for its bulbs. But when the bulbs aren't in bloom and you're vis­it­ing out of flower sea­son, where do you go to find them? We found ourselves in this very pre­dic­a­ment and, whilst there is a lot other than bulbs to enter­tain you, there are still a couple of places you can visit that will reveal flowers if you know where to look. Continued

Louriesfontein and Calvinia — sommer net passing through

Loeriesfontein Windmills

'Just what is so import­ant that it war­rants a drive through to Louriesfontein?' my other half com­ments dubi­ously whilst thumb­ing through his recent acquis­i­tion — a book brim­ming over with the plant types we can hope to see around Nieuwoudtville – mil­lions of them. My wind­mills can­not com­pete, or can they?

'A wind­mill museum', I inform him, with as much 'ta da' as I can muster. I've seen pho­to­graphs of the array of eccent­ric­ally stacked wind­mills in the yard of a church in Louriesfontein, and I want to go – think of the photo moments. Besides which, it isn't that far from our accom­mod­a­tion. We tumble into the car and set off in a north east­erly dir­ec­tion for roughly 60 km ... Continued

A farm in Nieuwoudtville — quiver trees, remoteness and skies like never before ...

Brandkop, Nieuwoudtville

Where the Hantam Karoo meets Cape fyn­bos is a little ham­let of a vil­lage called Nieuwoudtville. From mid-July until September the town annu­ally hums as it plays host to the flower sea­son — the time of year when bulbs deliver the goods and blos­som forth, pro­du­cing some of the most gor­geous flowers in the country.

We make it there just after the flower sea­son. Despite this there is much to enjoy. We head out of town to stay on a farm just bey­ond the water­fall, en route to Loeriesfontein. It is windy, over­cast and cold when we arrive, des­pite my expect­a­tions that the Northern Cape will be hot this time of year. Any sur­viv­ing flowers have stub­bornly refused to open, given the weather, and photo moments will have to wait for the sky to co-operate. Continued

Nieuwoudtville — the town famous for its bulbs reveals itself

Nieuwoudtville

The road to Nieuwoudtville is filled with unex­pec­ted sur­prises. For one, it rests on a plat­eau – sort of – called the Bokkeveld Plateau. You leave Vanrhynsdorp via the R27, which, after head­ing due north in a very straight line through the type of veget­a­tion I would have described as the true Karoo (it is the Hantam Karoo), takes one up Vanrhyns Pass.

Take the pass and its myriad hair pin bends faster than 70 kilo­metres an hour at your peril. We were lucky that there was no mist or rain when we ascen­ded, but on days when there is little vis­ib­il­ity, I can ima­gine that Vanrhyns could be pretty hairy. Particularly on the down hill, behind a truck – there are peri­odic sign­posts depict­ing a car upen­ded on the rear end of a truck, just so that you don't get any clever ideas about send­ing it round the corners ... Continued

Bono and Ali visit Tswalu Kalahari Private Game Reserve

Tswalu Kalahari

Lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, Bono and his wife Ali Hewson, were guests of Tswalu Kalahari, South Africa’s largest privately owned game reserve, earlier this year when they were pho­to­graphed by Annie Liebovitz, the world’s most cel­eb­rated por­trait pho­to­grapher, for the Louis Vuitton Core Values Campaign, which over the years has fea­tured vari­ous per­son­al­it­ies with “extraordin­ary stature”.

It is the first advert­ising cam­paign that the couple has fea­tured in and appears in the October 2010 issues of inter­na­tional titles.

Louis Vuitton has estab­lished itself as one of the world’s lead­ing fash­ion houses ... Continued

Kuier a while at the Kalahari Kuierfees

Kalahari Kuierfees

September seems to be a bumper month for the Northern Cape with the Gariep Kunstefees , NWCA NDFT Daisy Marathon (already taken place at the begin­ning of the month), St. Augustine's Cultural Festival (24 September), Apollo Film Festival (25 September) and the Kalahari Kuierfees from 23–25 September 2010.

I had no idea what the Kalahari Kuierfees was all about, so I thought I find out a bit more and let you all know so if you’re in the area you can go and take part in some of the fun.  This is a three day event that takes place in Upington and last year attrac­ted more than 30 000 fest­ival goers ... Continued

The Rooi Granaat in Loxton

Die Rooi Granaat

My brother and I recently spent a Sunday night in the tiny Karoo town of Loxton.  I'd done a bit of read­ing and vaguely remembered that noth­ing was open from Saturday lunch time to Monday morn­ing (thank good­ness we'd stopped in Senekal for lamb chops) but how right I was; abso­lutely noth­ing was open for those 18 hours — it was so quiet that it was actu­ally eerie.

Apart from the beau­ti­ful church there doesn’t appear to be much in this pretty, well kept, neat town (our walk around didn’t present us with a hive of activ­ity!) but there is a gor­geous cof­fee shop called The Rooi Granaat.  I peeked through the win­dow and declared to Gareth that we would be par­tak­ing of a cof­fee here on Monday morn­ing. Continued

The Horse and Mill in Colesberg

The Horse & Mill

The Horse and Mill in Colesberg is a per­fect local pub and prob­ably one of the only pubs in the town. Dinner was served at our accom­mod­a­tion in Colesberg (the fab­ulous Kuilfontein Stable Cottages) on a recent stop in Colesberg, but my brother has driven the Cape Town to Johannesburg route numer­ous times and when doing so has overnighted in Colesberg and is now famil­iar with The Horse and Mill and wanted to intro­duce me to it ...

There is a seper­ate bar and res­taur­ant area (I pre­sume to con­form to smoking laws) and we opted to sit in the bar area where there was a bit more of a coun­try pub vibe.  There were approx­im­ately six tables in the bar area, a few of them under­neath a fairly large mill, flags of vari­ous coun­tries hang from the ceil­ing, the walls are covered in graf­fiti Continued