Since I left Cape Town about two weeks ago I’ve driven through five provinces. Now only Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North West and Limpopo remain. With the green hulk of Amajuba to my left I cross the Drakensberg, and the N11 sets me down softly in the summery lushness of Mpumalanga. Just past Volksrust I pitch my tent at the Mahawane Country Resort. It’s a weekend, but the place is quiet.

My camping neighbours are Weg readers – Diana and Solly Cronjé from Newcastle. Diana works at Absa and Solly at Spoornet. Some people take drugs to escape from reality. Some run the Comrades. Others like to play house music very loudly in their cars. But for people like Diana and Solly it’s this: to sit in their camping chairs in the shade of a tree, watching the sunset playing out on the cloud in front of them, a giant meringue of a thing, billowing in slow motion from white to dirty orange to night-blue.

The next morning Diana and Solly are down at the water’s edge. Diana is reading and Solly is fishing. All is quiet, even the Egyptian geese. The fish aren’t biting, but Solly and the other fishermen don’t seem to care. They’re not fishing for food; they’re fishing for peace.

Tent packed, I take the back roads towards Wakkerstroom, past Vlakpoort and Rooipoort, Schoongezicht and Wydgelegen. It’s midday and another summer storm is heading my way. Lightning bolts snake between earth and cloud, the ruminating cows observing it all with a dull sense of alarm.

It’s Sunday and on a green slope next to the township at Wakkerstroom, members of the Shembe Church are kneeled down in ceremony. From a distance, the scene of white robes and the whitewashed circle of stones within which they worship looks like a mini cricket match frozen in time. They say the Shembe use the vuvuzela in their ceremonies, but I don’t see one as I drive past.

In Dirkiesdorp the rain comes down biblically, the town just managing to cling onto the edge of the main road by the tips of its porches. In Piet Retief I drive through pothole after pothole, red puddles like milky rooibos; and in Ermelo – past equally rain-rutted Iswepe and Sheepmoor – I get lost because the signboards are not very irie, despite the fact that Lucky Dube was born here.

I spend the night with family in Hendrina and leave in the morning with a bag full of tomatoes and rusks. (If you visit a member of my vast extended family and don’t get a gift upon departure, you can call me for compensation.)

I’m in coal country now, the horizon dominated by the cooling towers of power stations. This part of the country always makes me a bit anxious. You can feel the pull of Johannesburg, the traffic gets more hectic and the landscape can be depressing. But without these ugly silhouettes and the constant scraping of coal from the ancient folds of the earth, the beer in Van Wyksvlei won’t get cold.

Gauteng swallows me and a highway deposits me at the doorstep of a friend’s house near the Wanderers. We eat out in the Chinese part of Cyrildene. In the morning, listening to the commentary of South Africa tackling India in the last test in Kolkata on Radio 2000, I aim for the North West.

This is easier said than done. Joburg prevents you from leaving just as easily as it sucks you in. A combination of roadworks, heavy traffic and poor directions causes me to get lost somewhere in Roodepoort. I pull in at a shopping centre to get something to eat.

Finally I reach the Magaliesburg road and drive west, to Derby and Koster along the R509, the city finally off my back. Now, among the mielie fields and silos, Landmark shops and tractor smoke, the North West rises up around me with a smile on its face.
 

“You slice him open, like this,” Vincent du Toit says matter-of-factly, running a bloody finger along the barbel’s gut. “This one’s still alive, they’re very tough. Then you stuff it with coarse salt and you leave it in the bath. The salt draws all the muddy water out. After that you just put it in clean water and it sort of rinses itself out.”

I’m at Barberspan, between Sannieshof and Delareyville. About a week ago, when I was at the Vanderkloof Dam, someone told me that a barbel’s skin is so tough you need pliers to pull it off. Before that, in Van Wyksvlei, Vasie de Kock explained how you should first cut off a barbel’s head and leave it to bleed out overnight. Then you put it in fresh water for a while before rinsing it in vinegar water. (Vasie also told me about an old-timer he knew who liked nothing more than baked terrapin for his birthday.)

Vincent and his wife Lynn are from Vereeniging and are regular visitors to Barberspan. The wind is blowing and the fish aren’t biting. Another storm rolls in, the sun wrestling with the clouds as both sink to the horizon, and by the time I put my short curl of sausage (bought at Lichtenburg’s legendary Uitkyk Butchery) on the gas grill, I have to take shelter under the rear door of the Condor to stay dry.

The next morning my only neighbour in the campsite invites me to his motorhome for coffee. Frans van der Merwe is from Pretoria, where his wife is resting at home, too frail to travel after recent hip troubles. It’s just Frans and his dog Tika, who turns 11 in two days time.

Frans grew up near Barberspan. “Five miles from here,” he tells me, as we dig into my stash of rusks. “My brother and I would sometimes put the horses to the cart at three in the morning to come fish here. Once we had filled a bag, we’d pack up and go home. My mother would get out the big pot, heat lard in it, cook the fish and put it in preserving jars. This way the fish would keep for months.”

Frans’s motorhome used to be a normal panel wagon. He shows me the neat woodwork, the drawers and cupboards. Apparently the alterations were done by a convicted murder who learnt his trade in prison. Just before I leave, Frans shows me a little secret. He brings me his walking cane, with a warthog tusk as a handle. If you unscrew the cane at a special place, it reveals a long, hidden blade.

Video: How to eat a barbel

Klippan, Leeuwpan, Taaiboschpan, Deelpan. Pan country is flat country, and around here you see the silos of the next settlement from 15 km away. I’m driving north now, past signboards that say, “Dis mos mielies!” I drive past Grootfontein, Wonderfontein, Bakerville’s diamond mines and farms with names like Knoffelfontein and Broekmansfontein. At Broekmansfontein the landscape has changed. I stop and look around: the Bushveld. 

In Groot-Marico I pull in at Jouba Koffiehuis, where home-made cakes and meat pies await purchase. Engela Engelbrecht recommends River Still as a place to spend the night, so I follow a gravel road southwards out of town.

Jacques du Plessis welcomes me. It’s clear that the pace of life at River Still is about equal to Lance Armstrong’s heart rate when he’s watching a game of chess. The rustic resort is laid out on the banks of the Groot-Marico River. Jacques is busy digging new foundations for an extension to the main house – he wants to start a meditative retreat. I ask him about mampoer, a speciality around here. I follow him to the kitchen, where we each have a shot of delicious citrus mampoer – his own produce. I buy three bottles on the spot.

It’s hot. After I’ve unpacked I head down to the river for a swim. Soon the kingfisher returns to its perch, used to my presence. It’s midweek and River Still is quiet – weekends are when Gauties come here to revel in the Bushveld’s anti-clock-watching ethos. (If you’re lucky you might spot a 7de Laan star.) Otter-like, I paddle down the deep, almost motionless stretch of water. It’s so clear that you can see a yellowfish every now and then.

Despite the regular influx of visitors, Groot-Marico seems to have retained a roughshod charm. Other weekend refuges, like Clarens in the Free State and Dullstroom in Mpumalanga, have succumbed to the city influence. But the Bushveld isn’t easily tamed. There’s a certain edginess to the Bushveld – it’s a kaross, not an @Home duvet.

The bird sounds I hear from the comfort of my stoep at River Still are also different: the garish racket of a Swainson’s spurfowl, the social cackling of green wood-hoopoes, the endless broken-alarm-clock whir of a crested barbet.

The next morning I stop in town again to visit the information office, run by Santa and Egbert van Bart. I find them on the stoep with their friends, Harriet and Piet “Rympies” Swanepoel. Within seconds, coffee and a plate of koeksisters materialise. Piet finds out that I’ve never heard of Groot-Marico’s legendary “water baboon”. He’s flummoxed; it’s like I’d somehow missed the news about the moon landing. So he tells me about this shadowy figure, allegedly spotted in remote ravines around here. It’s half-man, half-beast, or an ancestral ape-man…

Seven stories later I head further north. I’m aiming for the Dwarsberge, then Dwaalboom, where I plan to spend the night. One of my mother’s old school friends lives near there.

With the Groot-Marico River to my right I eventually run out of tar road. The landscape opens up; cattle appear. Some of the Brahmans mirror the white clouds above. This used to be a piece of Bophuthatswana, and even though there are a number of villages, almost none of them are marked on my map.

Way over in India the fourth day’s play in Kolkata has come to an end. South Africa is hanging on desperately to avoid defeat. I stay tuned to Radio 2000 and the minister of finance, Pravin Gordhan, comes on air to give his budget speech.

Just past Debrak a bus is stuck in the mud. I stop. The driver, Samuel Mosine, tells me he’s been here since early morning. The bus company promised to send a tow-truck, but it hasn’t arrived. The best I can do is to give him and his friend Nicky Khupari an apple each.

Samuel suggests that I call the bus service to complain. I dial the number stencilled on the bus and eventually get through to the right person. I tell him that the road is obstructed and that I can’t get past (a white lie – the Condor can squeeze past). The man from the bus company promises me that the tow-truck is almost there.

Samuel wants to know whom he should contact to complain about the shocking condition of the roads he has to drive every day. I wish Pravin Gordhan were here right now to explain why the money allocated to the upkeep of roads never made it to this muddy stretch outside Debrak.

I cruise on, eventually reaching Dwarsberg, which is nothing more than a police station, petrol pump, shop and a couple of houses. I wind down my window to enquire about the correct turn-off to Dwaalboom.

“Yes, right here, left there,” the woman points, “and watch out for those turflope.” No one in Cape Town will know what a turfloop is. A turfloop is a place where the road crosses a patch of black turf soil – exactly like where the bus got stuck. After heavy rains these sections become car-traps.

Not much further, I meet a young man named Ascension Kheswa, walking in the road. From what I can gather he has spent the day swapping regular light bulbs with energy-efficient ones. I give him a lift to Welverdiend village. What a cool name: Ascension.

Soon I reach my mom’s friend, Fransie Smit. Her husband Jurie offers to take me on a quick tour of their game farm. He tells me that many of the cattle farmers in this part of the Bushveld have switched to game farming.
We’re in his Land Cruiser, elbows out the windows, sunset to the left. The sky is a freshly scraped hearth, the cirrus clouds orange coals sucking oxygen. In the city people show you their homes when you visit for the first time. Farmers do the same, but with their whole property. Here’s the dam, there’s the border fence, look at the wildebeest over there.

Earthed after a good night’s rest and Fransie’s great cooking, I head for Lephalale (Ellisras). I’m driving on an old military tar road, built years ago to provide quick access to the Botswanan border. I was very young the last time I was in this part of the country. We were visiting another of my mom’s old friends, Yolanda, who lived near Rooibokkraal. I recall four things from that holiday: Jacob, Yolanda’s husband, drank his coffee from a 1-litre enamel mug; we saw lion spoor while on a walk on the farm; Jacob gathered wood by driving over dead trees with his bakkie; and a man that we’d asked for directions gesticulated using a long, bloodied knife (he was busy making biltong).

You don’t have to remember every detail of your life; the highlights stand out automatically.

Game farm after game farm after game farm. Inyati Camp, Msigi Safaris and Kassabella Lodge (owned by Kabous and Isabel). When I stop to take a photo somewhere, security company Mapogo A Mathamaga’s yellow tiger logo growls at me from a warning sign. I move on. 

I see warthogs, giraffe, two kinds of vultures, the reassuring silhouettes of rollers and donkeys meditating the living hell out of the midday sun.

The road is white and bright. Up ahead a shadow suddenly moves. What? I look again. It’s a black mamba! Within seconds it has disappeared, gone in the grass, leaving me with nothing but a coldness trickling down my spine.

As I cross the Matlabas River, Harbhajan Singh traps Morné Morkel in front with one that pitched middle and straightened just enough. The Proteas lose by an innings and 57 runs.

In Steenbokpan, three bakkies are parked in front of the Bosveld Pub & Grill. Inside, a tannie is playing a one-arm bandit. The pool table has Blue Bull branding. A stuffed red hartebeest, warthog and impala look on glassily. I order a burger, which arrives with slices of bread instead of a roll, maybe a minor detail this far off the Sasko truck’s route. The tannie wins R242 from the slot machine and I hit the road again.

Since construction started on the Medupi Power Station outside Lephalale, the town has changed dramatically. Entire neighbourhoods have sprung up overnight, like instant puddings, complete with DStv dishes obediently pointing in the same direction.

Every second bakkie has a light on its roof: building contractors and construction workers. There’s a busy, hurried feeling about the town. At the half-finished Lephalale Square shopping centre, customers at the Steers lick soft serves while a cement mixer grinds away next door.

I drive through town, further east, going nowhere in particular but ending up at the Bateleur Tented Safari Lodge. It’s a great place. The next morning I go on a game drive and then the guides take me to a nearby farm, owned by Rudolph Britz, who also breeds dappled dachshunds (cute!). We climb a steep slope to where huge clay pots have been built into the cliffs. Apparently they date from the 1820s – some are still in good shape. They were most likely used for grain storage.

In the small town of Marken I hang out at the Aldrie Shop, so named because it was started by a father, daughter and son – all three. I meet current owners Frieda and Jan Nortjé, and their dogs Stompie, Trixie and MacGyver. Customers come and go. The shop sells everything from bananas and beer to Minora blades and, off course, Lotto tickets. You can also bet on a Premiership soccer match, like the “Newcastle vs Crastal Palace” game.

From Marken to Tolwe (where an old man almost drives into me despite the fact that we’re the only cars on the road) and from Tolwe to Suzie’s Corner, where I hook a right and drive past Simson and the Schiermonikoog turn-off to Alldays, where I park in front of a bar called At se Gat.

At se Gat looks like trouble. Maybe it’s the big corn cricket someone has squashed outside the front door. It’s not owned by anyone called At. It’s the kind of bar where stories – rough, freshly minted stories – can be heard for the price of a double rum.

Maybe Boos is holding court. Or Dirk, the owner. Depending on whose version of the story you choose to believe, Boos arrived at hospital after the birth of his child bearing either a Russian and chips (Dirk’s version) or a Just Juice and Nik Naks (Boos’s version) – “in case the baby was hungry”.

Steyn, who drills for water, doesn’t talk much. His dust- and sun-blasted face hints at a tough day. He’s accident-prone. Someone once drove over him, he’s burst his eardrum three times and he walked away from a microlight crash. At the moment his drill truck is stuck in the mud, with little hope of it being pulled out.

Boos tells us about the time “the women” wanted to bath and Steyn decided to assist them by getting the donkey boiler to burn faster so that they could have hot water. There was, as always, a party going on. Steyn, bare-chested, walked to the donkey to throw what he thought was a cup of paraffin onto the fire, but it turned out to be petrol, so the donkey’s chimney blew skywards and Steyn lost all his eyelashes and chest hair and some skin too.

While Boos tells this story, Steyn just sits there, delicately stirring the ice in his drink using his fingertips, as if he’s trying to take its pulse.

Boos and someone else, maybe it was Lelik, put Steyn in a bath and started making plans to take him to hospital. Started, because first they had to pack a cool box for the long trip ahead.

Once they had packed the cool box they loaded Steyn into the brown Kombi and headed for the hospital, where the doctor who used to be a vet treated him with that foam stuff they put on severe burns. Later, Boos walked down the hall in search of Steyn. He saw someone familiar in a bed, but it wasn’t Steyn, it was another friend called Rottweiler.

“Don’t worry, you’ll meet Rottweiler later,” Boos says. “He’s the kind of guy who can bliksem an entire rugby team, but that day in the hospital he was tjanking because a scorpion had stung him.”

I decide to go to bed before Rottweiler arrives.

South Africans know Dubai and Toronto and Taipei, but how well do we know South Africa?

A great ramble like the one I embarked upon is something every South African with a car and spare cash should tackle at some stage. It’s not the distance that matters; it’s the time.

Three weeks and 5 425 km after I left Cape Town I arrive at Musina. I stop at PostNet and send a few postcards to thank the friends and family with whom I stayed during my long trip.

On such a tour you rely heavily on the goodwill of other people. You also realise that it’s not necessarily the overflowing dams or thundering waterfalls you’ll remember long afterwards, but more likely the gratitude of Magrieta Michael, who had hitch-hiked to Britstown to attend a friend’s funeral. I gave her a ride back to De Aar.

You also relearn the value of driving slowly on a road with many potholes. You learn new degrees of hotness (hot, hotter, Van Wyksvlei). You see amazing place names: Beauty, Voëltjie-se-Werf (“little bird’s yard”), Beskuitfontein. You learn how to fleck a barbel, and how to tell the difference between a British Alpine and a Toggenburg milch goat (a Toggenburg looks friendlier, I think).

The long, solitary hours on the road also make you think about things you haven’t thought of in years. Childhood things, like fixing your own bicycle tyre. Painful things you thought you had long since locked away. Happy times that make you smile for an hour without knowing it.

You see snakes and rainbows and baobabs. The sun moving shadows across the landscape. Rain upon everything. Dust lives in your eyes. You dream of buzzards’ shadows and sun-bleached signboards splattered with microscopic cracks like those on your own skin. And the dotted lines, stretching endlessly into the distance: the road, always the road.

Video: Great Ramble: The final episode

Related articles:
Great Ramble: Part 1
Great Ramble: Part 2