The Karoo

From a review of On The Back Roads: Encounters With People And Places by Dana Snyman:

This book rekindles that recurring idea: to give up the madness and the rat race, rummage for the old, "worn Shell road map", fill 'er up and just drive. Dana Snyman seems to be really living his life, travelling the small, unknown roads through South Africa, and telling the stories of simple, salt-of-the-Earth folk.

Snyman is boyishly proud of his "Epol-brown" 1973 Regal Valiant. He writes about his car like the Lone Ranger might talk about Silver. And he associates Valiants, in particular, with the old days in South Africa, so his road trip is also a nostalgic meandering through the memories of his childhood.

Going Nowhere Slowly fans will love Snyman's storytelling. The difference is that Snyman travels on his own so he doesn't take his own company along - he chats up strangers at bars, asks pedestrians and "karretjies-mense" for directions and has tea with people he's only just met. It takes a certain amount of confidence to travel this way but Snyman seems to have an unassuming way about him which people warm to.

On the Back Roads reveals parts of South Africa that are unfamiliar in name but familiar in spirit, sometimes quaint and always intriguing.

He unearths a sense of history and old myths about stock thieves; he hunts for graves, talks about ghost hitchhikers as if they were old friends and jogs the memories of retired train drivers.

He sets out to find the Moordenaars Karoo - "one of the few places in South Africa that doesn't yet have any Eskom power" - and the heart of the Bushveld. Snyman pulls over at a place that sells "17 different kinds of game biltong" but even this is only considered "amateur Bushveld".

Glossary of South Africanisms:

"Epol-brown" - I haven't got a clue what it means. I Googled it and this article turned up as the only reference.

"Regal Valiant" was a Chrysler car made in South Africa between 1960 and 1978 when Jesse Jackson got the factory closed down and threw thousands out of work.

"Karretjies-mense" means Donkey Cart People who are semi-nomadic "Coloureds" (half white/half black people) who travel around South Africa doing farm labor.

"Moordenaars Karoo" - the Karoo is a large semi-desert in South Africa. Moordenaar means murderer. The Moordenaars Karoo is the most remote part of the Karoo. It used to be completely isolated but is now becoming well known for it's game hunting.

"Eskom" is the largest electric power supplier in South Africa.

"Bushveld" is the equivalent of the Australian term "the outback" or the American term "the boondocks."

"Biltong" is the South African version of jerky but it's a hundred times better. It is moist and juicy instead of dried out. It's often made from game such as springbok (and sometimes ostrich) but is usually beef.

I could post hundred of pics of the Karoo but here are just a few. Some of them are huge - click to enjoy. When I think of the Karoo, I think of the aloes as big as trees, the wildflowers that suddenly explode into blossom after a thunderstorm, the ubiquitous windmills struggling to draw water from the parched land, the small dusty towns lost in the immense distances and, yes, the snow-covered mountains.