We started the trip at 6:30 in the morning after waking up fairly early due to the fact that some of the windows in the accommodation only had lace curtains but it was a good thing as it allowed us to get on our way.
The Drive from Uniondale to De Rust rather straight forward will loads of dry land and mountians in the distance.
As we came near to De Rust there were fields of beautiful purple flowers and i had to stop to take some pictures. As soon as i got out the car I had a very sneaky suspicion what i was looking at due to the smell in the air. It was loads of onions which were flowering, beautiful purple ball shaped flowers, nice to look at but rather smelly.
When driving through the streets of De Rust we noticed that almost half of De Rust was for sale, don’t know why since it was town of the year 2011 and is very quaint. In De Rust we saw: a purple version of Herrie, a large cockerel (don’t know what the fascination with large scale animals is), many wire, mosaic and artistic crosses on peoples front doors and walls, a boat chained to a tree and a church on the hill.
We then headed into Meiringspoort pass, which is a stunning pass through the numerous drifts with the red roak formations towering above us.
Took so many pictures but none of then actually do it justice, you have to take a drive through this pass at least once in your lifetime.
Out of the pass we drove onto Prince Albert for a drink and found a beautiful old church but struggled to just get a fruit juice. Very quaint looking place. Had a browse around the antique store and used their loo.
From Prince Albert we drove back to the Swartberg pass turn off and on the dirt over the pass, this was stunning.
Got to the bottom of the pass and took the road onto Calitdorp, the road was tar until all of a sudden it was dirt for a long while, this went through another pass with huge red rocks.
Arrived in Calitzdorp at about 11am and went wine and port tasting at Calitzdorp, De Kraans and BoPlaas cellars, we could have continued but then probably would not have made it out for the rest of the journey, it is already an uphill battle to get out of Calitzdorp. We bought a few bottles of wine and port and carried on to Ladismith
In Ladismith there is a beautiful church building that is gutted and is used as the tourism beureu, this was a little sad, can only imagine how beautiful it was on the inside 100 years ago. The town had a number of old buildings to look at but not much else
The drive continues on to Barrydale which too had a beautiful church but couldn’t find the view we wanted so we carried on our way (found a view of Barrydale in the 70’s on the net and wanted to take a picture now)
After Barrydale the road takes you through Tradouws pass and then past Swellendam and the over Sir Lowery’s Pass (the fact that the sea was so near was a bit of a surprise) and down into Somerset West and then into Cape Town. After the pass and 10 hours of driving we were a little tired and over it, the journey was great but we needed a destination and thus gunned it for Cape Town.
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