Travel to Calitzdorp

pretty back roads below the Swartberg Mountains

Calitzdorp is located in the Little Karoo area of the Western Cape.

Despite being surrounded by some of the country’s most visited places, the Calitzdorp area is blissfully peaceful, with a number of small Karoo farming communities backed by impressive mountains.

If you really want to understand this area, then we recommend following the old concrete road that departs the south side of the village of Calitzdorp and follows the course of the Olifants River towards Oudtshoorn. The road is lined by some very impressive old farmhouses (most now dilapidated) which illustrate how much the area must have prospered from the ostrich feather boom of the 1920s.

However the best drive in this area is the endless dirt track that departs from the north side of the village and winds its way below the Swartberg Mountains, west in the direction of the Cango Caves. The hidden valleys along this route are magical, some also containing these ‘ostrich palace’ farmhouses.

At the end of that road, you can head up the epic Swartberg Pass, an historic dirt road route that heads over the mountains to enter the Great Karoo at the pretty village of Prince Albert.

On top of the pass a small side track leads winds endlessly into the hidden Die Hell Valley, where a lost tribe of white settlers lived for centuries beyond the reach of civilization, until the area was opened up towards the end of the 1900s.

Our favourite place to stay in this Calitzdorp area is the quirky Groenfontein Retreat, which is remotely situated in its own private valley at the foot of the Swartberg and is centred on a pristine ‘pre-packed’ farmhouse which was shipped out from Scotland in the 1880s.

one of our favourite rural retreats