Cederberg / Biedouw valley beauty

17-19 October 2020

We had the privilege to join friends for a long weekend in the beautiful Biedouw valley near Clanwilliam. The Eljo Nature Farm is a real treat if you ever would like to see this remote valley, next to the Cederberg mountains. Eljo is so popular that we could not find a booking for the first evening, which was actually a blessing at the end, since we also got to know De Pakhuys farm where we had a wonderful time.

De Pakhuys has so much to offer. The type of chalets where we stayed are partly hut, partly tented camp, quite luxurious. There are also a beautiful camping area closer to the mountain and waterfall. There are also bigger houses for rent and wooden huts at the camping site. An interesting “hippie” crowd occupied most of the camping site and huts with loud music and activities when we were there. The waterfall is easy to reach from the camping site, but we could not go all the way with our dog Cinzi, but I took a quick peak and photograph… It was a pity we only had one evening here, I would have loved to stay longer, but we had to leave the next morning for our actual destination of the weekend…

Although it was already the second week of October, after a wonderful wildflower season, we could still see some flowers here and there. The best time to see the spectacular show will however be in August and early September.

The area is so rich of interesting history and one of our well-known Afrikaans authors (C. Louis Leipoldt) came from this area and left a wealth of literature and poetry and even local cook books on how to cook from the “veld”. Maybe something more about this later…

We sometimes get so blasé in this beautiful country of ours that we don’t see the beauty and splendor anymore. This weekend helped me a bit to discover new interest in a part of the Western Cape where I haven’t explored much recently. And it helped me to value again what we have. I will never be able to leave South Africa, one will always be able to find a place where you can enjoy our culture, our people and the sense of place.

This series of photo’s below are from Eljo Nature Farm. One of the highlights for me was that it is totally off the grid, except for wifi at the main house… It helped me to disconnect a bit from being online all the time!

We had a lot of time to make up on our way to Eljo farm, so we took the winding gravel road to the little town of Wuppertal. Unfortunately a big part of this beautiful historic town went down in flames a while ago and one can now see how they are slowly starting the rebuild. Lots of people still live in temporary homes which should be very uncomfortable (hot in summer, cold in winter) and it will definitely take quite a while to rebuild this beautiful place…

The scenery on the way to Wuppertal was really breathtaking and we were very glad that we made this trip.

Another series of photo’s from Eljo farm below. We had a lovely braai at Carla and Christoff’s cottage on the last evening, which was a bit more remote and beautiful scenery. Our highlight of the weekend was however the farm dam, it took me far back to our dam at our farm in Villiersdorp and the time spent there during hot summers. The water was great and we went back about 3 times to enjoy this wonderful spot. When can we go back!!??