This is the second part in Laura Pedrick’s four-part photo journey through South Africa. Part 3 will be live tomorrow.
We depart early the next morning and set out for Clarens, in the Free State province, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Johannesburg. We drive south on the N1, the main thruway that runs from north country all the way to Cape Town. It’s smooth, wide-open and flat, so if you’re brave enough to try left-side driving, this is a good road to take a rental. And because there isn’t a train or an airport, it’s quite frankly your only reasonable option to get to Clarens.
A bit remote, Clarens is known for its breathtaking, big-sky, mountainous landscape. Part of the larger Drakensberg range, it’s an escarpment that runs along the international border between South Africa and Lesotho. There are countless hiking and mountain bike trails but perhaps the best way to take in the beauty of the colorful sand and mudstone cliffs is with a long horseback ride.
We show up late in the day at Bokpoort Cowboy Ranch, a fifth-generation-owned, 1,500-acre farm that specializes in horseback guided tours through the Clarens Valley. Still abuzz about a successful recapture and rescue of a stolen stallion and pregnant mare the day before, the owner and his ranchhands help saddle up our horses and we begin a two-hour rigorous ride on steep rocky trails and wide-open plains.
As the sun lowers on the horizon, each turned corner offers an even more breathtaking view of the dramatic Red Mountains. In addition to the excitement of spotting a few wildebeasts and a zebra along the way, listening to our guides recall the details of that recent rescue—bandits, dangerous night-ride border crossings into nearby Lesotho and even exchanged gunfire—pumps up the cowboy allure of our adventure .
Bokpoort is open year-round. They offer cabin accommodations and other activities like clay pigeon shooting, archery and customized game hunts on horseback. Cost of two-hour ride: R400 ($28 US).
Just few miles from the ranch is the entrance to Golden Gate Highland Park, a 130-square-mile grassland park, the only protected grassland habitat in the country. Its most striking features are its gold and orange sand and mudstone mountains and cliffs, formations that date back to the Triassic period.
Within the park is the Basotho Cultural Village, an interactive experience that tells the story of the Basotho people, the first inhabitants of the region.
Reenactors demonstrate the lifestyle and rituals of a typical village and how they have changed from the sixteenth century to the present. The entertaining and colorful 45-minute tour costs about $6 per person.
Before heading back to the town of Clarens we stop at various lookout points for vertigo-inducing selfies and then picnic in a picturesque spot that is inhabited by a colony of opportunistic lunch-snatching baboons. Our first direct encounter with South Africa’s wildlife.
The artsy little town of Clarens looks a bit like an old western movie set with the picturesque Maluti Mountains in the background.
Surrounding an open-space park are many charming boutiques, shops offering local arts and crafts, galleries, cafés, and a brewery.
As far as accommodations go, there are many cabins and guesthouses in and around Clarens as well as the Protea Hotel Clarens, a Marriott hotel, where we enjoyed a buffet dinner on our last evening in this charming, out-of-the-way place.
Next stop? Cape Town!
In part 3, tomorrow: Cape Town.
For more on travel to South Africa, visit southafrica.net.
