So there you have it: the ‘Secret Location That Revealed The Truth About Tourism In South Africa’ (This tourism Week 11 September 2008)  was none other than the lovely village of Prince Albert – with the surrounding farmlands and the indescribably beautiful Swartberg Nature Reserve playing starring roles, of course.

Prince Albert is so peaceful that I found myself using ear-plugs one night because the gentle gurgling of the fridge in the room next door sounded like the roar of a torrent over a million hollow pebbles (which is why I just loved the estate agent’s ad in the Prince Albert Friend:  “For Sale. Cute two bedroom cottage in a quiet part of town”).

You reckon it was a big deal when they closed down Broadway for the start of the Land Rover G4 Challenge  in 2003? (That’s Broadway, New York). Well, we closed down Kerk Straat in Prince Albert in 2008.

Four times.

And that gets to the crux of what I want to say about the town and its people. They’ve bought into a simple and effective kind of a 3-H credo - Hospitality, Humanity, Helpfulness – that struck me as the epitome of great tourism.

Close off our main road every third night so that you can have a running race for each of your four rotations? Done. No problem. Anything else?

… It went like that all the way. Nothing was a chore, nothing was too much trouble.

Everyone from Mayor Gaye van Hasselt to her councilors and their staff, from the table waiters in the coffee shops and restaurants to the cashiers at the Spar and the pump jockeys at the BP National Garage: they all lived and breathed the 3-Hs totally naturally.

And for those of you who’ve asked – and even if you haven’t - here are some of the people/places/things that impressed me most:

Gay’s Guernsey Dairy - bringing home a bottle of their English Toffee Drinking Yoghurt made me a hero with my family;

Prince Albert Tourism – if they lack anything in funds they make up for it in passion. Real passion – not ad-speak- corporate-babble passion. I bought a handful of their guides to the architecture of the area and some on the history of its historic passes; and I also enjoyed their collection of aloes and learned the names of quite a few new species – new to me, at least - and quickly forgot them, too. Thank goodness for digital photography.

Weltevrede Fig Farm - about 30 km outside of town (turn right onto the dirt road at the old cemetery). Man, the Koorts family really understand hospitality. The Land Rover G4 Challenge grew made Weltevrede our home for the duration: we rented two of the farm’s self-catering houses and spread a dozen tents around for additional accommodation. And you can imagine what it was like for us at the end of the day when we came in from the cold / heat / dust of the Karoo (and believe me, we got cold, hot and dusty) to find loaves and loaves of steaming farm bread waiting for us…

Now THAT’S my kind of self-catering…

Collins House - a 5-room guest house on Church Street. And Tessa Collins? you’re the meringue queen – no, the meringue empress - of the whole world. I have never tasted anything like those fluffy, creamy, crunchy, melty treats (and I fancied the cake you brought us that one evening, too. And the fact that you drove a 60 km round-trip just to do that? Now that was both generous AND impressive).

The Swartberg Hotel. The scary thing is I’m almost one of this hotel’s resident ghosts - I started my career in tourism as a driver guide more than 25 years ago, and the company always put me on the George–Oudtshoorn–Swartberg-Pass–lunch-at-the-Swartberg-on-to-Meiringspoort–then-Oudtshoorn-and–home route.

This time round, we didn’t actually stay at the Swartberg Hotel, but we did make it a kind of an informal Land Rover G4 Challenge base camp whenever we hit town. And yes, it does have 3G. And – vital, this - good coffee and an excellent apple cake…

Somerso Guest Farm - which is actually in town. We set up an office in one of its self-catering cottages (Somerso Klein) and used its garage as a store room. I stayed there when I needed to be in town to produce and mail my media releases - and on one occasion manager Dinah van der Walt managed to wash, dry and return my laundry in less than an hour. I’ve never had such fast service. Not even in any 5-star hotel.

Swartberg Nature Reserve – 180,000 hectares of heaven. And manager Tony Marshall did everything he could to make the Land Rover G4 Challenge a success because, he said, events organised within Land Rover’s ‘Tread Lightly’ philosophy made the Reserve more accessible while at the same time minimising the impact of visitors on the environment.

And don’t forget that members of the Challenge crew logged about 5 sightings of aardvark and 7 sightings of aardwolf while we were there (I didn’t crack the nod – so I’ll be going back…).

TWO WEEKS WASN’T ENOUGH
Each of the competitors in the Regional Selections of the Land Rover G4 Challenge got to stay in the Swartberg for just two nights – but we, the lucky, lucky crew, stayed there for two whole weeks. And we had a day off, too - and yet I still didn’t get to explore everything Prince Albert has to offer.

I still want to learn about the stars on an Astro Tour, I want to see the paintings in Bushman Valley, meet Dr. Judy Maquire and take one of her Fossil Tours, join Ailsa Tudhope for a Ghost Tour, enjoy the theatre at the Jans Rautenbach Schouwberg, visit the art galleries and walk again besides the leiwater at the top end of town.

I need to spend time on an olive farm and visit Gamkaskloof (and maybe even hike there from Weltevrede, which lies in a kloof called Die Gang – The Passageway – which once provided the Gamkasklowers their only access to the outside world). And I need to go back to Koggelmander for another sublime vegetarian dinner.

But above all, I need to spend more time in the Karoo. Its peace and grace are, without a doubt, South Africa’s most unique, most unexplored – and greatest – tourism attractions.
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