De Rust Never Sleeps

Your typical helicopter view of De Rust at the back end of the Klein Karoo - a tiny settlement at the foot of the craggy Swartberg range, Prince Albert lying thataway through the Swiss Roll rock lines of Meiringspoort Pass, on the opposite side of town the road leads to Dysselsdorp with its hilltop church and its switchback Via Dolorosa, past a few million stop-gos, a padstal or two and finally deep into Big Bird Country. Oudtshoorn.

There are dragon’s teeth rows of red-stone hills, pea-green fields of onions, sheep and their shepherds, curious clusters of ostriches, the neatly pleated patterns of the Cape Fold Mountains, swathes of lime-green lichen and, lurking deep in the poort, a waterfall where (the old men say) Karoo mermaids frolic when the moon is full. It’s just another magical dorp in the mountains.

Driving into