Cango Caves and Swartberg 230km

CANGO WILDLIFE RANCH

Originally established as the first crocodile show farm in South Africa, the Cango Wildlife Ranch is also famous as a breeding centre for cheetah. Visitors can view lion, cheetah, leopard and jaguar from the Cat Walk, an elevated walkway that leads through enclosures resembling the animals’ natural habitats.

The reptile park has a variety of local and exotic snakes, while the crocodile breeding centre has over 400 crocodile and a large population of American alligator. Regular guided tours are conducted to give visitors a better understanding of these much-maligned reptiles.

Among the unusual animals here are emu (the Australian relative to the ostrich), capybara (the largest rodent in the world), pygmy hippo, wild dog and racoon. Visitors can take a trip around the ranch aboard a mini-train, and there is a mini-farmyard and play park for children.

SCHOEMANSPOORT

This is an 18-km-long defile carved by the Grobbelaars River through the foothills of the Swartberg, links the Cango Valley with the fertile Olifants River valley. The road initially makes its way past smallholdings with ostriches, lucerne fields and tobacco-drying sheds, and then meanders through the scenic poort. A pleasant detour is a drive to the Rus-en-Vrede Waterfall, which cascades 61 m into a pool hidden in a lush forested kloof.

CANGO CAVES

The magnificent caves in the southern foothills of the Swartberg range were formed over millions of years by rainwater seeping through fissures in the limestone. The water gradually dissolved the limestone, forming an extensive network of subterranean caverns and tunnels. When the acidic oxygen in the rainwater comes into contact with the calcium carbonate in the limestone, a crystalline solution is formed, which hardens and eventually accumulates as stalagmites, stalactites and flowstones.

From the entrance, a flight of stairs descends to Van Zyl’s Hall, an enormous cavern that is 107 m long, 54 m at its widest and up to 17 m in height. Other well-known formations include the 10-m-high Cleopatra’s Needle – with an estimated age of 150 000 years – the Organ Pipes, the Ballerina and the Frozen Waterfall. Visitors can choose from a 30-minute scenic tour, 60-minute standard tour or 90-minute adventure tour, all of which are conducted at regular intervals daily. The adventure tour snakes along narrow passages and tunnels with appropriate names like Lumbago Walk, Devil’s Chimney and the Letter Box.

SWARTBERG

Rising to a height of some 2 326 m, the Swartberg range stretches for 200 km from near Matjiesfontein in the west to Willowmore in the east, where it merges with the Baviaanskloof Mountains. Its western outlier, the Klein Swartberg, is separated from the Groot Swartberg by the Seven Weeks Poort. Among the outstanding features of the range are the spectacularly twisted and contorted greyish-white and reddish-brown sandstone strata, formed some 150 million years ago when the Cape Folded Mountains were pushed up by immense forces in the earth’s crust.

SWARTBERG PASS

Of the numerous passes built by Thomas Bain, the Swartberg Pass is widely regarded as one of his masterpieces. The steep gradients provided the brilliant road engineer with a formidable challenge; after carrying out a survey in 1879, Bain wrote to the Chief Inspector of Public Works that he had to try four different lines before he succeeded in finding the correct one. Work started on the Prince Albert side of the mountains in 1881, but construction ground to a halt just over a year later when road-builder John Tassie was declared insolvent. Construction of the pass resumed in November 1883, when Bain took over the work.

Using between 200 and 240 convict labourers, Bain built sweeping zigzag curves and dry-packed stone retaining walls to support the road where the slopes were too steep to excavate. The pass, the last to be built by Bain, was completed in 1886 at a cost of £14 500, excluding the cost of the convict labour. Some 19 signposts indicating places of historic interest have been erected along the route, among these the ruins of the Blikstasie (Old Jail) where the convicts slept at night and the site of the Old Toll House, which came into service on 5 May 1888.

PRINCE ALBERT

Lying on the northern foothills of the Swartberg range, Prince Albert is a picturesque farming village with an old-world charm. It is renowned for its variety of well-preserved architectural styles, and for its ‘Prince Albert gables’, which date from 1840–60. This unique gable features the outlines of the ‘holbol’ gable with a narrow pediment, while horizontal mouldings connect the outlines of the gables. Other building styles include Karoo houses, with their symmetrical façades and flat roofs, as well as Victorian and Georgian-style buildings.