6:30am. The bus stop in Swellendam. It’s far too early after a broken night’s travel-sleep but it’s light and the day is fresh. Two little brown birds greet us, hop-hopping along the edge of the N2. Passengers get off and walk around. I stay in my warm, comfortable seat and enjoy the morning world through my window. The clouds are lying low and solid-grey today. It seems I’ve left the early summer in the Eastern Cape. Below the grey ceiling, the fields are lush and green between tall trees. Here, there is no brittle-dry grass and dusty soil thirsty for the first summer rains. In many ways it’s like a different country, a different world. The veld back home is parched. There has been too little rain for too many seasons. Farm dams are dry patches of cracked soil where cattle and sheep stand balefully, hoping for a drop of water or some fresh greens one day soon. As we drive on, I wonder if it has rained since I left.
A man in uniform is raising the South African flag at the Caledon Spa. He stops and watches the bus pass by. We turn off the national road and drive through the sleepy town. Almost no-one is around this early, except two municipal workers walking the streets in orange outfits. We stop at a traffic light, the only car on the road. The menu on the wall outside a café advertises Roti Curry Gatsbys.
The houses in the suburbs (do towns the size of Caledon have suburbs?) are low and neat, their gardens full of carefully cared-for flowers. The grapevines over someone’s driveway pop bright-green with spring leaves but the jacarandas are still bare. It is still spring; summer arrives later here.
Beyond the town, we pass between green, green fields rolling away across the hills. So green and thick and smooth that you feel the urge to run your hands across them, like a new, plush carpet or someone’s hair when they’ve just cut it off really, really short. This part of the country, so different to all the places I’ve called home, always takes me by surprise. Apple farms and wheat fields. I always forget it’s here. In the distance, jagged, rocky mountains rise to meet the grey. For a moment, a rock-face glistens as the sun steals through the clouds. Next to the Dassiesfontein Farm Stall, dirty-white donkeys graze in a grass-green field below a creaking windmill. Miniature arum lilies bloom wherever water flows. The fields of crops have tyre tracks like matched curls of ribbon, green against yellow-white. It’s like driving through postcards of tranquil, rural life.
The clouds begin to lift as we approach Steenbras Dam, letting in some sunshine. The dam lies gloriously blue in its circle of dark pines and bright yellow mountain-flowers as we head up and up. This pass is one of my favourite ways to arrive in the Cape because, in spite of inevitable motion sickness on Sir Lowry’s Pass, the vista is spectacular. We reach the top and I’m taken one more time as Somerset West and Strand stretch out before us in glorious sunshine, the Atlantic dancing on the left, the Helderberg soaring crisp against blue skies to the right. Welcome to the Western Cape.