Karoo

“Karoo” is usually traced to a Khoekhoe word for a dry, thirsty land, and for many travellers that’s exactly what it is: the long stretch of the N1 between Cape Town and somewhere else, crossed with one eye on the fuel gauge and the other on a horizon that never seems to get closer.

But stop in a dorp and the emptiness turns out to be full of characters – the barman, the butcher, the piano man who plays the blues of an evening – and every one of them has a story about how this little town came to be in the middle of nowhere.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tours let those voices do the talking. In Matjiesfontein, author Dean Allen walks you through the Victorian village a Scottish railwayman built around a cricket pitch, with lampposts shipped all the way from London. And where the Cederberg rises behind Clanwilliam, a local who grew up here leads you past the rooibos factory and the veldskoene makers to arguably the best biltong in the Cape.

Pull over, plug in your earbuds and stretch your legs. The open road will keep.