Dusty Magic

The Karoo at Christmas is best enjoyed in a mountain hideaway village, where the fastest-moving objects are flying wine corks at lunchtime. The pace of life is slow, like a Greek island hamlet off the beaten track. Right down to the donkeys in the streets.

Rewind to the early spring, however, and the settlement is sloughing off its dry winter skin and looking to the skies in hope of something wet and wonderful. December is just around the corner, and it’s time to spruce up for the rest of the world when it comes streaming in over the Sneeuberg range.

The streets are, by local decree, as dusty and authentic as you will find anywhere, and that suits Nieu-Bethesdans David and Bronwen Langmead of Starry Nights Guesthouse just fine. In the late afternoons when the last rays fall golden on the looming Compassberg, they take a long meander through the village with Xena, who looks like a steekbaard terrier but hares about like a sheepdog.

It’s a pleasant