Majestic olde world romance.
If you can imagine being in a time machine and rewinding to the 1920’s and appearing in this tiny quite magnificent Cape Karoo town. This would be Matjiesfontein.
Population 400. I think only about 30 actually work. If you stayed more than an hour you would get bored out of your mind and realize that there are no young people there because they have all buggered off to find a better life anywhere else. In fact most of the people there where so bored I think they pulled each other’s front teeth out. Each to their own.
The Hotel is magnificent but smells old which it is. Over 100 years. Most people over 100 smell a bit so it’s not surprising that this grandiose building smells like a donkeys butthole. Not everywhere but in enough places to remind you of a cleverly disguised fart.
There is a nice bar worth one drink. No Burger King.
The Lordy lord managed to sneak in one tiny place of worship. I don’t actually know if anybody does worship there but it’s there clearly for cute little weddings for mostly silly people for getting married in the first place and even sillier again to do it in Matjiesfontein. Have I mentioned only one bar and no Burger King.
Olive Schreiner who wrote the spectacular award winning Story of an African farm lived here for a few years. Apparently Rudyard Kipling visited her here. I am surmising that Olive and Rudyard must have rubbed wees because Olives little cottage is minuscule and I think Rudyard may well have had to sleep inside olive.
You know the red bus tours you get in all major cities, well Matjiesfontein has a similar one except the bus is not red and is just a bus and gives you a tour for about 39 seconds, obviously showing you all the shit I have already mentioned in the time frame discussed.
There is a very sweet old train station which is also worth at least a minutes attention. The blue train stopped there whilst I was there so I took a quick pic and then got the hell out of dodge. This place is worth a quick stop just to assess the validity of my views.
