Destinations / The Free State >>

The Free State doesn’t get a lot of tourist traffic, apart from the brave or spatially-challenged that underestimate the 15 hour plus drive from Cape Town to Johannesburg. There’s no one killer attraction to draw people to this vast veld of farming country and sandstone ‘koppies’.

But we are fans of the Free State. As was Nelson Mandela, which is perhaps a surprise because this is the spiritual home of the Afrikaner idyll – honest country folk living with and harnessing nature, the bible in one hand, brandy in the other. He liked the big horizons that make you feel free both in mind and body. Certainly as you climb up to the central plateau of SA from the winelands you feel like you’re almost touching the sky. The human impact is limited to vast farms cultivating sunflowers, sheep and maize.

All you can do with the Free State is accept it for what it is. Stay on a farm and contemplate life, camp in haunting emptiness and enjoy the night sky that is so dark you really can see the Milky Way.

The Free State grows on you.

The most accessible attraction to Gauteng is Clarens, just a few hours drive south-west of Johannesburg. This picturesque town gives way to the south to the Maluti Moutain Range, offerring some excellent hiking, fishing and horse-riding. The Golden Gate Highlands National Park preserves the immense, spectacular and unique sandstone formations that make this a hiker’s paradise.

Further west, Rustler’s Valley was an old hippie hide-out from the stern doctrine of the apartheid state, and still today attracts both the eclectic and eccentric in equal numbers to its white-washed village overlooking a stunning valley. This is where backpackers go to learn how to drum ad naseum and perform the latest fad in new-age massage, but that makes for a very unique atmosphere in an increasingly uniform world. However, check with us before heading there - due to a fire Rustler's Valley Retreat (the main accommodation option) has been closed recently. Less predictably, Rustler's Valley is also the home to one of the top polo schools in Africa.

The provincial capital, Bloemfontein, has a reputation for partying hard which is just another pleasant surprise in this seemingly very traditional state.

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