Oudtshoorn - today
Visiting Oudtshoorn - this initially of course means to marvel at the ostrich farms, crocodile ranches and the Art Nouveau-feather palaces. If however you want to do justice to Oudtshoorn as the centre of the Klein Karoo then you should also visit some of the other attractions in the surrounding area.
Amongst these are especially the Cango Caves, the largest dripstone caves in Africa. Here you can, in a sense, see the sandstone formations from which even the Swartberg in the North of Oudtshoorn are built up, from below.
From Oudtshoorn you can undertake a tour of approximately 200 km which brings you via De Rust through the grand gorge of Meiringspoort. A river ate its way through the rock here and the road follows its course with no less than 22 concrete bridges. Floods have damaged or destroyed bridges in the Meiringspoort numerous times, the last time in 1998.
Arriving on the north side of the Swartberg you can now continue towards Prince Albert, a worthwhile place to stop over, and then return via the most spectacular mountain pass in South Africa, the Swartberg Pass (whilst it isnt tarred it can be toured by regular motor vehicle without problems).
Amongst the other attractions of the Klein Karoo are the wine and port wine farms. In 1999 the small town of Calitzdorp nearly caused the failure of the European-South African trade agreement because the farmers did not want to give up the term port wine which, the Europeans claimed, is reserved for fortified wines from a specific region in Portugal.
