Barely had I met my South African (now) wife than she began eulogising about her country’s most epic road trip. Not the overcultivated Garden Route, the verdant stretch of Indian Ocean coast that offers endless beaches and, at peak times of year, an almost similar volume of tourists, but Route 62, a parallel inland trail running through the Western Cape’s Klein Karoo desert. She spoke of lofty mountain passes, of hot springs and hobby vineyards, of waterfall hikes and mini safaris offering the big five without the correspondingly big bill. And of eccentric little settlements with a cultural depth that belied their isolation. The real South Africa, she’d say, with a faraway look in her eyes.

Clearly we were going to have to drive it one day. And that one day arrived this spring. “Who’s up for a desert holiday in a hot car, kids?” You’ve got to love the under-fives. They can muster excitement for anything.
We kept the target distance modest: 230 miles, from the outback town of Oudtshoorn to Paarl, in the Cape Winelands. In the spirit of the road trip, we’d bed down in a different spot each night. There were just two rules: if you whinge, you walk. And everyone gets their choice of song in rotation. Mistake.

From George airport, we watched glumly as the other hire cars bombed off towards the coast, while we set a course north for the desert. The drive over the Outeniqua Mountains saw flourishing nature reserves give way to earth tinged a dusty terracotta and staked with crazy-haired aloes. It was the Cotswolds to Death Valley in less than an hour.
“Daddy, the bushes are moving.” Ostriches — the lifeblood of Oudtshoorn. They’re everywhere here: some 200,000 in all, striding the plains around the town with that distinctive nodding gait. Back in the 1920s, when ostrich-feather outfits were as common as Converse, Oudtshoorn boomed. Today, the Rio carnival puts in a hefty order each year, but otherwise the creatures are mostly for feather dusters and meat (lean, best eaten with red wine sauce and cranberries).