There is an architecture of South African escape, and you know it on sight. A white gable against a blue mountain. Shutters closed against the afternoon. A stoep exactly deep enough for two chairs and a dog. From the Cape Dutch werfs of the Winelands to the flat-roofed cottages of the Karoo, these are buildings that have been keeping people cool, calm and slightly out of reach for three centuries.
This guide gathers them by distance from the city. Two hours puts you under oaks in the Overberg or the Boland. Four puts you across the Swartberg in Karoo villages where water still runs down the street furrows. Six or seven, and you are in the Addo valley with elephants for neighbours. All of them, booked through Spekboom, put something back into the towns around them.
