Karreekloof since 1881

Why the name Karreekloof? No one really knows, but it could be because of the many Karee trees that grew in the kloof on the farm.

It is a farm rich in history and formed part of the Anglo Boer War. Many famous people’s footsteps lie here. Time can tell many stories they say.

For Karreekloof time is much needed to understand and appreciate every little detail of information. Fortunately, Peter Wright, the previous owner of Karreekloof, who still stays on the farm, shares endless stories, history, and lifelong experiences through his eyes as well as stories told by his father and grandfather. Four generations since 1822 and still stories are being told.

Karreekloof was once a trading store known as Lilienfeld & Wright. Many of the historical experiences may be of interest to the current generations and those to come. Although farming was the primary activity at Karreekloof, trading with Afrikaner cattle, Catalonian donkeys, and black head Persian sheep was as important.

The famous writer Olive Schreiner spent much of her time at Karreekloof writing one of her famous books, The Story of an African Farm. The Boer War, however, brought its hardships and difficulties to Karreekloof. A British officer Lieutenant Logan of Nesbitt’s horse was shot on the farm, which was buried in the small farm cemetery.

On 17 July 1962 former South African President PW Botha visited the farm leaving a letter in which he thanked the family of Karreekloof for their hospitality and kindness. “I hope that it will rain soon so that the farming interests may flourish,” was his wishes to the Wrights. Always interesting to know, that no matter where footsteps are being left, it always leaves a mark of some sort of history. It all depends on how you leave it.

This is why owner Wiaan van der Linde puts in all efforts to keep every little bit of history alive at Karreekloof through the new facelift and a museum – telling the stories of a long time ago.

Food lovers

Potjiekos (“Small pot of food”) originated with the Voortrekkers, evolving as a stew made of venison and vegetables cooked in the potjie.

Traditionally, the recipe includes meat, vegetables, and potatoes all slow-cooked with various spices. Traditionally, the liquid should never be added to the pot and the contents should never be stirred, as the lid keeps all liquids and flavors circulating throughout cooking. Usually served with rice or “mielie pap”.

LAMB CURRY POTIJIE

Lamb curry potjie is a real favorite of most South Africans! Especially in the winter time and when you want to entertain large crowds without having to spend hours in the kitchen. The recipe serves six.

750g x 2 cubed lamb ( you can use half beef and half lamb, but it is nicer if you use only lamb)

4-5 sweet potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks

1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin

1 ½ teaspoons ground coriander seed

1 teaspoon chili jam

2 teaspoons garam masala

1cm ginger peeled and grated

6 garlic cloves crushed

2 bay leaves

1/4 ground turmeric

1 tablespoon oil

2 onions chopped

800g tin peeled tomatoes

Liquidize the tin peeled tomatoes in the food processor. Fry the onions in the oil remove the onions. Use the same pot to dry fry the herbs and spices for a moment. Add the onions and the liquidized tomatoes. Add the meat bring to boil. Cook for 1 hour on the stove top with the lid on the pot. If too dry you can add half a cup of water. Add sweet potatoes cook for another hour or till sweet potatoes are tender. The sweet potato thickens the sauce. Eat and enjoy. The mild curry freezes well.

An authentically educational experience

Teenage Volunteering

Teenage volunteering is fantastic way to make new friends, see the world, and participate in unique and incredible community service initiatives. Join GoEco on fantastic programs around the globe, all organized to accommodate teenagers. All volunteers will receive certificates of completion. These projects are amazing resume-builders, great for college and job applications. Teenage volunteering abroad is also a great way to cultivate the foreign language you are studying in school, meet incredible people, and of course do your part to give back to less-fortunate communities abroad.

Teach Children and Surf in Cape Town

Volunteer at a surf and adventure club for children from disadvantaged areas in Cape Town. Be part of an opportunity for children to learn life lessons and stay off the streets. Volunteers receive surfing lessons during the school day and help teach the kids after school.

Cape Town Orphan Care

 

Travel to the exciting tourist destination of Cape Town, South Africa, and give back to the orphaned children in extremely under-served communities. Teach, mentor, and play with these children who desperately seek attention and care.

Cape Town Physical Education and Sports

Spread your passion for sports to children who have had few opportunities to learn and develop their skills in a structured yet fun environment. Inspire children to set goals and stay active, both on and off the sports field.

Orphanage and Teaching in Victoria Falls

 

Volunteer in the majestic and beautiful Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe! Make an impact in the lives of at-risk children by showing them that you care! Have fun, meet new people, and learn about Africa and its incredible culture.

Under 18 Community Involvement

This is the ultimate teen volunteer adventure experience! Enjoy the culture and beautiful beaches while you help with construction and renovation projects at local schools.

Cape Town Community Projects

 

Make an impact on communities living in Cape Town settlements through education, skills development and community improvement projects.

  • Africa: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana

South African cultural experiences

Hanging with South Africans

But nothing beats actually meeting people. South Africa’s many cultural villages offer a close-up insight into the country’s traditional cultures. In the major centers, township tours – conducted with sensitivity and pride – will put you in touch with real South Africans and their history. In the rural areas, community tours will help you get to know the country through the eyes of those who live here. You can discover ancient Setswana astronomy through the lens of a grandmother with an intimate knowledge of the ancient traditions. Or how about being taught to cook line fish the traditional way by the fishing community in Kalk Bay?

Cradle of Humankind

And remember, no matter where you’re from, this is where your roots are. It’s pretty much accepted that human life started in Africa. Most people look at the world differently after a tour of the Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg – one of the richest hominid fossil sites in the world. Fossilized footprints near Cape Town, and the wealth of rock paintings and surviving shelters in KwaZulu-Natal’s Drakensberg mountains and elsewhere in the country, all testify to humanity’s origins on this ancient continent.

Wars, apartheid, reconciliation

More recently, South Africa’s history has been one of conflict and confrontation, but also of reconciliation and restitution. You can explore the battlegrounds where the bloody events that shaped the country took place.From Isandlwana or Talana in KwaZulu-Natal to Soweto in Johannesburg or Langa in Cape Town, our land tells a story – but one that can be difficult to interpret, so it’s worth doing a guided tour. We show the wounds of our past – visit the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein, or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. But we also announce our new-found unity. A trip to Robben Island will show just how powerful that attitude can be. We’ve taken a place of oppression, isolation and despair and turned it into a symbol of forgiveness and hope. That’s what South Africans are doing with the whole country.

SA info reporter and South African Tourism

SAFARI WITH SOUL AWAITS YOU AT WAG ‘N BIETJIE LODGE

AUTHENTICAL MEMORIES

Is not something we have or don’t have!  It’s a practice, a conscious choice of how we want to live.  It is a collection of choices that we have to make every day.  It’s about the choice to be real and honest.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

SAFARI WITH SOUL AWAITS YOU AT WAG ‘N BIETJIE LODGE

The vast and arid Northern Cape is a breathtaking landscape that is characterized by its plains with outcroppings of haphazard rock piles. Building your own authentical safari with our extraordinary landscape, hosting some of the most beautiful camel thorn trees and wide open fields.

We offer an unbeatable combination of game drives, walks with skilled trackers and exclusive accommodation in pristine natural surroundings.  Wag ‘n Bietjie is an excellent lodge to experience Africa’s earthy design.  We have a committed relationship to social responsibility programs like supporting injured and orphaned animals, building a school for parents less fortunate to send their kids to local schools and providing of meat to workers and their families.

Nature and its surroundings

For the nature lover, we have beautiful wide open semi-arid savanna fields where you will get lost in with its thorn bushveld, koppies, extraordinary sunsets that only you can describe and relive.  To walk along this landscape and taking a gorgeous panoramic photo of the wildlife and its surroundings.  The more authentic the safari, the more you will enjoy it.

Wag ‘n Bietjie is situated in the Northern Cape and with our known hospitality, we will indulge you with our breathtaking cuisines and traditional desserts.   Taking a seat on the comfortable porch enjoying the silence of the bushveld and a cocktail after a long day looking out on a water hole where waterbuck, nyala, warthog and kudu’s drink is always a special treat.

Wild at heart

While building authentically memories, visit the Wild Heart Rehab center where orphaned and injured animals are treated from all around the country and released into their native habit.
 

Memorable accommodation

 

No matter which season, a lounge with nice fireplace telling endless stories of the day or the need to cool off in the swimming pool, we will help you to keep building on the authentic memories.

“Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all” (Alistair Reid)

 

Come and enjoy the freedom of the Northern Cape and its pristine moments and picturesque landscape. Make your journey an authentic one…here at Wag ‘n Bietjie lodge. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authentic Africa Safari Experiences Can Still Be Found at Wag n Bietjie Lodge

There’s nothing like exceptional wildlife encounters on an authentic safari! It takes you to wild and inaccessible places.

At Wag ‘n Bietjie Lodge with its unique surroundings, wide open spaces of fields and animals roaming freely, is where clients receive a more intimate viewing experience. Awaken your senses and feeding your soul.

Sit back; relax while watching one of the most beautiful sunsets. Enjoy the scenery when the animals such as waterbuck, nyalas, warthog and even kudus come to drink water close by the lodge at the waterhole.

 

PLANTS AND BIRDS

 

While having a nice bush outing enjoy the unique bird and extraordinary plant life. Making it a challenge for the nature experts to identify the fauna and flora and having a great view while you’re at it.

 

HOSPITALITY AND ACTIVITIES

 

Here at Wag ‘n Bietjie we have a generous and friendly treatment for our visitors and guests providing traditional food and drinks while sitting around a nice bush fire. On request, let us arrange a exquisite romantic bush dinner. Take nice game drives with lovely sundowners or sit on the porch and enjoy a cocktail.

Animal lovers can see how a helping hand at the Wild Hearts Rehab centre changes injured or orphaned animals and see how they are re-introduced in their native habitat. Embrace the true connection with nature. At Wild Hearts Rehab center they believe education is an integral component of the anti-poaching effort. Whilst learning about nature, you will also be spoiled with our luxury accommodation and relaxation at the swimming pool or enjoying the lounge area with fire place for the colder nights.

 

TRAVEL EQUALS NEW BEGINNINGS

 

Make Wag ‘n Bietjie your new authentical experience!

 

“African adventure by day and star studded romance by night … let us take you there!”

The Myth of Authentic Travel

For the 21st century traveller, authenticity has become the goal and measure of travel. “Real” travellers avoid expensive attractions, preferring to wander off the “beaten track”. They avoid the “touristy”, wanting to see how the “locals” live. They bemoan tourism and commoditization as “polluting” the culture of a place. “Don’t sell us stuff”, they say, “Give us the ‘real’ thing, the ‘authentic’ experience.”

But what is “authenticity” exactly? As we excavate the term, we find that it is founded on particular ideas of what “culture” is, and should be. And these ideas are shaky.

Robert Shepard, an anthropologist at George Washington University, writes, “What is most commonly referred to as the tourist impact on Others is grounded in the unspoken presumption that these Others at some point in the past have lived in enclosed spaces of cultural purity, protected from outside contamination.” In other words, if tourism is contaminating, there must be something pure to contaminate.

But in reality, there are no untouched and unchanging cultures. The world has always been in interaction. In ancient and medieval times, the Silk Road and sprawling empires (the Romans, the Mongols, the Han). Starting from the 16th century, imperialism, industrialization and globalization. Conquerors, traders, missionaries, adventurers. To say tourism corrupts local culture ignores all the changes that have come before.

CULTURES ARE INTERMESHED, AND EVER-CHANGING. THERE EXIST NEITHER A SPATIAL NOR TEMPORAL BOUNDARY AROUND A CULTURE.

Culture not only changes with time, it also varies within itself in the present. That is to say, culture is heterogeneous, diverse, and hybrid. A country varies hugely within its borders. The city is different from the countryside. The lifestyles of the rich are different from the lifestyles of the poor. The beach-towns are different from the mountain villages. The experiences of one ethnicity are different from the experiences of the other. What authority is able to say what or who gets to exemplify a country?

IT IS BY KNOWING ALL THE DIVERSE THREADS OF THE COUNTRY, NOT SHUNNING ONE FOR THE OTHER, THAT WE GET TO UNDERSTAND IT.

Searching for escape, authenticity and identity: Experiences of ‘lifestyle travelers’

If individuals are seeking „experiences‟ through the vehicles of leisure and tourism, how can researchers begin to understand experiences from a participant perspective? Certainly, this is a complex question that is not satisfied with the simple assumption that individuals seek to escape to authentic experiences. Nonetheless, the theories surrounding escapism and authenticity have been historically relied upon in various attempts to understand participant experiences in leisure and tourism. However, recent post structural approaches have questioned both the possibility of escape and the grounds for authenticity, hoping to bury both of these concepts on the basis of their relativity.

 

Deconstruction has threatened the validity of the meanings and rewards that individuals may perceive in experiences by favoring discourse over subjectivities. The resultant backlash has re-emphasized „self‟, as individual worldviews have been relied upon to re-justify escape as a state of mind and shift the focus of authenticity away from „objectivity‟ and instead towards the authenticity of subjective experiences. With this, movement has come a wealth of research on identity as the notion of searching for a stronger sense of self has gained momentum as a useful tool in understanding leisure and tourism experiences.

 

Existential authenticity

 

Is described as a process of „being in touch with one “sinner self, knowing one’s self, having a sense of one’s own identity and then living in accord with one’s sense of oneself‟

 

Conclusion

 

Modern theories on seeking escapism, authenticity and identity point to each of these concepts as critical in understanding dimensions of tourism and leisure experiences. Although the actual possibility of escape, an objective basis for authenticity and the concept of self have all been subject to deconstruction, the lifestyle travelers in this study seemed to have taken little heed of the supposed „illusion‟ at the basis of their searching efforts. Indeed, the case study has demonstrated that some individuals still seek experiences that allow for feelings of escape and a stronger sense of identity, and that meaning and value may be attached to experiences that provide for these perceptions.

 

Sources:

Cohen, E. (1988) Authenticity and commoditization in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research                  15,371– 386.

 

Cohen, E. (1995) Contemporary tourism  trends and challenges: Sustainable authenticity or contrived post-modernity? In R. Butler and D. Pearce Change in Tourism: People, Places, Processes

(pp. 12-29). London: Rout ledge.