One For the Road

collectors are a sad lot. my own affliction
runs to mid-century everything – citroëns,
scandinavian furniture, Gladys knight (on
vinyl naturally), tintin, pretty much anything
from the 1950s except for Duane eddy and
the korean War. my real drug of choice is
crockery, and susie cooper in particular.
the englishwoman’s clean designs are
perfection. i’ll cross glaciers for them. or
the chattahoochee river, as it turned out.

it had started, as so much does, with
ebay. based in new York, i was trawling its
magical vaults when i spotted an innocuous
little cooper plate, common and cheap. but
in the background, blurred but unmistakable,
was the hallowed motherlode: a hand-
painted art Deco lamp base by the artist
herself, as rare as an unrestored clifton
bungalow or springbok antipodean victory,
and easily worth r20 000.

the seller was listed as ‘badass-6’, the
hometown listed as Helen, Georgia. off
i went, without a moment’s thought.

Helen is one of those towns only america

could make, entirely counterfeit, a little
16th-century bavarian idyll fashioned as
a tourist magnet for suspicious mid-
Westerners reluctant to try the real thing
for fear of bratwurst and unreadable street
signs. it didn’t take long to find ‘badass-6’

– it was the name of the biggest guest-haus
in the dorf; its owner, slightly worryingly,
mrs ernestine Gallows.
i decided to check in and check out
the lay of the land. thrillingly, inside it
was full of treasures, though the decrepit
mrs Gallows was not one of them – a dyed
crone long past civility and far older than
her faux-cobbled town. For a mock alpine
room in a mock German chalet in a mock
schwarzwald town in the Deep south, she
demanded a vast amount of money.

‘no pay, no stay,’ she drawled in vintage
brooklyn parlance.

Hazed by greed, i checked in with the
new York nonagenarian in mock dirndl and
clogs and went in search of the lamp base.
the voice behind me made me jump.

‘are you an arctophile?’

my arched eyebrow clearly annoyed her.
‘teddy bears, jughead, teddy bears. Do you
like teddy bears?’

i did not. not since my panda had been
turfed out by mama bear when i was five.
However, i was not about to debate the
subtleties of infantile psychosis with attila
the Hun’s mother.

‘You like china?’

‘i like china.’

‘i have china. Wanna buy some?’

‘Do you have, um, any susie cooper?’

the ancient shuffled to a locked showcase
and opened it. inside were the cheap plates
and … that lamp base.

a few hours later in the local diner,
i gleefully admired my base, bought for $50.
i’d had to buy the plates too, but no biggie
to get one over the clueless old monster.

the waitress sashayed over. ‘Hey hon,
nice lamp. old ernestine, right? she sells
a bunch of them to you traveller types.
real little cottage industry. coffee?’

Camdeboo Private Game Reserve

Stop 2 on the Karoo food tour - Mount Camdeboo Private Game Reserve, owned by the Bucanan's, Ian and his wife Catherine. On the farm a selection of game, most not naturally occurring, such as cheetahs and sable. More interesting are the views from the top of the 14 000 ha property - truly astounding vistas across the Camdeboo.

Cheetah and cubs at Mount Camdeboo Private Game Reserve, near Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape.

African Relish cooking school, Prince Albert

Vanie Padayachee is the chef at the school, stop 1 on the food tour of the Karoo.

One For the Road, August 2010

Food is allegedly the best way into a foreign culture. Peter Frost begs to differ.

I am not a joiner, of furniture, games or riots - it is not in my nature and if God had meant for me to be so, he would have given me a better arm and a steadier hand. As it is, my natural wrist action is about as useful as Gordon Ramsay at a Decency in the Kitchen conference.

Still, I believe fervently in joining the family of (well-fed) man, a great, nostalgic entirely Humanist 1950s Julie and Julia construct in which heaving family tables overflow with the recently baked goodness of the land’s bounty. Around the table, in a quasi-Italian peasant idyll, hundreds of freshly scrubbed, cotton-clad people gambol happily and bask in the wholesomeness of slow food, dappled sunlight and the love of a benevolent dictator named Mama. It is Good.

Realistically of course it is not Good. As you crisscross the globe in search of The Real Thing, the truth is that local cuisine should best be approached with caution and an exit strategy. Haggis. Sauerkraut. Sautéed gibbon, flayed Weimaraner, boiled cabbage. The Brussel sprout is hardly worth travelling 4000 kilometres for, yet that’s what you’ll end up with should you find yourself tucking into a traditional Belgian meal of Witlof, the guest of a doily-loving knickknack collector delighted at your innocent request for “something traditional, please.”

Undeterred by my increasingly long list of near-death culinary experiences (rat in chili sauce in Thailand, green ants in Australia, tarantula in Malaysia, fried crickets in the Philippines and the best of all, durian fruit in Malaysia), I headed to Scandinavia, to smile at the fjords, buy some thin pale furniture and partake in a little harmless reindeer stew, seasoned with potatoes and a friendly veggie mix. My first stop was Norway, where I hopped off the good ship Sea Cloud II at Stavanger fjord and headed into the wild north. In the small village of Tinn, Floki the local fisher picked me up from my inn and took me off to his place, a fairytale stave-like home, for a taste of real Norway. I now fully understand why the Vikings ran riot over much of Europe – one sniff of raake orret would have been enough to send boiled cabbage-loving Osric fleeing for the safety of his native Sussex. In a nutshell, raake orret is rotten trout, served on bread made from yellow peas washed down with 90 percent proof witblitz. The trick, apparently, is to avoid the botulism threat.

A few days later I crossed into Sweden, and, fed up with the burger joints of bigger towns, opted for the Lapp village of Junosuando, close to the famed Ice Hotel at Kiruna and known for its organic holidays. The nice chap named Love (pronounced Loaf) at the Arctic retreat listened to my fast food moanings, nodded sagely and disappeared into the kitchen. He emerged with a small tin and bade me follow him. Outside he headed for the stream, and with a deft tug, opened the tin. Underwater. Ploof. Let me say here that I am a huge Abba fan, think the Volvo XC60 is glorious and was prepared to love Love’s fare. But I am also aware that the olfactory sense is the strongest. Months-old, dead, fermented herring so potent that it explodes on opening – underwater - was more than my philanthropic side could allow. Cultural relations soured, along with the surströmming’s "gräddfil", the traditional curded cream it is served with. A week later, sat in a Southampton bedsit, I have never been so glad in my life to see baked beans on toast.


Published in the August 2010 issue of Horizons for British Airways

One For the Road August 2010, Horizons magazine

Food is allegedly the best way into a foreign culture. Peter Frost begs to differ.

I am not a joiner, of furniture, games or riots - it is not in my nature and if God had meant for me to be so, he would have given me a better arm and a steadier hand. As it is, my natural wrist action is about as useful as Gordon Ramsay at a Decency in the Kitchen conference.

Still, I believe fervently in joining the family of (well-fed) man, a great, nostalgic entirely Humanist 1950s Julie and Julia construct in which heaving family tables overflow with the recently baked goodness of the land’s bounty. Around the table, in a quasi-Italian peasant idyll, hundreds of freshly scrubbed, cotton-clad people gambol happily and bask in the wholesomeness of slow food, dappled sunlight and the love of a benevolent dictator named Mama. It is Good.

Realistically of course it is not Good. As you crisscross the globe in search of The Real Thing, the truth is that local cuisine should best be approached with caution and an exit strategy. Haggis. Sauerkraut. Sautéed gibbon, flayed Weimaraner, boiled cabbage. The Brussel sprout is hardly worth travelling 4000 kilometres for, yet that’s what you’ll end up with should you find yourself tucking into a traditional Belgian meal of Witlof, the guest of a doily-loving knickknack collector delighted at your innocent request for “something traditional, please.”

Undeterred by my increasingly long list of near-death culinary experiences (rat in chili sauce in Thailand, green ants in Australia, tarantula in Malaysia, fried crickets in the Philippines and the best of all, durian fruit in Malaysia), I headed to Scandinavia, to smile at the fjords, buy some thin pale furniture and partake in a little harmless reindeer stew, seasoned with potatoes and a friendly veggie mix. My first stop was Norway, where I hopped off the good ship Sea Cloud II at Stavanger fjord and headed into the wild north. In the small village of Tinn, Floki the local fisher picked me up from my inn and took me off to his place, a fairytale stave-like home, for a taste of real Norway. I now fully understand why the Vikings ran riot over much of Europe – one sniff of raake orret would have been enough to send boiled cabbage-loving Osric fleeing for the safety of his native Sussex. In a nutshell, raake orret is rotten trout, served on bread made from yellow peas washed down with 90 percent proof witblitz. The trick, apparently, is to avoid the botulism threat.

A few days later I crossed into Sweden, and, fed up with the burger joints of bigger towns, opted for the Lapp village of Junosuando, close to the famed Ice Hotel at Kiruna and known for its organic holidays. The nice chap named Love (pronounced Loaf) at the Arctic retreat listened to my fast food moanings, nodded sagely and disappeared into the kitchen. He emerged with a small tin and bade me follow him. Outside he headed for the stream, and with a deft tug, opened the tin. Underwater. Ploof. Let me say here that I am a huge Abba fan, think the Volvo XC60 is glorious and was prepared to love Love’s fare. But I am also aware that the olfactory sense is the strongest. Months-old, dead, fermented herring so potent that it explodes on opening – underwater - was more than my philanthropic side could allow. Cultural relations soured, along with the surströmming’s "gräddfil", the traditional curded cream it is served with. A week later, sat in a Southampton bedsit, I have never been so glad in my life to see baked beans on toast.

One For the Road September 2010, Horizons magazine

Dancing to Irkutsk

Just as the opening chapter of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume relates the rather ignominious birth of Grenouille, his genius lead character in a fish market in France - under a table among the entrails - so Rudolf Nureyev, dance’s greatest son, first saw the light of day in a spot unbefitting of so celebrated a fellow – in a fetid third class carriage somewhere near Lake Baikal on the Trans Siberian Railway.

The story of Nureyev’s knock-and-drop (his Mum allegedly tripped over an Omul

 head [a salmon common in the lake] and gave birth prematurely), always fascinated me. Add my background in dance and a love of rail and you have the makings of a first class daydream; one day I would travel the Trans-Siberian and pay homage at the Spot of the Omul.

Fast forward eight years. I am sitting in a fetid third class carriage clack-clacking across the Urals surrounded by multiple Omul heads and all manner of other indescribably disgusting food. It smells like Süskind’s fish market. My rose-coloured spectacles lie shattered on the wooden floor. I’ve had three Imodium tablets to stave off the need to visit the euphemistically named toilet at the end of the corridor. It’s cold, the old crow next to me is scrubbing her dentures with a scouring agent, and no one has had a wash in four days. I know, I’ve been with them for the duration.

This is the Trans Siberian before Putin’s capitalism. The world’s greatest railway is a used, abused, scarcely operational cattle truck rank with the flotsam and jetsam of Communism’s forgotten millions.  And yet I’m having a lovely time. The impromptu barynya song and dance sessions swell the breast of even the deaf and the infirm (there are many) and there’s a don’t-mind-the-dribble-on-your-shoulder camaraderie you’d never find on the 7.30am from Fish Hoek. I have even managed to find someone to talk to, a young woman heading all the way to Vladivostok who spent three years in a Netherlands convent and is fluent in Dutch. So we pigeon Afrikaans and get by. Happily, Irena has heard of Nureyev (most haven’t, his name mud in Russia after his ‘leap to freedom’ defection) and asks loudly to the crowd for information on the exact birth spot. An energetic donnybrook follows, resulting in various Omul being flung and the old crow losing her teeth in a bowl of peasant shi soup. But finally Irena can report that indeed the ‘consensus’ is Rudi was born not two hours away at Irkutsk.

Now all part of the adventure, a carriage full of Russia’s finest disembark in a melee of colourful, limping chaos, keen to see where this famous son they know nothing about a few hours ago, was born. At the end of the concourse is a bust that I make for, Irena and the mob close behind. A plaque under the head reads, loosely “Triumph of Russian dance.” They cheer. A few minutes later we are back on board, the crowd chowing down on their dried fish, happy at their astute geography and national dance prowess. I’m subdued and preoccupied, but don’t say anything. Instead of Nureyev, above the words is the head of another dancer, an altogether less controversial one. Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov. The victors certainly do own history. 

PS. In 2008 the Baryshnikov bust was replaced with a likeness of Nureyev. Nothing has ever been said about the swop.


Published in the September 2010 issue of Horizons for British Airways

Local tourism month - much to do

September is local tourism month. Do we have the balls to do what’s needed?

News from the National Department of Tourism is that September is all about promoting local travel. This augers well – according to their own figures, 14.6 million South Africans undertook about 30 million domestic trips in 2009, spending around R22m.

However, as a travel writer who spends much of his time out in the field, it’s clear there’s much to be done. And a whole lot of hot air is being released by the Department, along with the statistics. 

Another of these is the admission that they have spent R70m in six years marketing the country locally. For all that – and it should be applauded – lack-lustre pressure on other national agencies and departments to come to the tourism party means that the money is all but wasted.

Chief among the culprits are the roads. One example is the R26 Free State Maloti Route road, now all but impassable for the hippo-sized potholes. There are countless others, denying communities and travellers access to needed tourist rands.

Then there’s the tourist information office problem across the land. Local political considerations has meant many official offices are all but useless, with a severe lack of knowledge, crazy opening hours (Kimberley’s is closed over holidays) and awful online representation the order of the day. Into this vacuum have sprung up myriad unofficial offices – better run but unregulated, meaning anyone with any agenda and photocopier – or vested interests – can make hay by promoting x over y. News last week that government is looking to streamline these offices (as well as the wider provincial and national authorities) is heartening, but if their solution is simply to shut down the new initiatives and return to the awful official offices, then not heartening at all, and travellers will suffer.

But most important of all is a mind-shift needed by government, in a society that could benefit enormously from it domestic market. The powers-that-be must be made to understand that tourism is absolutely vital, and that properly coordinated, can be the engine that drives real, quantifiable development across all sectors. Just ask New Zealand, Botswana and Costa Rica. Tourism in its broadest sense cannot be left to privatise, and the State must fund its parks, heritage sites, and other natural entities.

Just as important is that South Africans need to look up, open their eyes and reconnect with their whole country. They need urgently to get involved in maintaining and promoting their architectural, natural and historical heritage. I wander across our country with a growing sense that no one sees what I see, that fewer and fewer care about the exquisite dorps, the Kimberley Club, the Pela Cathedral, the lesser flamingos of Kamfers Dam, the historical houses of Hatfield, the giant baobab near Tzaneen, let alone the vast treasure trove of Mid-Century architecture across our interior, quickly falling to the Lubners hording monster. There are too many glorious buildings, small parks, historic sites simply dying from neglect, seemingly ignored by government and us as irrelevant as we rush headlong by in a black BMW headed for world domination.

It’s not good enough to keep suggesting, as some do, that we should be looking after them for foreigner visitors. No, this is our land, our responsibility and our treasure. Make a difference, fill a pothole, lobby your MP. And go visit the Loeriesfontein windmill museum. Twice, just for that glorious road.

Gauteng, Kimberley August 2010

Essentially a must-do trip turned into a bit of a nightmare. Gauteng, like India, you need to be ready for and truthfully my head was still on the Zim trip that was cancelled at the last minute. Instead Pretoria, Kimberley, Potch, everything that could go wrong, did. End of winter so ugly, ugly, ugly. Hannes' much-loved Great Dane died. Ash's mum in the spare room, Nelson in Benoni teaching NIA, so a dearth of friends to mitigate the uninspiring weeks. The bottom line was that the Pretoria and Kimberley 48 Hour stories highlighted the disappointing state of tourism in both cities. Between both these cities, the state of the Gauteng/Free State roads was shocking. It's a cliche, but the Western Cape is truly streets ahead of its northern neighbours in all these areas.

Still, Birdwood Lodge in Hatfield was charming - an Arts and Crafts mansion turned into a very efficient boutique hotel (www.birdwood.co.za.) So was The Kimberley Club (www.kimberleyclub.co.za.) which manages to stay classy, relevant and animated despite being in the middle of the city centre, surrounded by a deluge of fast food outlets, bad nightclubs and dodgy Asian clothing shops.

The AA Travel Guides meeting was disappointing too -  no possibility of becoming an assessor, given the paltry fees paid.

So all told a trip best forgotten. So done.

Kimberley 48 hours

There's plenty here, but Kimberley's ability to draw tourists is being severely hampered by closing times - imagine the country's most historic city closing down over the weekend. It's not good enough.

The Bluebeard Room, Owl House, Nieu-Bethesda, August 2 2010, more pictures

The Bluebeard Room, Owl House, Nieu-Bethesda, August 2 2010

Part of the reason for the return trip to Nieu-Bethesda was to document the Owl House's Bluebeard Room, opened and cleaned - but not on show to the public. It is so named after Charles Perrault's 1697 French folktale of Bluebeard (thought to be Gilles de Rais), a nobleman who was in the habit of killing his wives and dumping their remains in a locked room. One day he leaves his chateau and gives his present wife a key to the room, saying she is not to go in. She does of course, drops the key in horror, retrieves it covered in blood and can't get it off. Bluebeard learns of her disobedience and is about to kill her when her two brothers arrive and kill the man. De Rais was an infamous serial killer of the time.

Quite who named the Owl House room, or what it was used for, no one is sure, but the story echoes sentiments voiced about Miss Helen's despotic father. His room was known as the Lion's Den, so the BR cannot have been used to 'keep him'. On the red door out to the Camel Yard (it is an outside room with an additional interior door connecting to the long Sun Room) is a frightening scrawled face in white which seems to suggest 'beware, no entry'.

Inside the small room there is much that is curious. Half the floor is designed in typical bottle mosaic - green and brown - and half is block squares of painted concrete, blood red and natural. Why this design, no one knows. It may have something to do with the small bath in the corner. If, as is likely, the room was used to strip bottles of their labels (with powerful chemicals), perhaps Martins did not want to destroy the bottle mosaic. On shelves are some of the chemicals she (and her helpers) used.

For me the significance of the room is that if, and it's a big if, she did work in here with such potions, it's far more likely they affected her sight in later years, rather than the far-fetched notion of ground glass.

On the back of the connecting door are a few very personal items, too 'valuable' to put in the house - her glasses and a duffel bag she used on her travels, marked with her name and address in what can be assumed is her handwriting (terrible).

One final observation - looking through the archive with Arno du Toit, it's clear where the inspiration for Miss Helen's fearsome warrior table (outside next to the back door), comes from. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, in the Edward Fitzgerald translation, features vivid illustrations by Robert Stewart Sherriffs. Clearly the figure in the second plate is her table prince. The symbol he is holding also features in the Camel Yard; fashioned out of tin and glass, it sits right next to the back door.

Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls, Kariba and Hwange, 31 May 2010

Nieu-Bethesda in the snow, June 17 2010

The days prior to the snowfall on the Thursday night were very sharp. Ian Alleman and I did the circumnavigation of the Compassberg the afternoon before and it was bitterly cold. On the morning of the snow - 30cm by some accounts - the townfolk filtered into the streets to see the extent of the fall. It was substantial and the town was cut off until the weekend, although no more snow fell. The Owlhouse, after a short spell open, was closed, as some of the figures were completely covered. It was feared that visitors would not see the statues and break them.

Nieu-Bethesda 31 July 2010

The return trip to Nieu-Bethesda to photograph the recently opened 'Bluebeard Room' at the Owl House, and interview Owl House Administrator Arno du Toit. Interesting paper clipping in the archive - the first interview with Miss Helen by Blignaut de Villiers on the 30 August 1970, for the Dagbreek and Landstem. In it Martins suggests that she will return to haunt the house if anything of or in it, is sold rather than given away.

Nieu-Bethesda 31 July 2010

The return trip to Nieu-Bethesda to photograph the recently opened 'Bluebeard Room at the Owl House, and