Karoo Space
Photography in Cradock

But no thrill, no travelling buddy, no place on Earth can beat driving through the dawn in the Karoo with my wife Jules in the seat of the old bakkie right there, next to me. Right behind me, nestled on the back seat, are my old Canon cameras and their designated lenses. Next to them sits the padkos box and, in the deep of winter, two invaluable Pep Stores mega-blankets. He often comes with us on our assignments deep into the Karoo. When he can’t make it, TwoPack is across the road from our house in Cradock, yapping away in the company of Shadow and Roxy, his parents. Create a meal out of unlikely ingredients, preferably in one pot\. Feel blissfully happy if a glass of wine and stoep coincide at sunset\. Can recognise the various makes of windpumps from a fair distance. These are talents I’ve developed over ten years spent tracking back and forth over the Karoo, staying in countless self-cater chalets and lonely farmhouses. Chris Marais has worked on assignment as a photo-journalist in more than 50 foreign spots, including Mongolia, Borneo, Timbuktu, Madagascar and the French Quarter of New Orleans. Beginning his career as a newspaper reporter, he moved on to magazines before becoming the award-winning editor of the Johannesburg-based Living Africa magazine. She began her romance with the world’s dry spaces, aptly enough, by crossing the challenging Nullarbor Desert in Australia in Granted, it was while on honeymoon with Chris, and they were ensconced in a luxury compartment on the Indian-Pacific Express between Perth and Sydney. In her time she has tracked lemurs in the jungles of Madagascar, fought magazine deadlines as the editor of Keeping Track, a leading South African ecology magazine, spent a year learning Spanish in Chile and ridden the Mozambican currents at sunset on a fisherman’s dhow. It promises to break new ground as a printed traveller’s companion with a huge digital footprint\. Watch champion sheep shearers, dig in at a food festival and sip sherry in a Victorian-era hotel\. Hunt for fossils, fish for monster trout and wake up on a Karoo farm\. Ride mountain bikes on dusty trails, motorcycles on back roads and walk the veld in search of artefacts\. Celebrate life with some of the friendliest and most interesting people who call the Karoo home. Towns get cleaned up, recyclers benefit, and children learn about arithmetic along with the value of waste. Great winter holiday options in the Eastern Cape Karoo, also known as the Karoo Heartland. Every town needs its champion, and the Western Cape Karoo settlement of Murraysburg has one in the cheerful form of Adri Smit. Do not operate heavy machinery while following this route. When did you last wake up on a Karoo farm, taste the air and feel the peace ?