When I asked my local traveling friends where to stay during the spring flower season in Namaqualand’s Hantam region, Papkuilsfontein came out tops. They might not be savvy marketers, but Papkuilsfontein’s reputation is spread by the most trusted method of all: word of mouth.
Photography by Marie Viljoen except where noted.
Three-and-half hours from Cape Town by car, situated high on The Bokkeveld Escarpment above the forbidding Knersvklate, this hamlet finds itself in the international crosshairs of discerning flower hunters.
Famously, there are more species in this South African pocketsquare than in the entire United Kingdom. This eruption of flowers, their diversity and density, is unique on the planet.
In late August and early September, after favorable winter rains, the show begins right in town with a postcard display of Ixia rapunculoides growing wild in the grounds of the sandstone Dutch Reformed church.
In candy-striped fields beyond town flocks of blue cranes, South Africa’s national bird, gather daily to feed.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
Just beyond town, the Hantam National Botanical Garden is a former sheep farm whose conservation-minded owner, Neil MacGregor, maintained the land so well that it remains rich with flowers and endemic species.
Photograph by Annalize Buhrmann.
Further along the same dirt road is the farm and guest house Papkuilsfontein, named for the section of river that winds through the property, whose pools—kuils in Afrikaans—do not dry out, even in parched Northern Cape summers.
After exceptional rains this lazy water becomes a torrent that cascades into the Oorlogskloof, an imposing canyon that borders the farm.
At the Papkuilsfontein guesthouse, the Van Wyk men—Mariëtte’s husband Willem, and their son Jaco (the sixth generation to farm here)—run the agricultural side of things, raising sheep (their own lamb and mutton are served at dinner), and growing rooibos tea, olives, and fodder.
Photograph via Papkuilsfontein.
Flower routes have been established on the farm allowing guests to drive themselves, or to take a guided tour through the Renosterveld – a geophyte-rich vegetation type of the Cape Floristic Region, where indigenous and endemic plants flourish beside cultivated fields.
In wet weather there are deep puddles to ford, and when we visited we were happy to be in a sturdy Land Cruiser. Willem is on hand at reception in season to hand out farm maps and make sure that drivers stick to the right route for their vehicle.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
The Van Wyks’ venture into the hospitality industry began with the renovation a single stone cottage on their farm, in 1984. Mariëtte’s impeccable sense of design creates a sense of effortless calm.
Photograph by Obie Oberholzer.
Over the decades the Papkuilsfontein accommodation portfolio expanded to house the annual flood of flower tourists.
The most recent addition is Matjiesfontein, a Cape Dutch homestead built near a spring, where low whitewashed walls dating to the time when three farmers’ flocks drank here define the historic property.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
The restrained elegance of the revived building owes its new life to a painstaking restoration. It included the sourcing of handmade nails, while a blacksmith in Cape Town made the hinges and window fittings.
“The lounge gave me lots of headaches,” says Mariëtte.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
Photograph by Vincent Mounier.
Spring nights are cold, so hot water bottles and comfy beds keep you in the kind of deep sleep that city dwellers dream about. And the night skies here are unpolluted by light or industry, making for spectacular star gazing, year-round.