After leaving Rhodes where we’d spent the final night of our recent road trip, Bill and I were looking forward to driving Naude’s Nek, a mountain pass that offers one of South Africa’s finest 4X4 adventures.
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Even before we reached the start of the famous Eastern Cape pass the mountain scenery was magnificent and we approached it in high spirits. Naude’s Nek, more than 30km of rugged, bumpy road, hairpin bends and alarming drop-offs, peaks at about 2 500m above sea level, making it one of South Africa’s highest gravel road passes. Connecting the towns of Rhodes and Maclear, it was built by the Naudé brothers in the late 1890s. Using picks and shovels they hacked out this rugged route from their isolated farm to reach their markets with their cattle.
Unusual signpost.
The rough, unpaved, sometimes muddy, icy or snowy surface makes it a rather tricky road at times and one that would probably be best travelled in a 4X4 vehicle. It is well worth the effort. As you negotiate each tight corner, the view becomes more and more impressive.
We planned to stop at the top of pass for a coffee break but a howling wind threw pebbles at us and nearly blew us off the mountain when we tried to photograph the summit.
Instead we found a sunny sheltered spot a little further along where we stopped to enjoy the exhilarating views. Truly, Naude’s Nek is a must for any adventurous soul but we had more adventures to look forward to on our homeward trek that day.
Lower Pitseng, another time consuming ‘short cut’ worth doing.
At Eland’s Nek, soon after cresting the pass, we turned off the road leading to Maclear to follow another interesting 4X4 route along the Lower Pitseng Valley. It is one of those marvellous ‘short cuts’ that take you more time to travel than if you’d stuck to the original, longer, more conventional route.
The golden Lower Pitseng valley.
It is a beautiful and wonderfully remote route, though, that follows a fertile valley, overlooked by massive mountains. Although it is farmed, the valley seems almost untouched, with only the occasional isolated farm house scattered along its length and very little other evidence of human habitation.
At times the road skirts huge, other-worldly rock formations that look like avenues of castles built by some strange race of giants. On previous visits to this enchanted place the rocky sections had been ablaze with blooming aloes.
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The aloes weren’t flowering on this trip but the rock formations contrasted dramatically with the early spring gold of the surrounding mountains. In nature, every season has its special delights.
Eventually the rough, gravel Lower Pitseng road joined the R56 just south of Flagstaff. Because of our Rhodes, Naude’s Nek and Lower Pitseng detour we would only be travelling a short distance along the R56 but it is our preferred route when travelling to and from the Cape.
Naude’s Nek – 30km of incredible mountain road.
It skirts the Drakensberg mountains so is amazingly scenic, and it is much more pleasant and quieter than the more commonly used N2 via Mthatha. This lovely road eventually took us through the attractive towns of Matatiele and Cederville to Kokstad, where we joined the N2.
After passing through the magnificent Ingeli indigenous forest section and reaching Harding, we suddenly realised that our road trip was fast coming to an end. From there it would be all downhill to our narrow coastal plain and our home on the KwaZulu-Natal Lower South Coast. Our adventures were over but the last exhilarating couple days of travelling through the remote Eastern Cape mountains had been a fittingly dramatic grand finale.
The top of Naude’s Nek.
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