The Great Vintage Adventure: Day two

Matt gets back in the Triumph, laughing. “What did your dad say?” I ask. “He says not to worry about the rev counter,” he replies. “Apparently it only starts working once the car’s warmed up.”

We drive out of the Willowmore Old Jail and pull over almost immediately. The heat on day one of our road trip between Kenton and Cape Town was so fierce, so unabating, so inescapable that we didn’t even consider taking off the soft top. (Matt and I both come from redhead stock; we know what our skin can and can’t handle.) But the early morning of day two – bright and brisk – is just begging for a topless ride.

We switch drivers too and I take the wheel for the first time since the quick test drive I did in Kenton a few days earlier. Exhilarating doesn’t begin to describe it. Driving the Triumph on the open road – the completely open road, the not-another-car-in-sight open road – is as freeing as falling in love. For long stretches, I say nothing, relishing the feel of the slender steering wheel, the close contact I have with the road, the cool air, the shudder of the engine, Matt’s hand on my knee.

We have breakfast in De Rust with the rest of the familial crew and press on, agreeing to meet up half an hour down the road at an ostrich farm in Oudtshoorn (when in Rome, after all). An ostrich farm, it turns out, is a remarkably good time. With their beady eyes and bendy necks, they are as bizarre up close as they have always seemed from far – more so. Matt remains unconvinced for the duration of the visit. “Dinosaurs,” he mutters. “Not to be trusted.”

Here, as the day before, we part ways with the Austin, which has to continue if it is to make it to Barrydale, where we will sleep for the night, in good time. Matt, Rose, Emily and I, however, have a few hours to hit the Cango Caves, which only Rose has visited before.

The terrain quickly becomes mountainous as you head north from Oudtshoorn, and the pass to the Cango Caves weaves and winds and swerves its way as the mountains rise around it. With the top down, my neck is ostrich-like, swivelling, taking it all in – the farms tucked on the side of the road, the dirt roads that peel off, the mountains mountains mountains.

Matt’s eyes, for the most part, are firmly on the road – the corners are sharp and the Triumph predates the use of ABS in cars by about seven years. Even so, he’s having the time of his life. We both are. More than once, we howl like wolves.

The Cango Caves parking lot is empty, so much so that we are directed to park in the tour operators’ parking bays. In the weeks before this trip, when we were still in Kenton, Covid felt like a very distant disaster. But going into a major tourism destination brings it all rushing back.

The caves would see a minimum of 500 daily visitors in the before times. Since it’s been allowed to reopen, it sometimes has only 20 people walk through its doors a day. There are just nine of us on our tour – it feels like we have the caves all to ourselves. A tourism tragedy and a surreal experience.

For the rest of the day, we are on the justifiably renowned R62, winding our way through Calitzdorp and over the Huisrivier Pass. We get stuck behind a petrol tanker as we venture up the pass, which doesn’t do much to help the Triumph’s temperature as it wobbles in the direction of 100 degrees. By the time we get to the top, we decide to stop to let the car cool down – and for biltong.

We stop outside Ronnie’s Sex Shop (just a farm stall whose marketing ploy, to add “sex” to the benign “Ronnie’s Shop” sign, made it an R62 institution). Rose suggests we “pose for a raunchy picture” – but Matt and I are useless. We’re laughing too much to take ourselves seriously enough for raunchy. Ridiculous will have to do.

We throw on a jersey and put the top back on as we head into Barrydale. For days, the forecast has warned us of torrential rain on the final day of our trip. Up ahead, we can see it rolling in. But Barrydale is still calm when we arrive, the evening light dramatic. We park the car at our home for the night and walk down to dinner, hand in hand.