June 2026

Winter escape: Camping in the mountains

It’s winter in South Africa. And yes, it is cold – especially in the mountains. But we haven’t camped in a while and we missed the mountains, which meant it was time to plan the menu, pack our camping trailer, and head to the mountains.

To get to Suikerbossie Guest Farm, you drive through the Koue Bokkeveld, which in Afrikaans means ‘Cold Buck Shrubland’ – a mountain range in the Western Cape Province. With Suikerbossie Guest Farm being situated in the Cederberg, we expected it to be a cold weekend. We did, however, underestimate how cold it would be.

Entrance to Suikerbossie Guest Farm

Suikerbossie is about 220km/137 miles from Cape Town, via Ceres. Only 7km/4 miles of this road are on dirt, while the rest is tarred. But it still took us around three hours to get to our campsite due to roadworks on the tar road and we only arrived at our campsite towards sunset. Luckily, it’s quick to set up the rooftop tent and Berto got our campfire going in no time.

Dinner was lamb ‘sosaties’ (kebabs) that had been sitting in the fridge for two days in a marinade of lemon and oregano. After the ‘sosaties’ were done on the fire, we’ve placed the meat on pita bread and added thin slices of red onion and fresh tomatoes. Berto’s homemade Tzatziki sauce was the final touch to make this a great Friday evening meal next to the campfire.

Lamb ‘sosaties’ (kebabs) on the fire

Heating the pitas on the fire

Tomatoes, onion and homemade Tzatziki sauce

Our first (and delicious) camping meal in a long time

With our camping electric blanket on its highest setting, we slept warm and cozy. But the next morning it was not so easy to get out of our warm bed. The light frost on the grass and our ‘bakkie’ was proof of just how cold it was during the night.

Frost on the roof of our ‘bakkie’

Our camp site was covered in light frost

We were now able to admire our surroundings for the first time because it was already dark when we arrived at our campsite the previous night. We were surrounded by the Cederberg mountains and beautiful fynbos. It was great to see wild proteas growing everywhere. By the way, Suikerbossie is the Afrikaans name for ‘Protea Bush/Repen’ – a very fitting name for this farm. There’s also a river running past the campsites, and after we made coffee, we strolled down to the river.

Mist hanging over the river

Beautiful scenery at the river

Our campsite (called ‘Uitsig’ – or ‘View’ in English)

We took another path back to our campsite and I was thrilled to see the beautiful Protea Bush, as well as many other fynbos.

Path back to our campsite

Beautiful Protea Bush and the Protea up close

Colourful daisy covered with dew drops

More fynbos

Back at our campsite, we were happy to see that the sun had finally come out from behind the mountains and started to melt the frost. This was a good time to make breakfast.

The sun came out – yeah

For breakfast, Berto prepared French Toast. I had already made strawberry/raspberry/blueberry compote at home, and after the toast was done, we drizzled the compote over. With a dollop of Vanilla Seed yoghurt on top, we enjoyed our breakfast while overlooking the majestic Cederberg mountains.

Breakfast

It was now time to put on our hiking shoes and go for a walk on the farm. (I’ll write more about our hike in the next post.)

After the morning started off quite cold, it was now a lovely day. We made ourselves comfortable in our camp chairs and enjoyed the tranquility of nature.

Beautiful nature at Suikerbossie

The hike had made us pretty hungry (that delicious breakfast was long forgotten by now). Lunch was quick and easy to prepare – especially since we’d already made the filling at home. Our Caprese sandwich stuffed with roasted baby tomatoes & garlic, basil pesto, mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, rocket, and Balsamic reduction was just as tasty (or maybe even tastier) than a sandwich you’d buy at any deli.

Lunch

While I was washing the dishes, Berto started preparing dinner. We had seen earlier that the temperatures were going to drop quite significant at sunset, and we didn’t want to have dinner outside too late – even though the stars were really beautiful. Oh, and the fact that dinner would take 3-4 hours to cook, also prompted us to start early.

On the dinner menu was Pork Belly Porchetta (an authentic Italian dish). Berto had already deboned the pork belly at home, and now it was just a matter of cutting it in half and spreading it with a fragrant mix of fennel seeds, black peppercorns, salt, fresh rosemary, sage, and garlic.

Preparing dinner

Roast the dry spices and grind them into a fine powder

Spread the spices, fresh herbs and garlic inside the pork belly

Pork belly tightly rolled into a cylinder

A few months ago, we bought a new ‘braai’ at an outdoor expo. And now Berto finally got the chance to try it out. It’s really compact, can be folded up and fits perfectly in an ammo box. Besides the practical aspects of transporting the ‘braai’, it worked really well for spit-roasting the pork belly over low heat.

Our new Madkon ‘braai’

Pork belly on the spit

We had a little friend visiting us while the pork belly was on the fire

It was such a lovely winter’s day. We were the only campers at Suikerbossie, until a family showed up later that afternoon. However, they set up at the farthest campsite and didn’t bother us at all.

I can handle winter when it looks like this

The skin of the pork belly is getting crispy

Short story:

Speaking of the campers who arrived later – here’s a story. The power was out most of the time while we were camping at Suikerbossie (due to the recent rainstorm, they suffered a lot of damage, including to their power cables). We didn’t mind that, because our camping trailer is equipped with an inverter and batteries which mean we always have power. Besides this, we also had our camping gas stove. However, it seems that the new campers weren’t so well equipped. I saw them walking around with an electric kettle from plug to plug looking for power so they could make a cup of tea.

I offered that they could plug their kettle into our camping trailer. What I didn’t realise, however, was that the kettle’s wattage was too high for our inverter and in the process blew the main fuse. We then boiled their water in our gas kettle, and they happily went back to their campsite. We were however now without power. The extra fuses for the camping trailer were at home, so Berto couldn’t fix the problem. This meant we had no lights (although, we always have a few extra battery-operated lights in the camping trailer just in case). But the worst part, though, was that I couldn’t plug in our electric blanket. What a tragedy!

It got colder as the sun started to set

I started wondering how we were going to get warm when we want to sleep – that was until I remembered of the ’emergency supply’ in the fridge. There were two tiny bottles of Jägermeister that I always take along for ‘a rainy day’ … and it seemed that today was that rainy day.

Replacement for our electric blanket

We might have been without power, but at least our dinner was a big success. The pork belly was excellent – crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Together with a Waldorf salad, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner.

Dinner

So, what is there to say about the night, except that it was bitterly cold. Fortunately, I packed two extra fleece blankets, which probably saved us from freezing! When we unzipped our tent at 8:00am the next morning, small icicles fell off the tent. Everything was covered in a thick layer of frost with the temperature below zero.

Icicles at our tent’s entrance

Grass covered with frost

Our ‘bakkie’ was covered with a layer of ice

I know that our friends in the Northern Hemisphere are probably laughing at us right now, because this might not look cold at all to you guys. But for us, who are used to 15°C/59°F during winter, it was freaking cold.

Frosted leaf and my flip-flops (which was waiting for me outside the tent)

Waiting patiently for the sun to come out from behind the high mountains

Dressed in ALL my clothes with a hot cup of tea

We were planning to make a big breakfast, but it was so cold that we only managed to cook eggs to make egg sandwiches.

Breakfast on a frosty morning

After our rooftop tent ‘defrosted’ in the sun (and us too), we started to pack up. Despite a chilly camping weekend, the beautiful scenery was enough to convince us that we should come back to Suikerbossie – preferably during the summer.

Leaving Suikerbossie Guest Farm

As we were leaving, a cold front was moving in, and the clouds started to gather over the mountain tops. So, the real question is: Would we rather shiver like popsicles in a dry tent, or splash around like a soggy sponge in the rain?

Cold front moving in over the Cederberg mountains