Between Namaqualand and the Kalahari you can get into cruise mode on deserted gravel roads. Forests of quiver trees were flowering when Johan de Smidt drove three long gravel stretches between Loeriesfontein and Upington.

‘I bring my goats and sheep to graze here in the hills along the Gariep because fodder is too expensive.”

Life on the edge under the Northern Cape sun has lined the face of Cornelius Coetzee. Apart from his 12 boer goats and 17 Dorper sheep, the Eksteenskuil subsistence farmer’s only company out here among the hills near Keimoes is his mongrel puppy. “Sit, Bobbie,” Cornelius orders in vain, as his puppy licks us like we’re ice-cream on this hot autumn afternoon.

We’ve stopped on top of a hill along the Rockery Route, 60km of undiluted gravel entertainment along the R359 flowing with the Gariep. There hasn’t been another vehicle in sight for kilometre after dusty kilometre.

The Rockery Route is the third great gravel stretch we’ve travelled from Namaqualand to the Kalahari. Our welcome to the Northern Cape’s well-graded gravel roads was a smooth 121 km stretch of the R357 between Loeriesfontein and Brandvlei, after which sunset found us on a snaking 84 km humdinger linking Kenhardt, Brandvlei’s northern neighbour on the R27, to Kakamas, southeast of our first destinations, the Augrabies Falls National Park and Riemvasmaak.

On the way to Brandvlei we saw some die-hard little flowers and near Kenhardt we were surprised by a quiver tree forest where Vanessa almost stood on a viper. But it’s here, next to the languid Gariep, that the area finally gets a human voice.