Deep in the wooded ravines of the Eastern Cape’s Zuurberg mountains a winding 4x4 trail follows the tracks of Gen. Jan Smuts and his Boer War commando. Here Barnie Louw and photographer Mouton van Zyl discovered that local history can be almost as exciting as taking on a steep mountain pass.

For three months afterwards, the stench from the decaying horses ensured that no-one would dare venture far into the kloof. But once the smell had subsided, the farmers of the district, so it is said, heaved wagonloads of saddles, bridles and stirrups out of the ravine.

From our vantage point on this crisp winter’s day, near the top of the Bedrogsfontein Pass in the Zuurberg, and looking down into the kloof, it’s easy to see how 700 English horses could have ended up in the bushes below.

If you close your eyes and use a little imagination, you can see the English ride unsuspectingly up the narrow pass, right into the Boers’ ambush. You can hear the pandemonium as the first shots ring out, the whistling of the bullets from the Mausers and the Martini-Henrys, the desperate neighing of the horses, and the agonised cries of their riders.

This is how Deneys Reitz describes the events in Commando: A Boer journal of the Anglo-Boer War: “The English could not deploy on the narrow road, so they pulled round and made back as fast as they could, for the ground above and below was so steep that they had to keep to the causeway, down which they poured in disorder.

“They seemed to be boring and pushing each other frantically under our fire, horses and men toppling over the edge of the road, and crashing into the timber beneath.”

Fortunately for us, more than a century later, we arrived safely at our lunch stop on the top of the mountain, without our Land Rover and Patrol falling off the precipice and crashing into the bushes below, as happened to the English and their horses on that fateful day.

Early this morning in Kirkwood, photographer Mouton van Zyl and I met up with Stef Delport, local historian, citrus farmer and our guide for the day. Although it was harvest time, a few of the citrus farmers decided to take a break from navels, valencias and clementines, and to join us in exploring this rugged mountainous region at the edge of the Sundays River Valley.

A historian on a 4x4 route?! Indeed. Look, the route from Kirkwood through the woodlands of the Addo Elephant National Park is actually only 45 km long. It takes you through unspoilt mountain scenery, past the yellowwood trees in deep kloofs, over the Zuurberg with its cycads and fynbos to the noorsveld around the Darlington Dam (where a village was sacrificed so that the Sundays River Valley could flourish).

So yes, you can tick this route off your list in four or five hours and then tell your mates about the drifts, steep inclines and stony paths that you’ve conquered. But you’ll be doing yourself a grave disservice if you go about it this way.

Why? Because this route through old hunting grounds and battlefields stained by the blood of man and beast, is steeped in history. Around every corner a new story crops up: stories about border wars way back, Boer War stories and anecdotes of things that happened just the other day.

This once brutal and bloody border of the Cape Colony is one of the few places in South Africa where almost every ethnic group has fought: Xhosa against Khoi, Xhosa and Khoi against Boer and Brit, and eventually Boer against Brit.

This is why it’s worth enticing a historian away from his research and into the bush for a day. Because on this 4x4 route there is more history per square metre than just about any other place in South Africa.