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If you drive from farm 215 to Elim, the gravel road turns into a tar road for a few 100 metres for no apparent reason. The reason is that you are entering the rural hamlet of Baardskeerdersbos. The houses are few and far in between. Nevertheless, it still has a church, a shop of sorts and the Strandveld pub catering for locals and the farmers of the area. It is beautifully positioned at the foot of the spurs of the Koueberge and the Bredasdorpberge. Though, in the middle of a fynbos biome, the Baardskeerdersbos valley is extremely fertile. Everything just grows there. As the name says, it used to be a "bos" (forest). The ancestors of the present residents have however chopped most of it up.

It so happens that this is the village closest to farm 215 (Baardskeerdersbos can be seen from one or two of the hilltops of the farm). Baardskeerdersbos is a typical Overberg-village : it is rural, isolated and unpretentious. Baardskeerdersbos is worth a short stroll. For long, Baardskeerdersbos was a forgotten valley in many aspects and the people very much depended on themselves. Now things are changing. People from far are buying real estate, recognising that - even in South Africa - this kind of seclusion can only be found in a handful of places, such as this very fertile valley. Prices of real estate in Baardskeerdersbos are rocketing. Colourful residents are pictured in nation-wide magazines and English-speaking persons are moving in to this very Afrikaans village, where English is actually still a foreign language. Soon it will not just be a handful of surnames anymore that make up the biggest chunk of the phone book listings under Baardskeerdersbos.

The kind of hilarious, gruesome, funny and sweet stories that in most places are from generations ago, are living history in Baardskeerdersbos. It is a village of strong personalities, generous friendliness and feuds lasting for generations. Everybody is still very much the master and king of his own land, but nobody the master over any secrets.

There is another village in the area sort of the same size of Baardskeerderbos, past Elim to the South. It is even smaller than Baardskeerdersbos. So small that it has two names: Viljoenshof and Wolvengat (just pick one). In case you don't notice when driving through, it is a village in its own right. The sign to Wolvengat makes it distinctly clear. Apart from the name "Wolvengat", the sign states: "kerk, skool, winkel" (church, school, shop). Or did the sign say Viljoenshof? Wolvengat, by the way, is named after the "Strandwolf". Strandwolf is Afrikaans for Brown Hyena and Wolvengat means "the hole of the wolf". Though, according to all books on mammals, the present geographical distribution of this animal is far away from the Overberg, the brown Hyena was recently sighted in the area. Of course, close to Wolvengat.
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