What a month! What a year!
* Compliments of the season
* Trips & Tours
* Hendrik & Annick from the duck shop
* Ben 10 Official - Day 1
* Featured Pass
Listen to an AI-generated discusion of this week's newsletter:
COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
We will be taking a short break from today until early January.
Wishing you a joyful and peaceful Christmas from all of us at Mountain Passes South Africa. As the year draws to a close, we want to thank you for being part of our community and for sharing a passion for the remarkable landscapes, winding roads, and unforgettable mountain passes that make our country so special. May this festive season bring you rest, adventure, and time well spent with those who matter most, and may the year ahead be filled with safe travels, new discoveries, and many memorable journeys.
A quick recap on the year shows 8 tours completed. All of them fully booked. The new tour (Cederberg) we introduced was very well received and booked out quickly, to the point that we are already steaming ahead with pre tour bookings for the 2026 version.
From the social media side (Facebook) we gained roughly 30,000 new followers for 2025. Today's tally is 233,000 followers generating over 36 million post views for the year. Facebook continues to serve our style of story-telling particularly well.
Instagram is still a platform for busy people who don't like reading much. We are up 4,000 new followers to end the year on 35,000 followers.
On the back burner is the controversial Tik-Tok platform, where we have been operating for about 6 months and gained 3,800 followers, with results that read like a bizarre weather report of extreme highs and lows in terms of post views. I have yet to figure out the algorithm. We will make a decision whether to remain on Tik Tok platform in 2026.
TRIPS & TOURS
We have wrapped up the last tour of the year with a sizzling Ben 10 Eco Challenge.
2026
JANUARY - No Tours
FEBRUARY - Amathole-Katberg Tour ( 2 spots open)
MARCH - Kouga-Baviaans Tour (Fully booked)
APRIL - Mountain Kingdom Tour Lesotho (Fully booked)
MAY - Wild Coast Tour (Fully booked)
JUNE - Great Karoo Tour (7 spots open)
JULY - Swartberg Classic Tour (6 spots open)
AUGUST - No Tours
SEPTEMBER: Cederberg Spring Tour (Bookings not open yet)
OCTOBER - Seven Sisters Tour (Bookings not open yet)
NOVEMBER - Ben 10 Official (Bookings not open yet)
DECEMBER - No Tours
If you want to reserve a place on one of the tours where bookings have not yet opened, we can offer you a priority reservation without payment required. Just send us an email request to
WAFFLES, BEER, CHOCOLATE AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS
Hendrik & Annick Vangansewinkel. Congratulations!
Hendrik and Annick Vangansewinkel are organized people. They emigrated from Belgium to enjoy our land of sunny skies, surf and braais. When they settled on the date for their wedding, they checked long range weather history and picked the 12th of December, 2025 as their wedding date. Sunshine and the likely probability of a fresh souther easter. Who would have thought that a cold front would sweep over the Western Cape bringing plenty of rain. Cape Town, mid summer and it rains! Goes to show, one always needs a Plan B.
Plans were hastily changed from lawns to indoors and what a fantastic day it was, It seemed that it was an MPSA function as guests from various tours joined in to wish the beaming couple health and happiness on their big day. Hendrik and Annick have made good friends within the MPSA family as can be attested by the wedding guest profile.
It was a baptism of fire for yours truly who had to do the honours as MC. Trying to keep the MPSA folk in line was easy, but the Belgian contingent suffered with a bit of lost in translation, but nothing that copious quantities of wine couldn't resolve.
The rain drummed down. The paper umbrellas meant for shade from the sunshine, turned into soggy things, but they did sort of work (for a bit anyway). The wedding vehicle was a two tone green VW Kombi of 'splitty' vintage, adding a nice touch of vintage flair.
The happy couple had a great day and it was sublime catching up with so many MPSA guests. The title of this story was a jibe at the Belgian guests for the good and bad they brought to the world.
BEN 10 OFFICIAL - DAY 1
The Plan: Mountain Shadows Hotel > Barkly East > Kraai River Pass > Lammergeier Nature Reserve > Jouberts Pass > Lady Grey > Benjaminshoogte > R392 towards Dordrecht > Greylings Pass > Perdenek > Clifford > Heuningneskloof Pass > Barkly East > Mountain Shadows Hotel.
With scattered showers forecast for the day, we set off in the direction of Barkly East on the tarred R58 through dreamy sandstone scenery and a pair of Cape Vultures directly above our convoy as a sign of good luck. I'm not sure where I sucked that up from as normally a vulture sighting is pictured with a dying man!
We took the gravel back road via the Lammergeier Nature Reserve towards Jouberts Pass, fully expecting a muddy route (as we have experienced in previous years) but weather patterns change from year to year and in summer the storms systems can be quite local, whilst other areas nearby are dry. For the non-birders, the Lammergeier is the Bearded Vulture and numbers are very low. The Cape Vulture (Griffon) is the more common bird.
Bearded Vulture - on the endangered list / Photo: Brilliant Creation
This year the road was OK with minimal slipping and sliding. On arriving at the farm in the reserve, we found the gate closed. The farmer came out. I introduced myself and told him we were headed over Jouberts Pass. I asked him why the gate was closed this year and got a one word response:
"Veediefstal" (Stock theft).
Should you find this gate locked, just go and knock on the farmhouse door (don't worry the Alsation is friendly) and ask for the gate to be unlocked. It is a publicly accessible road, so locking the gate is techniclly illegal, but we also need to help our farmers to stay alive.
The drive up to the summit of Jouberts Pass was uneventful, where we stopped for a leg stretch and photos in perfect weather with zero wind. The views down over Lady Grey are always magnificent and the alpine flowers were out in full bloom, but the descent awaited and a little surprise, which would change the outcome of the plans for the day substantially.
We were about a third of the way down, when Martin Pullinger in his Land Rover Discovery 5, clipped a sharp rock in a moment of inattention. It was a sidewall cut of note and unrepairable. With help from the ever present Theo Hammond and other guests, we had the wheel off fairly quickly. Martin had purchased one of the new 12 volt jacks, but forgot to add the third extension tube, so at full height with the standard double tube, it was just high enough to get the flat tyre off but not enough height to get the new tyre back on.
L-R: Bruwer Raats, Theo Hammond, Martin Pullinger - all part of the adventure / Photo: Trygve Roberts
The MPSA spade was deployed as the younger guys took turns digging a hole below the wheel. It was like granite with each lunge of the spade stopping stone dead and sending a shockwave up the arms. The whole exercise took much longer than expected, but eventually we were safely in Lady Grey, where the bush mechanics had the opportunity to have a quick wash before continuing with the journey.
Time had definitely overtaken us and from long experience I've learned that you never make it up. I came up with a Plan B. Martin would proceed directly to Elliot to get his tyre replaced. (The tyre shop in Elliot really go the extra mile to help and its not the first time either.) The rest of us would return to the hotel with a visit to the vulture colony at Castle Rocks to fill the time gap. The Heuningneskloof route would have to be scheduled on another day.
Almost everyone took the optional excursion to see the vultures in perfect, sunny weather with no wind. Not a breath. The lack of breeze, also meant there wasn't much lift for the vultures. We did see a number of them flying, but the display wasn't as bountiful as in previous years.
Martin hosted the pre dinner drinks in the pub that evening, being the first Chappies recipient of the tour. What a good sport!
The weather remained clear for the next day, so we announced that Day 2 would be the Bastervoetpad day. There a few nervous giggles, but this was what we were all there for. For the rest of the tour we had rain forecast for each day, albeit not heavy rain. We were happy to live with that.
Next Episode: Dr LAPA Munnik would be crawling in his grave if he could see the state of the road that was named after him. Maybe just as well that everyone calls it the Bastervoetpad Pass these days.
FEATURED PASS
During November we did a dedicated filming trip to refilm the entire Gamkaskloof Road (Otto du Plessis Road or Road to Die Hel). We filled an entire external hard drive with video material and had excellent weather for the task at hand. The plan was to film Elands Pass (that last switchback peppered pass) with the on-car camera, then drive back up the pass and film the full descent with the drone (which was much more difficult than can be imagined).
We overnighted in Die Kliphuis, a lovely stone cottage at Fonteinplaas and left again in the morning. When we ascended the pass, my wife couldn't find her phone, so had to drive the 11 km back to the farm, retrieve the phone and ascend the pass one more time. I wasn't complaining. Not many people get to traverse that pass 5 times in 24 hours!
The link below will take you to the Gamkaskloof Page, where you can watch the full new series in the correct order, but be warned, it's like watching a movie as the 6 parts combined require just under an hour to watch. The footage is in 4K quality with full telemetry overlays. If you are thinking of driving this route, the video set will give you a very good idea of what to expect.
GAMKASKLOOF ROAD
Elands Pass from the air (10 mins)
Trygve Roberts | Founder
“The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.”
