It was a blustery winter afternoon on my 50th birthday. The Blogitects were headed to Stuurmansfontein, an iconic corbelled house in the middle of the Great Karoo, and I was super excited. But the sun was sinking fast and I was also starting to freak out.

Thorsten was driving on an unmarked gravel road; we’d hardly seen another vehicle, or even a person, all day. The GPS had been “re-routing” for hours since we disobeyed its instruction to turn down what appeared to be a private farm track. There was no cell signal.

I peered at the map book in my lap, studying a bunch of light gray lines that theoretically represented roads. Perhaps we were currently driving on one of them…I couldn’t be sure.

“We just need to make it to Vanwyksvlei,” I said, pointing to the only “town” — represented by a tiny white circle — on what I hoped was the correct page of the map book. “Then we can get some GPS signal…and hopefully find a petrol station.” Greylene’s fuel gauge had dipped a bit too low for Thorsten’s comfort.

We laughed nervously, joking before every rise that the great metropolis of Vanwyksvlei would surely fan out in front of us at any moment. Eventually we stopped laughing.

Lessons learned: Don’t rely on your GPS or your map book when driving through the Great Karoo. Plan your route carefully in advance and stick to roads with actual names/numbers. Perhaps most importantly: Fill up your tank at every town you pass through, whether your car needs it or not.

At long last we found Vanwyksvlei, which, while certainly no metropolis, did have GPS signal and a petrol station. And we finally arrived at Stuurmansfontein, albeit a couple of hours later than planned. I was sad we didn’t arrive earlier — every moment counts in this extraordinary place — but just happy we made it. Even on the coldest day of the year in the coldest part of South Africa, Stuurmansfontein was stunning.

What Is a Corbelled House?

Thorsten and I are both fascinated by corbelled houses and had been wanting to visit one for years. “Corbelling” describes a type of vernacular architecture in which beehive-shaped huts were built completely out of stone, because there was little or no wood available, using stone circles that grow progressively smaller as the building grows taller. The distinctive rings of protruding stones served as built-in scaffolding, allowing people to complete and maintain the buildings without ladders. Corbelled houses are often white-washed, giving them an igloo-like appearance.

Corbelling is believed to have originated thousands of years ago in the Mediterranean; examples still stand in Italy, France, and Spain, among other places. South Africa’s corbelled houses were built by the early “Trekboers” — the first Afrikaners to venture north from what is now the Western Cape — starting somewhere around 1820 into the middle of the 1800s. As far as historians know, corbelling in South Africa only took place in a relatively small square of the Karoo, around the towns of Williston, Carnarvon, Loxton, and Fraserburg.

No one knows how this style of building made its way to South Africa, or if it perhaps developed totally independently from its igloo-like cousins in the Northern Hemisphere. No one even knows exactly who built the houses, or exactly when, or why only in this particular area. I’m enchanted by the multi-layered mysteries surrounding these strange, beautiful buildings.

Charmaine and Piet Botha, who own the farm where Stuurmansfontein still stands (Charmaine and Piet live in a modern house about five kilometers from the corbelled house), have done an incredible job restoring Stuurmansfontein, and they’ve been renting it out as a holiday house since the 1990s. I spotted it on Airbnb a year or two ago and had been yearning to visit ever since.

I’ve traveled to a lot of wild, far-flung places in South Africa (including Augrabies Falls, which we departed from that very morning). But there is something about Stuurmansfontein that makes it feel further from civilization, and the modern world, than anywhere else I’ve been. I think it’s the corbelled house itself — which still functions much as it did 200 years ago — that made me feel that way. The otherworldly architecture is a reminder that, although people have been living in the Karoo for a long time, life in this vast, arid landscape has never been easy.

Our Stay at Stuurmansfontein

We arrived at the farm just before sunset, picked up the keys from Charmaine (who is, of course, delightful), and drove out to Stuurmansfontein.

My first priority was to take photos inside before the evening light faded completely. We quickly lit all the candles in the house, as Stuurmansfontein doesn’t have electricity. (There is also no cell phone signal or wifi, which we’d been warned of and greatly enjoyed.)

Stuurmansfontein is on a sheep farm, and Charmaine offers visitors delicious “braai baskets” with free-range lamb and all the food you need to make a gourmet braai. I had ordered a braai basket, but the winter wind was far too strong to cook outside over a fire that night. So Charmaine came to the rescue and cooked us an amazing dinner in her own kitchen, which she delivered to us complete with heated plates. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday feast.

We woke up to a misty, windy sunrise and spent the morning hanging around the house, drinking coffee and hot chocolate, taking photos and sketching, and reading articles about corbelled houses in the Stuurmansfontein information book. Later in the day we drove up to Charmaine and Piet’s house (which has wifi) to check our messages, then went for a walk in the dry riverbed that winds through the farm.

We were treated to a fiery sunset that evening. The next morning — our last morning at Stuurmansfontein — the wind finally died down enough for us to walk around comfortably outside and use the outdoor shower.

And that was the end of our time at Stuurmansfontein. This is one of the nicest and most unique self-catering experiences I’ve ever had in South Africa — I wish we could have stayed for a week.

A few final notes:

1. Stuurmansfontein is pet-friendly and you can book it on my friend Dee’s new pet-friendly accommodation website, holidaydog.co.za. Stuurmansfontein is also listed on Airbnb and Lekkeslaap. It costs R1500 (about $80!) per night for two people.
2. The gravel road to Stuurmansfontein is in good condition and drivable in any car.
3. Although it’s obviously too cold to use during winter, Stuurmansfontein has a lovely, farm-dam-style swimming pool.
4. Stuurmansfontein has zero light pollution and is one of the best places in South Africa for stargazing.
5. As mentioned previously, plan your route carefully and don’t rely on Google Maps to get you to Stuurmansfontein. I recommend navigating first to the nearest town — either Williston or Carnarvon, depending on where you’re coming from — and then setting your GPS to Stuurmansfontein from there (or just follow the directions that Charmaine provides).
6. If you like the Karoo and beautiful old stuff, GO.