BRETT-REID.COM

Snow is something we don’t see often in Cape Town so when Jackie and I spotted snow on the mountains by Franschoek, we decided to take a road trip. We arranged for Wes and Zelna to meet us on Sunday morning at our place. I had planned the trip - Ceres via Worcester - but had no idea where to drive to get close to the snow. Saturday night I was googling frantically for sites and directions/info on where to go. Here is the Ceres Tourism site (90’s flashback of a site) and the weather site wasn’t very detailed. As for finding a map with directions, I wasn’t holding my breath.

My parents had taken me to see the snow (and build the ’snowman on the bonnet’) when I was 12 years old but that was some time ago. I called Ceres Tourism and got a recording saying that there was not much snow left and that there were 2 places open for 4×4’s only. I thought we may as well head for Worcestor first, try find some snow and if not head for Ceres. I have put together a map of the route we took. If you know of other spots for snow please leave some comments so I can build on this:

The drive to Worcestor went quickly and all the snow Jackie and I had seen on Saturday had disappeared. After the tunnel we saw snow but only on the moutaintops. We turned by Worcestor and started to head towards plan B - Ceres. The traffic was mild at this stage. As we reached the top of Ceres pass there was bumper to bumper traffic which continued for about 25 minutes into the town. Driving down into the Ceres valley you could see snow on all the peaks (I think it’s the Matroosberg reserve). We were hungry and had given up on snow, so we hit the best restaurant in Ceres - Spur. After that I asked a local at the KAFEE where I could find snow. He told us go for 15km north out of Ceres and then turn right, so we did.

Here is the turnoff you are looking for - it’s about 12km’s north of Ceres:

By now we started seeing snowmen on the bonnet’s of cars. Some where so huge they covered the entire passenger side windscreen - and most of them weren’t 4×4’s Looking around you see just how unbelievably awesome the landscape is. White snow on the peaks and green/brown fields.

We started seeing patches of snow and loads of people parked on the side of the road. The traffic wasn’t bad at all and we kept going up the mountain pass until we reached the Klondyke Cherry Farm. We were still on tar roads, no 4×4’s required. Ceres Tourism - back of the net. We found a cool spot and did what every other human does when they find snow. Throw it at other humans. At this point I would like to give you a tip: TAKE GLOVES. Our hands were all numb but the person who remembers gloves will have the edge in the snow fights Jackie took this classic photo of Zel launching a snowball at her:

And after that we took what I thought was the faster route (check the map) but which turned out to be MUCH slower. Drive there was about 2 hours. Drive back was in the region of 3.5 hours! Granted the traffic on the way back was quite crap. It was backed up on Ceres pass because drivers were slowing down to look at the waterfall?!

We need a website similar to the Redbull Big Wave website which gives you snow levels etc and realtime weather! I will help build it if others handle the infrastructure (webcams, weather station, etc).