The Klein Karoo Rooms

A little cosier than the Groot Karoo rooms but still the product of a more generous and expansive era

Each of the rooms in the hotel have their own themes and authentic back stories. Staying with us you're unlikely to get to see the other bedrooms (we assume) so here's a tour. 

The Claudius room

Hendrik Claudius aka Heinrich Claudius (c1655 Breslau - after 1697 Holland) was a German painter and apothecary or physician, noted for his 17th-century watercolours of South African plants and animals.

Claudius arrived in the Cape Colony from Batavia in 1682 to paint plants of medicinal interest. He joined Ensign Olof Bergh's second expedition in 1683 to Namaqualand in a quest to locate the source of rich copper ore.[1] It is thought that two years later he also joined Governor Simon van der Stel who had the same goal, and that he was responsible for the illustrations in an account of the expedition. He is also regarded as one of the artists contributing to Jacob Breyne's Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarum plantarum centuria prima. In all, the Africana Museum in Johannesburg acquired some 433 original watercolours ascribed to him. The pictures in this room are high end reproductions on archival art  of some of those watercolors 

The Fynbos room

Fynbos is the name of the extraordinarily rich floral kingdom that surrounds us . Many an uneducated traveler might dismiss the grey / brown vegetation of the seemingly endless semi arid plains of the Klein and Groot Karoo as 'Karoo bush' and harbour the suspicion that "nothing grows there" . Yet they'd be looking at one of the worlds great floral Kingdoms and a place of typically more diversity per square meter than any other plant region on earth. Durban based mural artist Mandy Brockbank did this monochrome depiction of Fynbos.

The Aloe room

When we purchased the hotel this room was described as 'the drivers room'. As in the driver of the tour bus. Yes, it's the smallest bedroom in the house. And yes it has the enormous kitchen extractor fan as a view. But even so it's a room that grows on you. Intimate and with the afternoon sun it has the feeling of a bolthole , a place to escape and read a book in peace. Durban based artist Mandy Brockbank did the Aloe. She also did the murals in the downstairs loo's plus a giant mural in the Baines room.

The San Room

Barrydale wall artist Quinton Faro produced the wall art in this room. Interestingly enough his original work covered the entire space; floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Sue as decorator felt it was all too much and she then took the bold move of simply framing two small aspects of the bigger whole and then painting over the rest with a paint roller. Quinton was aghast and so were we. But 'less is more' worked. Perhaps in some distant age a geologist will come along and make the startling discovery that underneath 'the paint of ages' lay a spectacular resource of undiscovered 'bushmen' paintings