De Vlugt, Garden Route

De Vlugt is a small Settlement located Halfway through the Prins Albert Pass. It is the only Pass in South Africa, where People live beside the Road and Trade, within the Pass. The Town has a selection of quality and pretty Accommodation on offer, as well as Restaurants and Tea Gardens.

The Area has a lot of fun activities on offer and visitors can find out more about these activities at the new Information Centre, opposite the Outeniqua Trout Lodge. (There is however no Mobile Reception, Banks or Petrol, available on the Pass!) It is Roughly halfway along Prince Alfred Pass (R 339), as it descends to meet the River, is the Historical Hamlet of; De Vlugt. Also know as Die Vlug.

De Vlugt is what remains of the dwellings of Andrew Geddes Bain and his son, Thomas, their Outbuildings and the Concentration Camp that housed the 270 or so Convicts, who labored to Build the Pass, the early 1860's. Bain began his task on the Knysna side of the Pass, widening the tracks of elephant through the Forest, before setting up Camp Midway, in the Poort along the Banks of the Keurbooms River, to continue the demanding task of Pass Building. ( a POORT is a narrow pathway through a mountain).  Little has changed in De Vlugt since then. The only nod to Globalization is a Telkom Telephone, on one side of the Road, and a Tea Garden that offers coffee and Melktert (Milktart), bottled fruit, jams, tea, scones and hand-painted ornaments, on the other.

Otherwise the peaceful Hamlet remains undisturbed, (a Small Settlement, generally one Smaller than a Village, and one without a Church!) In this Stretch of the Pass, life is about as slow as it is going to get off the beaten Track in South Africa. Baine's Cottage still has original yellowwood floors, the kitchen a large Aga Stove, and there is no electricity. There are a couple of reasons to stay here: #Burchell's Track, a 4X4 route that follows Burchell's ox wagon Trail through the Kloof; a real Pioneer track threw by William John Burchell, the Botanist, in the Hectares of fynbos to the West of De Vlugt. Burchell traveled from Skuurbeknek to Romanskraal, Jaggakamma and Knoetskraal before linking up with the Paardekop trail to Plettenberg Bay.

It was only in 1998, when a fire destroyed Hectares of fynbos between Pietersrivier Farm and De Vlugt that the tracks made by his wagon were revealed. Burchell's Track is run by local; Katot Meyer, with the help of Middle Keurbooms Conservancy and Cape Nature. (Look out for hand-painted maps of the Trail in the old Cottage, at De Vlugt, if you want to follow the Trail that Burchell carved with his wagon. Interestingly: he had the wheelbase deliberately narrowed to enable him to navigate the narrow sections, which makes it steering wheel-gripping at times!)