Activities

Rietfontein is a place that can be visited year-round and offers the ultimate holistic Karoo experience. While hunting is the main activity, this is a place to which hunters will want to bring their spouses and families because there is so much to do for them. Hunting becomes a shared experience, a time for bonding and creating precious memories.

Rietfontein in Spring offers a true bounty of colour: the veld explodes into white, puffy kapokbos; vygies astound with their jewel hues; granaatbos blooms in yellow pillars scattered over the koppies and the num-num shows off its bright red fruit and the delicate white flowers have a scent more elegant than that of gardenias. This is a time that delights all the senses.

What the Karoo offers above and beyond the variety of activities is an opportunity to be still and breathe in the solitude: to sit and contemplate, recharge, think or just be. Besides day or night game drives, veld picnics, building puzzles or playing cards, there are a number of things you can do with your family:

Star-gazing

Rietfontein’s skies are mostly clear and cloud-free, and in the ink-black sky the Milky Way is a smudgy collection of nebulae that feel as if they are close enough to touch. Turn off the lights, lie on your back on the lawn and spend an hour star gazing. Nowhere else is the sky so dark and the stars so bright...

Mountain Biking

The farm is a mountain-biker’s heaven: for the beginner there are many kilometres of gravel farm roads to learn on and gain confidence, and for the intermediate and advanced rider there are challenges not only in distance and elevation, but in a variety of terrain from deep sand and river beds to shale and sandstone koppies. Rietfontein's topographical surface varies by some 200m between the highest and lowest contours and offers 160km of jeep track.

Fossil and Stone-Age Tool Hunting

Warning: This is dangerous! It could become the most addictive pursuit of all. Once you have found stone-age tools or petrified dinosaur bones in the veld, you will not be able to stop looking for more. A few dinosaur fossil bones can be found at Spykerfontein: examine them closely and note the tell-tale white “sponginess” on a cross-section that shows the bone marrow as it once was, now petrified.  The resident curator of the Prince Albert Fossil Museum, a palaeontologist, found the first dinosaur bones on Rietfontein on her visit to the farm within an hour of starting her search and a number of fossils have since been discovered, including an almost fully intact dinosaur lying encased in its stone shell. Fossil finds at 56 sites on Rietfontein have been registered and new fossils are found all the time. The best known fossils are those of the Bradysaurus, a mammal-like reptile about the size of a modern-day cow that lived 265milion years ago. That is 200 million years before Jurassic Park! Please note that the removal of any fossils or stone- age tools are strictly prohibited by law and enforced by us. The fossils have been there for millions of years and must remain there as they don’t belong to us!

Spykerfontein Bossie Trail

The plants of the karoo are small miracles; hardy and tiny and drably coloured, most would not rate a second glance until studied up close.  Their beauty lies in their astonishing detail.

Bird Watching

Cape Eagle Owl, Black Eagle, Martial Eagle, Secretary Bird, Kori Bustard, Pale Chanting Goshawk. Wild water birds abound on the dams and vleis around the spring: geese, coot and ducks.

Walking, Hikes, Jogging

Rietfontein offers many, many kilometres of walking pleasure. You can gamewatch on foot, follow a natural water courses, climb Tafelkop, or just jog for exercise and to clear your head.  Seemingly endless terrain and a variety of topography, geology and vegetation await you.