Small-town gems, strange bars and stories from the road

There’s something about a small South African town that can turn an ordinary road trip into a story you’re still telling years later.

That became very clear on HOT 102.7 Breakfast this morning when a conversation about Paternoster quickly turned into a nostalgic tour of some of the country’s more unusual small-town treasures.

Paternoster was first on the list — the West Coast fishing village known for its whitewashed cottages, great food and, of course, one particularly famous watering hole.

The Panty Bar at the Paternoster Hotel is exactly what the name suggests: a bar where underwear hangs from the ceiling above patrons.

Naturally, that was all the HOT 1027 Breakfast team needed to send the conversation slightly off course. Listen to their conversation below:

After some questions about whether any personal contributions had been made to the collection — and a few comments perhaps best left to the early-morning imagination — the team moved on to the other wonderfully quirky places they’ve discovered over the years.

Simon recalled his student days at Rhodes University and trips from Grahamstown to nearby Alicedale, where he and his friends would save up to play a round of golf at Bushman Sands.

Alicedale, he remembered, felt little more than a railway siding in those days.

After golf, the destination was the railway bar for a few beers before tackling the dirt road home — a road so remote that being stopped by a traffic officer in the middle of nowhere felt like something out of a Leon Schuster movie.

Then came another railway discovery, this time in Hoedspruit.

The team remembered being told they simply had to visit the railway station — not to catch a train, but to have a beer in a tiny bar with only a handful of seats.

It was exactly the kind of place you might never find unless somebody local told you about it.

And that, they agreed, is part of the charm.

South Africa’s small towns are filled with these unexpected gems — old pubs, historic hotels, tiny railway bars and places where it feels as though very little has changed in decades.

Riebeek-Kasteel offered another example.

At the Riebeek-Kasteel Hotel, the old-world bar and veranda transport visitors back to another era. Sitting outside, it isn’t difficult to imagine horses tied up nearby while travellers watched the dusty main road and shared a drink.

The horses may be gone, but as the Breakfast team joked, some things probably haven’t changed quite as much as we think.

And perhaps that’s the best reason to occasionally leave the highway, take the slower road and see what’s hiding in South Africa’s smaller towns.

You never quite know what — or whose underwear — you might find hanging above the bar.