Hooray for Harties!

the view of Hartbeespoort Dam

Hartbeespoort, nicknamed "Harties", is a small resort town in the North West Province on the slopes of the Magaliesberg mountains and the banks of the Hartbeespoort Dam.

It is a popular place for holiday homes as well as day visitors from nearby Gauteng. Less than an hour (but a world) away from Joburg and even closer to Pretoria, Hartbeespoort offers a wide variety of activities and attractions including animal sanctuaries and outdoor craft markets.

Amazingly though my friend Ros, a lifelong Joburg resident who has been to some of the remotest places on the planet, had never been to Harties! (Isn't that typical?) So we took a drive out on a beautiful spring day for lunch and a little explore to rectify the omission.

I had not been to Hartbeespoort in a while myself. Vince and I would go out there often on weekends when we first moved to Joburg. The landscape is spectacular, there is lots to see and do and it is home to the Transvaal Yacht Club where we once belonged. But after we joined the Royal Cape Yacht Club in Cape Town, we ditched sailing on the dam lake for the more exciting two oceans of the Cape and said good-bye to Harties.

my ticket to ride

First stop, the Harties Cableway Experience, a gondola ride to the top of the Magaliesberg. On the weekends it can be a tough ticket to get but during the week, we just hopped on the next car up.

up, up and away!

overlooking the Transvaal Yacht Club

The view is gorgeous. It was a just a little too hazy to really claim to have seen Joburg way off in the distance, but I think we could make out some of the Sandton skyline on the horizon.

Back down on solid ground, we took a scenic drive through a carved out tunnel and over the dam bridge before heading to lunch at French Toast.

Hooray for Hartiwood!

French Toast is a cute little French bistro located on the former movie set of the 2015 Afrikaans film, French Toast. Rather than film all of the Paris scenes in France where much of the movie is set, producer and director Paul Kruger, shot them right here in Hartbeespoort on a recreated Parisian street.

The French Toast set and bistro have been open to the public for about a year. Ros was reminded of its existence by an ad she saw for the Hartiwood Food & Film Show last weekend. Ros had worked at Television SABC with the director Paul Kruger when he was a studio camera man and she was an editor there.

if you use a little imagination, you can almost hear the accordion music ...

the Eiffel Tower

love locks!

the Alexandre Cafe

The film French Toast opened in April of this year and as such is long gone from the theater. But they were selling DVDs of it at the little gift shop so I bought a copy for Vince and I to watch at home. It is an Afrikaans language film with English subtitles.

Even the menu at the bistro has subtitles. The dish names are in French and Afrikaans and the description is in English! Ros and I had a couple of salads and the food was good.

ooh lala!

It was a cute place, a nice little diversion and a good addition to the offerings at Hartbeespoort. I am anxious to see how well Hartiwood translated Paris to the big screen.