Sutherland Sky: Part II

Today I’m continuing with my series of posts about my October 2013 visit to the small town of Sutherland in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. Sutherland is home to a South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) research station that contains many telescopes, including the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). You can read Part I of this series here.

Today I am sharing a few more pictures of the town of Sutherland. In my next post I’ll discuss my visit to the SAAO museum. Then I’ll discuss our amazing tour of some of Sutherland’s telescopes, including SALT. Last but not least, I’ll discuss some of the great geology that we saw while traveling between Cape Town and Sutherland.

Without further ado, here are a few more pictures of the small– but important– town of Sutherland:

My husband and I spent two nights in Sutherland, and we stayed at The Sutherland Hotel. The rooms at the hotel are very basic and somewhat small, but they are clean and the inn staff are very friendly. The hotel also has a bar and a kitchen providing some traditional Afrikaans food– very rich, hearty food. The food wasn’t anything to write home about, though– we’ve had much better Afrikaans food. Breakfast was included with our stay. For variety, if my husband and I visit Sutherland again we’ll probably stay in one of the smaller guest houses or possibly on a nearby guest farm. However, the Sutherland Hotel provided economical accommodation for our Star Trek club group. I certainly recommend the hotel– just don’t expect anything fancy.

During our first night in Sutherland, we had dinner at a lovely little restaurant called Cluster d’ Hote. My husband and I arrived in Sutherland a night before the rest of the Star Trek club group. After walking around the town for a few hours on our first day, we popped into Cluster d’ Hote and asked if we could have afternoon tea. We enjoyed a leisurely pot of tea and some sweets in the restaurant, which is located in an old house that is filled with interesting antiques. We noticed that Cluster d’ Hote had a very good Trip Advisor rating advertised on their wall, so we made a booking for dinner later in the evening. We tried to pay for tea before we left to freshen up and spend an hour or so reading in our hotel room, but we were told not to worry about the bill; we were told that we could settle it after our evening meal. I guess that there is still some trust in some of the small South African towns! It was very refreshing to experience such small town trust.

We immensely enjoyed our dinner at Cluster d’ Hote. We sampled two traditional Karoo lamb dishes, and the food was excellent. I highly recommend a meal at Cluster d’ Hote if you find yourself in Sutherland.

That’s all for this post. Stay tuned for Part III!