Arriving at the Old Mac Daddy Trailer Park, the thought did cross my mind that perhaps I’d entered the compound of some weird sect.
Secluded on a pine-tree forested slope overlooking a dam stood 12 gleaming American Airstream trailers.
Perhaps it was that incompatible combination of down-home ordinariness and the bizarre, which the United States specialises in, that gave me the notion. But here were no apple-pie-baking wives about to embark on a mass suicide pact with some polygamous messiah.
On the contrary, this is a comfortable, family-friendly, imaginative, conceptually fresh, relaxing country retreat.
Novelty goes a long way; we seem hard-wired by nature to be drawn to things different and original.
Some time ago the former owners of the Grand Daddy Hotel in Long Street hired a crane and hoisted seven 1950s polished metal trailers on to the roof.
They created a small hotel village, the world’s only trailer park penthouse suites, replete with Astroturf, white picket fences and US Postal Service mailboxes.
On calm summer nights they show movies on a screen above the building’s lightwell. One night I saw the vintage My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn.
There is a bar and a lounge. It is a unique experience.
The same team has now created the trailer park country retreat in Elgin.
Trailer park might conjure up some negative, white-trash images of people sitting on garden furniture that was once their lounge furniture and who own homes on wheels while their cars stand on bricks.
Ironically, Winnebago is an Algonquian word, literally meaning “person of the dirty water”, which originally referred to the Ho-Chunk Indians from the muddy Fox River of Wisconsin.
These are not Winnebagos (a proprietary eponym, like Jacuzzi), but iconic metal Airstream mobile homes.
The Airstream company has been in business since 1931 and still manufactures its signature aluminium-clad trailers. Depending on size, new ones cost between $50 000 and $80 000.
Attached to each of the fully air-conditioned trailers, which have queen-size beds, is a comfortable wooden deck and a chalet on stilts, providing a sitting room, en suite spacious bathroom and sleeping accommodation for kids.
Wrap-around floor-to-ceiling glass doors that can be completely folded open take full advantage of the south-facing view over the valley.
The pièce de résistance is that, as with the trailers on the hotel rooftop, each is individually decorated according to a theme.
I stayed in the Grolsch Airstream, refitted by design agency Coley Porter Bell. It is a fully magnetic, modular environment, meaning the shelving and the lights can all be moved around; you simply stick them to the magnetic walls wherever you find convenient.
The 360-degree wallpaper is a jigsaw puzzle of magnetic pieces depicting the surrounding pine forest. You can rearrange it at will.
The concept is playful and enchanting. Other trailer themes include the x-rated “Dirkie Sanchez suite”, with raunchy wrestling-inspired illustrations (costumes are provided for role playing games); “For Better or For Boerewors”, a hymn to the old ways of pioneering South Africans, with riempies, ball-and-claw furniture, lace doilies; the “King Midas suite” in gold; “Life before Colour”, paying tribute to black-and-white photography, smoky mirrors and fringed curtains; “Mills & Boon”, a pink cocoon of pulp fiction romance novels; “Private Life of Plants”, the Darwinian world of an eccentric botanist with old globes, vintage textbooks and prints, bell jars, specimens and curious artefacts.
In “The Dream” you enter Henri Rousseau’s painting of a verdant, exotic, dreamlike jungle. In “Yellow Submarine” you can survey the landscape with a fully functional periscope and plot your way on an LED-lit ocean-floor chart table.
The Airstreams are not self-catering; for meals, you must head down to the large barn with communal areas, bar, fireplaces and a swimming pool. There is internet, bigscreen television and games rooms to amuse the kids.
Potjiekos and braais are part of the summer menu, with children under eight eating for free from the children’s menu at all meals. The park offers a farm dam, a herb garden, hiking trails through the orchards, and there are nearby wine estates.
Grand Daddy Airstream Penthouse, 38 Long Street, Cape Town, Tel: +27 21 424 7247. [email protected]
Old Mac Daddy Trailer Park, Elgin. Opening special valid until January 10 next year, Sunday to Thursday at R475 a night for the trailer, including continental breakfast. Bookings: online at www.oldmacdaddy.co.za, email: [email protected] or tel: 08614 DADDY (32339)