During a recent visit to the beautifully arid Karoo village of Prince Albert, the  mercury is hovering at around the mid-40s.  Judging by the local kids nonchalantly walking around barefoot, this sweltering weather is nothing out of the ordinary, but something the townsfolk have come to count on.

Fortunately for me, as well as the myriad inkommers swarming the place over the December holidays, this town is well geared towards the soaring temperatures, with all of its delis and restaurants offering air-conditioned sanctuary, and some even cleverly tempting passers-by with sandwich boards promising homemade ice creams and ice cold ginger beer.

The aforementioned tactic works wonders, because before I know it, I find myself eating scoops of rich homemade fig ice cream at 9am on a Saturday morning at Mix, a cute little coffee shop cum deli, selling everything from brown paper bags filled with baby potatoes to bottles of lemon cordial tailor-made for the climatic conditions.

Next up on the itinerary is a mosey around the postage stamp-sized Prince Albert Farmer's Market next to the Fransie Pienaar Museum where the whole town has apparently convened to swap stories over coffee and roosterkoek as they load their baskets with the week's supply of shiny organic veggies. Quite cute is the pecan nut purveyor, who supplies a free pecan-nut pie recipe with all purchases.

By noon I work up enough of an appetite to pop into the Swartberg Hotel Coffee Shop and Food Store.This place is renowned for its freshly baked stone-ground flour breads, including olive, rye and farm loaves. They're usually sold out by lunchtime, but I'm lucky enough to be able to order French toast made with their spongy ciabatta, which, in addition to the crispy bacon and maple syrup it's served with, goes down particularly well with a dollop of the shop's homemade apricot jam.

Well sated, a drive is on the cards, so I hit the road to Swartrivier Olives where eccentric olive expert Jan Bothma jokes that he's been in the business since the eighties, but still doesn't know all that much about the biblical fruit. I taste my way through an assortment of pickled Manzanilla and Mission olives, and his wife Annalien's deftly crafted pastes, pickles and chutneys, and stock up on bottles for future impromptu picnics.

After a leisurely midday snooze abruptly ended by an electricity (read: aircon) outage, it's time for dinner at Prince Albert's iconic cookery school and restaurant, African Relish. Resident chef and spice girl Vanie Padayachee is busily cooking and plating up in the lime-accented kitchen, which spills over into the open-plan restaurant and affords diners a bit of dinner theatre thrown in for free.

A complimentary amuse bouche of chilled tomato soup with basil dressing is just what the doctor ordered to cool down the crowd, as are the overhead misters that spritz us with gloriously icy gusts every so often.

My choice of starter is a lamb and sweetcorn croquette served with a dribble of saffron aioli and slivers of piquant cucumber. For mains, I regret my choice of Thai red veggie curry only because my dining compatriot has ordered the most tender piece of slow-roasted lamb neck, the richness of which is tempered with a cleverly thrown-together salad of roasted butternut, pomegranate, feta and onion.

I finish off my last meal in Prince Albert with a sinfully good slice of Vanie's dense dark-chocolate tart. A suitably bittersweet note on which to end my Karoo sojourn.

By Annette Klinger