Freshly Brewed

In the Cederberg Mountains of South Africa, Kendall Hunter discovers the powerful effects of the humble rooibos plant.

- Kendall Hunter

I POPPED A POD into the Nespresso machine in my hotel room, and as tea filled the mug, I inhaled the woody, caramel aroma of rooibos. The broomlike shrub—its name is Afrikaans for "red bush"—is native to the Cederberg Mountains of South Africa's Western Cape, where temperatures can rise above 100 degrees in summer and drop to near freezing in winter. The region is, in fact, the only place in the world where rooibos grows.

In February, I traveled along the N7 highway north of Cape Town to experience the Rooibos Route, an itinerary of farms, factories, tea shops, and restaurants. I sampled rooibos as a tea, in a milkshake, in a martini, in a steak sauce, and even as an exfoliant during a massage.

One morning, I rode a Land Cruiser over dirt roads the color of marmalade with a guide, Byron Hartung, and three other guests of Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve & Wellness Retreat (doubles from $1,148, all-inclusive) to one of 130 rock-art sites on the property.

This was a shamanic site of the San, the nomadic hunter-gatherers who first inhabited South Africa. As we gathered around pictographs of cattle with long eland-type bodies and figures tilted in dance, Hartung explained that the rock was more than a canvas to the San—it was a gateway into a spiritual world. The paintings are 3,000 to 10,000 years old. As I gazed at them, in this sheltered spot on the veld, I felt transported back in time.