East of Victoria Bay, across the Kaaimans River, the beach at WILDERNESS is so close to the N2 that you can pull over for a quick dip and barely interrupt your journey. Unfortunately, the position of the national road leaves the village and lakes stranded inland. Tradition has it that Wilderness village earned its name after a young man called Van den Berg bought the property in 1830 for £183 as a blind lot at a Cape Town auction. When he got engaged, his fiancée insisted that their first year of marriage should be spent out of town in the wilderness, so he romantically (or perhaps opportunistically) named his property Wilderness and built a hut on it.