Trip report: Southern Africa
OK, so I've had my takeaway and a bottle of Belgian beer. The cats have stopped attention-seeking and the house is quiet because Sally is 20 miles away with an IV antibiotic drip in her arm failing to...
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Day 2: Sunday - Drakensberg
While waiting for breakfast I checked the camper again. It comes fitted with a 40 litre Engel fridge. This is a chest-style fridge and is legendary amongst overland travellers. It is a compressor fridge and has a thermostat that I left on 1.5 yesterday (it goes to something like 6). But overnight I was worried it was too warm, so set it to 3. That turned out to be a mistake as the thermometer showed this morning:
Checking the battery monitor showed it had nearly flattened the camper battery. Subsequently, leaving it on 1.5 over night turned out about right and only gently sipped from the camper battery. This camper doesn't have solar, but driving every day and running a very efficient fridge like this I was never again worried about battery use (the only other thing that uses battery power being the few LED lights and anything I plug into the cigarette lighter socket).
We have a traditional upright fridge freezer in our Shadow Cruiser. It is 140 litres capacity - so huge in comparison to this (and a much thirstier consumer of battery power, and nowhere near as powerful at cooling). I initially worried about this small 40 litre capacity. I needn't have - gravity came to my help. On my upright compressor fridge I cannot really fill it anywhere near capacity, or stuff will fall out when you open the fridge door. In this chest fridge you can keep cramming things in the gaps and of course nothing will fall out - as long as you can secure the lid. If I had a small pop-up truck camper which didn't have a fridge - I would now buy one of these (and the 40 litre one) instead of a regular camper fridge. The 40 litres was easily enough capacity for the two of us.
Heading out onto the roads it became evident it was Sunday:
People were walking miles in their smartest dresses or suit & tie to attend church. Children were in their smart school uniform. These people live in small single-room buildings, often circular with a straw or corrugated tin roof. People who didn't have much but took a pride in their appearance. Children waved at Sally, Sally waved at everyone, everyone waved back.
This is the other end of Africa in every way from Morocco. In South Africa locals with modest means were tremendously friendly and didn't just see you as a potential source of cash. Morocco was the opposite where everyone would see you as a source of money and be very pushy in their attempts to get that money out of you. In South Africa children waved, in Morocco they put their hands out begging for money or sweats or just threw stones.
Of course, the fact that South Africa has had a wealthy white section of population for a very long time may have an affect: to a bystander we looked like regular white South Africans, used to the country, where-as in Morocco we were clearly European tourists and fair game for exploitation.
This is Golden Gate Highlands National Park:
On a scenic loop road Sally had her first go driving the Land Cruiser. Of course she found it very easy compared to the truck camper because it is a lot narrower. Though she had a shock when she attempted to change into 3rd gear on the slightest of hills - where is the turbo? Our fully laden truck camper would not have noticed the hill with its 2.5 turbo engine, but the 4.2 non-turbo really didn't like hills, and not at 2000m+ altitude where the lack of a turbo really hurt it:
Driving into the town of Phuthaditjhaba on our way to the mountains. As with most South African towns every street corner is a magnet for minibuses driven like racing cars, competing for the next passenger. Thankfully the government has brought in a load of regulation of these minibuses since I first visited South Africa. Only a few years ago they were a ragged bunch of very dangerous looking vehicles. Now they are all shiny nearly-new Toyotas in standard livery.
This was why we were driving through that town - to get to a road leading to the mountains. Notice the expensive block paving, like you would have on your house drive? This toll road was owned and maintained by the luxury lodge at its end:
However, you can see the road diverges ahead. Left is nicely paved and heads for the lodge, right becomes a dirt road and the initial bit is in very poor condition - this is probably deliberate since the lodge clearly make extra pocket money by providing 4x4 trips to the trail head at the end of this road.
Also notice the car in front - the pick-up truck or "Bakkie" is extremely popular in South Africa, often seen with 6 guys in the back, either being driven to a job, or who have hitched a lift. The difference in South Africa is that you can buy micro-pickup trucks based on sub-compacts like the Ford Fiesta, together with the usual sized pickups sold throughout the world (a bit bigger than the old US compact pickups) - the pick-up that carries my camper is sold in South Africa (and most countries of the world in fact). I saw maybe 4 or 5 US trucks of the 'full size' class - a class which just doesn't really exist outside the Americas.
Look at all that graffiti - and the culprits are clearly so arrogant they are sitting around at the scene of their crimes:
Pulling onto the dirt road and switching into low ratio 4x4 I am impressed by the comfort and axle articulation of the Land Cruiser. Also, not having a large mass of truck camper sat high up swaying around really helps when on bad dirt roads. Typically you hit a really bad bit you have to crawl over at 10 km/h, then you are back onto a lovely bit of gravel road again:
From the car park at the end of the road we sign in with the guard and pay the hiking fee. This is 2500m altitude and we climb up to just under 3000m. Luckily we are pretty fit so don't really feel the altitude, but we also fail to feel the affect that thinning atmosphere has on the powerful African summer sun. We both end up with bad sun burn despite thinking we have taken sufficient precautions. Plus I have a bleeding head from hitting it on the catch that protrudes from the camper roof where the two rear doors latch.
Interestingly, maybe 2 km down the valley to Sally's left is where we will be camping tonight. So close as the crow flies, but several hours drive by road.
A few other people were also hiking. A couple of young women from the South African army were making a half-hearted attempt at hiking up the trail - they were better protected from the sun:
We would have liked to spend more time on the trail to follow it at least to the chain ladders and then ascend onto the plateau which becomes Lesotho. But we still had a lot of miles to do to get to our campground.
Despite being out of season this campground was fairly busy:
A couple of overland trucks were present - a local South African one and the one on the right an Austrian built Steyr owned by a Swiss couple. They had wanted to drive down, but the conflicts in northern Africa mean that is no longer feasible. So they shipped the truck and flew. They had been touring southern Africa for months.
We set up the camper for our first night of camping, including our first night of cooking outside:
Usefully it came with a spare propane cylinder with either a gas lamp attachment or a second burner attachment. The latter was invaluable because it meant we could heat two things at once. You can see the blue cylinder in the above photo.
The upper hatch above Sally's head is a cupboard containing cooking equipment, cutlery and cups - well sited for when cooking outside. As mentioned before the sink is not well sited, being inside the vehicle. We ended up using large bottles of water, and refilling them when we found a campground where the drinking water looked good (not this one - Sally reported the water was a "funny colour" so used it for tea only) - easier than keep going inside and running the tap - plus on a rental camper you don't know what quality of water someone has put in the camper tank before you.
The camper came with no electric hook-up, although most campgrounds in South Africa are wired for hook-up on every site. The camper had nothing that would take advantage of that.
The roof on the camper is raised on gas struts. You undo a couple of catches on the back and give it a gentle push. It hinges from the front unlike a pop-up truck camper.
Inside there is a second roof - this is the floor to the sleeping compartment. Initially this stays down, so you push it up, also on gas struts to give you standing headroom inside. A shorter flap is hinged from the back and you push that up as well. Once raised the interior looks like this:
You can see the smaller flap pushed upwards.
Also notice the location of the fridge on the right - against the smaller of the two rear doors. That smaller door is the one you open first and close last - it has the door handle and lock on it. But as we discovered the next morning, if you pull it closed from the inside when you go to bed - you have effectively locked yourself in the vehicle because the fridge blocks the door handle. Actually there is enough room to insert your hand, but the ratchet strap holding the fridge down prevents the door handle from being operated - after this night we were very careful to gently pull the door closed without it latching - I didn't feel we needed the security of locking the door given where we were camping.
When it is bed time you do not have the luxury of climbing up onto the over cab bed like a truck camper, where one person can go to bed while the other site in the dinette reading. Getting into bed means pulling the inner roof down (you can see the rail it rests on about level with Sally's eye height).
Once you have pulled that down, but left the small flap visible above up, you can crawl up through the gap the latter leaves into the bed space. And as you can see from the size of that flap, it is a pretty small gap.
Here is the area you are climbing into - big enough for 2 people to sleep in, but getting in and reversing yourself down into the bed would be very disruptive if one person went to bed and sleep before the second tried to get in:
Looking in the other direction you can see the open hatch I climbed through:
You can also see the 'windows'. These have an unzippable opaque cover, behind which is an unzippable fly-screen. They provide a lot of good ventilation. However, they provide next to no sound insulation, and in the African bush in the evening trying to get to sleep can be difficult - for some reason animals choose the evening to shout at each other, and I don't even think alcohol is involved.
Stay tuned for more Drakensberg (I'll add the next day tomorrow, because it is getting late here, so please check back tomorrow for more of the story).
While waiting for breakfast I checked the camper again. It comes fitted with a 40 litre Engel fridge. This is a chest-style fridge and is legendary amongst overland travellers. It is a compressor fridge and has a thermostat that I left on 1.5 yesterday (it goes to something like 6). But overnight I was worried it was too warm, so set it to 3. That turned out to be a mistake as the thermometer showed this morning:
Checking the battery monitor showed it had nearly flattened the camper battery. Subsequently, leaving it on 1.5 over night turned out about right and only gently sipped from the camper battery. This camper doesn't have solar, but driving every day and running a very efficient fridge like this I was never again worried about battery use (the only other thing that uses battery power being the few LED lights and anything I plug into the cigarette lighter socket).
We have a traditional upright fridge freezer in our Shadow Cruiser. It is 140 litres capacity - so huge in comparison to this (and a much thirstier consumer of battery power, and nowhere near as powerful at cooling). I initially worried about this small 40 litre capacity. I needn't have - gravity came to my help. On my upright compressor fridge I cannot really fill it anywhere near capacity, or stuff will fall out when you open the fridge door. In this chest fridge you can keep cramming things in the gaps and of course nothing will fall out - as long as you can secure the lid. If I had a small pop-up truck camper which didn't have a fridge - I would now buy one of these (and the 40 litre one) instead of a regular camper fridge. The 40 litres was easily enough capacity for the two of us.
Heading out onto the roads it became evident it was Sunday:
People were walking miles in their smartest dresses or suit & tie to attend church. Children were in their smart school uniform. These people live in small single-room buildings, often circular with a straw or corrugated tin roof. People who didn't have much but took a pride in their appearance. Children waved at Sally, Sally waved at everyone, everyone waved back.
This is the other end of Africa in every way from Morocco. In South Africa locals with modest means were tremendously friendly and didn't just see you as a potential source of cash. Morocco was the opposite where everyone would see you as a source of money and be very pushy in their attempts to get that money out of you. In South Africa children waved, in Morocco they put their hands out begging for money or sweats or just threw stones.
Of course, the fact that South Africa has had a wealthy white section of population for a very long time may have an affect: to a bystander we looked like regular white South Africans, used to the country, where-as in Morocco we were clearly European tourists and fair game for exploitation.
This is Golden Gate Highlands National Park:
On a scenic loop road Sally had her first go driving the Land Cruiser. Of course she found it very easy compared to the truck camper because it is a lot narrower. Though she had a shock when she attempted to change into 3rd gear on the slightest of hills - where is the turbo? Our fully laden truck camper would not have noticed the hill with its 2.5 turbo engine, but the 4.2 non-turbo really didn't like hills, and not at 2000m+ altitude where the lack of a turbo really hurt it:
Driving into the town of Phuthaditjhaba on our way to the mountains. As with most South African towns every street corner is a magnet for minibuses driven like racing cars, competing for the next passenger. Thankfully the government has brought in a load of regulation of these minibuses since I first visited South Africa. Only a few years ago they were a ragged bunch of very dangerous looking vehicles. Now they are all shiny nearly-new Toyotas in standard livery.
This was why we were driving through that town - to get to a road leading to the mountains. Notice the expensive block paving, like you would have on your house drive? This toll road was owned and maintained by the luxury lodge at its end:
However, you can see the road diverges ahead. Left is nicely paved and heads for the lodge, right becomes a dirt road and the initial bit is in very poor condition - this is probably deliberate since the lodge clearly make extra pocket money by providing 4x4 trips to the trail head at the end of this road.
Also notice the car in front - the pick-up truck or "Bakkie" is extremely popular in South Africa, often seen with 6 guys in the back, either being driven to a job, or who have hitched a lift. The difference in South Africa is that you can buy micro-pickup trucks based on sub-compacts like the Ford Fiesta, together with the usual sized pickups sold throughout the world (a bit bigger than the old US compact pickups) - the pick-up that carries my camper is sold in South Africa (and most countries of the world in fact). I saw maybe 4 or 5 US trucks of the 'full size' class - a class which just doesn't really exist outside the Americas.
Look at all that graffiti - and the culprits are clearly so arrogant they are sitting around at the scene of their crimes:
Pulling onto the dirt road and switching into low ratio 4x4 I am impressed by the comfort and axle articulation of the Land Cruiser. Also, not having a large mass of truck camper sat high up swaying around really helps when on bad dirt roads. Typically you hit a really bad bit you have to crawl over at 10 km/h, then you are back onto a lovely bit of gravel road again:
From the car park at the end of the road we sign in with the guard and pay the hiking fee. This is 2500m altitude and we climb up to just under 3000m. Luckily we are pretty fit so don't really feel the altitude, but we also fail to feel the affect that thinning atmosphere has on the powerful African summer sun. We both end up with bad sun burn despite thinking we have taken sufficient precautions. Plus I have a bleeding head from hitting it on the catch that protrudes from the camper roof where the two rear doors latch.
Interestingly, maybe 2 km down the valley to Sally's left is where we will be camping tonight. So close as the crow flies, but several hours drive by road.
A few other people were also hiking. A couple of young women from the South African army were making a half-hearted attempt at hiking up the trail - they were better protected from the sun:
We would have liked to spend more time on the trail to follow it at least to the chain ladders and then ascend onto the plateau which becomes Lesotho. But we still had a lot of miles to do to get to our campground.
Despite being out of season this campground was fairly busy:
A couple of overland trucks were present - a local South African one and the one on the right an Austrian built Steyr owned by a Swiss couple. They had wanted to drive down, but the conflicts in northern Africa mean that is no longer feasible. So they shipped the truck and flew. They had been touring southern Africa for months.
We set up the camper for our first night of camping, including our first night of cooking outside:
Usefully it came with a spare propane cylinder with either a gas lamp attachment or a second burner attachment. The latter was invaluable because it meant we could heat two things at once. You can see the blue cylinder in the above photo.
The upper hatch above Sally's head is a cupboard containing cooking equipment, cutlery and cups - well sited for when cooking outside. As mentioned before the sink is not well sited, being inside the vehicle. We ended up using large bottles of water, and refilling them when we found a campground where the drinking water looked good (not this one - Sally reported the water was a "funny colour" so used it for tea only) - easier than keep going inside and running the tap - plus on a rental camper you don't know what quality of water someone has put in the camper tank before you.
The camper came with no electric hook-up, although most campgrounds in South Africa are wired for hook-up on every site. The camper had nothing that would take advantage of that.
The roof on the camper is raised on gas struts. You undo a couple of catches on the back and give it a gentle push. It hinges from the front unlike a pop-up truck camper.
Inside there is a second roof - this is the floor to the sleeping compartment. Initially this stays down, so you push it up, also on gas struts to give you standing headroom inside. A shorter flap is hinged from the back and you push that up as well. Once raised the interior looks like this:
You can see the smaller flap pushed upwards.
Also notice the location of the fridge on the right - against the smaller of the two rear doors. That smaller door is the one you open first and close last - it has the door handle and lock on it. But as we discovered the next morning, if you pull it closed from the inside when you go to bed - you have effectively locked yourself in the vehicle because the fridge blocks the door handle. Actually there is enough room to insert your hand, but the ratchet strap holding the fridge down prevents the door handle from being operated - after this night we were very careful to gently pull the door closed without it latching - I didn't feel we needed the security of locking the door given where we were camping.
When it is bed time you do not have the luxury of climbing up onto the over cab bed like a truck camper, where one person can go to bed while the other site in the dinette reading. Getting into bed means pulling the inner roof down (you can see the rail it rests on about level with Sally's eye height).
Once you have pulled that down, but left the small flap visible above up, you can crawl up through the gap the latter leaves into the bed space. And as you can see from the size of that flap, it is a pretty small gap.
Here is the area you are climbing into - big enough for 2 people to sleep in, but getting in and reversing yourself down into the bed would be very disruptive if one person went to bed and sleep before the second tried to get in:
Looking in the other direction you can see the open hatch I climbed through:
You can also see the 'windows'. These have an unzippable opaque cover, behind which is an unzippable fly-screen. They provide a lot of good ventilation. However, they provide next to no sound insulation, and in the African bush in the evening trying to get to sleep can be difficult - for some reason animals choose the evening to shout at each other, and I don't even think alcohol is involved.
Stay tuned for more Drakensberg (I'll add the next day tomorrow, because it is getting late here, so please check back tomorrow for more of the story).
