Dirty Weekend

Looking for a last-minute adventure that will satisfy your hunger for wander? This story takes in one national park, two nature reserves and a wilderness area — all in two days of travel on gravel from Cape Town.

- Calvin Fisher and Kelly Lodewyks

It was Sunday, midday. Normally at this point I’d be fighting off a food coma on the couch with my Staffies, but this time I was sitting alongside South Africa’s longest dirt road, the sun beating down on my back, with a too-hot wheel spanner in my hands. The massive carcass of a recently exploded 4x4 tyre was nestled on my lap. I’d just replaced it after winching the spare-wheel free from under our Nissan Navara’s belly with Kelly’s help. But, and this part is crucial, we were still smiling.

How did we get here?

The plan was simple enough. We’d bust out of work at around 16h00 and point our 4x4 in a northerly direction along the Cape–Namibia route. We wanted to get our tyres dirty. See, doing great distances off the paved road is a lot like taking your shoes off when you get home after a long day. You tend to unwind, unravel somewhat in the most therapeutic of ways. When you depart the asphalt and allow the rubber to bite hard into the dirt, that’s soul food to a South African. We had two nights to unwind before hitting the grind again on Monday morning, so it was clear that we’d need to beat a tarmac retreat for the first leg of our journey, which would begin at sunset on this warm Friday evening at the West Coast National Park along the R27.

We made it narrowly, five minutes before the gates closed. Once in the park we ventured off the tar and onto the dirt roads where permissible. We barely scratched the itch, knowing full well that by the time we fell asleep it would have grown once again. But that’s fine as we had easily 250 kilometres of untarred goodness to enjoy the next day. Not to mention the sort of food that road trips are famous for. Warm inside and out from the fire we cooked on in our Morocco-like Duinepos chalet, we retired to bed. Kelly would utter ‘roosterkoek’ more than once in her sleep that night.