The Bokkeveld is a must-see on anyone’s travel itinerary if long stretches of open country get your imagination going. I had an additional incentive: the chance to test a brand-new circular gravel-road route that neighbouring farms in the Nieuwoudtville region have put together.
But one thing’s for sure, the corrugated R355 that links Ceres and Calvinia is a stern test for any 4x4 suspension and, right now, the back end of my test car, a Toyota Fortuner 2.8 GD-6, is bucking about on the corners. I was beginning to wonder why I had pleaded for an SUV instead of a bakkie.
Yes, I was a single passenger in a seven-person people carrier with a scant 80kg in luggage, and I was pushing on a bit, but I did get to thinking that the stock spring and damper settings were over- rm.
Time to get out then and drop tyre pressures to 1.7 front and 1.9 back, engage 4H and slow down a tad. The handling improved after that, but I wasn’t tempted to drop pressures much more on a road notorious for punctures.
I was on my way to a brainstorming breakaway at the well-known Papkuilsfontein Guest Farm outside Nieuwoudtville. I had been asked to come along by Cobus Theron, who manages the Drylands Conservation Programme (DCP) for the Endangered Wildlife Trust. My role was to see if any sustainable nature-based tourism activities could be added to the list with which they hope to help better conserve the unique bio-diversity of the Bokkeveld escarpment.
Cobus had also said there may be some rugged 4x4 driving opportunities on and around the escarpment, but I’d devised my own there-and-back dirt road test track of some 1 000km for the Fortuner just in case these didn’t materialise. And, as things turned out, I was glad I did.
Denne historien er fra October 2019-utgaven av SA4x4.
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Denne historien er fra October 2019-utgaven av SA4x4.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Uganda The Pearl Of Africa
This trip, the very last in the series of stories from Dan Grec’s two-year Africa round trip, details a scary mishap and some extraordinary wildlife encounters
Chewy, But Edible
Take another look at those garden pests
Auto Perfection?
Adding a six-speed auto to Mahindra’s workhorse ups the game for this value proposition
Defenders On Tour
The second 2019 Defender Trophy event kicked off in Limpopo and was unique in that participants camped in three different countries…
Rad Rig The Dream Catcher
Motorhome world’s one-of-a-kind luxury globetrotter
The Difference Between An Overlander And An Offroader
A very important distinction needs to be made between the offroader and the overland traveller; often the two are thought to be the same.
Steelmate TP-S9
Solar powered TPMS (External sensor)
Light on the dark side
VW AMAROK DARK LABEL
Monkey business!
Vervet Monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) are the most widespread of the African monkeys; occurring from the Ethiopian Rift Valley, highlands east of the Rift, and southern Somalia, through the eastern lowlands of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia (east of the Luangwa Valley), Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and all nine provinces in South Africa.
GREAT ZOOKS
There are a few mishaps as a bunch of Jimnys tackle one of Lesotho’s premier off-road challenges, Baboon’s Pass
