Family Vacation

[Travel] Cape Town to free state (and back)

When the time came to plan our end-of-year visit to family in the Free State, I had two options: Either fly up from Cape Town and rent a car for a few days, or take a road trip of just over 3 000 km. Obviously, I chose to take a road trip!

To make things even more interesting, my wife and I decided that we were going to take our two dogs along for the ride. We have in the past taken them with us to go camping for a weekend, but they’ve never been on such a long adventure (in terms of time away from home, or distance travelled).

While I love long-distance driving, I wanted to take a load off after a long year of hard work, so I also needed some proper rest time. In planning this trip, I tried to keep driving to around 400 km a day, and to spend at least two nights at each campsite. For days on which we had longer drives, I booked us in at guest houses for single nights – we were travelling with a trailer and sleeping in tents, and not having to set up camp at the end of a long drive (or packing up when heading out early again) is a big comfort.

MATJIESFONTEIN

I had parked the Rhino Bushy Ranger trailer in the garage a few days before our trip began, and most of our equipment was already packed on the day of our departure.

Even though we were just two people (and two dogs), we filled the trailer to the brim. Since we had the space, we stored almost everything in the trailer and folded down the back seats of our old Nissan X-Trail so the dogs had a luxury ride.

Everything fitted easily… not just all the camping equipment, but also most of the food (non-perishable), two tables, two tents (a small Oztrail Blitz pop-up for one-night stays, and a bigger unit for longer camping), Christmas gifts for the family in the Free State, as well as a healthy supply of local wines.