WE FOUGHT THE DESERT, AND THE DESERT WON… SL’S ROADTRIP GOES HORRIBLY WRONG.

WE FOUGHT THE DESERT, AND THE DESERT WON… SL’S ROADTRIP GOES HORRIBLY WRONG.

Every year we, the SL team, go on a road trip. We talk about it for months, debate over the pros and cons of driving to Namibia, subtly try to plant a little overseas-shaped seed in the boss’ head, get turned down and then throw darts at a map of South Africa, all with the intention of bringing you the greatest damn travel story of the whole year. Before I can even begin to tell you about this year’s escapade, there are a few things you need to understand. Firstly, Louise – our editor and general care-taker – has more connections than Selebi and can hook you (well, not you exactly, but us) up with almost anything we need. Secondly, most of our decisions in the office are made in 0.2 seconds, provided someone mentions the phrase ‘it’ll be awesome’. It was these very facts that resulted in a brainwave, one rainy Tuesday, that, yes, it would be awesome to take a drive to the Afrika Burns festival in the Karoo, and two days later we were in a campervan sponsored by Bobo Motorhomes, surrounded by boxes of Tang Bite, on our way into the desert. Sure, we could’ve hit the beach and lounged around drinking cocktails and swimming with dolphins for five days, but where, really, is the fun in that?

The only way to truly get some good road trip stories is to take yourself far away from your comfort zone. Plus, deserts spark all sorts of Fear and Loathing imagery and that’s not a bad headspace for your roadtrip-to-end-all-roatrips to aspire to. Road trips in general sound cooler in theory than they are in practice, unless you do it like we did. Campervans are the only way to travel long distances. Period. So, instead of squeezing ourselves into a tiny City Golf with a broken tail light, we were sprawled out on beds, basking in our general good fortune (and stellar planning). I was promptly vetoed out of any actual driving duties, and I assume it may have had something to do with the fact that I can’t reach the pedals and see over the dashboard at the same time. Still, my job was to entertain the drivers and judging by the amount of times I landed ass-over-head in the van as it wiggled around the highway, much to the other’s amusement, I did just that.