Family vs Camping: 1 – 1

We’re back from our trial night in De Hoop Nature Reserve with (most of) the Lloyd family and we have a result: we’re ready – mostly. De Hoop was really impressive: lots of wildlife (zebra, eland, ostrich, lynx, scorpions, baboons and more), enormous dunes and a beautiful old Cape Dutch farmstead – hardly rough camping.
But a good test it was. I won’t bore you with all the details but in general we discovered the following:

• We have too many children, or too little space, depending on your gender-based viewpoint
• We don’t have enough space for food: 40 litres of fridge space may sound a lot, but it’s the equivalent of a single shelf on your home fridge, at best – and takes only 10 beer bottles if you pack them in carefully, leaving enough room for a pound of boerwors
• Women don’t think beer is a legitimate food group
• It takes a long time to set up camp (45 minutes) and longer to pack up (1 hour) – God help us – especially having only hot beer to look forward to once complete
• Packing and unpacking in 40c heat is going to be really challenging
• The Land Cruiser, fully loaded up, will only go about 850 kms on 140 litres – and you wouldn’t want to be following us up big hills
• Baboons will attack your tent if you leave food inside and remunerate you for the steak with sh*t on the floor next to your mattress
• The roof tent comfortably accommodates a male adult and two children; getting up to have a pee is tricky and peeing from the tent itself is trickier still and necessitates a car wash in the morning
• The ground tent is big enough for everyone and a PhD in Physics would probably be helpful for putting it up
• Kids will only help doing the following: hammering, knifework and pyromania. Lifting, sorting and packing are out of the question
• Women will still obsess about cleanliness and make you take your shoes off before you enter the… errr…. tent – and they must be obeyed
• We need to bring a mop?!
• Mops can also be used for beer negotiations
• Boys will play with scorpions instead of running like hell
• If we let Elme Lloyd navigate, she’ll lead us to a military munitions test range for a picnic
• Exploring Botswana with the Lloyds is going to be great fun

So, in all, a moderate success. We have a list of things we still need to acquire – and a better understanding of how 5 people are going to live out of an SUV for 3-6 months… not terribly easily, but it should be a laugh.