Chapter 8: The road less travelled

After a wonderful time in Worcester and getting to spend time in the wilderness, we left in the early morning and hit the N1 for another grueling four-hour drive to the Karoo National Park. According to SANParks, it is prohibited to use drones inside (or above) a national park so we had to make alternative plans before entering.

We decided to visit Oukloof, which is a farming settlement that borders the Karoo National Park. Oukloof is made up of a series of game farms and has an interesting terrain; Akasia trees, crates, cliffs and river beds, which made for great footage and capability challenges we could put the #KarooDUSK, #KarooDAWN and #KarooSTORM through. As it has been throughout our trip, the Karoo Special Edition Range overcame the terrain with no problems.

Our drive led us to a long gravel road that runs through the Nuweveld Mountains, known as the Oukloof Pass, that was absolutely mesmerizing to drive through. We’ve driven on a lot of mountain ranges on this trip but this one was special, the view was spectacular and, despite the cold weather, we couldn’t help but stop and marvel at the absolute beauty of the land.

Something interesting happened while we were driving through Oukloof though, one of our team members nearly fell off a cliff! Luckily the other team members were there to assist him and he made it out with no scratches. Unexpected things happen on expeditions like these all the time and it’s important to learn a lesson from the experience and carry that into the rest of the journey.

From there, we headed towards Gamka Dam, an earth-fill dam located on the Leeuw River, just outside of Beaufort West. It sits in the mouth of the Gamkapoort Canyon and provides an even more breathtaking view of the landscape. After, we headed towards Trapvoet Pass further into the Nuweveld Mountains, which then led to the Ko-Ka Tsara trail. We reached Ko-Ka Tsara at nightfall, it was minus 4 degrees and the vehicles were starting to freeze so we ended up staying over for the night. We stayed in a lovely bungalow at the Ko-Ka Tsara Bush Camp.

We leave in the morning to meet up with Peter Laubscher, a well-known personality in the 4×4 community who will take us 30-40 kms North, where another challenging 4×4 trail lies.

Join us in part nine of our ongoing blog series as we explore all that Southern Africa has to offer as we Unleash The Explorer in You!