Picture your perfect South African road trip, or Sho’t left as our tourism board would call it. What do you see? The perfect SUV or double cab bakkie heavily packed and finding its way on the N1 South, picture perfect family moments with little Linda and Sipho playing their fave games in the back seat your two besties (who don’t even have their learners yet) chowing up the remainder of the padkos in the backseat, right? Right.
That’s just my imagination running wild when Datsun SA told us they’ve teamed up with Finns Vesa Eskola and Jarmo Kymenlathi, with their Datsun GO, in completing their epic roadtrip across Southern Africa. If there’s one thing that can be universally agreed in geekdom, it’s that the GO from Datsun is pretty damn cool. There have been various real life entry level (budget) vehicles built across the years, but only one has been officially localised for our market .
The trip began in Johannesburg, whereafter Vesa and Jarmo meandered across to the Kruger Park and then down to Durban. From Durban, they travelled along the garden route to Cape Town and up the west coast into Namibia. Then it was up to the Etosha Pan and back along the Trans-Kalahari highway (I have no idea where these last two places are).
One highlight of the trip was a stop in the Free State to view the classic Datsun collection of around 70 vehicles belonging to enthusiast Freek de Kock from DeKelder in Bothaville. The prize-winning vehicles in the collection – an original Datsun GTR, introduced as a sedan in 1971, and the Fairlady – the answer to the British 1960s genre of two seater sports car, but unusually featuring a third seat mounted at right angles to the driver’s seat in the rear of the vehicle.
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When we asked Vesa what the best thing of this trip was, he replied “South Africa is very beautiful with landscapes that keep changing. The diversity is wonderful and the roads are good.”
“The Kruger Park; being surrounded by a herd of 40 elephant in the Etosha as well as the winelands of the Western Cape come close to nothing” he concluded.
Believe it or not, but the only maintenance required during the entire 9 800km journey was to two tyres that suffered punctures on the flinty roads in the desert areas of Namibia. Comparing his African trip to those in Indonesia, India and Russia, Vesa saw Africa coming up trumps.
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