Tonga steps up a gear

The Tonga has had a revamp and now boasts the kind of kitchen we've not seen before.

- Leon Botha

Because the Tonga is a small camper trailer intended for a couple, you could mistake it for a typical teardrop trailer. It is everything but. Teardrops usually have two doors on either side with the kitchen at the back. But the Tonga only has one door – at the back – and the kitchen is at the front and on the left, plus some of it is in a detached unit…

We checked out the first Tonga model in 2019 – and back then we were already impressed. The new version has been refined and improved significantly, although you can still recognise the lines.

These days, you can choose between a braked and an unbraked Tonga. For this article, we towed the latter to a campsite.

Setting up

Because our test model wasn’t equipped with brakes, a chock on both sides of the wheels comes in handy to prevent the trailer from rolling forward or backward while you set up camp. It’s less of a problem if, like us, you’re given a lovely, lush lawn – then you can just quickly hop out to put a stone in front of the wheel. Now lower all four of the corner steadies – simple square tubes with feet that you lower and then tighten in place. Just like its predecessor,