This Travelling Circus Is No Joke

Nick Dall liked to think of himself as a seasoned traveller, ready for whatever the world could throw at him. That was before he tried going away with a baby and two dogs...

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I have survived a battle with a flesh-eating Amazonian parasite and I’ve traversed bandit country in northern Kenya. I’ve diced with death astride a scooter on Hanoi’s claustrophobic streets and I’ve swallowed (but failed to keep down) a piece of barbecued cow’s udder in Bolivia. None of these misadventures, however, carries anywhere near the emotion, the heartache or the angst of the quotidian tale I will now relate…

It was Christmas a few years ago, and like every other Christmas before, I was about to make the annual family pilgrimage to Betty’s Bay about 90 km from Cape Town. Every year since 1976, my entire extended family from both sides has descended on this sleepy holiday village for a couple of weeks of sun, sand and siestas; a much needed battery recharge for the year ahead.

Except this time it was different. I now had a family of my own and just leaving Cape Town was going to be a challenge. Our brood comprised mom, dad and baby daughter, plus Basil and Ruby – needy Africanis rescue dogs – and a colony of 523 earthworms. (The worms may have been part of the family, but they’d be staying behind.) I tried to force down the panic by telling myself that it was only a 90-minute drive to a place I’d been to a hundred times before. We’d pack the Christmas presents the night before and the rest of the stuff in the morning and we’d still be there by lunch, maybe just after. My wife had wrapped, labelled and boxed the prezzies well in advance, so all I had to do was pop them in the car’s roof box before I went to bed. I did that, and slept well knowing that everything was under control.

It wasn’t. I got up