As wild as it gets

Fun and games in Baviaanskloof

- Jim Freeman

If there's one place in South Africa you don't want to encounter oncoming traffic, it's in the Baviaanskloof.

Roads in the Eastern Cape are frequently quite frightening, but nothing I've ever experienced in many years of travelling matches encountering a Hilux bakkie on a hairpin bend with no room to spare between a mountainside and sheer drop of hundreds of metres.

Eric and Esti Stewart promised the 4x4 adventure of a lifetime when I met them at World Travel Market (Africa) in Cape Town a few years ago and boy did they deliver when I finally took them up on their offer last week.

Three main elements determine the depth of one's Baviaanskloof experience: route, weather and choice of vehicle. The second and third essentially decide the first.

Although still winter and chilly, there was no serious rain forecast and with the Stewarts driving a tricked-out Series 2 Land Rover Discovery and me piloting Isuzu's new top-of-the-range m-UX 3.0 Onyx turbodiesel 4x4 sports utility vehicle, we were free to go anywhere there was a semblance of track.