Cape Town to the Tankwa Tented Camp, via Worcester and Ceres/328 km
Rain. It’s the last thing you want to see when there’s an SUV adventure to the Karoo on the cards, but that’s what the weather gods served up as a sodden entrée to our trip. As the drenched blanket of grey draped itself over Cape Town on the morning of our departure, the CAR garage was a hive of activity; readying tyre pressure gauges, hurriedly applying decals to the delayed Toyota Fortuner, and coordinating our first stop on the N1, where we’d collect our off-road caravan, and quietly praying our delayed departure would not see us thrown into the teeth of Cape Town’s notorious morning rush-hour traffic.
Thankfully, the expected gridlock and chaos that usually accompanies the slightest hint of moisture on Mother City roads materialised only on the inbound lanes – an unenviable sea of headlamps and morose-looking commuters mired in a trudge towards town – and the cut and thrust of motorway driving gave us the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the gathered SUVs before tarmac gave way to unsealed road surfaces. While our group comprised several models with which we’ve spent a good deal of time, there was one car that was particularly compelling, being something of an unknown quantity: the GWM Tank. With its eye-catching, Jeep-esque styling
