How Morgan Freeman fits into the story.

27 AUGUST 2020

Within a day or two of returning home from Strandfontein, Andre found her on Gumtree: our perfect caravan! Cheap, light in weight and inside colour, small but still fairly spacious, 4 berths for when the kids join us. The only problem was – she was in Oudtshoorn!

After Andre managed to negotiate the price down a bit, we decided to go and have a look at her. If we liked her, we could simply hook her up and gradually make our way back home with a few stopovers. If we didn’t like her, we could still make a long weekend of it by staying over in B&B’s or chalets. So, on Thursday, 27 August, we grabbed our picnic set, our sleeping bags and pillows and a small box of things that I had earmarked for the caravan during the big move, and off we went to Oudtshoorn.

We travelled on the N1, through the Du Toitskloof Tunnel and past Worcester… Oops, no, that does not sound right! What really happened is that we were talking so much that the navigator forgot to direct the driver through Worcester, so we had to take a detour onto De Wet Road and through the Nuy Valley, until we reached the R62 towards Robertson.

Just before Robertson, we had a loooooong delay – a truck full of sheep had collided with a bakkie and there were sheep everywhere. Luckily, we did not see that, but a passing traffic official told us that they had their hands full trying to herd together and catch the poor disorientated animals. I must admit, I got a bit of a giggle out of that mental picture – traffic cops chasing around sheep! Unfortunately, we were stuck there for about two hours, but we had our picnic set and a flask of hot water, so we made coffee and ate some cookies whilst Kris Kristofferson kept us company.

When we could finally drive on, we struck the roadworks between Ashton and Montagu, which caused further delays. Eventually we reached Oudtshoorn after 5 o’clock (and 6 hours on the road), only to realise that the owners lived on a smallholding another 10 minutes or so outside Oudtshoorn.

But it was love at first sight! She was by no means perfect, but she was perfect for us! We could live with her small flaws. So, we bought ourselves a caravan! We signed all the documents, did an EFT for the purchase price, and hooked up our caravan!

By this time, it was dark already, but luckily Kleinplaas Resort in Oudtshoorn had space for the night (actually, we were the only people crazy enough to camp in the freezing weather). The electrical connection cable did not have the correct fitting, but the caravan has an inverter, so at least we had lights for the night. Nothing could dampen our excitement about cuddling up inside our cozy caravan for the first time.

In our family, everything gets a name, so our caravan had to be named. I made suggestions and so did the kids, but Andre insisted that he wanted to name her. And then it struck him – my brothers always tease him because he drives too slowly (the Van Zyls like speed) and refer to him as “Driving Miss Daisy” – with reference to the movie with Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. Well, our caravan would be called “Miss Daisy” because now he would really be driving Miss Daisy!