Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit, by Catherine Lanz

Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit, by Catherine Lanz.

Everything but the toilet paper is a chapter from the travel report Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit, written by Catherine Lanz.

It rained twice on the day we departed for our southern African safari. For the final hour of a three-day packing operation – the part involving roof and bike racks – the Cape Town skies emitted a misty, continuous drizzle. It was more of a middle-finger salute than a fond farewell from the Mother City. Two weeks and four hours later than our intended departure date, the travelling circus finally lumbered out of the driveway. It’s a trick of the human brain that the longer you go for, the more stuff you seem to need. So, of course, we had too much stuff: a gleaming new Conqueror off-road trailer, four bicycles, a double fold-up sea kayak, a surfboard, two boogie boards, 15 locks … not to mention the camping paraphernalia. Pulling this lot along was our diesel Toyota Fortuner, sporting five new Cooper off-road tyres, a long-range tank, a dual battery system and the essential roof carrier. For guidance, we had TV Bulpin’s Discovering Southern Africa, the Lonely Planet guide, a large-format African Adventure Atlas and a Garmin GPS (mounted on the dashboard just next to the good-luck frog). We didn’t, as it turned out later, have toilet paper. We hadn’t gone more than 15 kilometres when I learned my first two rules of African travel. The first: never trust a GPS. The second: never have firm expectations of anything. Let me explain. It was a Monday morning, rainy and still in the aftermath of rush-hour traffic. On our way to the wild bush of Africa, we just had to make a quick stop at Home Affairs to collect a passport for Kira. I knew where the office was Everything but the toilet paper Chapter 2 Cape Town to Cape Agulhas 10 – after all, I’d been there three-and-a-half months previously to apply, hadn’t I? But Byron, with the eagerness of a man with a new electronic device, insisted the GPS should guide us there. With irritating electronic beeps and an insistent American accent, it guided us instead down a dead-end alley that was too narrow to turn the trailer. The result was a 35-point turn, an unhitched trailer, irritated fellow motorists and a very wet Byron. It was neither an auspicious nor a well-tempered start to 10 months of travelling together. Before departure, I’d packed a picnic lunch, which I thought we could enjoy on the crest of Sir Lowry’s Pass in glorious sunshine – chomping chicken mayonnaise as we yelled our exuberant goodbyes to our flat-topped mother mountain and the gnarled finger of the Cape Peninsula. However, you should never use the words ‘quick’ and ‘Home Affairs’ in the same sentence. Byron and the kids picnicked in the parking lot while I stood for a famished hour in the collections queue – just the collections queue, not the insurmountable-problems queue, not the need-to-buyan-illicit-SA-ID-document-for-a-foreigner queue, just the sign-here-and-take-your-green-book queue. An hour. Finally, we escaped the city of Cape Town and quit the N2 highway at Bot River to follow back roads through the undulating coastal fynbos of the southern Cape. Our intention for the trip was to meander idly, avoiding tar where possible, to new places and old favourites. Screeching in protest, the GPS attempted at every turn-off to return us to the highway. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit, by Catherine Lanz.

Title: Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit
Author: Catherine Lanz
Publisher: Randomhouse Struik
Imprint: Travel and Heritage
Cape Town, 2011
ISBN 9781770079403
Softcover, 15x23 cm, 192 pages, several colour photos