It didn’t start off well. We’d been planning to drive in my husband’s somewhat ancient vehicle, but a few days before we left the engine more or less just dug in its wheels and refused to go. We looked into hiring a 4x4, but it was so expensive we might as well have charted a private jet. I was all for it, at that point. But in the end we settled on an affordable but distinctly bottom-of-the-range bakkie; a good thing, as it turned out, because it was big enough to carry everyone else’s water, spare tyres, mattresses, chairs, beers, tents, clothes and… I actually have no idea how any of us would have managed without it.
We were a motley group made up of writers, farmers, architects, amateur historians,…
