Prepping our Ford Figo for our 25 day South African Adventure.

#fordfigo #camping #roadtrip #lazycampers

We have a Ford Figo (2011 model) which we love, it gets great mileage, I love the diesel humm and it is pretty comfortable to drive, and we do a lot of driving. We have very high expectations of this car, it is expected to take us wherever we would like to go. So when we went on our 25 day South Africa camping trip it was expected to take us… and it did. This trip covered quite a few of the national parks in South Africa and +-7000km.

In order to make this camping trip as easy as possible we needed to pack our car cleverly as we did not want to spend the whole trip packing and unpacking then repacking the car every time we got to a new place. I put quite a bit of thought into how to adapt the Figo to best suit our trip. I kept thinking back to when I was a kid and the cars we had when we went on safari. When I was in my early teens my folks had a Unimog (for those not sure, Unimogs are large army vehicles) that had been converted on the inside into a safari vehicle. We used to go on holiday in this car: the tents were on the roof, my brother and I had our own seats in the back with a TV and the fridges whilst in the very back of the vehicle there were 2 stacks of drawers (one side with clothing and the other with utensils). This was a great way to travel and there was very little setup and very little unpacking and repacking. So my thought was how do we make our Ford Figo work like the Unimog?

Firstly we needed drawers but the Figo does not have nearly as much vertical space as a Unimog so in order to be able to fit a set of drawers 4 high my husband suggested we take the back seats of the Figo out. Removing the seats was really easy: two clips and 3 bolts and 5 minutes later we were in business. Removing the seats gave us a lot more space but underneath the seats the floor of the car is not flat and so the drawers would not sit well. Solution: we put a large piece of MDF superwood where the backseats were to create a large flat surface. We placed the drawers’ frames onto the MDF and to prevent them from sliding we screwed thin strips of MDF around the base, cable tied the top of the drawers to the front seats to prevent them toppling over backwards; cable tied the drawers to each other to prevent them from toppling sideways and once the drawers were filled the weight of them was more than enough to help them stay in position. We filled the one set with clothing (2 drawers each) and the other set with non-perishable food items. We used bungy straps over the front of the drawers so that they didn’t slide open while we were driving, especially on the the bumpy dirt roads (of which there were many).

The drawer system.

The next task to tackle was how to keep fresh food cold for 25 days. So off we went to Outdoor Warehouse and Cape Union Mart to look at car fridges. They were way more expensive than we had expected and the big ones were too big for our tiny car and the small ones too small to fit the amount of food we needed to keep cold. So after weighing up the cost of a car fridge versus bags of ice, we decided a cooler box with ice would do us very well, and we already had the cooler box. Now the issue with a cooler box in a car is that everything rolls around the inside of the cooler box and then things become messy. So we adapted the cooler box as well. We bought plastic trays and angle grinded them to size and then slid them into the cooler box to create partitions: one for drinks, one for fruit and one for all other fresh goods. We also placed a tray, with holes drilled into it (it helps to heat the drill bit before drilling to ensure you do not crack the plastic), in the bottom of the cooler box to help keep fresh fruit and veg out of the water from the melted ice. In order to keep everything cold we put new ice into the cooler box each day and emptied the water out when need through the little side tap - super easy.

1. Divisions in cooler box, 2. Cooler box packed in car, 3. Cooler box as food prep area

Now to pack the car smartly:

We packed all the clothing in the drawers behind the passenger and all the food stuff in the drawers behind the driver. This was also really convenient when driving around because if we needed a jersey or short sleeve shirt the clothing was always with us. There was also no need to make any major plans to ensure we packed lunch as all our food was always with us in the car (in the drawers and the cooler box). We packed all valuable items like cameras, binoculars and laptops behind the driver’s seat and all the quad-copter paraphernalia behind the passenger seat. When the boot opened we had the cooler box with all our fresh food and drinks and our box with all our cooking and eating utensils nested in the frame of the boot. We were also able to use the top of the cooler box and utensils box as a food prep surface. In between the drawers and the cooler box we stored all the extra beers, extra milk, 5L water bottles, charcoal and firewood. Then on top of that we put the tent, blow up mattress, bedding and chairs as these were the only items that needed to be taken out for the car. When we moved from one campsite to another we didn’t roll up the tent, mattress and bedding, we just left everything in the tent folded it all in 4 and slipped it into the car, this made set up at the next site very quick. We managed to put up or take down our entire campsite in only 20 minutes, this gave us more time to enjoy the scenery.

One trick to living out of your car for a number of days is to put everything back in the same place all the time so that it is easier to find. Otherwise things get lost in the car, not to be seen again until you get home and unpack.

Our Ford Figo did really well on our trip and we covered a great variety of landscapes. We did over 1700km of dirt roads and some of those roads were rough. We drove hectic rumble strips in the Tankwa-Karoo National Park, beach sand on our way to Koringkorrelbaai in Namaqua National Park, 4X4 passes (we didn’t know they were 4X4 passes until reception told us after we had driven them) in Tankwa and Namaqua, drove through rivers at Augrabies Falls and got stuck in the sand at Augrabies (here the 2 wheel, front wheel drive was not our friend - we just dug deeper and deeper as we tried to get out). We also reached the 100 000 km mark on our trip while chasing the sunset to get to our beachfront rustic campsite in Namaqua National Park.

1. Stuck in the sand at Augrabies. 2. Driving through rivers in Augrabies. 3. Beaching driving while chasing the sunset - Namaqua

Clocking over to 100 000 km

We might have accrued a few extra rattles on the trip but we are very happy with how our vehicle handled our adventure and our packing system worked fantastically. Just because we didn’t have the ideal vehicle did not stop us from having an amazing adventure. Plan your trip and make your car work for you.

Disclaimer: We did make an effort to avoid 4X4 paths when we knew they were 4X4.