Road-Trip

It's hard to live in the Southern Hemisphere, drudging through winter, while half the Northern Hemisphere is on a summer road-trip! That's the downside of the internet - whatever season one is in, someone is in the opposite. And the opposite sometimes looks way too attractive for one to enjoy what one has... It also doesn't help when one watches movies like Elizabethtown.

But back to the road trips. A friend is currently on a mini-one, brave bloke that he is. Buzzing along on his little Gomoto for 300km or so, sleeping in a tent - and this in the middle of winter as a cold front approaches!

As I type this, some foodie types are driving across the USA, and if you do a blog search you'll find many others are going here and there too. It is SO not fair!

You see, I love road trips. I love the sense of adventure and discovery, of finding new things in unexpected places. I love the long road, the sudden views, the secret glimpses in passing. I love finding a perfect place, an interesting shop, a cluster of cool buildings, or that one quirky character. If the price of petrol hadn't recently hit the R6.50/litre mark.... well, let's just say you'd find me out and about on a whole lot more road trips, at every opportunity.

I guess that's why I've dreamt of an extra-big road trip, that trek through Africa. There's something about stretching my horizons both literally and figuratively that gets my feet itching horribly.

Today the itching is almost unbearable. I can't wait for summer, for the heat and the open windows, the open road and packed lunches. The adventure. Yes - I could do this in winter, but somehow it's just not the same. Summer, road trip - those go together perfectly.

We have done a few small ones - a trip through the Cape Peninsula, and another circular route in the Overberg. But there are so many other places left to explore - the R62, the entire Northern Cape, the Langeberg, Agulhas.... and beyond.

It doesn't even matter how you do it - by car, by bicycle, by motorbike, by horse-drawn wagon if you must. It's the journey that matters. It's what you see and experience. It's all in the detours and the road less travelled, the whim to go here or do that. Sometimes it's the photos you take, or the mementos you pick up, or the memories you make. Sometimes it's just a feeling, a smell, an image that makes your soul sing.

Where will you go this summer? Where have you been?