How to avoid a camping disaster

Posted on 13 July 2011

 

Camping disasters

After our photojournalist Lisa Johnston posted a hilarious blog about her misadventures with a tent on a recent assignment for Getaway, we asked our fans on Facebook what their camping disasters and received loads of amusing (although they certainly weren’t at the time) stories.

A lot of our fans cited leaving tent poles at home as their worst camping disasters, while others remembered inclement weather and rowdy campers keeping them up all night.

Here are some of our favourite camping disaster stories from our Facebook fans:

Alfred Thorpe: My worst camping experience was when a campsite was turned into an organized rave at Koelbaai. Two generators, huge speakers and more than 100 people who were high and claimed that the’ No Music’ sign did not apply to them. The police finally got them quiet after 12h00 but at 06h00 the music was booming again. Bongo drums ‘entertained’ us all night.

Devon Concar: Two mothers and three small children went camping and thought they were the luckiest in the campsite to get the best spot on the river bank … until later that night when the caravan started floating. My mother was hanging from a tent pole in the middle of the night (trying to keep the wind from blowing the tent away), when a samaratan came to help and said ‘Aren’t you Keith’s ex-wife?’. Was much funnier after a few weeks had passed.

Zipping Zebra Tours: Pitched my tent on the first night of a six-month cross-Africa journey to find my stretcher was too long for my tent. Slept on a reed mat for six months with a travel cushion under my hips!

Angela Taylor: Waking up with my waist length hair floating in a pool of rainwater because we had neglected to dig a trench around the tent before the deluge.

Jayne Holness: Swapping my brand new big tent with three guy friends for their crappy, old-school, one-man contraption and being woken up by shrieking in the middle of the night because of drunken vomit all over my new Pride and Joy.

Craig Summers: Have had booming music all night at Manyane, rain swamped tent (also Manyane), sub-arctic temperatures at Roodeplaat dam and then there are the days in my (idiot) youth when I didn’t have mattress / stretchers to sleep on.

Christopher Stuart Wise: We set up camp next to the Midmar Dam on a sunny day, then headed off to Margate, and had fun in the sun.  We were totally loving life, but when we left Margate we hit a huge storm only to get back to the tent to realize we had left the plastic windows open. The tent was flooded up to the door zips. All our blankets pillows and clothes were soaked! We ended up sleeping in the car.

For more of these amusing stories, click here.

With camping disasters in mind, I asked our team of rugged experienced campers to share their top camping tips. If you have any of your own to add, please do so in the comments section!

Our digital project manager, Chris Davies, camped for eight months on his solo overland trip from Cyprus to Cape Town. His top tip is: work out where the morning shade is going to be before you pitch your tent and try get it in a shadow if possible. By the way, his worst camping story involves a cyclone in Plettenberg Bay. ‘Having been forced into the car during the night, we had to extract our tent from half-way up a tree 200 m away the following morning.’ Not fun!

Photojournalist Dylan Kotze goes camping often on assignments for Getaway Magazine. You could say he’s something of a camping connoisseur. He says he always keeps a camping box ready with all his gear pre-packed (we’ve actually got an article on this in our August issue), and he makes checklists of what he needs to pack so he doesn’t forget anything. Like Chris, he reckons your best bet is to find a camping spot with shade as well as level ground. He also says: remember your braai grid as not all campsites have them, and don’t forget to waterproof your tent from time to time (nothing worse than being rained on!).

Tyson Jopson, digital intern and avid weekend camper says: Aim to set up your tent before it gets dark. That way you will be sure of your surroundings. Many times what we thought was a good camping spot at night, turned out to be right next a marsh, steep cliff etc. One time we even put up our tent in the middle of a 4×4 route because we didn’t know that it was there.

Christie Fynn has two words: wet wipes. She recently went on a 17-day epic adventure on the Put Foot Rally and experienced some cold camping. She reckons that if you have a stretcher, put blankets underneath your sleeping bag because otherwise you’ll wake up freezing in the middle of the night. Also, make sure your stretcher fits into your tent – she had a bad experience on a cold night in Namibia where her feet poked outside the tent (her toes just about fell off in the morning).

Justin Fox, our editor-at-large, says disaster-free camping is all about lots of plastic packets, dishwashing liquid, a blow-up mattress and Duct tape (for everything). Wise words indeed.

As a foodie, I’m always focused on the outdoor cooking aspect of camping. For some reason, food just tastes better when it’s cooked over the campfire and eaten off plastic plates with stubby camping forks. My top camping tip? Be prepared when it comes to food. Know what you’re going to cook before you go. Measure out dry ingredients you’ll need and store them in Ziploc bags. This saves you bringing whole bags of flour and jars of spices. Camping food doesn’t have to mean boerie on the braai – get inventive and make gourmet one-pot meals such as mushroom risotto and chicken curry (just make the rotis at home). Use mince to stuff rolls that you bake in the coals, or butternut.  Baked rum-chocolate bananas are great for pudding, and my friends were very impressed when I made these banana pancakes for breakfast on our last camping trip.

Justin Bonello has some great camping tips of his own – check them out here. He gives step-by-step instructions on how to potjie (an oxtail potjie is a great meal to make on a camping trip)

So there you go: no excuse for not going camping this weekend! As our Facebook fan Lauren Davies says, camping is always fun no matter what happens. The worst camping trips make for the best stories around the camp fire for years to come!

Image credit: Lisa Johnston

Image credit: Daveography on Flickr






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