I have it on good authority that the thoughts and vibes we put out there in your ethereal space will morph into something real and come back to us. That if we dream and visualise and believe hard enough, your cosmic forces will kick into action and help turn our happy imaginings into something a bit more tangible.
I am an unhappy camper surrounded by a family who loves to camp. Usually I get my way, and we stay in self-catering cottages or hotels when we travel. Or we compromise and go glamping – where we don’t have to set up our own tents and there are decent bathrooms.
So it was quite a shock to my system to be thrown in the deep end in the Canadian Rockies with rough and ready REAL camping. No power, no beds, no roof over our heads. In some places even no showers or flushing loos. And while we survived through weeks of living wild in the forests and mountains at the other end of the world, our family ate like kings, slept like babies and had the time of our lives.
One of my favourite camping avoidance excuses at home in South Africa is that we don’t have decent camping gear and to purchase the works would cost more than years of happy self-catering chalet holidays. We were delighted to be able to rent all our camping gear in Canada, and learned that it is absolutely not necessary to have all the bells and whistles and fancy purpose-made camp site stuff that fills the shelves of outdoor and camping shops. The folk over at Rent-a-Tent Canada have perfected the art of camping in comfort with the bare minimum that you need to schlep along.
Here is what we discovered needs to be in your camping kitchen – no more, no less – and you can pack most of it right out of your kitchen at home:
If you’ve had a squizz around our blog, you will know that we are massive fans of all things nature. Give us a few hours off, and before you can say boo, we’ll be heading to where the wild things are. It’s no surprise then that we end up so often at Addo Elephant National Park, given that we live an insanely short drive away from this SANParks gem.
Usually when we visit national parks we do the self-drive thing, and when we go to private reserves we take a guided game drive. This week, we mixed things up and went on a guided game drive in Addo National Park, courtesy of Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism.
So, which is the best option?
We have a delightfully bright new logo, a pair of South African rainbow nation takkies, a calendar full of South African places to explore and a trip to Canada around the corner – but how did our incredible journey begin?Continue reading…
We used to be a conservative family – level headed, feet firmly on the ground, sitting pretty in our comfort zone. Until, that is, Chasing the Rainbow entered our lives and shook things up a bit. In our quest to change our focus from the stresses and strains of daily life in South Africa, and concentrate rather on family, happy times and spreading positivity about our beautiful rainbow nation, we have managed to catapult ourselves head first out of our everyday routine – laughing all the way.
Here are some of our most extreme moments from our first year of blogging:Continue reading…
