What really bugged me about my impending foray into the bush was my friend’s attitude toward camping. Practically everything I asked her (a seasoned camper) about, she would reply: “Don’t worry, we’ll make a plan.”
The more she said it, the more I worried.
I’ll admit to being a city slicker who really doesn’t like camping, only because I’ve been there, done that when it comes to sleeping under the stars — I’m not the sort who turns her nose up at something without knowing anything about it.
My last camping experience about seven years ago was for a conservation story and it took place on the banks of Lake St Lucia. The team I was with had to set up a rotating watch every evening to ensure that hippos coming out of the water wouldn’t come bounding through our camp and trample us all to death. Needless to say, it was a fairly hairy experience, mostly because I actually spotted two hippos approaching our camp on a night when there was a torrential downpour and little visibility. So, after storming into the game ranger’s tent, tripping over his rifle and ending up sprawled most unladylike across his chest, hysterically shouting “the hippos are coming!” that I realised I wasn’t made for camping.
The hippos didn’t come within 100m of our camp that night, but those wicked, green orbs (the hippos’ eyes) bobbing up and down in the distance still haunt me. Okay, they don’t haunt me, but it’s one of the reasons I despise camping. But, I do like live music and was pretty keen on the White Mountain Folk Festival held recently at the White Mountain resort near Estcourt.
Two months before the festival, there were no chalets available and I didn’t want to sleep in a tent, so I hatched what I thought was an ingenious plan to test Jeep’s newest and biggest SUV, the Commander, in the hope that it would be big enough to sleep in.
I put a mattress on to the folded down second and third rows of seats and, yes, the Commander was big enough for my friend and I to sleep very comfortably.
So, the biggest Jeep of them all proved to be a very spacious vehicle, but what I hadn’t expected was how thirsty this 5,7-litre V8 would be.
My Dad nicknamed it “the guzza-lator” when I told him I had used about two-and-a-half tanks of petrol to get from Jo’burg to Estcourt and back — a trip totalling 950km.
I expected that an engine of this size on a vehicle that weighs almost three tons wouldn’t exactly be fuel-efficient, but I didn’t expect to see the fuel gauge needle drop every time I overtook another vehicle at high speeds on the freeway.
Despite its insatiable thirst, the Commander was a consummate cruiser — it accelerated easily, handled the twisties as well as could be expected, given its ground clearance, and it maintained a certain amount of composure at high speeds.
I didn’t put its off-road ability to any serious test, but can say that it didn’t have any problems on the treacherous, pot-holed roads around Estcourt and it braked fairly well when I had to slow down very quickly to swerve around a cow crossing the road.
Interior fit and finishings are of a high standard, with nifty features such as electric, heatable seats with a memory function, cruise control, a six-CD changer and much more. Safety is taken care of with the usual array of acronyms from ABS to ESP and BAS.
All in all, the Commander proved to be easily driveable and perfectly comfortable on a variety of surfaces and I have no doubt that it will sell well, not only because it’s a capable vehicle, but because South Africans, much like Americans, still believe that bigger is better.