Nico Pietersen Camping Story

Category: General News | Author: CaravanParks.com | Date posted: Wednesday, 31 October, 2012 | Reach: 22239 3498

Nico Pietersen Camping Story

Camping I have kept ALL statistics of my caravans over the years. We started caravanning with my father in law (I “made” him buy one as I could not afford it!) in 1973 and we used to erect two tents - one in front (kitchen, dining room and lounge) and one at the back of the caravan (bedroom for me, the wife and our two (then) small children). If I remember correctly, it was a Jurgens 660 - the years of the caravan with the table depicting the map of South Africa on it, all

Mountains

in bright colours and the tinted glass windows that are similar to that used on the Blue Train - or so their

advertisement said!

My own first caravan was a second hand 1972

Jurgens 440 which I bought on 20/09/1976 - the price of which I did not note down. We travelled 9 738km with it and traded it in on 27/03/1979.

I’ve had two blow outs since my first caravan trip, both with the present caravan and both were hair rising experiences, especially when it came to the changing of the tyre with traffic passing close to your back at 120+ km/h – (both blowouts were the right hand side tyres.) Lessons learned with those?

You MUST have a usable spare tyre, you must have an adjustable handle (extendable) wheel spanner (Ex-Midas), you must have a bottle jack (preferably a small trolley jack) that will fit under the flat tyre side of the van and to be able to comfortably lift the tyre off the ground (height) and most importantly; you must check your tyres regularly for small cracks on the side walls or in Car

the grooves - replace immediately when deterioration is noted (You are advised to replace tyres after 5 years, but I cannot tell you to do that, as I am also guilty of extending the life of the tyres for as long as possible!).

The tow cars I used during caravanning to date over 36 years were:

A Green Datsun 2400. 2.4l 6 cylinder (Lovely tow car)
Blue-grey Nissan Skyline (Not that nice although it had a six cylinder engine of 2.8l?)
Purple-blue Hyundai Sonata (First shape in RSA. Although only 2000cc and 4 cylinder, nicest tow car to date)

Silver Hyundai Sonata Vivante (2.5 V6 - very soft rear suspension - I had the rear coils replaced with stiffer coils, but it was never that nice a tow car.

White Hyundai Santa Fè (First shape in RSA). Nice tow car and sold me on the SUV type but very heavy on the juice! It is nice and sturdy in front of the van.) I still use this car today.
We did belong to both the CCSA (in Bloemfontein) and SAWA (in Centurion) but we gave up Club caravanning in favour of on-our-own or with a few friends and/or family. We have camped a few times (3)

Car

with the “other” forum but are not really part of that forum anymore. We have also camped once with Caravanparks.com (Koro-Koro) and hope to get to some more of these rallies.

And that is my story for those who read this far!

Greetings - Nico

The trade in was for R1 600.00 on a new Jurgens Magnificent for R4784 on 27/03/1979. This was the model with a bathroom (very small!) and the t Old Camping wo fridges - one on each side of the van and advertised as “his” and “hers” fridges. I eventually replaced the one fridge with a portable gas freezer which I mounted on wheels to enable the top lid to be opened - so you had to roll it out from under the counter to be able to open it. We had much fun and games with that rolling freezer if we forgot to put the stop on before moving off. It then used to “rock ‘n roll” around in the passage for as far as the cables and gas pipe allowed it to go! We travelled 23 484km with this caravan and sold it privately early in 1998 for R14 000.00

Car We then bought a new Jurgens Fleetline L on 03/10/1998 from Brits Woonwaens for R47 950. 00. This is still our caravan today and to date we have travelled 28 704km with it.