Accidental Tourist: Without a spare in the world

10 August 2014 - 02:38 By Janine Stephen
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When you're driving solo, the scariest roadkill is rubber

It was very early, far too early for a holiday really. Calvinia, however, was awake. I was cadging a 5l container at the local petrol station, just in case the road turned out longer than imagined. The woman at the desk and her daughter looked at me blankly. "Tankwa? How many spare tyres do you have?"

It was a sore point. Like most mortals accustomed to driving an elderly French car around the Mother City's streets, I had one spare, seldom checked, tucked into the boot as snug and pristine as a newborn baby. But I was off to tackle a section of the R355, at 648km South Africa's longest stretch of dirt, littered with shale rock shards designed for maximum tyre annihilation. It has few vehicles and zero fuel stops or towns for many a rocky mile.

Thanks to AfrikaBurn revellers, who travel a mere 100-odd kilometres on the R355 as a test of their commitment to debauchery, I had been forewarned. Pupils would dilate and, inevitably, a tyre conversation would ensue. There hadn't been this much build-up when I'd set off on a jaunt up Alaska's ice-clad Dalton Highway (where flares and a CB radio were considered essentials, not that I had those, either).

Fear of the R355 is really due to the lack of cellphone signal. There's not so much as a small Muizenberg swell of connectivity in the area, a modern travel terror for solo wanderers. So I scoured the map (I'm a paper-era traveller): the dreaded R355 reaches all the way to Springbok, but I just needed to do a swathe south from Calvinia to the turn-off to the Tankwa Karoo National Park - I'd rejoin it later to Ceres. Still, perhaps an extra tyre might not be such a bad investment after all.

Except I'm a journalist. We don't have cash for such trifles as spare wheels. So I spent a morning down Voortrekker Street. The Korean Boyz, for once, had nothing second-hand. With not enough time to locate a wheel, they sent me to a building filled with car carcasses, piled from ceiling to floor. Here a shifty-eyed individual suggested I take a choice plump specimen, never mind that the dimensions didn't match up. Would it fit? Much shrugging.

Which is why I was in Calvinia with the bare minimum, feeling conspicuously blonde. The locals tutted and whistled and called their friends to commiserate. The woman sharing her petrol container said with relish that the last time her daughters had gone to Tankwa, they'd got two flats. The record was four.

The first roadkill I saw on the R355 was, inevitably, rubber. Mangled tyres littered the verges. And the initial 50km stretch was evil: not merely rocky but corrugated. Each curve had the car juddering to a near standstill, all the better to admire the landscapes. Which were pretty. And then I hit the rain-scoured P2267, and discovered what slow really means.

All worth it, of course. I was meeting others on the far side of the Tankwa National Park, and once there traded French brand-name vehicle for Japanese high-clearance comfort with glee. Except that we promptly got stuck in a drift. We spent a happy hour digging and pushing and digging again as spinning tyres bathed us in fine Karoo sand. Finally, an English chap came along in a 4x4 and pulled us clear to enjoy the park's sun-bleached pleasures.

My companions - all of whom had come from Ceres, tyres intact - didn't seem to understand my now entrenched R355 fear (trifivephobia?). But when I finally plucked up the courage to go home, the notorious dirt had been freshly graded and was magically smooth. I sailed by tyre skeletons in a plume of dust. I wasn't overtaken by any donkey carts. And my spare ended up back on the rough streets of Cape Town, dust free. - © Janine Stephen

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