My daughter and I undertook this trip into the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa in my new Suzuki Jimny on 11 Sep 2025 to get some gravel road driving in (just over 100 km of gravel), and revisit to Kromrivier farm (where I used to holiday as a child) as I also wanted to see the new campsite facilities they now have. I also wanted to test out my DJI drone, as I can't fly it near home due to two airports being within 10 km.

The camping site was nearly full, but I did find an empty slot where I could video the kitchen, toilet, and shower facilities that each site has to themselves. It also turns out on weekdays out-of-season, you must order ahead of time if you want to buy farm-made bread at Cederberg Park.

Two interesting things did happen on the 11-hour trip: I crashed my drone into a bush (you need to check if the ground slopes nearby as a drone does not just push through a bush), and the Truitjieskraal Road is really narrow with high sides, so your car and the passing truck lean in towards each other (next time I'll use that 4X4 traction and just drive off the road). A bonus was a horse licking the car's bonnet!

I wanted to test out the Tracks4Africa off-road mapping, and exporting that into OsmAnd to navigate on Android Auto. But I had trouble with OsmAnd not loading the saved track (maybe because I was already out of cellphone reception?).

This video is a compilation of most of the videos I took, and I found the dashcam video very useful — not only for driving uninterrupted (I can't imagine stopping every km or two to set up drone shots), but also for pinpointing locations in the middle of nowhere using its coordinates.

Travel Animation 00:00

Tracks4Africa Route: https://map.tracks4africa.co.za?systemUserId=11756&tripId=53311

CREDITS:

My daily tech blog at https://gadgeteer.co.za/blog

#travel #offroad #cederberg #southafrica