Over the years I have realized that I have travelled more than the average South African. Like most Dutch* families, my parents, sister and I spent every summer camping in France.
I have been ‘spoiled’, ‘blessed’, ‘lucky’ and ‘fortunate’. Or at least, that’s what my South African friends tell me when I tell them about these trips. But my sister and I hated every minute it. Still, to this day, I recall these holidays with some resentment, even though the pangs of my conscience tell me to feel otherwise. We always left in the early hours of the morning. I remember my sister and I sitting at the dinner table, our tired heads leaning on our hands. It is still dark outside and we are trying to finish our breakfast sandwiches. Outside, the stoep is full of bags filled with clothes, crates filled with toys, tents, sleeping bags, and lots and lots of camping gear. I remember my dad scratching his head as he tries to find a way to fit everything in the boot of the little grey Mazda. I remember my mother frantically running up and down the stairs, picking up forgotten items along the way.
With Paris only five hours away, our destination was never far. As the hours ticked away, the sun slowly rose and heated up the car, and the landscape changed from the flat countryside in the Netherlands to the mountainous French scenery.
So why did we hate it so much?
My sister and I always complained we didn’t have a holiday at all. We’d arrive tired, hot and sweaty at the camping site. Air conditioning in the car was a luxury we didn’t have at the time – we used to joke we only had ARKO, a made up acronym that stood for ‘Alle Ramen Kunnen Open’, the English equivalent of AWCO or ‘All Windows Can Open’). Instead of running off to the inviting swimming pool, my sister and I were instructed to help my parents set up the tent, often functioning as ‘pole-holders’ while Mom and Dad argued about the way the fabric needed to be draped over.
We stayed at each camping site for about three to four days, after which we’d pack everything up again to drive for a few hours and see a different scenery. Living as a gypsy for a few weeks really wasn’t for me.
My sister and I were also responsible for getting the bread in the morning, and most of the bread shops on camping sites opened their doors as early as seven or eight o’clock in the morning. By nine o’clock, the nice bread would be finished. So we had to set the alarm and get up early. ‘What kind of holiday is that?’ we complained.
Girls as we are, the walk to the bread shop was a real ‘walk of shame’ if we hadn’t brushed our hair and put on a colour-coordinated outfit. All campers walked around in their pyjamas at that hour, everybody but my sister and I. Walking around in our pyjamas was simply not done and would be just as embarrassing as walking to the toilets with a toilet roll (but that is another story).
The second ‘torturous’ experience was at breakfast itself. We had to drink a glass of milk. My mother had worked as a doctor’s assistant in the eighties and had come across an old man with a severe case of osteoporosis. His bones had become so brittle that they’d break even if he’d bump into something. My mother was adamant that her daughters would never have such a deficiency of calcium, and thus a glass of milk at breakfast and lunch had been compulsory throughout my childhood.
Though I never minded drinking milk, in France it was a problem. While we had the luxury of drinking fresh milk at home, my parents always bought long life milk while camping. My sister and I called it ‘French milk’, and we found the taste repulsive. We tried everything: drinking it with our nose closed (if you didn’t smell it, it wasn’t that bad), adding Nesquick, and I even took the desperate measure of drinking several cups of tea each morning, slowly mixing some of my compulsory glass of milk in with each cup of tea, thereby slowly getting rid of it. The fact that I had to walk to the ablution building every half an hour afterwards, wasn’t a big price to pay. That’s how bad this ‘French milk’ tasted to me.
Even hiking in the mountains didn’t do it for me. My dad had the habit of losing his sense of direction as the mountain paths twirled along confusingly. ‘Just a few more kilometres’ was his standard reply if my sister and I wined if we were ‘there yet’. But a few more kilometres somehow always became a few more hours and by the time we got back on the campsite, we were so tired and grumpy that even the beautiful French mountains didn’t make it worth it. In fact, I’d decided I hated everything French.
It has been almost ten years since the last time I went camping with my parents. I always thought the spoilt brat named mini-me ruined my ability to enjoy camping forever. It seemed like all things positive had been clouded by my brat-ish opinion of sleeping in a tent.
Yet I recently ventured a camping trip again. After a few days in a cheap (and extremely old and dirty) apartment in Hogsback, I drove with a group of friends in an air conditioned car to a camp site in Yellowsands, close to the Kei River Mouth and the sea. We had bought bread at the local grocery store before we arrived, I wasn’t forced to drink ‘French milk’ by anyone and instead of a hike we skinny dipped in the river on New Year’s Day. We slept in until the heat of the sun forced us to stumble out of our tents.
I am spoilt, blessed, lucky and fortunate.
And I love camping.
* Dutch as in: from the Netherlands, not Afrikaans
For more camping stories from other Getaway bloggers, click here.
Photo by Lisa Johnston
