* Trips, Training & Tours
* Up, up & away!
* Ben 10 Eco Challenge report back
* Pass of the week
* A snippet of wisdom
With most businesses and factories heading back to work this week, it's a sure sign that the summer holidays are over. It's also the perfect time to plan a trip and secure a booking - something to look forward to in the not too distant future.
Come and join us for a day of fun on the white sands of Atlantis Dunes just north of Cape Town, where we will teach the basics of sand driving, tyre deflation, self recovery, traction and momentum, which will leave you with confidence to venture out on your own or with friends. We cover the full spectrum including assisted recoveries. We will have three safety marshalls to ensure our group is well cared for. You will leave at the day's end armed with a take-home user manual as well as a completion certificate. Click on the link to make an online booking. There are 5 places left.
We are still finalising accommodation issues for this tour. It should go onto our shop page within the next two weeks.
This tour has been altered to add in some new points of interest as well as several new passes. We've also changed the starting point and added in an extra day at Bosch Luys Kloof Lodge. There are 3 tickets left.
Our 2022 inaugural version of this tour was a great success. We are busy making a number of improvements to the accommodation venues. As soon as this is finalised, booking will open.
We are busy adding a few attractive additional points of interest into this tour. It will be loaded in the next two weeks.
One of our most sought after tours, we are adding something fresh into this tour. We are reversing the route this year for a number of reasons, the most important is to spoil our guests with an opening night at the Karoo Theatrical Hotel - a seriously enjoyable experience.
The Wild Coast Tours continue to be fully booked well in advance of the tour dates. We have decided to offer a second tour in the wet season. There are 3 tickets left.
Be the first to drive the newest version of the tour. With the long term closure of the Ben MacDhui Pass, it's time to reinvent this tour. We are working hard creating a brand new Ben 10 Eco Challenge. We will be removing the TTT (as it's not a popular route with most people), Barkly Pass (as it's tarred) and of course the Ben MacDhui Pass. We will stick with the 10 pass formula and will be adding three new gravel passes into the mix. Booking should open towards the end of January.
After 5 years of indecision, we finally took the plunge and ordered a drone - the DJi Mini 3 Pro. After an interesting first week of test flights and experimentation, the drone is starting to produce some interesting photos and video clips. Our first mountain pass drone filming will happen very soon.
* Breaking records
* Trips & Tours
* Ben 10 Eco Challenge Day (Prologue)
* Pass of the week
* Albert Einstein quote
We had a phenomenal month during December in terms of our social media platforms (Facebook & Instagram). On Facebook alone we logged just under 4 million post views, over 500,000 comments and gained 2500 new followers over a 28 day cycle. We seem to have hit the sweet spot. Instagram has a very different user profile where users mainly just look at pictures or reels and very few comments and interactions occur. As an example we would post the same post on both platforms and get a fantastic response on the one, but a mediocre response on the other. It takes a lot of experience and research to understand an audience that size. As Gary Player says: "The more we practice, the better we get!"
In last week's newsletter we published our proposed tour calendar for 2023. The response for advance bookings has been amazing. So far we have uploaded the November Wild Coast Tour, the July Swartberg Tour and the Atlantis sand driving training day in February. The rest of the tours should all be live by the end of next week. Thanks to everyone for the support. Our tours continue to provide guests with just the right balance of fun, technical driving, and excitement.
Here are the links for the 2023 tours that are currently open for bookings:
In the 10 day period leading up to this year's Ben 10 Tour, South Africa experienced some profoundly unusual weather in the form of a massive cut off low, which caused widespread storms with very high rainfall. As the clock ran down towards the start of the tour, we were looking at 5 days of rain. We knew we were in for a muddy adventure, but of course, safety always comes first, so we already had a number of backup plans in case conditions became dangerous.
That first evening during the driver's briefing there were some very worried people - and who could blame them! But let's get back to the start of this adventure. The lead and sweep vehicles departed Cape Town two days earlier with an overnight stop at Graaff Reinet. Trying to find accommodation in the town proved to be quite difficult, resulting in us splitting up to two separate venues. The lead team picked the short straw as the guest house we stayed at had no water at all, other than a jug of water in the room for drinking. Graaff Reinet had been buckling under drought conditions, with the Nkweba Dam being down to single digit, unusable water during our stay there. That means no showers after a long, hot day in the vehicle.
* Happy New Year
* 2023 Tours Calendar
* Changes and plans for 2023
* Vision
* Kouga Baviaans Tour (Final Day)
* Pass of the Week
May the New Year bring you health and travel dreams fulfilled. Do that trip you've been thinking about. Every year comes with its challenges and wins, and you’ve been with us every step of the way. Thank you for keeping us in your corner!
Happy New Year!
Here is a brief summary of our tours calendar for 2023.
We will be adding the new tours at the rate of two per week until they are all uploaded. If you wish to get a priority booking in advance, pop us an email to
The festive season break allows us a bit of creative time to plan ahead and review the year gone by. There are going to be some changes to the format of the newsletters and we will most likely be publishing them bi-monthly next year. We are also working on doing audio-visual newsletters, which should prove to be popular. We intend running an experimental version in the near future to test the waters with our subscribers and followers.
Some good news for our regulars - we have decided to keep the subscription price at R350 for renewals as a loyalty reward. New subscriptions will have a 10% increase.
We will be stepping up pass filming trips for 2023. We have just acquired a drone, which will be used to add some extra pizazz to our pass videos. The first of these should start being added by March.
Our recent story about the rescue of the three bikers off the Bastervoetpad Pass touched hearts all over the world and has subsequently been republished in Australia, Brazil, Die Burger, Getaway Magazine and some smaller publications. Its had over half a million views on our Facebook page. Just a few days later we were contacted by an anxious parent who said her son and his wife on two motorcycles had gone missing and had not reported in as promised. Our social media presence worked quickly and within two hours we had traced the couple to Patensie thanks to followers of our Facebook page - They were alive and well. They were a tad embarrassed and said they simply had no signal with which to communicate. There are lots of lessons to be learned from these events.
We had a later than normal start on the final day of the tour as we regrouped the convoy outside the Ripple Hill Hotel. Every day we do a radio check before starting off as a "roll call" to make sure everyone is present and accounted for. That day there was one driver missing. A quick search revealed that he was still fast asleep in his room. Our start was delayed by an hour as we waited for him to shower, pack and get into his car, whilst the group watched to the to-ing and fro-ing of the locals heading to town.
* Season's Greetings
* Mountain Rescue Heroes & Heroines
* Who stole our sign board?
* Kouga Baviaans Tour
* Pass of the Week
This year has flown by yet so much water has passed under the proverbial bridge. We've had droughts, floods, tornadoes, mini tsunamis, riots, political drama and of course load shedding, the latter being a real pain in the butt for all of us. But we are a resourceful and cheerful bunch and these days most homes have some sort of backup power system, which includes solar, wind, inverters, generators, oil lamps and candles. Life goes on! At least some sectors of the economy are booming as a direct result.
At MPSA we had a very busy year running a series of highly successful tours which included two Ben 10 Tours, two Wild Coast Tours, Swartberg Tour, Garden Route Tour (new), Kouga-Baviaans Tour, Seven Sisters Tour (new) and a Training Day at Grabouw. The price of fuel has inhibited our pass filming trips somewhat, but we are determined to slot in at least three pass filming sorties during 2023.
Our social media efforts have paid huge dividends in terms of spreading the MPSA 'gospel' with our Facebook page following currently standing at 115,208 generating around 2 million post views every 28 days. Our Instagram following grew from 13,000 followers to 17,000 during 2022. The downside to those marvellous numbers, is that our social media pages are increasingly targeted by spammers and scammers. We do on average 20 bannings a day which means one has to watch the phone constantly, to keep the baddies away.
For those of you who receive the newsletters, it's time to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May the year ahead be filled with travel, health and happiness.
This is Sarel Vorster and his wife Jody (photo at the top of this article). They own the farm Lymore north of Elliot (now called Khowa). It's not far from the start of the notoriously difficult Bastervoetpad Pass. Last night around 8.30 pm I took a phone call from my friend Geoff Russell, a well known motorcycle tour guide. He had been contacted by Okkie Oosthuizen, a motorcyclist who, together with two other motorcyclists were in serious trouble near the summit of the pass in terrible weather - with gale force winds, hail, heavy rain and lightning.
They had managed to contact ER in Ugie via the NAMOLA SOS App, who said they would despatch a vehicle to assist. Okkie had taken a number of falls and suspected he had cracked ribs. The ER vehicle never reached them. So whilst the app worked brilliantly, a suitable 4WD vehicle was not available and certainly no ambulance is capable of getting up that pass. Okkie decided to call his friend, Geoff Russell in Cape Town, who in turn called me (MPSA) for assistance.
* Take the day off!
* Ben 10 Eco Challenge
* Kouga Baviaans Tour (Day 3)
* Podcast
* Pass of the Week
By the powers invested in me I hereby give you all the day off tomorrow (16th December, 2022) as it's my birthday! It's an interesting day to have a birthday with many positives. As a child I was always concerned that I would only get one present as it's so close to Christmas. But having a birthday on a public holiday is actually a wonderful blessing. I have never gone to school or worked on my birthday. How cool is that?! At school one of my (many) nicknames was "Dingaan". I didn't understand the significance of the tag at the time.
The Day of the Vow traces its origin as an annual religious holiday to The Battle of Blood River which took place on 16 December 1838 in Natal. The besieged Voortrekkers took a public vow (or covenant) together before the battle, led by Sarel Cilliers. In return for God's help in obtaining victory, they promised to build a church and forever honour this day as a holy day of God. They vowed that they and their descendants would keep the day as a holy Sabbath. During the battle a group of about 470 Voortrekkers defeated a force of about 20,000 Zulu. Three Voortrekkers were wounded, and some 3,000 Zulu warriors died in the battle. It is said so much blood was spilled that the river flowed red with blood - hence the Battle of Blood River.
Two of the earlier names given to the day stem from this prayer. Officially known as the Day of the Vow, the commemoration was renamed from the Day of the Covenant in 1982. Afrikaners colloquially refer to it as Dingaansdag (Dingane's Day), a reference to the Zulu ruler of the defeated attackers.
I have often pondered what it must have been like inside that laager of wagons. The naked fear, the sound of gunshots, of people dying, anguished screams, children crying, warriors falling, blood flowing.
16 December was made an annual national holiday in 1910, before being renamed Day of the Vow in 1982.
In 1994, after the end of Apartheid, it was officially replaced by the Day of Reconciliation, an annual holiday also on 16 December. However, many still celebrate it unofficially. I am fairly apolitical so I just enjoy the day off.
As you read this newsletter, our group will be ascending the very steep Carlisleshoekspruit Pass on our way to Tiffindell. From there we will tackle the tough and bumpy TTT, then return to Rhodes via Naudes Nek Pass for our Chappies Awards and finishing badge ceremony.
As usual you can expect a full report with photos of the gorgeous scenery and some of the action. Our next Ben 10 (V7) will be run during the dry season for those who don't like mud.
The third day of this tour is packed with technical driving, water crossings, deep forests and exquisite scenery. We bade farewell to Sederkloof Lodge and Zandvlakte after an outdoor breakfast. Those that had befriended the placid farm dogs offered a few last pats, as we rolled eastwards towards the control gates. It's only about 3 km to the gates from Zandvlakte, so we were there nice and early.
The official at the gate was on the ball. I've learned these days to print additional copies of the convoy sheets which contain all the names of drivers and passengers as well as vehicle details. I encourage them to issue one permit for our whole group, which greatly reduces the admin time. Entry was R55 per person, so the guard was collecting tips at a rate of knots.
The first point of interest is the Rooihoek Mountains. It is red, hence the name. The geology in the Baviaanskloof varies a great deal, but this mountain with its steep flanks consists of enon conglomerate; a matrix of compacted mud and pebbles. Erosion is more from wind than water, leaving an interesting system of overhangs and caves. It looks magical around sunset when it has an almost ethereal atmosphere.
* The big annual wind-down begins
* MPSA Gift Vouchers
* Kouga-Baviaans Tour - Day 2
* Ben 10 Eco Challenge
* Podcast
* Pass of the Week
The year of 2022 is almost kaput. We call this the post-Covid revival year - a year when most of our lives have returned to normal levels, but it's also been a year of renewed load shedding and political scandals. 2023 will no doubt see more of the same. Vasbyt!
No matter how bleak the news makes us feel, it is vital to remain positive. The more you glue yourself to news channels on TV and social media, the more down in the dumps you will feel. One of our many missions at MPSA is to fire up a positive mind-set via our newsletters and on our social media platforms. It's taken us 10 years to build our social media following. We currently have 114,000 Facebook followers generating between 2 and 5 million post views per month. On Instagram our following is 17,000. Growth has been steady on both platforms. We believe we play an important role reaching out to everyday people, by treating them to good stories and photos. There is no substitute for consistency, originality and perseverance.
This time of year stirs some strange emotions amongst our population, but the letting go of stress and entering these euphoric weeks pre and post Christmas are normal. Drive with care wherever you are headed. Rest when you're tired. We want you back here in January.
Gifting a family member, friend or loved one a one year subscription is a great gift idea. The recipient will remember your kindness for a full year. It's a thoughtful gift that doesn't break the bank and will provide many hours of enjoyment. Take the link; complete the recipient's details and add a personal message and Voila!
You can buy the gift subscription voucher on the MPSA Shop page.
As usual we were blessed with pleasant weather as the sun rose over the Baviaanskloof casting those long early morning shadows. We had an easy day planned. First we met the other half of our group at Babe's se Winkel at 09.30. This is one of the last genuine old school trading stations in the kloof, where the community still buy their daily needs.
Your scribe grew up in the old Transkei when many school holidays were spent on farms where trading stations were the norm. The buildings were always unpretentious, gloomy and large with open shelves. The art of merchandising had not yet reached these rural outposts, where sacks of maize meal lay in untidy rows on the cement floor. Up in the rafters were galvanized tubs, enamel pots, three legged black pots, bicycle parts, pumps and general use items. The racks contained a small variety of tinned food like Bully Beef, baked beans and pilchards and cheap sweets like Wilsons Toffees at four for a penny. There was a great abundance of vegetables, especially pumpkins. Tobacco was also for sale. Either the dried leaves in their basic form or for the more flush clients, a packet of Boxer tobacco. The packet was orange and black. All these aromas would mix to form that peculiar smell you only come across in a trading store.
* GPS vs Common Sense
* Garden Route Tour - Day 5 Final
* Kouga Baviaans (Day 1 - Part 2)
* Ben 10 V6 Tour - Update
* Podcast
* Pass of the Week
There's an adage that states "Common sense is not so common at all"
With the demise of our national rail network, more and more reliance has been placed on road transport - and there's lots of money to be made out of it too. These days there are thousands of trucking companies plying our roads. The older experienced drivers are being replaced with younger ones, eager to take home the pay checks. Almost all of them are reliant on GPS and modern navigation systems to find their destinations efficiently.
One of the most common mistakes (and I've made this same error myself) is to ask your GPS to navigate the shortest route, rather than the fastest time. In the case of the Bain's Kloof Pass near Wellington, the pass is in fact the shortest distance between Worcester and Cape Town, but it is most definitely not the fastest.
Just this weekend past, a luxury passenger bus managed to get itself stuck under the overhanging rock known as Dacres Pulpit, with a very costly recovery and inconvenience and aggravation to other road users. This is the fourth large vehicle to fall victim to the rock since the refurbished pass was reopened to traffic in September, 2022. There are more than enough signs warning of the 3.8m height restriction, yet drivers ignore the measurement chains suspended from the gantries at either end of the pass and proceed. Once they are committed, there is no easy way to extract themselves, other than reversing back 10 km, which is an extremely difficult task for a truck with a trailer.
Similarly a large truck & trailer overturned and caught fire on the Swartberg Pass, resulting in the pass being closed for three days as the authorities worked to get the wreck out of the way. The driver's story: "I followed my GPS"
I recall about five years ago when driving from Cape Town to Matatiele via the N2, I punched in 'Matatiele' into my Garmin whilst keeping a low profile in Mthatha. The Garmin took a few seconds and then guided me through the maze of broken traffic lights, congested intersections and on to the road to Port St.Johns. It had been a long time since I had been in Mthatha and nothing looked familiar from my childhood memories. So I followed the GPS and was duly pleased when the lady announced that I was 40 minutes from my destination. The joy of being early overshadowed any doubts about the numbers. The routing took me off the main road (R61) after about 15 km and down a dodgy looking track. At that point I decided to stop and carefully check the information. It turned out that there was a tiny village near Libode also called Matatiele and that was where the Garmin was directing me. I ended up 3 hours late at my destination at the real Matatiele. A tough lesson, well learned.
A GPS is not the be all and end all of accurate navigation. At all times, we should apply common sense and double check on the unit. Read the road signs. Think!
Our penultimate stop on this inaugural tour was a visit to the Storms River Bridge. The large, modern service station and surrounding eateries and shops is a popular spot with most travellers. From the safety of the parking area, a well laid out path takes visitors under the roadway via a small pedestrian clover leaf, which allows access to the walkway on the southern side of the bridge, which provides unobstructed views of the gorge, some 120m below. When heavy vehicles thunder over the bridge, one can feel the movement in the bridge. It's quite an uncomfortable sensation. The same setup exists at the eastern end of the walkway where a cloverleaf arrangement takes visitors back under the bridge and onto the northern side for the walk back over the bridge facing west and on to the car park.
* Tours
* Pass of the week
* Garden Route Tour (Day 5)
* Kouga Baviaans Tour (Day 1)
* Podcast
All tours currently on our shop page are now sold out (Ben 10, Lesotho & Wild Coast). We are busy working on our programme for 2023, so for those of you champing at the bit to join a tour, the new 2023 calendar will be published soon.
Our Kouga-Baviaans Tour was a massive success with a really super group of guests who gelled right from the start. Having an absence of punctures or mechanical failures was an added bonus. We'll be doing a full report on this tour over the next few weeks, so watch this space.
The final tour of the year - the Ben 10 Eco Challenge will take place from the 10th to 15th December. As always keep an eye on our Facebook page for daily updates, videos and photos.
Our featured pass this week is the Suuranysberg Pass, which dovetails with our report on the Kouga Baviaans Tour. This was the first pass of the 4 day tour and quickly got guest's mojo up and running. The pass connects Kareedouw with the farming areas to the north of the Suuranysberg mountains.
* * Suuranysberg Pass * *
Our final day was an easy one, covering the relatively short distance between Plettenberg Bay and Storms River Mouth, so we called for a leisurely start of 09.30 and headed east up the Keurboomsrivierhoogte Pass, making sure we complied with the ever changing speed limits along that section, before arriving at The Crags, where we took a right, heading to Birds of Eden. We gave our guests three options:
1. Birds of Eden
2. Monkey Land
3. Elephant Sanctuary
The majority opted for Birds of Eden and weren't disappointed. It's a bit like walking into the Jurassic Park film set with a large variety of birds to see, but beware some of the parrots tend to nibble at one's toes!
* Pass of the week
* Ben 10 - Last opportunity for the 2022 tour
* Garden Route Tour - Day 3
* Seven Sisters Tour - Gawie se Water
* Kouga Baviaans Tour (A journey through the mountains)
* Podcast
On the first day of our Kouga-Baviaans Tour, we pay a visit to this unique pass with it's troubled history.
This is quite a unique pass as it holds a number of extreme statistics under its rutted gravel surface. It's a short pass at only 3.7 km but packs a staggering 55 bends, corners and curves into that length, which works out at one bend every 67 metres! There is no other pass in South Africa to equal this!
Besides the large number of corners, this pass is also steep with an average gradient of 1:14 and some very steep sections at 1:5. The scenery is fantastic as the pass follows the course of a tributary of the Nooitgedacht River, but the cherry on top of all these impressive figures is the ghoulish history of this pass, where a murder took place about 200 years ago - and it's how the kloof got its name.
Bookings for this tour will be cosing on the 30th November. There is 1 ticket left. The link above will take you to the online booking page, and provide the full itinerary.
Our journey through the Garden Route continues from De Vlugt as we head back to towards Buffelsnek and the junction between the R340 and the R341. At this point is a strange sculpture by renowned artist Strijdom van der Merwe, which consists of a number of square tubes which end in trumpet like shapes. Lower down there are bugle mouth-pieces set at various heights. The idea is to blow into these contraptions and try and emulate the sounds of elephants trumpeting. The sculpture is named "Calling the Herd". The concept is to connect with the elephant herds that once roamed these hills in great numbers - asking them to return.
Our group gave it their best as various agonising sounds were reproduced creating lots of laughter.
* Pass of the week
* Garden Route Tour (Day 3)
* Seven Sisters Tour (Witrivier Disaster)
* Grabouw Training Day (Final)
* Ben 10 - Last opportunity.
Apologies to our newsletter subscribers for receiving this a day late, due to a technical glitch.
The Potjiesberg Pass is a long pass on the N9 south of Uniondale. It descends from the Karoo plateau to the valley that hosts the R62 route. There are some big descents and motorists should exercise caution on this pass - especially heavy trucks can have braking issues here. The pass is broken up into two distinct sections, with a valley separating the two.
* * Potjiesberg Pass * *
From De Vlugt we crossed the Keurbooms River to enter the Langkloof (not to be confused with the much bigger Langkloof on the R62). It is this final section of Prince Alfred's Pass that is without doubt the most charming. The width of the road decreases to mostly just wide enough for a single vehicle. If you meet an oncoming vehicle, one of you is going to have reverse to a point where the road permits passing. Surprisingly there are very few accidents here as the road has to be driven slowly by necessity.
The bends come thick and fast as the road follows the stream into a narrow gorge, where at times it becomes so narrow that Bain had to build stout walls into the river itself, to make space for the road. Bain was in many respects a self-taught man, who possessed a range of skills including engineering, geology, cartography, art, writing and accounting. He was the son of Andrew Geddes Bain, a Scottish immigrant, from whom he first learned pass building techniques. He drew his own maps and plotted his own lines - either on foot or on horseback.
Over time he earned himself the nickname of "The man with the theodolite eye" due to his uncanny ability to visualise the line a pass should take with his naked eye. His famous dry-walling method of construction to support roads on mountain faces, involved breaking large rocks up by means of fire, followed by cold water, to create manageable triangular pieces. These would then be stacked up at an inward tilting angle of 15 degrees and backfilled from the top to form an extremely strong road..
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