The team at 4×4 Adventure Tours would like to thank all the staff of Old Mutual that attended the Rocky Eco Drive day, as event organizers and drivers the pressure is on us to run an event without any problems and provide a wonderful safe day for everyone to enjoy.

The day was certainly full of action and the sportsmanship of all the Old Mutual staff really helped the day become one for our team to remember.

A special thank you to Johan and Melissa that made this day possible!

Here’s a run down of the day from driver/organizer’s view, Adrian Carter.

On arrival of the Old Mutual guests I could see that everyone was full of anticipation, guests could see some of the trails we would be climbing and I could see this did add to there excitement.

I held the group briefing and all members paid close attention to what I was saying, after the briefing guests then picked from a hat the vehicle they would be in for the day.

Organized for the day was a Fauna Flora spotting completion, Jamie from Hylton Ross was on hand to assist with identification and I hope the guests put her to the test, I’d like to also thank her for all the photo’s she took throughout the day.

Guests had an introduction to their vehicle on section one of the trail, this section is very straight forward until you get to the descent, I was traveling mid way on the convoy and could see a couple of the defenders had some slipping points, with the high cabin of the defender I’m sure this would have made the eye’s open for some guests, it always feels worse inside the machine, when you are watching from the outside the drama looks less dramatic.

When we got to the bottome of section 1, guests took over and we made our way to section 2 and the lookout point, we had a group photo taken and then swiftly moved onto section 3 which has a 4×4 playground area. We then introduced the second competition of the day! A two vehicle axel twist events,- this combined 2 groups coordinating between them the entrance and exit of their vehicles and navigation through the axel twister without breaking the string attached to both vehicles or popping a balloon at the centre. A YouTube link has been posted Click Here.  Steve’s Range Rover group took this event but I’m suspect of some timing as I’ve watched the video play back of the Hummer and a Defender and the clip was 3mins 44s yet the time called at the end was 4mins 30s………..

After the 4×4 playground area we all headed off for some much needed lunch and refreshments. Lunch seemed to go down well, our ribs come all the way from France and we use a local sauce that is only available to people in the 4×4 club. I’d like to thank Monique, Natasha and Justin who did a very good job of setting up camp for when the guests arrived. We did have a lunch time surprise planed but due to time restrictions we removed this event.

Steve had done a wonderful job building the anticipation for section 4 of the trail, this is by far the most difficult section with some steep angled descents. At lunch time it was decided that 3 defenders would take the escape route for section 4, providing transport for the guests that had to be back to Cape Town to catch flights and offering guests an alternative to having to take on section 4.

On route to section 4 there was a surprisingly difficult part to the trail, the Hummer was leading the way and ran into a few problems on a climb where the terrain was dry but some previous rains had washed out some very wide tracks and traction was limited, taking that part of the trail on the left hand side was almost impossible. Vehicles behind didn’t seem to learn from the Hummer’s problem as the Range Rover had a go and also ran into the same problem, the defender drivers got wise to this and took an easier route round to the right and missed the obstacle. The Toyota Driver and crew took full advantage of being at the back and picked the perfect line and momentum to make the obstacle look easy….. Well done Justin, next time we will look at putting you up as lead vehicle!

We arrived at the start of section 4 and the 3 defenders headed off down the escape route, leaving 4 other vehicles, (Hummer, Range Rover, Defender and Land Cruiser) to carry the more daring passengers. What they didn’t realize at the time was the introduction of the final competition. A full jug of water had to be carried by the passengers sitting in the vehicle.

At the bottom of section 4 it became apparent that team Range Rover had taken yet another event with less than 1” of water being spilt out the jug, whilst the Hummer had lost about 3” and a 2” roughly in the other 2 vehicles. I did wonder to myself if they had found a fresh supply of water and done some topping up a long the way!

We made our way back to the farm house and passed out some sweets to the local farm kids, they always come out and wave us in and out in the hope we have some treats for them.

On returning to the farm house it seemed everyone was ready for a nice cold beer and some quick adding up was being done to see who had won the Fauna Flora spotting competition. It transpired that Steve’s Range Rover group had taken that event, giving them a clean sweep on the day!

Steve assured me there was no cheating…….. Congratulations to Carel, Louise, and Vernon. Steve was very sorry he had to loose 2 of his guests for the final section 4 challenge! But it was a wise move over to the Range Rover for Phil as he moved to a winning team……

Once again I would like to thank all the staff of Old Mutual for really helping us make this a special day for you!