Say what you like, but the Eastern Cape is Isuzu country, maintains Jim Freeman, who took the no-nonsense new M-UX 3.0 turbodiesel 4×4 into the province’s foremost wilderness area.
What goes up must come down. In the Baviaanskloof, it goes up and down again and again, up and down.
A map of the area, located as one approaches the western entrance to the Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve and World Heritage Site, informs visitors that the distance to the next town, Patensie, is 99 km. It also reveals – and this seems scarcely credible, given that the road from Willowmore to that point (101 km) was covered in just over two hours – that Patensie will take four and a half hours to reach.
This, we learned as our new Isuzu M-UX 3.0 DDI Onyx XT 4×4 rocked and rolled in variations of a four-wheel drive theme through streams, inclines, and declines, was a very realistic estimate based on nothing going wrong.
It is not for nothing that the Eastern Cape’s Baviaans is something of a lodestone attraction for serious off-roaders, and our three-day (two-night) expedition into this wilderness area was a definite test of my driving abilities.
My lack of practice, however, in driving in such challenging terrain was more than adequately masked by the Isuzu’s grunt (140 kW and 450 Nm on tap from its turbodiesel mill) – it was only on odd occasion that I had to resort to low-range – and high ground clearance.
The latter was especially necessary on the first afternoon of the adventure as we descended from the Kouga mountains into Baviaanskloof just as the sun was setting. High-speed bumps, put in place to prevent further erosion of the gravelly jeep tracks, were frequent, and hitting them at any kind of speed produced some awful grinding on the underside of the hefty SUV and wincing on the part of my passenger.
LOW-RANGE 4X4 COUNTRY
The Baviaans is generally driven from east to west, but we approached the area from the south, having turned off the R62 at Kareedouw in the Langkloof and travelling private roads to the farms at Nooitgedacht. Our expedition was led by Eric and Esti Stewart of Baviaans2Bay Adventures – veterans of traversing the area by vehicle, mountain bike or on foot – who have built up a close relationship with the local farmers over the years.
This has given them unique access to private roads and tracks as well as farmhouses where their guests can overnight in greater comfort than that offered by tents and stretchers. Our first night at Joachimskraal presented not only a hot shower but also Wi-Fi!
It was in reaching Joachimskraal that I engaged low-range 4×4 most frequently, allowing the vehicle to do the work on steep slopes covered in loose stones, particularly on those sections where I was driving blind into the late afternoon sun and dust left by the preceding vehicle.
I spent the whole time focussing on the road while my partner Rose-Mariè nervously eyed the sheer drop down the mountainside a few metres to her left. She was, she said, quite exhausted by the time we got to our overnight stop. For my part, I could only sympathise with those off-roaders of yore who tackled the route without power steering; their necks, shoulders and forearms must have been in constant agony.
The flagship M-UX 3.0 Onyx is equipped with hill-descent control as standard, but I never felt the need to engage this feature. Incidentally, engaging low range activates a screeching beep which, in conjunction with the almost non-stop auditory complaints from the front and rear sensors due to the proximity of plants and rocks beside the road, can be very disconcerting.
It might sound silly, but I was glad the wing mirrors could fold in at the push of a button to prevent banging and bad scratching. It wasn’t as if I needed them to see if anyone wanted to overtake! That said, there was one hairy moment when we encountered an oncoming vehicle on a hairpin bend. Thankfully it was on the outside and all we had to do was hug the mountainside as we inched past one another.
SUFFICIENT LUGGAGE SPACE
The M-UX is a seven-seater, and with the back row folded flat, we had more than sufficient luggage space for all our gear, which included a large Coleman cooler box, my camera gear, and enough padkos to see Napoleon and his army to Moscow and back.
Thankfully, the full-sized spare wheel is stowed underneath the rear of the vehicle while the jack and toolkit are in the side panels of the “boot”. This meant we didn’t have to unpack everything after we had a puncture on the second day – a small mercy, perhaps, but very welcome at the time.
Challenging as the first day’s driving might have been, it was nothing compared to that of the second afternoon – from our lunching spot at Smitskraal (“Warning! Buffalo and dangerous animals.”) to the eastern gate. The reserve falls under the auspices of the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency, and it’s obvious that little time, money or effort has been spent on road maintenance.
To call the track a “suspension tester” is an understatement. The drive felt interminable. Nonetheless, both front seats were extremely comfortable for the conditions; neither so wide that we slid from side to side when we pitched and yawed, nor so narrow that we felt cramped.
LAST WORD
The high point of the trip for Rose-Mariè was crossing a score or so streams and muddy trenches on the valley floor. She was ecstatic when Eric took over the driving for one especially deep fording (the M-UX has a wading depth of 800 mm) while I took pictures and was almost drowned by the water thrown up by the three-tonne vehicle’s momentum.
We might have lost a front number plate somewhere along the way, but we were never going to get stuck. That fact and the all-round no-frills ruggedness of the Isuzu m-UX meant we could undertake this technical route with the utmost confidence.
Long-time fans call Isuzus “indestructible; it isn’t hard to see why.
Report & Images © JIM FREEMAN
