Books for guidance and counting the costs

"Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?" - Serena Williams

So our plans are busy being formed, and a few decisions have been made.
So far, we will rent out our house (it will be listed next month), and we will spend out first month of travel in KZN (Kwazulu Natal).

Initially, we thought this would be a cost-saving year, as school fees and extra-murals will be excluded from our budget and the rental income received for our house will cover the bond, etc. And anyways, camping is cheap - isn't it?

We have been working through this book:

We bought it a few years ago (around 2012) and the camping spots are rated from cheap (R50 - R150 per night) to expensive (R400 and up). So we thought we could get away with spending WAAAYYY less (i.e R50 per night) on accomodation each month (when compared to our bonds and municipal rates etc.)

Unfortunately it seems that camping has become quite expensive in most places. They are no longer just charging you for a camping spot, but now they are chargin on to of that a "per person" fee as well. The rates in the book are obviously outdated, and if we check a camping place with the recent details online, no-one charges R50 per night anymore...

Expensive is obviously a very "flexible" word, as normal campers do not camp for 365 consecutive days in a year :-)

But if you look at the going rates at the moment, we are looking at spending R440.00 per night for the 4 of us, and then it is no longer "cheap" (especially if accomodation is now going to cost us R13 640.00 per month (excluding the monthly installment on a new car that will be strong enough to tow a caravan). 

So we are really going to have to do our homework PROPERLY so that we don't end up abandoning the plan because our money has run out!

In the meantime, my sister also told me that the WEG / GO magazine  has issued a camping spots editions, and we are working through that as we speak.

The other book that we have invested in so far, is a road trip book which is awesome! The writers did not really camp though, but they did travel through a few special back roads which we will definitely visit.

And then last, but not least, my mother in law gave me a book that was published by the Reader's Digest in 1982 -  travel guide (illustrated) through South Africa. And it also has a lot of little gems (that may or not exist anymore) as well as historical facts (that may or not have changed since 1994).

Anyway - that is all for now with my goofy snapshots :-)

I am looking for T.V Bulpins book "Discovering Southern Africa" as well, which I saw in a book I read late last year "Travels with a Roadkill Rabbit"by Catherine Lanz, but I haven't been able to find it yet. I will put in more effort to find it over the coming months.

We obviously have some costing analysis to do! 

Another SHOCKING thing we discovered this week was that caravaning in MANY places is MORE expensive than some Airbnb and Lekkeslaap accommodation we are looking at. Especially if you consider all the extra costs we will have to incur (seeing as we DON'T have a caravan OR a vehicle to tow it with.)