Our familiar 1 bedroom home away from home. Our Alpine Design Horizon 3 tent has been with us for quite some time now. We purchase this tent in Fall 2009 for camping in Shenandoah National Park (SNP). Our first night in SNP was so windy that we couldn’t sleep. In the morning we were so impressed that this $50 end of season special held up until morning. This tent has travelled with us for all of our camping needs since then. We had no idea it would ever be used to camp in Africa, but it is here with us today.

Broken Tent Pole

While hiking the wild coast we camped for 3 nights on the wooded dunes overlooking the beaches. One of the days was overwhelmingly windy and our poor tent succumb to the breeze. One of our 2 main tent poles fractured and caused a tear in the tent. We field engineered it to keep going another night. In Durban we would find a way to reinforce the pole and keep going. We purchased some metal dowels and used duct tape to make the joint. Our tent was back in action! We had the tent up for 10 nights in the bush, but when we moved to Sodwana bay for 2 nights more nights another joint fractured. Using the same equipment we purchased in Durban, we made the field repairs again.

We have 3 more planned camping nights as we travel through the Drakensburg mountains. Our new ‘robotent’ is hanging in there by a thread. It has been so great at providing cost effective accommodations during our travels. We’re hoping that it completes the last leg of the trip and we can order new poles and make some sticking repairs when we get back to the US.