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Are we there yet? Couple gives up after 70000km |
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Karen Van Rooyen |
Published:Jan 11, 2009 |
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Children’s needs end world trip two years early. Driving from Johannesburg to Cape Town with toddlers in the back of the car is bad enough. Not surprising then that a South African couple called it quits after 70000km through 47 countries. About two years ago, Dean Allie, his wife, Vanita, and their boys, Zack, now six, and Troy, now four, set off in their modified four-wheel-drive vehicle, determined to cross five continents and return in time for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. But dealing with endless fights in the back seat and children desperate for the toilet proved no easy challenge, and they arrived back in their home town of Port Elizabeth just before Christmas. In their Internet diaries posted on the marathon road trip, the Allies wrote about what their little darlings got up to. In Botswana: “Troy is still in the learning phase and is always upsetting the play of the older kids, which causes a lot of endless crying. His crying we have named the Globeriders’ national anthem and that happens on average about at least six to eight times a day.” In Denmark last June, toddler Troy became the “resident pirate” when he was forced to wear an eye patch after run-ning into a boom gate and sustaining a deep gash above his left eyebrow. It was elder brother Zack’s turn to cause havoc while on a trip to a glacier in Norway, when he dropped a rock on his finger and split it open. His father had to rush down the mountain with the child on his shoulders, holding up his left hand to try to stop the bleeding. But possibly the worst scrape was in the Czech Republic where, at a castle with a bear pit, Troy was trying to spot the bears, put his head between the bars and got stuck there. “He started crying as all attempts to pull his head out of the bars failed,” his parents wrote at the time. “But with the help of some fellow tourist, they pushed the rest of his body through the bars and lifted him out over the top while checking to see where the bears were...” Their mother sounds happy to be home at last. “It was very draining,” Vanita said this week. “People think it’s glamorous but, at the end of the day, we were camping. We still had to clean the van and do the washing in the hotel bathroom.” The family left in March 2007 with Dean’s elder brother, Gary, his wife, Jo-Anne, and their children, Jade, 10, and Dane, eight. Along for the ride were Dean’s sister, Deidre Davids, her husband and a family friend. The Allie brothers, both medical doctors, sold their cars and homes to finance their trip. Gary and his family are now travelling in India alone. The others dropped out early. Said Dean: “Before we got to India, Vanita started hinting that she was getting a little bit claustrophobic in the van. “Many times we would have three or four days in a row where we would need to spend the entire day driving, up to 16 hours cooped up in the van and trying to keep (the children) entertained and not fighting.” But the children also sometimes made their trip easier and often softened up gruff border officials who became “jovial” after meeting the young boys and “hastened the process” of getting across. They managed to climb Egypt’s Mount Sinai, survive sandstorms in Sudan’s Nubian Desert, and a strong earthquake in Uganda. In Asia, they managed to avoid two disasters by days — November’s terror attacks in Mumbai and an earthquake in Pakistan’s Quetta province in October that killed hundreds. “We stayed maybe 100m from where the attacks happened in Mumbai. Luckily we left about five days before,” said Dean. The family is staying with Vanita’s parents until they are able to buy a new house. The boys start school and nursery school next week. The Allies have no regrets about cutting their trip short. “From our experience, South Africa is still the best country in the world,” Dean said. |
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