For many a 4×4 off-roading overseas adventure is a true bucket list experience! There are few things in life that beat the feeling of waking up completely surrounded by nature, far from the beaten track, with the freedom to go wherever you desire in the day ahead. Only one thing would make this better and that is, knowing your way around your 4×4 vehicle, so that should you get into difficulty, you’ll be able easily manoeuvre your way out of it.
Over the years, Explore 4×4 have taught many off road drivers ready for planned and forthcoming overseas trips. Our clients have successfully toured such places as Mongolia, Australia, South America, South Africa, Iceland, Sri Lanka, The Pyrenees, The Alps and The Atlas Mountains, to name but a few. We have also trained drivers for Afghanistan and Southern Sudan.
If you’re planning an adventure overseas, please give us a call and see if we can help.
For now we’ll leave you some feedback from some of our past clients…
Max and Gina’s Australian Off-Road Adventure
You may remember that Max and I attended one of your courses to learn how to drive a 4×4 in readiness for our expedition in Australia. Sorry it’s taken us so long to get back to you – but time flies when you are having fun!
Well, we did indeed go and had a great time. Thanks to your tuition – it gave us enough confidence to be able to get into the truck and drive out into the middle of nowhere over dirt roads, through rivers and over some very rough tracks.
It was during a previous short trip to Melbourne and the Alpine National Park, that we discovered that our hired Hyundai i20 wasn’t man enough to get us to the places we wanted to be. We wanted to be remote, to go walking in the middle of nowhere and to do that we had to drive deep into the temperate rain forest.
Why, you might ask, should we want to do this? ….. Reason, because that’s where the big lizards live and to get pictures of them we had to get ourselves into their manor.
We needed a proper 4×4. So, for our next trip (taking in the National Parks between Sidney and Melbourne) we went on-line and hired ourselves a Troopy i.e. a Troop Carrier (aka Toyota Land Cruiser) with a tent on the roof, dual fuel tanks, dual electrics, double batteries, a winch and a very handy wine cooler, it was just the ticket (though filling up both tanks nearly bankrupted us).
In the publicity blurb it looked man-enough for the task in hand, but then it dawned on us that we had absolutely no idea how to drive such a vehicle; we’d never been in a 4×4 let alone driven one off road! So, we phoned Malcolm and explained our predicament.
Malcolm was more than happy to instruct us in the ways of 4×4 driving skills and we duly turned up on a windy, cold day to be taught in the classroom the practicalities of how a 4×4 worked, before being taken out for a practical lesson. Malcolm encouraged us to find the limits of the vehicle and what to do when things go a bit wrong. He also taught us the basics of inspecting a vehicle – which proved useful when hiring our Troopy.
Most importantly, the lesson enabled us to assess where we could take a Troopy and gave us the confidence to be able to get where we wanted to go.
Quite frankly without the course we would either have been too nervous to take the vehicle properly off road, or we’d have been overly reckless (enough to get ourselves into some serious trouble).
The few hours we had with Malcolm were both informative and fun and we would wholeheartedly recommend anyone wanting to understand the ways of 4×4 driving to give it a go. We are certainly grateful for the tuition that enabled us to have our own adventure in the Australian bush.
The first obstacle we managed, the second we need to have the advanced course for!!
One thing we would say, is that the biggest problem we had off-roading in the bush was finding out about what to do re: safety-wise. In fact, while over there, we never did get any proper/useful information. We even spoke to a Park Ranger about what to do re: snake/spider bites but he just said to be careful.
Another thing we discovered was that it is really essential to take something like a GPS beacon in case of accident. You really are in the middle of nowhere out there.
If you want a good place to hire a serious off-roader in Sydney or Melbourne, we hired our Australian 4×4 from Travel Car Centre, Sidney (and would recommend them); they included a GPS safety beacon as part of the package (something you should not be without in the wilderness). The vehicle wasn’t new but it had been well maintained and was well adapted/modified for the terrain: www.travelcar.com.au
Explore 4×4 wish to express their thanks to Gina and Max for this article. As the saying goes “ One life….Live it”
