Bushlapa Ratel 4

As we have been camping, we discovered a few brands that came up strongly, in no particular order, there is Bush Lapa, Conqueror, Echo and a mix of others.

Since we have tried the Conquerors we decided to move to the Bush Lapa, and lucky for us we started with one of the top of the range Bush Lapa's the Ratel 4.

Firstly let me begin to tell you that every camping setup is specific to how are you going to camp. Being a family of 4 with an infant, we needed certain things, mainly the ability to have a bottle warmer in the camper and secondly access to water inside the camper. I can say the Ratel offers this and alot more.

I could not believe the size of this camper, it is big, but it sits behind the ranger like it is nothing. It has solar panels, and this is a blessing when you are camping in the middle of no where. Not to forget the water tanks, which we filled and utilized, with the gas geyser.

Why, well it was simple, even though we were at a nice camp site with very good facilities, the fact of the mater is that the communal facilities are normally still a way from the camper, and with the kids this makes it challenging. With the ability to access hot water, we are able to use this incredible kitchen and not have to move away from the camper.

Now let me tell you about this kitchen and the storage space. The Ratel 4 has alot of packing space inside, you can even pack a MTB bike along with the table, chairs and all the clothing. This pleased my wife alot, as she is super women and wants to be prepared for everything, with this packing space she could. But what one this camper over for us was its kitchen and the setup. Let me start with the bad, the gas cooker, looks like something that comes out of an industrial kitchen and you struggle to see if it is on or off. Many people also put the washing up basin and water in the front by the cooker, bush lapa have catered for that, but they have traditionally set the taps near the back corner of the camper, we found this a better use and after several discussions I have to agree with my wife that the basins at the back make more sense on the ratel. Pots, pans, utensils are all conveniently located by the cooker and so is the fridge, leaving the back storage area for food stuff and drinks. truly a great kitchen setup.

Inside the Ratel there is plenty of packing space and the two beds are nice an big, we like to think that it was going to be two kids on one bed and two adults on the other bed, but it landed up being one child and one adult per bed, which is still good. This was more to do with the fact that our children always want to hold on to one of us. The used a full popup roof, not slanted, this made a huge difference. They also used real open and close (swing) doors, which meant those midnight wakeup to go to the bathroom didnt wake anyone - check out the review on the conqueror campanion or the bush lapa miskrier.

Setting up and taking down of the bush lapa was easy, start at point A and walk around the camper till you get to point A again. There is a few tricks you have to learn with putting up the batwing awning, but once you know this then you are set. I still struggle with packing away the awning, this is my biggest problem with that awning and I can say my one hate.

The real nice thing is that I can setup and pack up by myself and Zante can look after kids while I am doing it. You dont need 2 people to setup, (though 2 people will help - its not necessary), it takes me about 25 minutes for setup and 25 minutes for pack up, yes by myself, I think I can get quicker the more I use the same camper.

We still have other campers to try but this can easily become our go to reliable camper. The only real concern would be the weight and how this would handle in sand.