brokedown palace
Last we left our intrepid heroes we were stuck 17 miles from water, 10 hours into the bush. Spoiler: we lived.
The Marienfluess, best of places, worst of places. The ride out there puts more wear on my truck than anywhere else, and that's in a dry year. This year the rain came and never stopped, so we're hip deep in grass and riding the shittiest roads in memory. The grass hides rocks big enough to roll us, the ruts shake my truck apart. I mean it's pretty and all and there are baby everythings everywhere, but we're definitely talking mixed blessing here.
Harshest place of all, hard-scrabble Otjoze. Little shade, crap soils, a rubbish sand well that tastes strongly of salt. Can't imagine why anybody lives here but many do, so we'd stopped by a day or two earlier to get permission from the local chief to do some interviews. He remembered us from before. We're cool.
We rolled in early to start things, but when I tried to move the truck to a little shade ... nothing. Turn the key and not a thing. Hmmm. This happened before and it was my stupid goddamn starter motor. Got that bastard fixed and fixed well, I thought. Crawled around in the dust for a bit - no loose wires to speak of so this won't be an easy fix.
First things first - we're 17 miles from shade and decent water. Kemuu's truck is at the camp so if we can get it, we can use it to tow us there. Problem is that the truck is there and we're here. Plan B - kemuu goes to arrange for donkeys, no way we're gonna make 17 miles in this heat with no cover. While he is off I'm on Plan A: rescue. Out comes the sat phone and we're talking to Hendrik, who says yeah, sounds like the starter motor. Two days, maybe three, expect the cavalry. See, this is why it's good to have friends.
In the meantime, we need to get to home. So, what options have we that are not donkey-related? Unusually but wisely, we took two trucks out to the 'fluess this trip but the other is parked at camp near the river. Kemuu returns and mentions that, unlike his usual practice of keeping them to hand, his keys are in his tent. Better than having them here, I suppose, but we need a driver so whom do we call? As luck would have it, Jerry (the other guide) mentions that he has the phone number for the phone at the worker's camp. Seems he was chatting up one of the locals and he wanted to keep in touch. Conditions for an elegant solution coalesce thanks to my paranoia, Kemuu's forgetfulness, and Jerry's effort to get some trim. Thus are angels born.
We call and to my everlasting astonishment, somebody answers. Kemuu explains where to find his keys and they find somebody who can drive stick. Fortune favors the foolish after all.
Took hours but we found a way. The winch wire made the most obvious tow line but proved rather unforgiving - we tore the bumper off kemuu's car before we figured that one out. A bit of rope from a passing portuguese gem miner let us tie into the chassis and took a bit of the jar off, so everything worked fine. Another 5 miles, and then we got bogged in deep sand. They couldn't move us without sinking in, so we parked them, chocked the tires and used our winch. We had just enough juice in our batteries to pull ourself the critical 100 meters. Then the battery on Kemuu's truck crapped out after too many attempts to yank us out of the sand. As luck would have it, we had a spare battery aboard, charged up just enough to jump Kemuu to life. Blue Team does many things.
We got there eventually.
So now we had a couple of days to kill as our food swiftly dwindled. Time enough to do some visitin', albeit on foot.
Two days later, rescue arrives. At 1 minute after midnight. Just time enough to drink a bit, braai a bit, and pitch out on the ground.
First thing in the morning and an actual mechanic takes a look at my poor sick baby. Took about 2 minutes for Rimmer to find the broken wire coming off my battery. Shitskys. Stripped, reconnected and everything works fine. The starter motor is just fine. Well, this is what it took and now we know, so now we get to ghost-rider whip-chain the hell out of this place. It's gonna be a while before I live this one down but something about riding in echelon with these guys is somehow splendid. And yes, that's Kemuu's bull-bar on my roof: the washboarding was bad enough to fracture the welds that held it on.
To go from fretting that you've stuck 6 folks in the worst place on earth to flying formation with Afrikaners tough as tree roots. Something I'll be remembering in quiet repose when I've hung up my spurs, having seen one corpse too many.
Now I'm back in Yorkshire and we're expecting floods and snow at elevation. In June. Bloody England.
The Marienfluess, best of places, worst of places. The ride out there puts more wear on my truck than anywhere else, and that's in a dry year. This year the rain came and never stopped, so we're hip deep in grass and riding the shittiest roads in memory. The grass hides rocks big enough to roll us, the ruts shake my truck apart. I mean it's pretty and all and there are baby everythings everywhere, but we're definitely talking mixed blessing here.
Harshest place of all, hard-scrabble Otjoze. Little shade, crap soils, a rubbish sand well that tastes strongly of salt. Can't imagine why anybody lives here but many do, so we'd stopped by a day or two earlier to get permission from the local chief to do some interviews. He remembered us from before. We're cool.
We rolled in early to start things, but when I tried to move the truck to a little shade ... nothing. Turn the key and not a thing. Hmmm. This happened before and it was my stupid goddamn starter motor. Got that bastard fixed and fixed well, I thought. Crawled around in the dust for a bit - no loose wires to speak of so this won't be an easy fix.
First things first - we're 17 miles from shade and decent water. Kemuu's truck is at the camp so if we can get it, we can use it to tow us there. Problem is that the truck is there and we're here. Plan B - kemuu goes to arrange for donkeys, no way we're gonna make 17 miles in this heat with no cover. While he is off I'm on Plan A: rescue. Out comes the sat phone and we're talking to Hendrik, who says yeah, sounds like the starter motor. Two days, maybe three, expect the cavalry. See, this is why it's good to have friends.
In the meantime, we need to get to home. So, what options have we that are not donkey-related? Unusually but wisely, we took two trucks out to the 'fluess this trip but the other is parked at camp near the river. Kemuu returns and mentions that, unlike his usual practice of keeping them to hand, his keys are in his tent. Better than having them here, I suppose, but we need a driver so whom do we call? As luck would have it, Jerry (the other guide) mentions that he has the phone number for the phone at the worker's camp. Seems he was chatting up one of the locals and he wanted to keep in touch. Conditions for an elegant solution coalesce thanks to my paranoia, Kemuu's forgetfulness, and Jerry's effort to get some trim. Thus are angels born.
We call and to my everlasting astonishment, somebody answers. Kemuu explains where to find his keys and they find somebody who can drive stick. Fortune favors the foolish after all.
Took hours but we found a way. The winch wire made the most obvious tow line but proved rather unforgiving - we tore the bumper off kemuu's car before we figured that one out. A bit of rope from a passing portuguese gem miner let us tie into the chassis and took a bit of the jar off, so everything worked fine. Another 5 miles, and then we got bogged in deep sand. They couldn't move us without sinking in, so we parked them, chocked the tires and used our winch. We had just enough juice in our batteries to pull ourself the critical 100 meters. Then the battery on Kemuu's truck crapped out after too many attempts to yank us out of the sand. As luck would have it, we had a spare battery aboard, charged up just enough to jump Kemuu to life. Blue Team does many things.
We got there eventually.
So now we had a couple of days to kill as our food swiftly dwindled. Time enough to do some visitin', albeit on foot.
Two days later, rescue arrives. At 1 minute after midnight. Just time enough to drink a bit, braai a bit, and pitch out on the ground.
First thing in the morning and an actual mechanic takes a look at my poor sick baby. Took about 2 minutes for Rimmer to find the broken wire coming off my battery. Shitskys. Stripped, reconnected and everything works fine. The starter motor is just fine. Well, this is what it took and now we know, so now we get to ghost-rider whip-chain the hell out of this place. It's gonna be a while before I live this one down but something about riding in echelon with these guys is somehow splendid. And yes, that's Kemuu's bull-bar on my roof: the washboarding was bad enough to fracture the welds that held it on.
To go from fretting that you've stuck 6 folks in the worst place on earth to flying formation with Afrikaners tough as tree roots. Something I'll be remembering in quiet repose when I've hung up my spurs, having seen one corpse too many.
Now I'm back in Yorkshire and we're expecting floods and snow at elevation. In June. Bloody England.