At last I managed to persuade (cajoled with a
few threats) Ernest to open up the top tent and we had a great night sleeping
on top of the truck. By the way, we have now named the truck "The African Queen" as she is certainly
stately enough, even though she does pull in a mountain of dust and she also
wallows on the road, a little like Queen Elizabeth the first. Better than “the truck" I will now refer to her as
"The Queen"
So I start again - we woke up with a couple of
elephants just on the edge of the camp, what a great sight and even better when
you are sitting up high. They wondered off and we had our breakfast and set off
for a quick game drive before pushing up to Tabor. We had again been told the
road was tar (and can you believe it we actually believed it) so we thought it
wasn't going to take us too long, about 385 Ks till Tabor where incidentally
Livingston lived and met up with Speke and Burton on their travels through Africa
(some of the suites at Safari are named after these intrepid explorers).
We thought we would have a quick game drive for
an hour or so and then shoot off and reach our destination before dark. There
are absolutely no camp sites at Tabor so we knew we were in for another night
of bush camping but this time we knew where to go as we had found a great site
last time we were there, just 10 kilometers outside Tabor. In order to do the
game drive we wanted to do we had to go out of the reserve, down the side for a
short while and then into the reserve again on a different road. About 10
minutes down the road we found a truck that had driven into a culvert on the
side of the road and landed with the cab about two meters down the drain and
his bum in the air.
Well Stevie Wonder, ever the Good Samaritan, was
out there to help these poor guys get the damn thing out. When we asked him how
he got there, he just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know. We think he must have fallen asleep
at the wheel. They had obviously been there the whole night trying to jack the
car up and put rocks and wood under the front wheels but had literally had no
effect. Well the boys, ever so keen to try out the capabilities of 'The Queen' and it's super-duper 35 ton winch (this car was probably 3 tons) attached the car
and started to winch...oooops the chain from their car "she broke".
So they started again, attached the winch to the chassis and we were winching
again. This time Ken hung a ground sheet
over the cable to prevent the cable doing too much damage if it snapped.
I was sitting in the front of The Queen talking
to Tracy and Ernest was shouting at me to duck if I saw the chain break.... Hell!! I was out of there sitting behind the
front seat as I have seen the whiplash when the cable comes lose or breaks.
Slowly but surely the truck came out backward with everyone cheering and
shaking hands which is all of our nightmares as who knows where those hands
have been!! Stevie was the only happy one as he still had his gloves on so he
was happy to shake their hands and nod heads with them. Now to rewind the winch
and "sorry for you” the winch would not
wind back! Oh dear no hydraulic oil in the hydraulic tank. It had been leaking
before we left and Ernest had asked the guys in the workshop to fix it but duh!
They had fixed the tank but never filled it with oil or told anyone that it
needed oil, or it hadn't been properly primed or something like that! We had to keep changing the angle of The Queen
to get the last drop of oil sitting in the right position to eventually be able
to wind back the winch. I had visions of us trailing a long tail all the way to
Kwanza if we didn't get it right. Anyway, that was the end of our game drive as
it was 11 o'clock by this time and we needed to head for Tabor without further
delay.
Off we went to fill up with fuel at the first
one horse town called Panda. The first step was to find a bank so that we could
withdraw money. All you have to do in a place like this is drive around till
you find one smart building and know for sure that is the bank. This one had an
ATM, with a very long queue outside so yippee, it was working even though it
took a while to get there... All the time the clock was ticking. Then to find
the exchange rate to know how much to draw which is impossible so in the end I
just drew the maximum the machine allowed.
Three times!! Then stopped as I thought it might swallow the card if I
tried again and off I went with a pile of money, literally. Ernest asked if I
had enough to fill the car, what a stupid question as how the hell would I
know. Anyway we put in what we thought was the whole amount to find we didn't
have a third of a tank... Then comes the “I told you to draw enough!!!”... Murder on the forecourt! Anyway as it turned out we had it all
screwed up as the whole tank got filled and only one third of the money was
used. Heaven knows how much I actually drew but it will last us a while now.
Then we found that the cap on the hydraulic tank for the winch had somehow
fallen off during our ride from Katavi giving us another problem. Steve managed
to seal it all up with cloths and zip ties. It is amazing how you can
"make a plan.”
So as I said time was now ticking, we had 289 Ks
to do and it was one thirty. We left in a big cloud of dust thinking the road
was good but oh boy we didn't know what we were in for. It was first, second,
third, back to first, second, back to first for 100 Ks. By this time we were
all practically crying. Ken also had a close call when some old boy (probably
20 years younger than him) passed him, then stopped then passed him again, then
when Ken tried to pass him again the old boy swerved and nearly pushed him
right off the road. You have to be fully alert at all times when driving around
here. Ernest's knees from changing gear and pressing the accelerator was so
sore he was in agony. So at 5pm we found a nice quarry, fairly far off the road
and made camp. It had taken 4 hours to do 100 Ks and we still had 189 to get to
Tabora which was our target for the day!
Oh boy we were finished and everyone was just a
tad grumpy so we made camp and decided a good shower for all would put us in a
better mood. Ernest and I got in our showers first but that brought a few bees
and when the next guy tried to shower the whole hive had arrived. This is semi
desert, no water for miles and just hundreds of bee hives all set up by the
locals along the main road. So we put out bowls of water all away from the
truck and sat and waited out the onslaught until the sun went down. By the time
it was dark there was a whole bowl full to the top of dead bees, drowned in the
water. At this point when the bees had left we could get out the supper, eat
quick and go to bed. We had to get an early start almost before sunrise as we
knew the bees would be back the next morning as the sun rose and this time they
would bring all their brothers and sisters with them. Just to add insult to
injury the biggest spider I have ever seen was sitting on the inside of the
grocery cupboard door when I opened it. It promptly shuffled into the cupboard
and it took Steve ages to find and kill the dam thing ... He had to, otherwise
nobody would eat again as I was dammed if I was going to put my hand in the
cupboard with that hairy thing still in there. Just could not figure out where
it came from and how it got in the cupboard as the doors are always closed!
We were well hidden from the main road and no
civilization for miles around so we were safe for the night. We did however
have hyenas fairly close which is something I always love to hear.
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