How Africa Kicked My Ass, Part One

---

Hola!

It has been so long since I last wrote that I am now on a new continent, in a new country, trying desperately to speak a new language. The last leg of my Africa trip nearly did me in, and only now do I feel semi-recovered and ready to write it down. So here we go....

The last time I wrote I was at a hostel in Joburg waiting to go on my overland trip---the day after I transfered to the Drifters Inn, which is the overland company´s inn in Joburg and quite luxurious compared to what I had become used to over the last 7 weeks. That day, however, I realized I was getting sick---you know when you can feel in the back of your throat and neck that you have a massive head cold coming on? Well, I certainly felt that and kind of started to panick considering the next day I was starting a 17 day "roughing it" trip. I checked in, walked to the store to buy a few necessities, then decided to take a quick nap since I felt exhausted. I was supposed to meet with my guide and group for the first time at 8:00pm, but lay down at 1:00 and was dead to the world until 9:00. Oops. Clearly, my body was not doing well, and I stumbled downstairs after my 8 hour nap to find my rather unimpressed guide. They had been looking for me everywhere, and had even knocked on my door numerous times. I, somewhere, didn´t hear this, and had the whole staff thinking I had been mugged and was now lying in a ditch somewhere. Again, OOPS!

I got myself into bed for the night and woke up the next morning Officially Sick, but all we did was drive that day so I was able to get some rest. Our overland truck was huuuuuge, like a tank, and since there were only 7 of us on the trip we each got to have 2 seats to ourselves. There was myself, a couple from Seattle, an English lady, a Chilean lady, a woman from Munich, and Swiss guy. I was the youngest by 8 years, but that didn´t really matter and we all got along very well.

The first few days went smoothly, although I felt like hell. We drove into Kruger Park (a national game park the size of Holland) and setup camp in one of the campsites (very nice, not roughing it yet) for a few nights. We did lots of game drives and saw tons of animals. The highlights for me were definately the elephants----we got to watch an entire herd of them, babies and all, splashing in the river then walk up the bank and cross the road in front of our truck. They are so beautiful. We also saw rhinos, wilderbeast, buffalo, hyenas, warthogs, zebra, impala, giraffe, waterbuck, lots of birds including vultures, crocodiles, hippos, several kinds of snakes, baboons, vervet monkeys, kudu, ostrich, steinbock (which look like miniature deer and stand stone still thinking we can´t see them), and about a million other things that I can´t think of right now or can´t name. Ah yes, and the ass of a leopard. That´s the best we could do for cats, unfortunately, but to be honest I wasn´t all that bothered.

After we were done in Kruger we set out on a gravel road for a rural Mozambican border crossing into the Transfrontier Peace Park (created after their civil war). Here we got our first flat tire. Our guide, Eugene, has been guiding for years and rarely gets flats. Until now. The road we had driven on wasn´t even bad, so this was purely bad luck, and took 6 men 2 hours to change, as these are no ordinary tired. Once the spare was on, we set out into the Peace Park, which is bush as far as the eye can see. We sat on top of the truck for the first hour with the sun shining and it was definately a¨"this is why I travel" moment. The road was dirt and there were some directional signs but we didn´t see another vehicle the during the entire 2 hours it took to get to our camp, which was on a huge lake. We slept under the stars last night which was pretty amazing.

The next morning we got up early and set out on the next stretch, which I hestitate to call a road. It was a bush track barely narrow enough for our truck to pass through. Because the sides of the truck are open, we all had to sit on the inside seats to avoid being decaptitated by the tree branches that kept whipping inside and depositing not only leaves and twigs, but also every small creature imaginable that lived in the forest. After only several minutes the floor of our truck was no longer visible and I looked like Jane of the Jungle. I have officially gotten over my fear of the North American house spider, as we had countless of them in the truck and on ourselves, as well as a bunch of cool bugs like Walking Sticks and Preying Mantases. The ride was so bumpy that every few minutes I would nearly fall off my seat, so there was no chance of taking a nap. About 6 hours into this journey, we got our second flat tire. You know when your tough, capable guide starts swearing that things have taken a turn. It took 3 hours to discover that it was not possible to pump it up enough to get to the next camp, take the wheel off, change the tube, put the wheel back on, and find that there was a leak in the tube. So, we spent the next 6 hours driving for an hour, then stopping and refilling the tire. Guess how far we made it in those 12 hours---100 km. It got dark before made it to the camp, and since our guide had just seen "fresh elephant shit" when we stopped to fill it up again, the girls had to scan the bush with flashlights while the guys dealt with the tire. The best analogy that I could come up with for this trip was that it was like being on a really crazy Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, except that it lasted continuously for 12 hours and the snakes, bugs, and spiders being thrown in your face were real. I consider myself to be a pretty tough person, but in the last hour before we reached camp I was as close to hysterical as I will ever be. By the time we finally stopped I started laughing like crazy, because the alternative was crying and breaking down completely. Fortunately, I discovered that the rest of the girls had nearly unravelled as well, just none of us wanted to admit it. Our camp for the night was a patch of dirt surrounded by grass full of snakes, so we slept on top of the truck!

The next morning it was scorching by 7am, so we got packed up quickly and set out again on the bush track with the following plan----we were meant to reach and cross the Limpopo River (which has no bridge, but if the water is low enough then the truck can handle the crossing). Our guide, however, could not find out from anybody was the water level was like, so we had no choice but to drive all the way there to find out. If it was low enough, we´d cross, and if it was too high we would have to turn around and DRIVE THE WHOLE WAY BACK, ALL 12 HOURS. Clearly, I was justifiably nervous that this damn river would be too high, and since I became carsick on the way to the Limpopo I was pretty sure I wouldn´t be able to handle that drive again. After 4 hours we reached the Limpopo, and it was low enough!!!! After I returned to my normal colour, I celebrated. We got out of the truck and Eugene walked across it to make sure the truck could handle it. Since it was only up to his waist he figured it should be no problem. We got out and waded across to the other side to watch. He had driven 10 metres in when the truck died. I wasn´t really surprised, because this was the kind of luck we were beginning to get used to. It wasn´t until later that Eugene figured out that a Drifters mechanic in Joburg had neglected to put some valve cap on to prevent the engine from flooding, so it flooded, and we were screwed. At that time, however, he didn´t have a clue what was going on so the mission began to get us out. To put us in context, we were in the Middle of Nowhere, at a rural river crossing used by locals who paid to have their things taken across in wooden boats pushed by wooden poles. There was no cell reception and the nearest payphone was 17 km away. A tractor was fetched from the next village (it was quite strange to see a tractor out there, not too sure how they got it) and chains were hitched to the back of our 7 tonne truck. It took them 8 hours of pushing and pulling (with the tractor and about 15 local men, plus our 3) to get the back tires of the truck onto the bank. We sat in the river the whole day, watching this spectacle and wondering what the heck would happen next. The river was wonderfully refreshing, so we can chosen a good place to get stranded, and sat making comments like "well, at least that front tire is holding up..." Once they had gotten it to the banks, Eugene had to deal with paying the tractor guy and the locals, who wanted much more than was reasonable, so things got rather heated and we sat watching and worrying that we would soon be losing our guide. They got it settled, however, and we setup camp on the banks of the Limpopo. The next morning Eugene set out to find the nearest payphone, so we spent the day at our little camp, sitting in the water and staring back at the locals who did nothing but stare at us (and again, worrying that we may never see our guide again. There was no guarantee that the payphone in Mapai would work, and the next one was 27 km away). It was quite a nice day actually---the weather was beautiful and we played with some kids in the water and had a few friendly exchanges with locals that found us interesting. 5 hours later, Eugene did return, to tell us that the company had instructed him to abandon the truck, which they had never had to do in the 23 years of their company. He arranged with a local guy to take us in his truck to the border, where Drifters would send a new truck for us. We spent another night at the river (during which I accidently accepted a marriage proposal from a local while sitting in the river, much to his delight and the crowd on the bank) and in the morning got up EARLY to pack up. Oop,s almost forgot. On our second night there some teenagers tried to rob us. Roger was sleeping in the truck, and Eugene was on top of it, and the kid managed THREE times to get himself into the truck. THe first 2 times they woke up and he ran off, and the third time he actually had my daypack but dropped it when he jumped down and landed on some logs below. It didn´t have any valuables in it, as we had locked them all up, but it had my journal and address book with all emails of people I had met on my trip, and was therefore VERY valuable to me. So I´m thankful for those logs! The third time he showed up our guide was so pissed off that he chased him down the beach with a machete. Needless to say, no one slept at all that night, except me, who was still really sick and in a drugged up state. Plus my ears were so plugged up that I couldn´t hear anything anyways! We had to strip the truck of everything we could (since leaving it meant for sure it would be stolen). We hauled it all up to the 2 little Toyota trucks where Donald, our driver (a lovely man who looked just like Forrest Whittaker) packed all of our things into one and the rest of us into another. We drove with Richard, and I was very lucky to get to sit in the front for most of the trip, as the others were crouched under a canopy in the back with little airflow and lots of bumps. The border was supposedly 2 hours away, but 4 hours later we got there. On the way we stopped at various villages and met most of Richard´s family, and filled up with gas at the¨"gas station," which was a hut on the side of the road where they poured gas out of a barrel and poured it into the gas tanks with a rolled up brochure. The "road" was yet again just a sea of potholes, and I remain in awe of how those little old trucks managed to make it. Once at the border, we met with the two young Drifters trainees who they had sent out to guard the truck until they could haul it out of there. Those two poor suckers spent 5 days sitting at the river. While transferring our stuff from Donald´s truck to our new one, the South African border guards insisted on searching everything, a process which took 2 hours and included a search of our cereal. We were soooo dirty, tired, and grumpy at this point that they may have actually believed we were drug smugglers. We finally got into our new truck, and drove back into Kruger. And I will end this blog here, since it is already a short novel and I am dying for breakfast. I don´t have time to re-read it so hopefully it makes some sense. I´ll get the rest of the trip on soon, and will try to get some pics up too. So that´s the first part of the adventure! Kate and I are spending our last day in Barcelona today, which is such a beautiful city. Early in the morning we fly to Granada, which I am really looking forward to. It is great to be back with my sister and we are loving Spain. Hope everyone is well!!! xoxoxoxo Love Linds

---