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Published: September 5th 2010
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Addo National Park is only 2 hours from Port Elizabeth so any easy drive on our way north. Finally England have played a half decent game against Slovenia so we are through to the last 16 and need to make our way North to Bloemfontain.
We are told to drive our own car around the park as the tours leave early morning and evening for better viewing. Without an official driver I play tour guide as Hawkins drives the van, I have my African Wildlife guide after all. We meet a man at the entrance who says he'd be surprised if we didn't see elephants but we try not to get our hopes up, it is already 11am so most animals will be hiding from the midday sun by now.
The path is paved and easy to drive unguided, it's only minutes before we see our first animal, easily spotted by the other stationary vehicles. I finally find the right type of antelope in the guide, a Kudu, the most common kind in South Africa. Easily identified by the large ears and the twisting horns of the male. These soon become boring though as we see a herd xxx of elephants
across the plain. Off we rush, although stop suddenly for a close up of an elephant eating in the bushes by the side of the road. The man at the beginning was right, it would be hard not to see an elephant. I explain the differences between Indian and African elephants to Hawkins, as learnt on my mahout training day last year. One of the differences causes a problem, African females have tusks so we cannot tell the male from female. As I read the elephant chapter from the book, it all suddenly plays out before us... I read that the elephant herds are matriarchical, with a female leading the other females and youngsters, the males tend to roam alone or in teenage groups. The males only join the herds in mating season, when they are in a constant state of excitement. As I read this I look up at the three elephants that have just passed a few metres behind the van, one is suddenly clearly male, he almost has a fifth leg!! Impressive! I also though read that the males can be violent and boisterous for no reason at this time, so we suddenly feel more vulnerable while
5 more are walking straight towards our van. Luckily they give us a wide berth and we continue driving around.
Next is a huge herd of buffalo with calves. They always seem to have a miserable face to me, although they are probably happy enough eating grass and roaming at will. They also cross our path so clearly the animals here are not effected by our presence which is a confidence boost for the tourism and management of Addo. The midday sun has chased away the big viewings of zebra and lions but we still see some warthogs, ostrich and many other birds, We have to continue our journey north if we are going to arrive in Hogsback before dark.,..
The sat nav says 6 hours to Hogsback, it's only xxx km away and it's already 2pm so decide the estimation is wrong and press on. The lonely planet says never enter through Seymour or Cathcart, and never arrive at night, but the sat nav insists we take the Seymour route and that we will arrive at 8pm, the sun sets around 6pm at the moment. The guide says some of the roads have been recently paved, so we
take the sat nav's route as the best option as we have no way of knowing the state of the roads until we get to them. We enter the seymour road at 6pm about 20km from Hogsback and it still insists there are 2 hours to go, the road is quite basic sand, rocks and dirt but nothing too bad, we can still drive at 50kph. It starts to get dark but this allows us to see some wildlife, we see a dik dik dart into the bushes, a vervet monkey and some kind of woodpecker. There are a few farmers along the route all with horse drawn vehicles. The sat nav arrival time prediction drops sharply as we progress up the road at a reasonable speed. We haven't seen anyone for a few kilometres, it's completely dark now and the mobile signal drops in and out. Suddenly the road quality worsens but we press on anyway, we bound over the first set of rocks, phew the next section is not so bad. We start up there, slipping and sliding from side to side, then suddenly no movement, we are slipping in the sand. We back up and try another
manouever, this moves us slightly but we hit another trench, then disaster strikes we are unable to move forwards or backwards. I get out to check the situation with my head torch, neither back wheel is touching the ground and the van is rear wheel drive, the back axle is banked! We collect stones to try and get some traction on the back wheels, I try pushing and wobbling the van as Hawkins accelerates, no luck, we are well and truly stuck. We are now 8km from our destination, it's pitch black and not a person in sight. My only thought is to get help so I call ahead to the hostel we were aiming for, luckily the mobile signal has returned! The hostel only know one person with a 4WD and he is back in PE, so they say they will call the police for us. After a long 30mins of turmoil they call back to say that John with the 4WD is just back from PE and will come out to help, as expected the police didn't care.
At 7:30 we see headlights over the brow of the hill and 3 Brits arrive, our knights in shining armour!!
They assess the situation but are not happy about the fact that now only one back wheel rotates when accelerating, they think we may have snapped the axle. They also try the stones for traction and pushing tactics but also can't budge it. The last resort if being dragged over the rocks, not a nice option but all we have left to try. We tie the van to the 4WD and Dan drives the van, John in the 4WD while the rest of us push. After lots of clattering and clanging we are free from the rocks and back to an uneven, untarred road. While Hawkins was peeing in the bushes he found our spare tyre back down the road, so we throw that in the back, reattach the spare tyre bracket and carefully drive to the hostel. The clanging seems to have stopped and the wheels all seem to work. As the sat nav predicted we arrive at the hostel just after 8pm, that debacle must have been part of the estimate! After a large rum by the fire I feel much more relaxed...
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