Sticky days

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11/05/10

Have been away from the bus for 3 days on the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Nice to have time away but was grateful to return to comfy seats. Also relief to be back to tarmac roads, until the next sand patch that is. We have had days of getting stuck. First we got stuck driving into the campsite after a 14 hour day. Got a tree between the wheels that our driver John had to saw out. John looks a little like Clint Eastwood and has a slow, strong accented way of speaking. His knowledge about people, places, history and geology so far have been amazing. He has seen everything so many times but doesn’t seem to get bored with it. He is completely unfazed by anything. Even after a tough 14 hour day, and then having to hack a tree out from under the bus, he calmly climbed on the bus and proceeded to tell us all about the scenery we missed while driving in the dark. He is never too stressed or busy to give us advice and he never stops fixing the bus. In fact, as I type, he is under the stationary bus now, trying to wedge the compressor, that has sheared off its bolts, back onto the engine with a stick. Apparently this is our best hope to get us the 100 km to our next destination. John is never happier than getting some quiet time and finding some space to go off alone with his binoculars and bird book.

The following morning in our trials of getting stuck, we packed up to leave camp early so we could get a head start and proceeded to get stuck when trying to turn the bus around in sand. Would have been relatively simple to solve if the sand tracks hadn’t got caught on the underside of the truck and bent like a sheet of aluminium when the bus drove over them. We got out the sand, demolishing the rock border of the path on the way, but then had to spend a long time getting the heavy tracks flat enough to attach back on the bus. We then drove all day, bus seeming to get slower and slower, motoring at 55km per hour, into Botswana and down the side of the Okavango Delta. We stopped in a small village and transferred luggage, tents, kitchen and food for three days from our truck to an even more tank like one. The 45 minute drive on to Guma Lagoon Resort needed to be done in 4x4, but one that has wheels 4 ft tall. We left John with our bus with the aim of getting the engine fixed, while we rattled and bumped off, gears grinding and with diesel fumes pumping into the open sided truck.

As we followed the sand track through the village it quickly became clear why we need a 4x4, and one so big. We were to spend most of the 45 minute journey driving through water. Our confidence in the vehicle was shaky from the off, and when we entered the first big stretch of water we ground to a halt and the back left wheel sunk 3 ft into the sticky mud. It took them a surprisingly quick 20 minutes to free it (the slightly inadvisable African technique of winching it up on a jack and then driving off the jack), before we waded out and got back on it. We set of with great trepidation. Not quite sure how, as the water sometimes made it 4 ft up the truck, but we made it to the resort without further incident.