And look who greets us at the edge of camp early this morning
Today passes much the same as the others, but there is a knowledge that this is our last day in the CKGR, slowly, almost sadly, we gradually start tidying things up and putting away unneeded items in preparation for the early start tomorrow morning. Although the distance to be covered is only just over 400 k's, the first leg to the gate and then to the tar will be slow owing to the deep sand.
We go and check out a few of the other campsites within the Sunday pan vicinity ( a total of 4), they are all superb and one would be hard pressed to make a choice between any of them. The others are all empty so we don't feel as if we're intruding on anyone. The others are a bit closer to each other (2 or 3 k's apart) with ours being all on its own on the other side of the pan.
For those wanting to know what the camps consist of, here is a pic
On the left is a shower cubicle, complete with bucket on a rope, but you use whatever water you have carried in and on the right is quite a decent longdrop. That's it. We used my shower cubicle, simply because I have a water heating system in the Landy that pumps water from the one water tank, through the heating system, into the shower and no need for a cold shower.
Rough it?......what for when you have the right equipment.
So tonight's supper is Ox tail pootjie followed by a well laced brandy trifle. There were even a few veggies on offer, but I noticed they went largely untouched. A reasonably quiet and early night tonight, I will give the kettle call early in the morning.
The weather has turned, there is a biting, cold wind howling from the northeast, dust and sand blowing everywhere as the sun breaks the horizon. The guys all dress warmly and scurry about, braking camp and loading the vehicles. having done a lot of the prep work the night before, we are soon ready to hit the trail. Once again in convoy we head across the vast pan, but today it is difficult to pick out the trail in the blowing sand, speeds are very low. We must keep on our toes, it is impossible to get forewarning of the soft patches, the only indication is when you're already in it, so gearing is chosen to have as much power in reserve as possible.
After what seems like for ever, the gate looms out of the sand and dust. We stop to discard our full garbage bags in the big trailer provided for this purpose and proceed to check out. Formalities concluded we head back to the vehicles. Ryan, pulling the heavy Conqueror trailer points out to me that the trailer brakes are smoking, he is sure he disengaged them, but the lever is up, so maybe he neglected to do so. We decide to send the Pajero out in front, the Fortuner with trailer in the middle and the Landy in the rear just in case there's an issue. We have the rough 45 k's to do to get to the tar. Things are going well, I hang back a few 100 meters to stay out of the dust when suddenly coming around a bend we find the trailer leaning to one side and Ryan running down the track after his wheel.
The heat from the cooking brakes had burned the grease out of the bearings and the the whole wheel assembly including break drums had disintegrated. This in the middle of nowhere. I have always had the philosophy that when something goes wrong in the bush, you sit down, take out a beer and relax. Climbing headlong into the problem so often results in the wrong moves. During this time we also established what had caused the problem. The emergency cable that activates the brakes in the event of the trailer coming unhitched was too short and with the up and down flexing between the car & the trailer on the bad road, the cable had step by step engaged the brake. The extra drag was put down as being from soft sand conditions.
Ok so here we are we need 4 new sets of barings to get the trailer mobile, we don't have any spares. The closest place we can get help from is 400 kilometers away. Nothing to do but get the trailer on the level, prop it up with logs using the Landy's high lift jack and leave the trailer exactly where it is. I do a U turn and head back to the park gate to tell them of our problem and that we would hopefully return tomorrow to fix things and recover the trailer. In the flick of an eye, they offer to keep an eye on it during the day and night. Awesome people, I doubt we would have got a similar offer here.
Back to the scene, we put the finishing touches to the log pile and hit the road to Maun.
This excitement is too much for some and apparently all the vehicles were reasonably quiet on the boring drive to Maun
Suitably relaxed after double clutching two or three we headed for an old buddies workshop. Louw, who owns Delta 4X4 had assisted me previously and if any one could get the trailer mobile again it would be him. No sooner had we told our tale of woe when he swung into action, phoning all over Maun to locate bearings. Nobody had the correct ones, but he did manage to locate some that would suffice in getting the trailer to Maun.
