AS there seemed to be no point in staying long in an area so bereft of animals, we cut short our stay in Moremi and set out for Savuti.
Before we were even out of the north gate, the radiator boiled. We opened the bonnet and found that the radiator cap was missing. Amazingly enough, we did manage to find it – in pieces – but no amount of hammering and crimping could get it back together again.
Corrie just shoved it on as it was and we headed for Kwaai River Lodge.
But the people at Kwaai were unable to help us, so we pushed on, topping up with water every kilometre or so. And every kilometre brought us nearer the sand ridge. If you can tackle it early in the day, it poses very few problems, but we were now approaching it at three o’clock in the afternoon, with a boiling radiator.
We had no option but to camp before the ridge and wait for the cool of the morning before crossing it. Camping in the hunting area is strictly forbidden, but we just had to hope that the hunters would be somewhere else that night.
Soon after we stopped, we were joined by four young men in another Land Rover, who were having trouble with their fuel pump.
For a few minutes it looked as if we might be able to solve each others’ problems, but after much scrabbling and searching, and turning-out of toolboxes, we found that our spare fuel pump was for a different model and they hadn’t got an extra radiator cap either.
So when the hunter arrived on the scene, there were two vehicles illegally parked. He told us to move on. We would, we said, be only too happy to oblige, if he could provide us with a fuel pump and a radiator cap. Knowing the terrain ahead and being a sympathetic sort of chap, he said we could stay where we were.
He would go and hunt somewhere else, but we must sleep inside our vehicles.
That lion was clever, I must admit. He obviously reasoned that, if we were there, the hunter must be elsewhere. So the safest place for a lion who didn’t want to finish up as a rug, would be with us. He prowled around the two Land Rovers all night.
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