OWING to the fact that we had had to find room for all John’s equipment as well as our own, the roof rack was not as scientifically packed as it might have been.
This meant that, when we got our second puncture of the day, we had to offload 90 percent of the garbage on the roof before we could get to the second spare.
At least this one did not have elongated bolt holes for chewing up wheel nuts but, at the same time, it also lacked even the slightest vestige of tread.
We continued on our way with somewhat uneven traction.Our gremlin laid off us for the rest of the day and we arrived at Serondella camp with time to spare for a bit of game-viewing and a lot of wood-collecting.
Corrie and I both like a good campfire, but John turned out to be a positive pyromaniac.
I also had time to defrost some fillet steak, so we ate well that night and then sat around our conflagration, swapping yarns and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
Before anything else could be done on Monday morning, the tyres had to be fixed. In addition to the complete spare wheels, we also had two spare inner tubes, so we decided to put these into the tyres and patch the damaged ones at our leisure.
Both had been sent to the service station for checking prior to our departure, so we were not too pleased to find that one had three holes in it and the other had four. Corrie got out the repair kit and patched them. Unfortunately, he put the patches on back-to-front and they all fell off again.
Meanwhile John was battling to get the other tubes out of the tyres, Karen was trying to replace the arm of a broken doll and I was sewing a patch on the seat of Corrie’s second-best shorts. We had declared it ‘fix-it’ day.
Eventually one of the tubes was inside the spare wheel and being pumped up by one of those natty devices which screws into the engine and lets you drink a beer, while it does all the work. It’s a marvellous invention, except that it usually takes half-an-hour to decide which end of it is which, and another half-hour to find the plug spanner, without which it cannot be fitted.
The rear tyre, which had been our first casualty, was giving us real problems. It was an extra-heavy-duty job and the rubber was so tough and unyielding that it would not go back onto the rim of the wheel.
Maybe a couple of guys the size of Ed, armed with crowbars, might have managed it, but we three skinnies, with our 40cm tyre levers, hadn’t a hope.
We decided to put our problem inside the Land Rover and transport it to the engineering works in Kasane. But we would have to hurry if we were going to get there before they closed for lunch.
Shortly before we reached the gate of the park, our Calamity Bug made its presence felt again. Not that it was very serious. The nuts and bolts holding part of the exhaust pipe together had worked loose, but it didn’t look as if we would lose them before we got to Kasane, so we pushed on. By the time we got to the gate, we had lost them, but John rigged up something with a bit of welding rod and a jubilee clip.
A mile or so further on, we were treated to a ghastly rending sound, as the entire rear section of our exhaust system fell off and we ran over it.
It didn’t look much like an exhaust system after that, so we chucked it on the roof rack and roared into Kasane like a cavalry charge of superannuated tractors.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
