Here follows the first part of a cautionary tale containing lots of water, in more than one phase:
We left Joburg on 16/12/2010 in the pouring rain. I was especcially wet having just completed packing the roofrack and tying everything down. At this point I probably need to point out that my Trol dosn't fit in my garage if there is anything on the roof. The rain never stopped untill we reached Underberg. We arrived at our first campsite at the Nip Inn in Bulwer in wonderful sunshine, but as we unpacked our spirits were dampened, as all our bedding which had been transported in plastick crates on the roofrack was soaking wet.
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Fortunately it all dried out by nightfall. The next morning we headed up Sani Pass. By now it was obvious that good rains had been falling for a while.
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Our next stop was at no. 10 Riverside, a community project campsite. The ablutions consisted of a couple of badly built longdrops, but the people were friendly and the scenery pretty.
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The plan for the next two days were to drive to Katse dam via the shortest route, which according to T4A should take 2 days, but according to the head honcho at our campsite would be an easy one-day trip. At about 10am we arrived at the place where we had intended to overnight, but we decided to press on. A short while later we came across this:
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However walking across it seemed quite safe despite the fact that there was a taxi eying it out and looking concerned, so we carried on. Several kilometers later we came across another river in flood. This time there were several vehicles on both sides and we were told that it was impossible to cross, even on foot and had been that way for six days.
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We turned around and drove up the hill to a quite place where I could interrogate the GPS. Shortly a 60 series Cruiser came by and we stopped them and told them about the river. The driver said that they were worried about fuel as his gauge had stopped working, but they wanted to go take a look anyway. We said we would await their return, and had a little picknic while we waited. They returned shortly and we decided to take the tar road around as we all had accomodation booked. The intention was that we could siphon some fuel from my car if he ran out.
Shortly thereafter we came across a couple of Canadians and an SA girl in a borrowed Fortuner. Passing bikers had warned them of the river and as they were also concerned about fuel the tagged along behind us. The day was getting hotter and I started suffering with overheating. The second time I stopped to allow my car to cool down, one of the smaller hoses in my cooling system burst. We managed to affect a repair using self-curing silicon tape and carried on, but shortly thereafter I stopped to check it again and discovered that the fan belt had chewed it's way through the now thicker hose.
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I removed one of the two fan belts, taped up the hose again and carried on. Unfortunately not long thereafter I heard a whistling sound and discovered that the pipe had sheared off just above the nipple and was now beyond repair. By now it was getting dark, but we were only about 30km from Afriski. The fortuner took the Patrol on tow and in the gathering darkness we carried on.
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By the time we arrived at Afriski it was half past eight and my battery was almost completely flat. It was also drizzling. I had to switch all my lights off and when I braked (which was virtually all the time), the wipers would stop. It was thus with great releif that we managed to acquire accomodation in the backpacker's lodge at R90.00 per person.
The next morning the mechanical manager helped me to affect a reasonable repair using a piece of 1/2" hydraulic hose stolen from a broken TLB. In a light drizzle we set of down Moteng pass, where we came across a truck which had stalled and run backwards, jack-knifing across the whole road. A Pajero with a trailer had tried passing through the rock-filled rain gutter beside the road and gotten stuck, from which predicament it was being pulled by a Triton as I arrived. When it had been extricated, the Triton got through and we followed them. On the steep pass leading to Katse I had to stop three more times to cool down, despite it not beeing a hot day.
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As we crested the pass a tremendous storm broke, complete with some light hail,
but by the time we reached the dam we had passed through the rain and the dam was bathed in glorious sunshine.
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We stayd the night at Katse Lodge and the next morning took the dam tour. Very informative and great value at R10.00 per person, made much more memorable by the fact that the dam was overflowing by 42cm and we got soaking wet in the 20 seconds it took us to sprint from our cars to the dam wall.
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Mag ons ons kenniskry met lekkerkry aanhoukry.
