You Win Some

As the saying goes you win some you lose some. 

Mr. Deep and I created the preparedness challenge that I explained in this post feeling so confident that we would win. Who would design a competition knowing that they would lose? 

We lost. We lost in spectacular fashion. To quote Bon Jovi, we went down in a blaze of glory. Only minus the glory.  

Our losing began from the moment we met our fellow campers at the Crocodile Bridge rest camp. As we pulled into the camp there were two 4x4 vehicles already parked there, both with huge trailers attached. Mr. Deep asked me, "do you think those could belong to the other campers?" Of course I said no because I didn't think they made trailers appropriate for off road. Well guess what? They do and it was. This gives you a peek into what might be wrong with Mr. Deep and me. It never occurred to us that someone would have a 4x4 trailer. It was then I began to realize that Mr. Deep and I were like a high school basketball team. We are a good team but we have never played outside of our division. We practiced hard and prepared well but we were outclassed. Similar to high school students we apparently think we know everything and that everything we do is right and perfect and great and maybe that's not always the case.

Our first clue

We didn't lose just by the mere fact of the trailers. In fact, the trailers could have allowed us win if they had gotten stuck or fallen off the trucks or something. The trailers were just the beginning of our losing. We lost on so many levels that I put together a chart showing all of the categories in which we were eclipsed and I have included photos to prove that I'm not exaggerating.

CATEGORY	US	THEM	WINNER	COMMENTS
Fire starting method	Newspaper, kindling and a lighter.	A giant can of propane with a special nozzle that is used to ignite a whole pile of logs at once.	Not us	who knew this even existed?
Meals	Small pre-planned meals such as steak with couscous and chicken soft tacos.	More meat then you can imagine. Enough to share with the entire group and have leftovers.	Not us	This could be chalked up to different styles and they were a group of friends all sharing food.
Method of cooking	camp stove	Separate the coals from the campfire and cook over the coals using a large metal grill like thing.	Not us
Firewood	A few bags of split wood purchased at the local grocery store.	Wood from the black wattle tree which is native to Australia. This wood gives the meat extra flavor when used for cooking	Not us	You can't make this %&!^ up!
Bar	Cans of beer and wine. Wine was consumed out of a coffee mug to reduce number of cups to pack.	A full bar complete with special camping tumblers, real wine glasses and a bar to mix drinks.	Not us
Sleeping	A tent on the ground	There were three couples. One couple did have a tent on the ground (bigger than ours) one slept in their camper and one had a tent on top of the camper.	Not us	If lions do kill people while sleeping guess who was going to be the easiest target?

Firelighter gas can with hose and nozzle and metal grill

Splitting up some of the black wottle wood

Neil's bar

Bobby also has a bar on his trailer. Sadly this is not a great picture of it. Yes, they are all wearing headlamps.

Yummy stuffed sandwiches that our fellow campers shared with us at lunch one day. These were made over the fire the night before with a special camping panini maker. Our lunches were PB&J!

Our not so enviable setup

As the trip progressed Mr. Deep and I made lots of jokes to each other such as how we were Team Angola facing the Dream Team in the first round of the 1992 Olympics.  But it still wasn't a sure thing that we had lost the challenge. If the trip were a boxing match we might have gotten a few points in a decision from some of the judges for things like "most creative use of regular household items" or "camping on a budget" or "nice touch in adding sauerkraut to your poached hot dog dinner." 

But to keep going with the boxing reference unfortunately a knockout punch was eventually delivered. Our car battery died. It didn't just die. It started dying a slow and agonizing death. At first, we blamed our camping fridge. Oh by the way, they had a camping fridge and a freezer. I saw them eating ice cream pops on day three. Not even kidding. But anyway, even though our camping fridge is supposed to have a mechanism to ensure it does not drain the car battery, when the jeep battery started to die we figured the regulator on the fridge wasn't working. To address this we starting unplugging the fridge when the car wasn't running and we shifted our planned meals around to eat our most perishable food first. When despite these efforts the battery continued to die, we bought ice at a rest camp and turned the camping fridge into a cooler.

I do want to pause and point out that Mr. Deep does get kudos for purchasing a compact jump starter prior to the trip called ResQ. This small little battery about the size of a walkman from the 80s can jump start a car 15 times on a single charge and it really does work. So that was impressive. What's not that impressive is that at this point we were jump starting our battery every time we started the car. Then one morning it became clear that although the jeep started it didn't want to keep running and that our battery was going to die for good and soon.  This was definitely a low point not only because we knew at this point we clearly lost the competition but because we might be stranded and either starve to death or be eaten by wild animals.  When this happened we were about 40 miles (60 kilometers) from any kind of civilization or help.

Luckily Piet was not going to leave us stranded for wild dogs to find. We kept the jeep running and then made a scheduled stop at a rest camp 40 miles away (it took half a day to get there.) When we reached the rest camp Piet called a garage, which thanks to aligning stars was located at this rest camp to fix ranger vehicles. The garage miraculously had a battery that was the right size for our jeep and it was installed and we were on our way. Yes, we were very, very lucky! When the battery was removed it was so hot that we were told it could have exploded at any time. 

Old

New

This is Ivan the mechanic who installed our new battery. He saved our trip and possibly our lives!

So lessons learned are:
1) you don't know what you don't know
2) there are many different styles of camping
3) always have an extra car battery with you
4) in addition preferably have two batteries one that runs your car and one that runs your fridge and other systems

The other people on the trip were so nice to us. They shared their delicious food with us. They didn't make fun of us at all (at least not to our faces.) They are now friends and have invited us to come and visit them in the Free State province where they live.

New friends. I'm not in this picture as I'm behind the camera.

The ResQ charger got one last use on the way home from Kruger
Park. After we left the park we stopped for gas and came across people in a car with a dead battery. Mr. Deep (sliver of orange shirt) gave them a quick jump.

More Tales From the Lebombo Eco Trail

If you ask Mr. Deep to share his favorite part of the trip to Kruger Park, he might say that it was jumping in the fray helping Piet to clear a tree that was likely knocked down by elephants and was blocking the road. In addition to getting to use his saw, he also got to use his tie down straps to drag the tree out of the way. You might remember from this post that he contemplated for a while whether or not to even bring the tie down straps on the trip. Good thing he decided to bring them along!

With our new friends Jan and Bella

Or, he might say that his favorite part of the trip was sneaking under the fence across the border to Mozambique with his new BFF Jan (pronounced Yon) and yelling "first time in Moz!"

Or he might say it was staying up late with his new friends drinking "police coffee" which seems to be like Irish coffee only the spirits are from Africa and not Ireland. I have no idea why it's called police coffee.

If you ask me what my favorite part of the trip was I would say it was when Mr. Deep stayed up late drinking police coffee. No, just kidding. It was definitely seeing the animals, the scenery and meeting some fun new friends. 

First time in Moz! Sorry about the bad picture quality. I tried to get a photo from a video. The poor quality does make him look more criminal like though.

Here are some of our most interesting pictures. 

This is a tree stump that has been rubbed smooth by rhinos scratching themselves on it. Piet said it has probably taken almost 30 years to get this smooth.

Part of the remains of a rhino killed for his horn. You can see on the left the spot where the horn was sawed off by the poachers.

Our route

Waterbuck

Piet with his shotgun

Bella sticking her head into a hippo skull. Kind of reminds me of when Mr. Deep climbed into a tortoise shell in the Galapagos...

Whether he is illegally crossing borders or wearing discarded animal parts he certainly tries to make the most of his vacations.

Southern yellow-billed hornbill. I looked it up.

Potentially spotting a poacher. There was definitely a guy up on the mountain but not sure what he was doing there.

Coming in my next post the long awaited results of the Lebombo Eco Trail preparedness challenge.

Kruger Park Lebombo Eco Trail Highlights

We have returned home from our five day/four night 4x4 camping trip in Kruger National Park. The drive through the park totaled 295 miles (475 kilometers) on rough roads suitable only for four wheel drive vehicles. We drove every day and camped every night. In order to show you the route that we traveled, Mr. Deep set up an elaborate system using his running watch to track our driving movement. To ensure the watch worked properly, it had to be stopped each time we stopped the car for any significant length of time and then restarted when we began driving again. 

We knew we'd be challenged to remember to stop and start the watch so we created little reminder signs which we hung in strategic spots in the jeep. 

And it worked!  Below is the map and our route is shown with the red line. Rest camp refers to places where we stopped for showers, gas and supplies along the way. The yellow line near our route is the border between South Africa and Mozambique.

On Wednesday, we left our house at 3:00 a.m. to drive to the park. We arrived a little after 8:30 a.m. and met our guide, Ranger Piet and our fellow campers at the Crocodile Bridge rest camp. Piet briefly went over how the trip was going to work. We would drive caravan style with Piet in his truck leading the way. If we saw an animal or something we wanted to look at, we could stop and take pictures and then Piet would wait up ahead for us. If we were taking too long and getting behind on our timeline, Piet would let us know to hurry it up. Also, Piet said that every night at camp we would have one fire so that we could all sit around it and get to know each other. He didn't want separate groups of people each sitting around their own fire.

The first day was the best animal viewing you can imagine. We saw four of the big five. The Africa big five are lion, buffalo, leopard, elephant and rhino and we saw all except for the elusive leopard. We are definitely spoiled from our trip to Madikwe when we had such a great leopard viewing. I doubt that will ever happen again. 

We drove into a huge valley at one point that Mr. Deep described as Jurassic Park.  There were animals EVERYWHERE. What also surprised me is that we were able to get out of the trucks and walk around quite a bit. At one point Mr. Deep asked the guide to identify a bird he was looking at. To give you an idea of the number of animals we were seeing at one time, the conversation went something like this.

Mr. Deep (looking through binoculars): OK you see the elephant over there? 
Piet: Yes
Mr. Deep: Above the elephant see the zebra and the giraffe? 
Piet: Yes
Mr. Deep: The bird is walking up the hill past the giraffe.
Piet: Near the zebra?
Mr. Deep: No, to the left of the giraffe.
Piet: Oh yes, that is a secretary bird.

Finding a secretary bird (lower pic)
 in our wildlife book

Piet's vehicle and trailer

The way it's pronounced by people here rhymes with Debra.

Thankfully no snakes were seen on the trip!

Hippos and a croc having a beach day

Cheetahs hanging out

We arrived at our first camp around 5:00 p.m. and rushed to set up our tent before it got dark. We then headed over to the fire to enjoy a sundowner (happy hour beverage) with our fellow campers. By now it was completely dark. We then heard a noise that I am not sure whether or not I should describe as a highlight or a lowlight of the trip because it was a little bit of both. Thrilling yet terrifying. We heard a lion roar.

We all heard it and we were all shocked. I knew it was a lion before Piet even told us because it sounded just like the lion roar you hear when you are watching an MGM movie. It sounded just like this only maybe not quite as loud because it was (hopefully) a little bit far away. Piet said the lions were 50 meters away and we probably drove right past them on our way into the camp. Did I mention that there are no fences around the campsites? 

It was at that point that Mr. Deep said to me privately that going on this trip might be the stupidest thing we've ever done in our lives. That's saying a lot because we've done some very stupid things. I asked him if it was even dumber than the time we went in the hot tub during a hurricane and he said yes.

Even Piet was a little surprised by the lion roar. He said in all his years he's never heard a lion that close to camp before and he's been leading these trips since the late 90's. He assured us that a lion would not tear into a tent to eat people. But then what was he going to tell us? If lions do claw their way into people's tents to eat them would there be any point in letting us know? He did say though that no one was allowed to leave anyone else alone throughout the night. Even if you had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, someone had to go with you. I'm not really sure why seeing two people (one of whom was peeing) would be more intimidating to a lion then seeing just one person, but I didn't ask because I didn't really want to know the answer.  I think he only suggested this buddy system in case someone went missing a witness could tell the others what happened. "No use waiting on Bob this morning, he was eaten by a lion last night."

We heard a few more roars as the night went on, as well as the sounds of hippos and hyenas close by. I was so tired that I really didn't care and went right to sleep the moment we got into our tent. Mr. Deep slept with a few weapons including his knife and a Russian special forces shovel by his side.

At about 2:30 a.m. we heard a huge crash that woke us both. It sounded like a stack of dishes being knocked to the ground. We then heard a lot of laughing. It turns out one of our fellow campers tried to climb into his tent which was on the roof of his trailer, but after more than a few drinks, he forgot to put the legs down properly when setting it up, so the whole thing tipped over.  Mr. Deep and I were cracking up at this and for the rest of the trip there were lots of reminders to this gentleman to remember to put the legs down before climbing into bed.

I will soon be sharing additional posts about the trip, both highlights and not so highlights. I will also soon share the much anticipated results of our self imposed "preparedness challenge!"

Sunset at the first night camp. There are lions out there!