Adventure in Hartbeespoort

View of the Hartbeespoort Dam from the aerial cableway

Mr. Deep and I know that sometime in 2017 we will be leaving South Africa. When this will happen and where we will go are questions that we don't have answers to. Living with this uncertainty is not easy. This is the part of the story when the lead characters realize that their script only has a few pages left but they are not ready to exit the stage. 

We simply aren't finished with South Africa. We have an endless list of places that we still want to visit, restaurants where we want to eat, neighborhoods to explore, markets to browse. We haven't even spent enough time enjoying the roof deck at our own house. Regardless of all of our efforts to maximize our time here and our constant and consistent knowledge that living here was temporary we, it turns out, wasted too much time watching TV, sleeping, surfing the Internet and doing who knows what else. 

Because I'm the kind of person who relies on lists and goals to get me off my ass, I've come up with personal challenge which I'm calling 20 Adventures. The goal of 20 Adventures is for me to have 20 South African Adventures. Likely I will have to have more than 20 because a few might end up being too boring to warrant a blog post. Mostly, I will try to explore new places and experience new things but as 20 Adventures was designed solely by me and for me, I can return to places that I have been before if I want and still count it as an adventure. Mr. Deep will be roped into joining me for some of these adventures but I alone am responsible for achieving the goal of 20. 

This past Saturday we had our first official adventure (19 to go.) We visited Hartbeespoort in the North West province located 45 minutes from our house. We have been to Hartbeespoort before when we visited the elephant and monkey sanctuaries but usually we are just passing through on our way to Pilanesberg or to Madikwe. We haven't made the time to explore the area. Located in the Magaliesberg Mountain Range, there is a man made dam in Hartbeespoort called (of course) Hartbeespoort Dam. 

The Ops team planned the whole adventure. First, we took a ride on the Harties Area Cableway for great views of the dam and the surrounding areas.

A little massage parlor at the top of the mountain

Deep relaxation in the grass

Photo by Mr. Deep. The cloud and its shadow.

Live music. There are also several restaurants and bars at the top. 

Following a period of relaxation at the top of the mountain we drove about 20 minutes to lunch at a place called Die Ou Pastorie. You might think it's strange for a restaurant to have the word die in the name but Die in Afrikaans means "the." Die Ou Pastorie translates to the old rectory which was what it was before it became a police station and before it became a guest house and restaurant. We sat in the garden and had a lovely lunch. Side note there are so many restaurants where you can eat it gardens in this area of South Africa. Maybe one of my adventures will be a post about eating in various garden settings. 

In the garden

In true South African fashion the adventure we planned turned out to not be the real adventure at all. After lunch we were ready to head home when my car wouldn't start. The battery was dead. We knew it was the battery because the day before I had taken my car in for service at the dealer and it was suggested that I purchase a new battery. As I had not any any issues with the battery, I declined. Fortunately the always prepared Mr. Deep sprung into action and the ResQ battery charger saved the day. As we headed for home we discussed when we might be able to take my car back to the dealer for a new battery. The challenge was that Mr. Deep's Jeep was in the shop and we were sharing just one car. 

As we drove we saw a gas station with a garage. Mr. Deep said "what the hell" and we drove in to see if they could possibly replace our battery. Sitting in front of the garage were four workers. Mr. Deep explained our situation and two guys immediately got to work removing our old battery and searching their inventory for a new one. Within 20 minutes we were on our way home with a new (or possibly used so lets just say working) battery. As they worked on my car, I noticed the employee work schedule posted to the wall and I'm pretty sure they two guys who helped us were named Surprise and Respect. 

Surprise and Respect working on Schmool

Sometimes we use the phrase T.I.A. which stands for This is Africa to remind ourselves not to get frustrated when things don't work correctly. But the phrase can also be used in a positive and loving way. It's not every day that you can you take in a gorgeous view, eat lunch in a fancy garden and then pull into a garage only to find people who are just waiting to help you with a smile? More adventures to come...

For some reason there were several shelves of these pumpkin chews for sale at the garage.

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.