In the end the land cruiser wasn’t brought to it’s knees by a deep river crossing, or the infamous black cotton soil, nor a charging elephant. It was much more mundane, and at the end of the day we were at a low point. But the beginning of the day was incredible, we had a fantastic morning leaving Nxai Pan.
We had a long drive to get to Kasane, the border town on the Botswana side of the Bots/Zambia border, so we rose early to be able to watch the sunrise at Baine’s Baobabs on the way out of the park. The plan was to use Kasane as a bit of a regroup stop, to do laundry and wash off a bit of the dirt from the bush and not try to tackle too much. I ended up being very full instead with vehicle issues (some self inflicted) and the chores we had already planned.
We drove the 20 minute drive to Baines from our campsite and stopped to make tea and coffee at dawn. When we arrived we found fresh elephant tracks and dung, but no elephant. The mental image of elephant wandering through those great trees was wonderful, and though we didn’t see it happen it was still nice to think about. The salt pan shows the tracks very clearly, and with only a few tracks from before and the new tracks of last night it makes me think it doesn’t happen that often that these animals make the trek this way, so we felt lucky. We departed the scene after sunrise feeling great and on a real high note.
It’s about 500 km to Kasane from Baines, and we’ve found that to be about our limit for distance. Those that know me from home will know that I’m happy to complain about my 30 minute commute, but somehow this is different. 500 km is not too far by American standards, but the roads are not as fast as a US interstate, and we find the driving to require more engagement from the driver, so 500 km is more than enough. Too much really. That said, it is never boring and even though we’re spending hours in the vehicle most days we are finding each kilometer we roll past fascinating and somehow spending 6 hours on the road doesn’t seem too arduous.
Now, the cruiser. This is a bit of a long story, with no wild animals or danger, but I think it is a great illustration of how things get done in Africa, or at least Botswana in this case, and by virtue of minor car trouble we met some really great people. I apologize if this digresses into some boring details, don’t hesitate to skip ahead.
I didn’t mention it before, but we suffered a bit of a crushing defeat earlier. In the CKGR our driver side power window started acting up again, so apparently our genius fix (loose connection) was an unrelated problem. We have taken the door apart again, cleaned all the contacts and still it only intermittently goes up and down. Sometimes fine, sometimes not. This is immensely frustrating. If you are driving you can’t roll the window down for a photo, a toll, a police checkpoint. It’s a problem.
Also the air ventilation system is stuck on defrost. Which sucks, because when you can’t roll your window down and it’s hot here, while the a/c system just cools off the window, and not your face. We messed around with it and the cable that moves the heater core mechanism popped out of the linkage and is no longer attached to anything. We reattached it, but the mechanism appears to be stuck, so it popped out again. We couldn’t reach the linkage to exercise it, so that is also on the list for the shop.
We read online about a great mechanic, Mario (of Mario’s Garage) in Kasane, so it was an early start to get to him as early as possible so he can have time to take a look. We drove along the A3, and the portion before Nata was recently flooded by heavy rain, but is now fine. We could see flooded plains on the north side of the road as we drove along, but the water had at least receded below the road. Also, lots of potholes on this stretch. Just enough good tarmac to get your confidence up, and then speed along, and then *boom* – big stretch of potholes, so progress was slow at first.
We stopped in Nata for some fuel, lunch and a few provisions. The road condition improved a lot on the way north, so much so that Jenny immediately picked up our first speeding ticket! She was speeding, and the officer, with a radar gun set up, told us the fine was 400 pula (~$40 USD). We agreed to pay and I asked him for a receipt or copy of the ticket. He said yes, and waved me towards his table set up in the shade of a tree by the side of the road. When I got to the table he shrugged and said we didn’t have to pay, as he only had the book with the offense, but that the man who writes the receipt of payment wasn’t there, so he said we can go and “Please tell her to slow down.” Ha! I wonder if maybe this wasn’t the whole story, why would he not have both receipt and offense books? Perhaps this was true, but maybe he inflated the price a bit and didn’t want to write a receipt for the wrong price? Regardless, we were on our way.
From Nata and we made pretty good time. Both sides of this road are various kinds of conservation/game management/safari/hunting concession areas and so there is game along the road, even at 120 kph. We saw elephant, giraffe and various antelope as we sped north.
About 10 km out of town there was a few hundred meters of freshly graveled road that was unsealed. We drove slowly and the noise was horrendous as we threw up tar covered gravel everywhere, and when a truck passed us we got a loud WHACK and a chip in the window. Another item for the growing Kasane list, which was starting to get a little long and we were feeling our anticipated slow days in camp slipping away.
We arrived at Mario’s around 2:30. It’s a proper mechanic’s shop, with clapped out cars around the perimeter and some used cars for sale too, all behind a fence and gate. The shop itself was busy, with mechanics working on a few cars parked in front of the shop, parts and pieces everywhere. Walking into the garage, a sort of two car wide building with heaps of spares, tools and stuff all over the pace, was Mario and his wonderful wife in an attached office. They were incredibly friendly and helped us right away.
The mark of a honest mechanic, he didn’t work on our car, but instead sent us to the people he thought could help us best. First off he thought that the switch for the power window was bad. He referred us, and I could tell it pained him, to the official Toyota shop down the street, thinking they might have a switch in stock. He also thought that Toyota would have the best shot at fixing the air vent system, but he emphasized that if they couldn’t do it that we should come back and he’d sort it out one way or another. We chatted for a while and were then on our way.
The Toyota shop was pretty new, apparently there to support the large fleet of Toyotas brought in for the Kazungula bridge project. They agreed to take a look at the vehicle right away. They also thought the switch was bad, but ordering one would take up to three weeks. They did get right into the air vent selector problem, but only managed to move it to a different position, better for air con, but they pronounced we needed a whole new heater core, as this one was jammed.
I was surprised they didn’t have the switch in stock. There are 70 series land cruisers all over the place here, like Prius are in California, surely they would have most parts in stock? I took a look through the windows of a few, and almost all had been spec’d with manual windows. We were envious.
Better the air ventilation to be jammed in this position than in defrost mode, so we were happy enough. They also wouldn’t charge us, and with the prompt service we were impressed. Back to Mario, explaining that they didn’t have the switch. Mario sprung into action, again saying that he wasn’t the guy, but that Nathan, his electrical wizard from Zimbabwe, was the man. Also not far away, he phoned up Nathan and explained our problem. He would take a look.
Nathan was also quite close, another shabby looking industrial shop with broken down boats and trucks around the front of the lot. Nathan came out, wearing coveralls and sandals, ready to take a look.
He agreed, a bad switch. He said he could take the switch out of one of the rear doors, so at least the front two would work. We hemmed and hawed, we were hoping for four functioning windows. A friend was going to join us for the next leg, and we’d like for there to be ventilation and to be able to roll the window down for photos as well.
Mario had mentioned putting a simple after market toggle switch in, while kind of kludgy, this would give us all 4 windows. We asked Nathan and he said no problem, he hadn’t suggested it because he didn’t want to drill a hole in our door panel. We assured him it was okay and he said “I will get one.” Without another word he got in his car and drove off. We gathered “I’ll get one” means he’ll go buy one.
He returned a while later, switch in hand. He took the door apart and without hesitation and without a multimeter, he started to pin out the connector on the window switch using a hot wire to send power to each pin to see what it activated. It has something like 16 wires in it, and just a couple minutes he had figured out which wires control the driver side window, very impressive.
In another 20 minutes our new toggle switch was installed and the window was functional. Nathan’s quiet competence was really great to watch and I’d highly recommend him to others with electrical issues. With the cruiser getting slightly funkier by the day, we were off.
We were exhausted, but amazed that so much had been accomplished in just a few hours. It was time to pick up some food and head to camp. We went to the Spar supermarket in Kasane (which incidentally is where Nathan had given us the tip that Newton the window chip fixer hangs out in the parking lot, looking for customers) to provision. While looking for a place the park around the back we ended up having to drive the exit lane through the parking garage. And that was a mistake.
You see, there was a sign stating the minimum clearance, but we didn’t know our vehicle height. So one of us got out to watch and the other crept the vehicle forward and we cleared the beam by a few inches, and an onlooker gave us a thumbs up and a smile that we were good. Feeling okay we made our way along and about half way through the garage there was a heart stopping CRUNCH and the vehicle came to a stop.
We are idiots, and should not have done that. We should have walked the whole thing, or driven out against the one way, or something else. I got out and found that we had collided, hard, with a cement beam, lower than all the rest, in the garage, and it had seriously taken out our jerry cans mounted on the roof rack, and bent our roof rack. Thankfully the jerry cans were empty, and amazingly the roof top tent and cooking gas bottle (!) were unscathed. Looking at the beam it’s clear we are not the first victims, but with our hearts in our stomachs and feeling completely stupid for making such a simple mistake, we extracted ourselves.
Assessing the damage we decided we needed food and beer and some time to compose ourselves, so we went to the suspiciously named, but quite good, “Curry and Pizza and Coffee” restaurant across the street to drown our sorrows. FUCK!
The next morning in Senyanti camp we took everything off the rack and took the rack off the vehicle to truly asses the damage. The jerry cans were a loss, the jerry can holder..maybe with some reshaping. The rack disassembled, proved that two pieces were bent, the rest was okay, so better than we originally imagined. I managed to mostly straighten one pice with a mix of jumping on it and levering it against the bull bar. The second piece was harder, and while working on it and slowly getting there it cracked. It’s aluminum, which doesn’t like to be bent, so this is not surprising.
We finally conceded that we needed help, so we went back to Mario, again. On the phone he again said he wasn’t the man for the job, we needed Dannie, the only aluminum welder in town. We made our way to Dannie’s shop and he took a look and said no problem, he could have it straightened, reinforced and welded this afternoon. He asked if we’d had time to enjoy Chobe, the nearby National Park and we said we hadn’t, because we’d been sorting out all our vehicle issues. He encouraged us to take an afternoon game drive while he repaired the rack and come back to his shop late, after he closes, so that we could properly enjoy the park, continuing everyone’s streak of being incredibly hospitable to us.
Kasane is a town that coexists with wildlife all the time. We saw elephants down the street from Mario’s shop, impala on the drive to the grocery store, Dannie’s dog had wounds from a warthog scuffle from the day before and on the same day a man had been killed in town by an elephant.
Mario has acacia trees inside the fence of his compound, which are nice for shade and look good, but also the elephants love them. Thus he jokes that his gate spends more time on the ground than in place, as the elephants just knock down the gate to get to the trees. He said most shops just cut the trees down, but he likes the elephants and said “They were here first.” And so puts his gate back up every time.
Dannie’s house is on stilts near the bank of the river, and there have been huge rains this year and so it has flooded. He told us of one trip out to his house to recover some things where he had a near miss with a 10’ crocodile. Not quite like home.
On our way to Chobe we stopped by the Spar and looked for the windscreen repair man. He was nowhere to be found, but the security guard wandered around the parking lot and found his tool kit lying by a tree and his phone number was on that. We called it, and he said “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” Sure enough, 20 minutes later he showed up, seeming upbeat and happy and started in on the window. He said he is in a good mood because he was a new father today, and this job would give him some extra money (300 pula, probably a bit steep, but we were happy to avoid a whole new windscreen) for his new baby.
After Chobe we returned to Dannie’s shop after dark and his worked exceeded our expectations. Straightened, welded and painted even you can hardly tell the rack had been previously tortured by our stupidity. He even had some used jerry cans we bought off of him. Feeling a little better we were ready to head into Zambia the next day.
Photographic evidence of this day has been censored.
Logistical Notes:
-Mario’s Garage is NOT where google maps says it is. Driving in to Kasane from Nata follow the signs to the Zimbabwe border crossing, but then turn right before the border post and it’s a few hundred meters up on the right, Mario has signs posted on the way into town, follow those. It is, roughly, here: S17° 48.398′ E25° 14.716’ and he has a website.
-Dannie’s shop is here: S17° 48.039′ E25° 14.373’, turn left at the main intersection towards Kasane when arriving from the Nata side. 400m on the right hand side is a sign for the “Big 5 Safari Lodge”, turn there and his shop is right off the main road, with an aluminum gate and some old boats in the front.
-The A3 between Nxai Pan and Nata has some pretty bad sections of potholes, so proceed with caution and you probably won’t be able to make full speed unless you know the road well. From Nata to Kasane is in pretty good shape.
-Nathan was here: S17° 48.383′ E25° 14.660’, but I’m not sure if it’s his shop or someone else’s? Ask around town for Nathan for electrical work on your car, he was great. Fast and seemed to know his business without messing around.
-Windscreen repair. Look for Newton (?) in the Spar parking lot. He wasn’t there when we arrived but the security people knew him and call him and he showed up in 20 min. 300 pula to fix our windscreen chip, he did a great job and took pride in his work.
-Senyanti Safari Camp – nice place with private ablutions and hot water for each campsite, quite a luxury. In close proximity to wildlife, elephants, baboons, zebra, impala all were around, mostly on the undeveloped side of the camp where there is a floodlit watering hole. Beers are 25-30 pula, bar closes at 9pm. Everyone at the bar seemed really serious and we got some dirty looks while we quietly, but apparently not quietly enough, enjoyed a beer at the bar. Internet was available at the bar for a few hours in the evening only, but during our visit it was so slow it was unusable anyway.
