Today began at 0445 and at 0530 off we went for a Game Drive. It rained almost the whole time, but we still had a great time. I didn’t take many photos because it was raining, but we saw hippos, a jackal, a water monitor, a Wahlberg’s eagle, several dung beetles, a huge army of matabele ants, giraffe, zebra, impala and wildebeest. We had our drinks break in a hide which was quite cool.
We got back to camp just before brunch, today we had fried chicken, dauphinois potatoes, salad and fruit. After brunch we finished one of our tasks for our 4 x 4 course – we had to measure all sorts of different lengths on the car and even use trigonometry and Pythagoras to work out some angles! That really made our brains go into overdrive!
I spent the afternoon doing some revision and trying to wrap my head around some of this car stuff (not getting very far)! At 1600 we went out for another Game Drive, we saw a terrapin, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, two cheetah (they could hardly walk they were so full) and a hippo out of water.
We drove back to camp (slower than normal because the headlamps didn’t work) and had a dinner of beef stroganoff, rice, salad and left over dauphinois potatoes, after which it was time for showers and bed, ready for another early start tomorrow.
Today began at 0445, we were supposed to leave at 0530 for our 4 x 4 course but the trainer (Mark) wasn’t there. We drove to Mahlahla to find out where he was, he and the other trainer (Jan) had overslept and were just about ready! Off we went to Makalali. First of all we did reverse stall starts, if you stall going up a hill instead of doing a hill start you let the car go back down the hill in a controlled way and then just try again from a flat surface start. Once we’d had a couple of goes at that we went and drove up and down a much longer section of the road, learning how and when to turn the differential on and off. After that we did a river crossing, it’s the same one that I have driven across a couple of times except that this time there is water in it. It was fun to drive across. Another group came to join us for this bit (because there probably won’t be any water left when it’s their turn tomorrow) so while we waited for them some of us went paddling in the river which was great fun.
We got back to camp just in time for brunch – chicken nuggets, pasta salad, salad and muffins – super yummy. I spent a while standing under the shelter of the dining area chatting, waiting for the rain to stop and then went up to the classroom to study for a bit. The internet was so slow, ridiculously slow!
At 1600 it was time for part two of our 4 x 4 course. We drove to a different section of the river (seeing several giraffe, impala and wildebeest on the way) and then Mark was going to drive the car across the river and out the other side, the plan was for us to then drive back into the river and purposely get it stuck so that we could practice getting it out again, using another car to recover us. The plan didn’t quite work, the crossing went fine until getting out on the other side, the bank was unexpectedly steep and we did actually get stuck on the first crossing. The water was pretty deep, up to the headlights, so almost a metre at deepest. To start with the plan was to try getting the car out using the static rope, but early on Mark said that wouldn’t work and that we should change to the kinetic rope. We did that and got the car out fairly easily. Then we got it stuck twice more (intentionally) so that everyone could have a go at driving one of the cars.
We had a great fun, paddling about in the river, leaning under the cars to attach the ropes and obviously freeing the cars. It was a great learning experience and I had such fun as well (hopefully the videos turn out well) – so much better to learn practically rather than from pictures from a book! Now I just need to finish understanding how a car actually works and the differences between a 4 x 4, a 4WD and whatever else there might be.
We drove back to camp and had a super dinner of sausage, mash, carrots and salad and then showers and bed.