Tag Archives: land rover

Botswana Safari with Larry

This blog is about happenings, disasters, surprises and chaos since I caught marriage and kids. But every now and then I re-post a story from my blissful, trouble-free, beer-fueled, wealthy bachelor days blog. Here’s one:

Hey, let’s go on a safari!

Great friend Larry Wingert is out from the USA and we hop on a flight to Maun in Botswana. It’s 1985 and we’re bachelors on the loose with time and money!

– 1985 Maun – pics by Lee Ouzman, who arrived about then – and stayed to fly aeroplanes and explore –

Okavango Delta

From Maun we fly into the Delta (Tjou Island camp) in a Cessna 206. After many beers and wines a resident auntie starts looking enticing at around midnight but the moment passes.

– internet pics of where I think Tjou Island was – names change – I’m hoping to get pics from Larry –

The next morning a pair of Tropical Boubou, Laniarius major, fly into the open-air pub under a tree right above where we’re sitting and belt out a head-turning, startling loud duet. Stunning! That’s a lifer!

duet in a pub
duo in a similar pub

After a short mokoro ride it’s back to the plane and a quick, low-altitude flip back to Maun where we all squeeze into an old Land Rover, fill up at Riley’s Garage . .

– 1985 Rileys Garage by Lee Ouzman –

. . and head off for Moremi, stopping just outside Maun to buy some meat hanging from a thorn tree. Goat? Supper. Our outfit is called Afro Ventures.

At First Sight

We’re a Motley Crew from all over. We get to know two lovely Aussie ladies, a lovely Kiwi lady, a Pom fella – 6 foot 7 inches of Ralph; and the gorgeous Zimbabwean Angel Breasts (Engelbrecht her actual surname)! Unfortunately, she’s The Long Pom’s girlfriend (*sigh*). Weird how the only first name I can think of now is Ralph, the undeserving Pom.

Our long-haired laid-back hippy Saffer – no, he was probably a Zim, see his letter – safari guide Steve at the wheel is super-cool, a great guide. So off we go, heading north-east, eight people in a Series 2 Landie – “The Tightest-Squeeze-Four-By-Four-By-Far.” Sort-of Four Thelmas and Four Louis’

Long Legs in a Landie to the rescue!

Anyone who has driven in a Landie will know there’s lots of room inside – except for your shoulders and your knees. Besides that – roomy. Land Rover’s theory is that three people can fit on the front seat, three on the middle seat and two on those postage stamp seats in back. Right! See that metal pipe that your knees keep bumping against? That’s what Land Rover used as their prototype airbag. It didn’t work so they only kept it for the next fifty years, then changed it. By using milder steel for the pipe?

– promotional pic extolling landrover luxury –

Previously a critic of Landrover design, in a flash I’m a keen supporter! Unable to endure the cramped space on the middle seat, The Lengthy Pom gets out at the very first stop and sits on the spare wheel on the roofrack. I sit with my thigh firmly against Angel Breasts’ thigh (*sigh*).

More clever Landrover design features:

True Love

The Long Pom stays up there for the rest of the week – whenever we’re driving, he sits on the roofrack! When we stop he has to pick the insects out of his teeth, like a radiator. I’m in seventh heaven. Mine and Angel Breasts’ thighs were made for each other.

– she was like this . . . the landrover wasn’t –

Birding: Problem Solved!

I’m mad keen on birding but I don’t know how these guys feel about it. What if they get pissed off? What if they only want to stop for large furry creatures? After all, five of the seven of us are fureigners. But the problem gets solved like this: The first time we get stuck in the deep sand, a little white-browed scrub robin comes to the rescue! He hops out onto the road in full view, cocks his tail and charms them. From then on I have six spotters who don’t let anything feathered flit past without demanding, “What’s that, Pete? What’s that? And that one?” I become the birding guide! Steve is happy – it’s not his forte, but he’s keen to learn.

– thanks fella! – see wilkinsonsworld.com –

Moremi – and Truer Love

At Khwai River camp a splendid, enchanted evening vision befalls me – my best nocturnal wild life sighting of the whole trip: I’m walking in the early evening to supper and bump into Angel Breasts outside her bungalow – she’s in her bra n panties in the moonlight. Bachelor dreams. Oops, she says and runs inside. Don’t worry, I’ve averted my eyes, I lie (*sigh*). That’s another lifer!

Amazing Chobe

At Savuti camp the eles have wrecked the water tank.

– internet pic – thanks –

At Nogatsaa camp a truck stops outside the ranger’s hut, a dead buffalo on the back. The camp ranger’s wife comes to the truck and is given a hindquarter. Meat rations. The rangers also drop the skin there, and advise us to carry a torch if we shower at night, as lions are sure to come when they smell the skin.

– internet pic of nogatsaa waterhole –

Another Lifer! Later I head for the tiny little shower building – a single shower – to shower while it’s still lionless daylight, discretion being the better part of valour! A sudden cacophony makes me look out of the broken shower window: The lady-in-residence is chasing an ele away from her hut by banging her pots & pans together! We travel thousands of k’s to see elephant and she says Footsack Wena! Tsamaya! The ele duly footsacks away from that awful noise. While looking out, I spot what I think could be a honeyguide in a tree, so I have to rush back to our puptent wrapped in a towel with one eye on the ele to fetch my binocs. It is a Greater Honeyguide, the one with the lovely Latin name Indicator indicator, and that’s another lifer for me! Moral of the story: Always carry your binocs no matter where you go! I have done ever since.

– Greater Honeyguide, Indicator indicator- also from xeno-canto.org –

That night the elephants graze and browse quietly right next to our puptent, tummies rumbling, other noises emanating from front and rear. Peeping out of the tent door I look at their tree stump legs, can’t even see up high enough to see their heads. Gentle giants tonight.

As we head on north and east through the sand, we approached the Chobe river; and the landscape looked like Hiroshima in WW2! Elephant damage of the trees was quite unbelievable. That did NOT look like good reserve management! Botswana doesn’t believe in culling, but it sure looks like they should!

The Chobe river, however,  was unbelievable despite the devastation on its banks – especially after the dry country we’d been in. What a river! What wildlife sightings!

Zimbabwe and The End

On to Zimbabwe, the mighty Zambesi river and Victoria Falls. We stayed at AZambezi Lodge. Here we bid a sad goodbye to our perfect safari companions. Me still deeply in love. Angel Breasts holding The Long Pom’s hand, totally unaware of my devotion (*sigh*).

At the end, our new friend and safari guide Steve gave me and Larry a letter. We read it on the flight out of Vic Falls.

– lovely note –

~~oo0oo~~

Hopeful note: Larry had a camera on the trip, I didn’t, so I have asked him (hello Larry) to scratch around for his colour slides in his attic or his secret wall storage space in Akron Ohio. He will one day. As a dedicated procrastinator he is bent on never putting off till tomorrow what he can put off till the next day. Or Wednesday week. Meantime, thanks to Rob & Jane Wilkinson of wilkinsonsworld.com, xeno-canto.org and others on the interwebs for these borrowed pics and sounds!

Edit: There’s more hope! Larry wrote 16 December 2017: P.S. I will renew my efforts to locate some photos of our Botswana trip. If you saw the interior of my house, you’d understand the challenge. . . . OK, but if you saw the exterior of his house you’d fall in love with it:

– 40 North Portage Path, Akron Ohio –

Terrible note: Update November 2019: Larry has since had a bad fire in the basement of his lovely home. Much of his stuff is ruined by the fire, the smoke and then the firemen’s water! He may not repair his home! This is so sad! Dammit! Pictures suddenly aren’t important any more.

Sweeter note: Larry sold the house and it was indeed repaired and beautifully restored, just as the people he sold it to promised it would be.

~~oo0oo~~

Saffer – Suffefrickin; a South African

Aussie – ‘Strine; AusTRYlian

Zim – a Zimbaabwean; often been to ‘private schools’ so their accent can sometimes impress the Breetish queen herself

Pom – a Pom; you know what they’re like; seldom sound anything like the Breetish queen

Kiwi – a Kiwi; lovely lass once you worked out what she was sayin’

lifer – first time you’ve seen that bird ever – or anyway in lingerie

Footsack Wena! Tsamaya! – Go away! Be off with you! Eff Oh!

pamberi ‘n chimurenga – forward the liberation struggle! in Shona

~~oo0oo~~

Sheila at Fugitives Drift – Sit Still!

Sheila worked at Fugitives Drift Lodge with David and Nicky Rattray for a while and met many interesting people and characters from all over the world. She should write about the weird folk she met – the judges and military men and colonial types and rich folk and historians and chief constables and all the other titles the Breetish Empire invented.

While there, she organised for the five of us – her old Swanie ‘nuclear family unit’ from Harrismith in the sixties – to have a family weekend there with her – the youngest child – as our guide. One afternoon she took us out to the Isandlwana battlefield in a Landrover and got lost on an off-road excursion. Her sense of direction was imperfect, but she was unfazed and soldiered on like a lost Pom fleeing a battlefield. She had the Buffalo River on her left (or was it right?) and was headed in a direction she thought might get us somewhere sometime. Like Douglas Adams wandering around at the end of the Universe, she was in Don’t Panic mode.

– start of the fugitives trail at isandlwana –

So we’re bouncing over the veld, Sheila driving the ponderous old Defender, and our 85yr-old ‘ole man’ uncharacteristically sitting in the back, getting fidgety.

After a while the bouncing got to his ancient bones and he groaned and – forsaking the old stiff upper lip – moaned about the bumpiness – sort of a geriatric ‘Are we there yet?’

Sheila whipped round and said, “Keep quiet and sit still. Don’t make me come back there and sort you out!” then grinned triumphantly and crowed, “I’ve waited fifty years to say that!” Now that was hilarious!

– isandlwana –

~~oo0oo~~

We drove over to the waterfall where ‘Lord’ Chelmsford made a monumental cockup for which he suffered no consequences, as connected people don’t.

– the family at Mangeni Falls –
– where Robbie and I did a re-enactment . . –
– . . from many years before –

~~oo0oo~~

While sitting on the hillside opposite the Isandlwana kop listening to the tale of the famous battle in which the homeland-defending Zulu warriors knocked the shit out of the wicked invading Poms, a fascinating tableau played out below us.

A minibus and two sedans pulled up. People piled out and one in sangoma dress – one who can channel the ancestral spirits – was holding a small branch of the buffalo thorn tree umLahlankosi, “that which buries the chief. ”

They had come to fetch the spirit of an ancestor who had died at the great battle of Isandlwana in 1879, and take him home.

Makgadikgadi Pans, Khumaga Gate

The Tamalakhane River runs south-west out of Maun and when it turns east it’s called the Boteti. After a while it runs southward forming the western boundary of the huge Makgadikgadi-Nxai Pans National Park.

At Kumagha village there’s a gate into the park. When the river has water in it a ferryman carries you across, one vehicle at a time.

20180321_Khumaga Gate Tiaan's Camp (23)
– our ferryman is Tiaan, Kalahari character –

We were guests at Tiaan’s Camp as Tiaan is looking for someone to help him start a new admin system and Janet’s just the person to do that. I got lucky as they decided she needed to visit him to check out the camp and discuss how Janet’s consultancy could run the project for him. Tiaan is a character. He was once a diplomat although you would never guess that in a game of Twenty Questions. Nor in game of One Hundred and Twenty Questions.

Map Makgadigadi Park.JPG

Tiaan has run mobile safaris in Zambia, Botswana and Zululand among many other places. He has been involved in lodges on the Delta panhandle and has now settled in Khumaga village in a camp he built himself with comfy chalets, lovely campsites, a crystal-clear swimming pool and a huge central building housing an open dining area, an open raised deck overlooking the Boteti where 22 elephants came to bathe the afternoon we arrived.

AND he operates a cool bar run on the honour system. You know, gooi and skryf.

Makgadigadi Pans view from Tiaans.jpg
– gin n tonic n eles –

He has a delightful accent, a mischievous laugh, speaks three languages well, and has an amazing store of tales from brain surgery to government service to building in Botswana and Jakobsbaai on the Cape West Coast; to safaris, interesting guests, religion, Land Rovers (he’s afflicted with six of them), philosophy and fascinating animal stories. Maybe he does have a diplomatic side, but he keeps it well-camouflaged.

He took us on a game drive in one of his Land Rovers – and we didn’t even break down – so he could show us his knowledge of and love for his patch, the very southern end of the great Okavango Delta, just before the waters from Angola sink into the Kalahari sand for the very last time at Lake Xau.

Makgadigadi Pans Kumagha Gate
20180321_Khumaga Gate Tiaan's Camp (30).jpg

The next day Janet and I took her old Toyota – now well over 400 000km on the clock – into the park along the green Boteti river valley. The water was dropping so the ferryman had me move the Toyota forward a couple metres, then back a couple metres on the ferry to rock it across the shallows. We found plenty of interesting little things to photograph, and only got stuck in the deep sand once.

2018-03-28.jpg

In between all this there were the gin n tonics, whiskies, beers and Tiaan’s home-made absinthe, generously dispensed – the absinthe gratis on the wonderful Tiaan system of “Have another and listen to this . . . !”

Interesting birds included Double-banded Sandgrouse, Acacia Pied Barbet, Hoopoe, Crimson-breasted Boubou, a young Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl, Pin-tailed and Shaft-tailed Whydahs, Red-faced Mousebird, Bateleur, Pale Chanting Goshawk, Blue-cheeked, European and Little Bee-eaters, Meyers Parrot, Goliath Heron and a Grey-backed Camaroptera who clacked at me fourteen times!* Here in KwaZulu Natal they usually clack five to seven times. Here are some Lee Ouzman pics from his website:

Makgadigadi Pans Kumagha Gate-001 (2)
– Lee Ouzman pics –

Before this leg of the trip we had been to Mogotlhong.

~~~oo0oo~~~

gooi and skryf – honour system in a bar: pour your dop and write it down, you’ll be billed later

dop – grog

*record broken now. A camaroptera clicked at me 29 times in Mtwalume, KZN!

Redfoot, the 1979 Land Rover

Aitch knew an old doctor with a fading practice in PMB who “did up” Land Rovers on the side. That got me thinking . . .

To my amazement my partners Lello, Yoell & Stoute were NOT HUGELY ENTHUSIASTIC as I twisted their arms to go in as equal shareholders! Even when I told them that, besides the good doctor, it had only one previous owner.

But eventually they saw the light and agreed, good partners that they are, and we became the proud consortium owners of a handpainted, 1979, hole-in-the-floor, manual, 4X4, long wheelbase, get-out-and-manually-lock-the-diff, Series III station wagon, 5-door, Land Rover. White. Like whitewash white, which turned out to be appropriate.*

It was fitted with a new-eish Ford Essex V6 three litre engine on new birdshit-welded mountings and painted white with an old brush. The wheel rims were painted red with the same brush, from which its name Redfoot. Did I mention handpainted with an old brush? A matt white, so no glare. You could drive it without sunglasses as long as you weren’t driving east in the morning or west in the arvie.

Well, we ended up putting two more engines into ole Redfoot, and it went up Sani once.

It also went to Ladysmith once on the tar N3 carriageway; Used by Prem as 8-seater passenger transport wagon; Yoell used it once and never again; Soutar used it once or twice and pronounced it ‘very good’ – he owned an even older white Landie; We took the dogs to the beach in it. Some of these people were complainers who insisted on mentioning the big hole in the floor, seeing the road rushing beneath, and the loud roar. Fussy lot. I don’t think Lello and Stoute got any benefit, but they did share in the loss.

Once I grew weary of replacing engines, and worked out my consumption in miles-per-engine, I advertised it for sale and there was a huge and busy and clamorous non-rush. Then friend Andre vd Merwe from PE thought he’d buy it as he knows a bargain when he sees OK, hears about one, but unfortunately he brought his level-headed and intelligent wife Sue along to the test drive. Sue realised something wasn’t all that new Bentley-like – I don’t know HOW – and ordered the man to turn around NOW after only a few km’s and stated in no uncertain terms that he would buy it “Over Her Deceased Corpse!” Unfortunately Andre, not being an automotive engineer, didn’t have all Redfoot’s great advantages and features at the tip of his tongue, so he meekly made like a husband and my celebrations were rudely interrupted when they drove back down my River Drive driveway where I had just gleefully waved them goodbye not half an hour earlier.

Once a Canadian optometrist used Redfoot to get to a clinic where he did a volunteer stint in the Valley of 1000 Hills in KwaZulu Natal. He brought it back smoking. Being Canadian he didn’t really get the ‘stick shift’ thing, nor the ‘clutch’ thing. That was one of the new engines. Louis du Plessis the Kingfisher Canoe Club mechanic said, “He pushed the connecting rod and the big end right through the block.” I nodded gravely as though I knew wherof he spoke.

Spent a total of R25 000 on it in all and sold it for R5 000 hot cash – with relief! To another Sue’s boyfriend – not husband, see? – who was running contraband to lodges in Mocambique from a boat and needed a 4X4 to . . I didn’t ask. He didn’t come back. I didn’t ask.

Not a runaway success story was Redfoot, but I think my partners exaggerate when they say I promised them an ‘investment opportunity’!

~~oo0oo~~

*The whitewash: Turns out the ‘one previous owner’ was the KwaZulu bantustan homeland Police Force!

~~oo0oo~~

We have not been able to reach you

On 2013/02/20 12:34 PM, carshop wrote:

Dear Thomas,

We have been unable to contact you since your vehicle enquiry from CMH Land Rover Silver Lakes. Please contact Org R on 012 8_9 5__0 from CMH Land Rover Silver Lakes to discuss your vehicle enquiry. Feel free to contact our support centre by email carshop@cmh.co.za or call us on 0861 carshop should you experience any difficulties.

Sincerely,

~~oo0oo~~

Hi there

I’m sorry!
Thomas is 11yrs old and was on a “wishing” spree without my knowledge!
Please cancel this request.
Thanks a lot
Pete

~~oo0oo~~

Hi Pete,

Thank you for your response, I’ll cancel your – or shall I say Thomas’s – request with the dealer.

Glad the boy has good taste in cars.

Keep well.

Kind Regards

Vicki
Carshop Team Leader
————————–

From: Pete
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 2:15 PM
To: carshop
Subject: Re: We have not been able to reach you

~~~oo0oo~~~

Brauer: Fully understandable. Having been forgotten to be picked up at school so often by his dad he deserves his own wheels and shouldn’t be embarrassed in front of his peers by arriving in a skadonk;

Reed: Would Evoque some ire no doubt! Hope it was the Diesel Turbo 6 speed manual. (Probably the automatic, though, so he could drive it).

Stoute: Where’s their sense of humour? Didn’t even offer him a test drive!

~~~oo0oo~~~

skadonk – Land Rover