So a chain of 600 pubs went bankrupt and I know why. If you’re selling beer and you call yourself Thank God its Friday, that will resonate with thirsty tired working people, and you’re going to be popular. If you change your name to Thank Goodness its Friday you’re starting to wimp, and that’s not a good sign. If you then wimp it down to TGI Friday’s (what!!?) you’ve lost the plot IMO. Beer sales will steadily decline over a period of about 58 years and there’ll be financial trouble.
So TGI Friday’s went bust cos they were no longer Thank God its Friday. That, and probably also that apostrophe.
Back in 1973 they very much were Thank God its Friday, and we patronised them because that sounded like a great name. It was a special night for me cos I had been drinking beer illegally for a long time and TONIGHT I was about to have my first legal beer, thus wiping clean all past transgressions like good Catholics do. Or like bad Catholics do? I’d be getting Absolution, anyway.
In the ole Vrystaat where very little is actually vry the legal age to have a pint was 18 and I was 17 when I left for America after a few years of practicing drinking beer under sustained peer pressure. That’s my story anyway. I landed up in Oklahoma where I turned 18, but that didn’t help much. The beer was Coors light, only 3.2%, but the legal drinking age was 21. That summer Katie and family took me to Louisiana which was also 21. I had to (or should have) continue to drink feeling guilty.
Larry then drove down from upstate New York and fetched me from Shreveport in his light grey VW Beetle and we drove north through Arkansas, where we might have enjoyed a beer, but the legal age was still 21, so sadly (right! actually merrily) I was also breaking the law then.
But Missouri! Now Missouri was an 18 state and in Springfield MO we needed a beer after a long day’s drive and so we repaired to Thank God its Friday. I had my passport in my pocket, looking forward to proving I was ‘of age,’ but as always the bouncer just waved me through. I’ve never been skatted younger than I am.
So there I had a pint or two with Larry who had poured beers down my throat (me protesting) when I was an innocent fourteen year old lad back in 1969 when he was sent from wicked New York to corrupt the innocent ous in Harrismith, Vrystaat.
After that they stopped calling it Thank God its Friday and soon after – in 2024 – they went belly-up.
Cause and effect, see?
~~oo0oo~~
Damn, now Hooters has gone bust! The world sure is changing when even showing cleavage to old okes can’t sell beer!
In this case I may carry a bit of guilt. Never did go to Hooters. Felt to me like exploitation. Also, there wasn’t one nearby.
vry – free, mahala
mahala – free
skatted – estimated; collective noun: A bout of estimations (thanks Terry)
As Jess and I whizzed southwestward in search of clear skies to dry out the tent on my lorry after the floods in the Kruger Park at the beginning of the year and the soaking rains in Mpumalanga, Free State and KZN which kept my canvas damp. It got so bad I started thinking there wasn’t a sky in the cloud. On the tar roads we passed numerous signs saying some or other pass. You notice the lovely scenery, but the passes pass with no effort, so we seldom stopped for photos. Thanks to the amazing website run by the geeks, nerds and – worse – engineers of mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za anyone can go on a virtual drive over these passes. I used them gratis for a bit, then subscribed. Well worth R465 a year in my view, even if you’re only doing one trip with one pass – you’ll get so much more out of the trip once you’ve read the amount of info these guys post about each pass. A narrated video of the route, angles, altitudes, distances, directions, gain, gradient, history, can you take a Fiat Uno or do you need a Unimog, ens. Fascinating.
I had some well-known and challenging passes on my to-do list for this trip, and on those I did take pics which I’ll post.
Wapadberg Pass – On the tarred R61 between Cradock and Graaff Reinet; 17km long; On YouTube here.
Carlton Heights Pass – On the tarred N9 between Noupoort and Middelburg; 7km long; On YouTube here. It was here I remarked to Jess, ‘Look, not a cloud in the sky!’ We had found our dry blue skies to dry out my tent! We stopped for a pic and saw there was one wee cloud to the south, no bigger than a man’s hand, just like in the Bible.
Now four passes on the tarred N9 north of Graaff Reinet. Heading South, as we did, they are: Naudesberg Pass; Paardekloof Pass; Goliathskraal se Hoogte Pass; Perrieshoogte Pass; All tar, all beautiful, but none caused us to stop and take pics. Also near – almost in – Graaff Reinet are van Ryneveld’s Pass and Munniks Poort. Some of these passes were Andrew Geddes Bain passes, the famous road- and passbuilder whose reputation I accuse my ancestors of appropriating when they got to Natal!
In Camdeboo National Park we found the first pass, mountain and valley I had long wanted to see: Camdeboo Pass leading to the Valley of Desolation! Back in 1972, fresh from a wonderful Veld & Vlei adventure, I’d been invited on a Boy Scouts patrol leader camp to the “Valley of Desolation near Graaff Reinet.” The camp was cancelled, but my imagination had been fired up and I always dreamed of seeing this mythical place one day. Now, a mere fifty one years later, I was driving up the pass. – – (virtual drive it on YouTube here and here)
— Jess halfway up the pass; and the tent on my lorry nice and dry —
Next we headed to the Karoo national park outside Beaufort West, my old mate Louis’ stamping ground. Inside the park there’s the Klipspringer Pass built with great effort and care. Being in a declared nature reserve, rocks were sourced from outside the park, ruins of old houses and kraals eg. and local labourers dry-packed them by hand to minimise the damage to the area. Jess chose to loaf back at camp while I drove it. She missed out.
After Beaufort we headed for Oudtshoorn to visit Louis and Gail – and what a welcome we received! Good friends indeed. Louis told of us of Meiringspoort, saying It’s Beautiful! and he was right. We crossed Droekloof Pass on the way, then took our time in the poort, stopping at every picnic spot and walking up to the waterfall. — (the feature pic at the top shows the mighty Ford Ranger on the Meiringspoort road).
Reluctantly leaving Louis n Gail’s hospitality we headed north towards a must-do pass – the famed Swartberg Pass. After passing through Schoemanspoort near the Cango Caves we started up the pass, stopping at Kobus se Gat to get Jess her 100th hot chocolate (! approx). Ahead lay 24km of Thomas Bain’s finest road engineering. The boffins at mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za rate it so special they have made eight videos to cover it! See a shorter video here, showing north to south, opposite of our direction. Swartberg could actually be called multiple passes and multiple poorts!
~~oo0oo~~
A pass goes up or down or over a mountain. A poort goes through – often following a river course. Often you drive with high mountain walls on both sides, whereas on a pass there’s usually a wall on one side and a drop on the other.
Thanks to mountainpassessouthafrica.co.za; tripadvisor.com; and princealbert.org.za for pictures
In Botswana’s Khama Rhino Sanctuary I was visited by Bennets woodpeckers, Burchells starlings, Meyers parrots and Meves starling. African feathered beauties saddled with the surnames of European explorers and naturalists.
The biggest of the beautiful trees in Makongwa Campsite are called variously the Mongongo nut, or Manketti, or Makongwa. Scientific name Schinziophyton rautanenii (was Ricenodendron before).
As I left, I spoke to a German couple who said they were going to exit Botswana at Gaberone “cos we want to drive longer in Botswana – we like it here.” So I changed my plan and did the same. Instead of heading east to Martin’s Drift / Groblersbrug border post, I meandered south to the Tlokweng / Kopfontein crossing.
As afternoon approached the old familiar Where To Stay dilemma started – not my favourite part of this procrastinator’s meandering life. For a change I decided to ask someone, as Groot Marico turned out to be a surprisingly not-groot dorpie. I ran out of main street in three seconds flat. Just outside the ‘city centre’ the Wag n Biekie Pub looked enticing, set in a green shady garden, so I drove in, parked and strolled in.
Three heads swivelled to check Wie’s Die Ou? One maybe thinking Wie’s Die Oom?Manne looking comfortably ensconced at the large pub. One my age was nursing a brandy n coke; one who said he was the youngest oke left in the Groot Marico at 36, nursing a brandy n coke; and Brian, nut farmer, ‘No not macadamias, the climate is wrong. Pecans,’ nursing a brandy n coke. Once Brian and his gabbas had sussed me out – What you doin’? Where you goin’? How old are you? Where do you hail from? – he hopped onto the phone to sort out a place for me to spend the night: Hello Liddy my darling. Listen, Wild Bill Hickok has come to town and is needing a bed, can you help him sweetheart?
Liddy could, so Brian drew what he assured me was a very accurate map to get to Evergreen farm I couldn’t miss it. Luckily I listened carefully as he scribbled.
I bought a round then, as when they heard it was my first visit they winked at the barmaid and she brought me a glass of amarula liquer. ‘Watch out, don’t choke hey! There’s something in it,’ I was warned. I thought maybe a chilli or a mopani wurm, but turned out to be a cherry, which I slukked.
While the kind ladies in the pub kitchen made me a supper to take home we all had another dop, then I departed with thanks for the lekker hospitality and sage advice.
Evergreen Farm’s chalet was great and the monster Wag ‘n Biekie pub burger I had for supper was delish.
The next day I discovered the Groot Marico river runs gin-clear as it’s source is an ‘oog’ – a large dolomitic hole in the ground, a spectacular scuba diving spot. I now remembered as a student listening to friend and fellow student Dave Crouse raving about driving here in his Vollies – Volvo – and diving deep in crystal clear water. He was a wonderful life enthusiast was Dave!
It flows northwards, does the Marico; after a stretch it is named Madikwene, then reverts to the name Marico, bends northeastwards and forms the border between South Africa and Botswana. Further downstream the Crocodile River joins the Marico from the right – bringing its badly polluted water all the way from iGoli/Joburg and Tshwane/Pretoria. After the confluence these two rivers become our famous Limpopo River, no longer gin clear. In fact, some Pom called it ‘grey-green, greasy.’ Bloody cheek!
After just one night I was off again, heading south-east, uncharacteristically in a hurry as I had committed to a meet-up – a matric reunion. So I have yet to experience the district where Herman Charles Bosman’s lovely stories were hatched.
The 258km from Harrismith to Parys via Weiveld takes six hours to negotiate if you haven’t yet seen a korhaan and you need to see one.
This includes a stop for steak egg and strips at the Royal Hotel in Reitz. Instead of strips I got potato wedges crisply fried in batter. Yum!
Here’s the route for slow pokes not in a hurry:
The roads are really quite good mostly. There’s a section between Petrus Steyn and Heilbron where the ANC oke who got the pothole tender must have pocketed the money and not delivered them. It’s smooth tar, has painted lines, and is kinda first world! He’s gonna be in trouble. The dirt roads are also mainly fine, but can get rough, and in the dips they get more interesting, as they’ve had some rain. Mud and some deep pools.
I saw my korhaan at last. Not the Blue, which I’ve been searching for, but the Northern Black Korhaan. Also a few Namaqua Doves, a favourite. Pics from my Newman’s Birds app.
Heavy storms were predicted but I had only a few showers on the way.
The feature pic is the view from my B&B on the left bank of the Seine, I mean the Vaal, in Parys, Free State. Paddling mate Chris Greeff had told me about this lovely rapid in his home town. Read a bit about him here. There’s A LOT more – Greeff should write a book.
Very warm in bed in Mistique Waters guest house on the banks of the Vaal after a hot bath. Tomorrow the streets of Paris!
The youngest and tallest of the Ten Cousins went to New Zealand. He and wife Julie live on the North Island. Adventurous souls, they have been planning a tour for a while now. So recently they just did it: Hopped onto their motorbike and off they went. Here are some extracts and pictures from Solly’s – or Swanie’s – account of their trip.
New Zealand South Island Trip – Feb 2021 – On a fully-laden bike – 230kg all-up – we left home in New Plymouth for Wellington.
– OK, luckily not this bike – theirs was a bit newer –
Visited Wellington CBD and the Te Papa museum. Julie went to see the WOW (World of Wearable art) exhibition while I went to see the Gallipoli exhibition (https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/visit/exhibitions/gallipoli-scale-our-war). The next day, Saturday, friends took us to see parts of Wellington that we never get to.
– Julie and the WOW exhibition at Te Papa Museum –
Then it was the ferry to Picton and from there to Cheviot via Kaikoura, where in 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake lifted the land by a few meters to lay bare a rocky shore that had been underwater for millennia! That shake, 350km from us as the crow flies, had us so scared that we moved out of the house that night!
– on board the ferry –– Kaikoura – exposed seabed after the earthquake –– Julie taking a break in Kaikoura –
Down the coast to Moeraki of the famous Moeraki Boulders on the beach. We stayed in a cabin in the Caravan Park and the manager at the park said the boulders are just twenty minutes’ walk along the beach. Or on a walkway just off the beach. After about half an hour we had not yet reached the sandy beach and could see the boulders in the distance about another two km away. I said to Julie Don’t worry, I’ll call an Uber once we get there, and we kept walking. As we got to the sandy beach, a red Audi with two elderly ladies came driving past us and waved. We saw them stop later to walk their dog on the beach. As we approached, the Bull Terrier came running straight at us and just wanted to play. I managed to calm it down and started talking. The two lovely ladies said they would come up to the boulders and pick us up if we’re still there. How’s that? Who, in their wildest dreams, could have wished for a V10 Audi A6 5.2FSI QUATTRO AVANT Uber? I offered to shout them a drink at the local, but JJ, the owner of the ‘Uber’ invited us to her house for drinks. What a stunning artistic lady she was. She said she was 70, but she looked more like 69. This was one of the highlights of our trip.
– Moeraki Boulders – – Dunedin Station Building –
The next day we left Kaka Point in the rain again and rode through the Catlins via Slope Point to Invercargill where the Burt Munro bike rally is held. More gravel roads. The bike was very dirty by now, but was behaving well.
– Solly: In some places even the dogs can climb a tree –
Invercargill was alive with bikes from all over the country. The Burt Munro Challenge is NZ’s biggest bike rally and runs for four days with several events like drag racing, beach racing, street racing, circuit racing and speedway with the odd bit of hooliganism mixed in. (Ooh, Solly would have hated that! 😉 ;-). The first two days in Invercargill was the typical blustery, rainy weather of Southland, but luckily after that it cleared up.
Next day it was off to Manapouri just about twenty km down the road to join the Doubtful Sound overnight trip. Katie the KTM had to sleep in the public car park overnight, chained to a drain grid. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of that.
We got on a boat and travelled across Lake Manapouri; then a one hour bus trip over the gravel Wilmot Pass to Doubtful Sound and onto another boat. Cruising down the sound with the mountains towering above you on both sides is amazing. Down the Thompson Sound back to the Tasman Sea for a beautiful sunset. We briefly saw two Beaked whales before they took a dive.
Like the Trout Farms in South Africa, there is a Salmon farm in Wanaka where you hire a rod, catch some Salmon, pay by weight (a very reasonable price compared to the supermarket) and then you can have it cooked there or take it with you. One can get carried away quickly so I limited myself to two fish. We had one there, prepared hot smoked and sashimi. The other we swapped for cold smoked and had that for breakfast the next two days. Delicious!!
Then we took a boat trip to an island in Lake Wanaka called Mou Waho Island. On this island is a pool about 150m up via a fifteen minute walk with some beautiful scenery.
From Wanaka it was over the Haast pass to the West Coast via the aptly namesd Blue Pools and numerous waterfalls. Beautiful road!!
After Jackson Bay it was up the coast to Fox Glacier and Lake Matheson a short ride away. We walked 3.5km around the lake – amazing scenery.
The next morning we took a helicopter flight up to the glacier where we landed on the snow. What an experience!
From there it was up to Carters Beach at Westport where we stayed at a lovely park near the beach.
-the beautiful west coast road –
From Carters Beach it was a three hour trip via the beautiful Buller Gorge to Nelson. By now there was a serious front pushing in from the South and warnings of severe weather for the West Coast. Lucky for us, that bad weather was following behind us. God is a biker! The West Coast has an average of 200 days a year of rain. We managed to experience the days that were sunny!
From Nelson a short ride to Picton via Queen Charlotte Drive. Queen Charlotte Drive is only about 40km long, but it takes about an hour. Speed limit is 50 and there would be about six corners or more in every kilometre and the surface is not the best. Lots of slips make the tar sag down the slope so one has to be very vigilant, but the scenery makes up for it.
After nearly 4000km we were happy to be back home, sore arses and all. Sorry, no photos of those!!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Solly says his ‘other hobby’ is distilling! – I hope to find out more soon.
(A re-post -I went looking for my ‘missionary’ post to link to, and couldn’t find it. Turns out I’d posted it only on my seldom-visited Apache Adventures blog. So without apology, I thought I’d also post it here).
The new preacherman at the Christian Church of Apache Oklahoma, looked me up after he’d been in town a while and invited me over to his place. Turns out he was interested in becoming a mission-nary to Africa and wanted to meet one of the real-deal Africans he’d heard and read so much about. Maybe suss out just how much we needed saving?
A HUGE man, six feet and nine inches tall, Ron Elrick wore a string tie, a 10 gallon stetson and cowboy boots, making him damn near eight feet tall fully dressed as he stooped through doors and bent down to shake people’s hands. I met his tiny little wife who was seemingly half his height, and two lil daughters. He was an ex-Canadian Mountie and a picture on his mantelpiece showed him towering over John Wayne, when Wayne was in Canada to film a movie.
Soon he invited me to join him on a ‘men’s retreat’ to “God’s Forty Acres” in NE Oklahoma (the yanks are way ahead of Angus Buchan in this “get away from the wife and come back and tell her you’re the boss” shit. I mean, this was 1973 and SA was blissfully low on charlatans back then).
– me – – Ron –
I had made it known from my arrival in Apache that I would join anybody and go anywhere to see the state (and get out of school – I mean I’d already DONE matric!).So we hopped into his muddy pinky-brown wagon with ‘wood’ paneling down the sides – it looked a bit like the ’53 Buick Roadmaster in the picture above, or this Chev Brookwood maybe?
We roared off from Caddo county heading north-east, bypassing Oklahoma City and Tulsa to somewhere near Broken Arrow or Cherokee county – towards the Arkansas border, anyway. Me n Ron driving like Thelma and Louise. Hey, you think they based the 1991 movie on us? We should get royalties, surely?
– me – – Ron –
Non-stop monologue on the way. He didn’t need any answers, I just had to nod him yes and he could talk uninterrupted for hours on end. He was a dominee, remember.
At the retreat there were hundreds of men & boys just like him, all fired up for the Lawd, bellowing the Retreat Song at the drop of a hat:
♫“In Gahd’s Fordy Yacres..“♫ We musta sang it 400 times in that weekend. If I was God I’d have done some smiting. Only men and boys at this retreat. That’s cos you don’t count them who cooked, cleaned, served us and tidied up. A MEN’s retreat.
We left at last and headed back, wafting along like on a mattress in that long slap wagon, when Ron suddenly needed an answer: Had I ever seen a porno movie? WHAT? I hadn’t? That’s amazing! Well, jeez, I mean goodness, he felt it as sort of like a DUTY to enlighten me and reveal to me just how evil and degraded these movies could be.
– I remember less soap bubbles –
So we detoured into Tulsa. Maybe he regarded it as practice for the mission-nary work he was wanting to do among us Africans? We sat through a skin flick in a seedy movie house. It was the most skin ‘n hair ‘n pelvis ‘n hairy organs this 18yr old boykie from the Vrystaat had seen to date, so it was, after all, educational. Thin plot, though.
I suppose you could say I got saved and damned, titillated and educated all on one weekend.
~~oo0oo~~
footnote: Ron did get to Africa as a mission-nary. He was posted to Jo-hannesburg. Lotsa ‘sinners’ in Jo-hannesburg, I suppose. I’m just not sure they need ‘saving’ by a Canadian Mountie.
After a slow drive from Mombasa we spent a night at a plush hotel in the metropolis of Voi. There it is in the left background. I think it was called Voi Safari Lodge. Don’t let Aitch tell you we didn’t spoil ourselves at times. The dining room had a linoleum floor, plastic chairs and metal tables, no table cloth. It was clean, the chicken and rice was hot and delicious, and the waiter was attentive. I had a Tusker beer that was cold and delicious. As was Aitch’s ginless Gin n Tonic. Luxury!
– the metropolis of Voi in October 1998 –
Then on to a destination I had looked forward to all my life: Tsavo National Park!
All my life? Just about. We got the quarterly African Wildlife magazines at home back in the Vrystaat and I eagerly read about Africa’s great parks. I also knew of Bernhard Grzimek’s work in the Serengeti and his book Serengeti Shall Not Die. The great parks I knew and fantasised about included Kruger, Etosha, Luangwa, Masai Mara, Amboseli, Wankie, Serengeti, Okavango, Ngorongoro, Gorongosa – and Tsavo. I remember seeing an aerial picture of the drought in Kenya and how the vegetation IN Tsavo was worse than that outside the park. The story was it was due to Kenya (Leakey?) refusing to cull elephants and other game. Of course it may have been a story by the pro-culling people in SA’s parks. Who knows? Lots of jealousy and rivalry among the ‘good people in conservation!’ Me, I hang my hat on the need for active conservation management, no handwringing and no decisions made by anyone not on the scene. Once you fence an area you are responsible for that ecosystem, and you have the duty to care for it, difficult decisions notwithstanding. Overstocking kills everything. Here endeth the sermon.
* Tsavo East *
Chris and Tilde Stuart, great Africa-philes, chose Tsavo as one of ‘Africa’s Great Wild Places’ in their book of that name, mainly for the huge wild expanse of Tsavo East where you can drive for hours without seeing another vehicle.
– arrival at Elephant Hills Lodge – whattacar! says Aitch –– here’s where the underground path to the underground hide leads down to the waterhole –Tsavo East – Another ice-cold Tusker beer for you, sir?
Driving around Tsavo East was amazing. We hardly saw any other vehicles.
In places like a smooth highway – only better: No traffic!Into Tsavo East and peace! Vulturine guineafowl– the Galana River in Tsavo East –
Firsts for us – ‘lifers’ – Gerenuk, Lesser Kudu and Vulturine Guineafowl: Wow! at last.
GerenukLesser kudu
Also Golden-breasted Starling, Red & Yellow Barbet, Superb Starling & White-headed Buffalo Weaver:
Birds I’d pored over as a youth in my Birds of the World book. One day . . And here they are! (internet pics, thank you)
~~oo0oo~~
* Tsavo West *
Tsavo West
We saw Kilimanjaro! We weren’t expecting to, but as we drove around we suddenly saw a snow-topped mountain top WAY higher than one would expect above the low clouds and through the higher clouds; way higher than the hills around us. We realised that it must be Kili, the world’s highest free-standing mountain!
Of course we should have realised we’d be close to Kili, but we didn’t give it a thought. We were in Kenya, Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania, and it just didn’t occur to us! That’s our pic of the low clouds on the left and an internet pic of Kili from Tsavo West. Our view was a glimpse through a break in thick clouds. That was an unexpected treat.
– Aitch snuggles in on the veranda with her torch – looking for nocturnals –– Genetta genetta – come to look at the lady on the veranda –
Here we also saw the magic clear waters of Mzima Springs.
~~oo0oo~~
Tsavo National Park was created in 1948. At approximately 21,000km², it’s the largest protected area in Kenya. In the late 1960s, there were approximately 35,000 elephants in the Tsavo region. This population has suffered two population crashes, probably due to mismanagement or misguided management in both cases!? Firstly there were simply too many elephants, so in the drought in the early 1970s many died, especially pregnant females, females nursing a calf or young calves. Independent bulls’ mortality was lower as they were able to travel greater distances in search of vegetation and water.
The second crash was due to the illegal killing of elephants for their tusks. The bulls who survived the drought were now the victims. Kenya had banned legal trophy hunting in 1977. By the late 1980s, at the height of the ivory poaching era, about 6,200 elephants remained in the entire Tsavo region. Not all conservationists – and few bleeding heart animal lovers far away – understand that when you fence an area, you have to manage that area. Pretending it’s still natural does a lot of harm; and allowing ‘rich donors’ to dictate what happens on unscientific, emotional grounds ends up killing many animals, and – a much worse disaster – their environment. Leading to way more animals dying starvation and disease deaths than the number that needed culling. Anyone doubting this, buy a cattle farm and never kill – or allow to be killed, so selling is no solution – any of your cattle. Soon you’ll have a desert full of many dead animals.
From this deck at Elephant Hills you can watch animals approaching the water from miles away. I’ll wait with my binocs and spotting scope while the obliging waiter sees to it I don’t go thirsty. Two Tuskers later, they’re still plodding closer, not here yet. It’s a long slow movie.
Tsavo East – Another ice-cold Tusker for you, sir? I scope the plains, Aitch wanders around with camera, our waiter sees to it we don’t go thirsty. Heaven!
~~oo0oo~~
Those wonderful old African Wildlife magazines. Official Journal of the Wild Life Protection Society of South Africa. Published 1946 to 2009
We flew in on our first trip to Malawi in 1990. Just me and Aitch. At Lilongwe airport we hired a car from the brochures on the desk, not from the kiosks in the airport. Well, the man on the phone said they didn’t have any presence at the airport to save money, but they were nearby, they’d be there in a jiffy. And they were cheap. I like that.
The airport emptied till it was just us, so we took our bags to the entrance and sat in the shade waiting. There was no-one there but a bored youth sitting in a dark blue Honda with sagging suspension, but we were chilled and the airport garden needed birding. Eventually I went back to the desk to phone the man. He was amazed: “My driver should have been there long ago!”
‘Twas him. ‘Twas our car: The dark blue Honda with sagging suspension. “No, no,” we laughed, “There must be a better car than this!” – thinking of the rough roads we’d be traversing. “Come back to the office and you can choose another car,” said the friendly man. So we did. The office was his house, and we inspected his fleet. Well, bless him, of course it was his best car, he’s good people; so off we headed to Kasungu National Park in a dark blue Honda Civic with Formula 1 ground clearance. We were on safari, and this was our jeep.
In the park we drove with one wheel on the middle bump and one on the left edge of the road. On the open road we drove slowly and avoided anything above deck.
While I was unpacking to occupy our bungalow I froze: a serval! Wonderful! We always love seeing the smaller wildlife. I tried to signal to Aitch as the long-legged cat walked out of the long grass into the clearing. I didn’t want to scare it, so I whistled low and urgent. Aitch came out, and we watched as it came closer and closer.
And closer. And closer till it rubbed itself against my leg! It was the camp pet, it had been raised by the rangers.
We headed further north – to Vwaza Marsh, and then up high to Nyika Plateau, 10 000ft above sea level; then south again to Nkhata Bay, beautiful Lake Malawi and warmer weather. The car went like a dream at twenty km/h and even sometimes at thirty km/h.
– smooth highway! –
South of Nkhata Bay we suddenly came on a stretch of smooth road! I crept the needle up to forty km/h. Then fifty and eventually sixty! Wheee! “Careful, Koos,” admonished my Aitch, clinging white-knuckled to the dashboard (kidding! sort of). Then we came up to the big yellow grader that had smoothed our path. It moved aside and we went past with a wave to the friendly driver. The road condition was now back to interesting, so I slowed down to forty. “Slow down, Koos,” admonished my Aitch. We’d been doing thirty, so this still felt fast to her and I knew she was right, but I had tasted speed . .
WHUMP! We hit a brick and I knew immediately Fuckit Mrs Tuckit that we’d be getting to know this remote stretch of Malawi. I parked on a low level bridge and leaned out to peer under the car: Oil pouring out of the sump. Do you have any soap? I asked Aitch. Here, she said shoving a bottle of liquid soap into my hand. Um, no, a bar of soap. Ever resourceful, she whipped out a fat green stick of Tabard mozzi repellent. Perfect, I said and shoved it in the hole. It went into the sump without touching sides! OK, we were going to be here for a while . .
– uh oh –
– now the Black-winged Red Bishop – Euplectes hordeaceus – thanks wikipedia –
To break the tension I took my binocs and went for a walk and straight away things got better. “Come look!” I called Aitch “A lifer!” A Fire-Crowned Bishop flitted around in the reeds of the stream we were parked above. ‘Um,’ she said, ‘Don’t tell me that’s why you stopped here?’ Grinning, she made us a snack on the bootlid and we waited. Before too long someone came by. On foot. Two schoolboys who said, Not to worry, we know a mechanic in a nearby village. He will fix it. Great! I said, Would you ask him to help us, please? thinking, Actually guys, there’s no sign of a ‘nearby village.’
An hour later, a car zoomed by without stopping. Unusual for Malawi. Another hour later and a Land Rover stopped, the driver got out and shook his head sadly. He couldn’t help us, he said, as he was in a government vehicle. As he drove off we saw his female passenger appearing to give him a thousand words. He stopped and walked back with a 5l oil can in his hand. “I can’t sell you this oil because it’s guvmint oil, but I am going to give you this oil,” he said. Great, we accepted it with alacrity. It was half full. It was a start.
Another hour or so and three figures approached us on foot, one with a greasy green overall and a red metal toolbox on his shoulder. It was our mechanic and our schoolboys. They had come through!
– my mechanic watches as I tap tap – check tool detail on left –
Soon he had the sump cover off and I started tapping the hole closed using a shifty and a spanner. As I tapped I asked if anyone – perchance – had a bar of soap. Nope. No-one. Holding up the cover to the sun I tapped that malleable metal until not even a glint of sun shone through. I had closed the hole. As we started to replace it, I muttered “I’d give twenty kwacha for some soap,” whereupon one of the guys whipped out a sliver of red Lifebuoy soap from his pocket.
– our rescuers –
Boy! Did the others turn on him! “How can you be so unkind to our guests?” was the accusation and they refused to let me pay him more than four kwacha for his soap, despite my assuring them that it was worth twenty to me. As we prepared to depart after pouring in the guvmint oil, we gave them each a cold can from our hebcooler, paid the mechanic his modest dues (he didn’t charge traveling costs) and gave the schoolboys and the mechanic each a cap. I had two spare caps and Aitch had one. A pink one.
1500km later we handed the car back and I told the man at the airport: “Please check the sump. Its leaking oil.” It wasn’t, but I wanted him to check it.
~~oo0oo~~
More pictures of our journey from Aitch’s album:
– road near Rumphi –– up on Nyika plateau – 8000ft above sea level –– Nyika Plateau very special rolling grasslands –– sure, sometimes we did save money – I like that! –– and sometimes we splashed out –
~~~oo0oo~~~
The whole album, as I have now discarded the hard copy:
Aitch and I went to Mombasa in 1998 and checked in at a hotel on Diani beach. The next day I got a lift into town and walked the crowded streets of Mombasa looking for a cheap hired car. Mombasa is quite a place:
I did my sums. I’m meticulous. Not.
– car hire – lots of choice –
While I was on safari hunting hired cars, Aitch chilled on the uncrowded beach and pooldeck, no doubt quaffing ginless gin&tonics. She used to do that, you know! Tonic & bitters. Ginless! I know! You’re right; Search me; Where’s the medicinal value? The personality enhancing factor, PEF? Still, she loved it.
After careful stalking, keeping downwind of my prey and pinpoint aiming, my lone hunting expedition was successful; I found a lil Suzuki jeep. Marvelous. I could turn round from the drivers seat and touch the back window! Almost. I knew they were good cos my chairman Allister told me, and he knows things, him being a Suzuki driver himself. Also JonDinDin once drowned his in the Tugela estuary, pulled it out and it still worked. We had wheels!
Good Birding Advice: Back at the hotel I went for a walk, leather hat on my head, binoculars round my neck. An old man came cranking along slowly on a bicycle, swung his right leg high up over the saddle and dismounted next to me.
‘Ah!’ he said,‘I can see you are English.’ I didn’t contradict him. ‘You are looking for buds,’ he said, also in a way that made me not argue. ‘There are no buds here,’ he said emphatically. ‘If you want to see buds you must go to the west, to the Impenetrable Forest. There are many buds there.’ After I thanked him for this sage advice he put his left foot on the pedal, gave a push and, swinging his right leg high over the saddle, wobbled off. After a few yards he had a thought, slowed, swung off in the same elaborate dismount and came back to me: ‘But in this hotel over here you can see some peacocks in the garden,’ he informed me re-assuringly.
‘Ah, thank you sir. Thanks very much,’ I said, wishing him well and thinking of Kenya’s 1100 species of birds – eleven percent of the world’s total. The USA has about 900, and the UK about 600. He was a character a bit like this:
Good Traveling Advice: We also got pessimistic advice on the roads. We were on our way to Tsavo National Park the next day and we wanted to avoid the main road to Nairobi. We’d heard it was crowded with trucks and buses and we’d rather avoid that, if at all possible. On our Globetrotter map I found a little road south-west of the main road – an alternative route via Kwale, Kinango and Samburu.
‘No you can’t; No, not at all; There’s no way,’ says everyone. Even the barman! Even after I said, And Have One Yourself! he still said no. ‘The bridge has been washed away by cyclone Demoina,’ they all said. This was a bit weird, as Demoina had been in 1984, fourteen years earlier, and had mostly hit Madagascar, then Mocambique, then KwaZuluNatal, well south of Kenya.
Usually I can eventually find ONE person to say ‘Don’t listen to them, the road is FINE,’ but this time I was stymied. No-one would say ‘Yes!’ nor even ‘Maybe.’
SO: We headed off along the road toward Kwale anyway. ‘Tis easier to seek forgiveness than permission, we thought. Aitch, what a trooper, was right behind me in adventurousness and right beside me in Suzukiness. ‘We’ll see new places,’ was all she said. She knows me.
As we neared Kwale a minibus taxi approaching from the other direction did a strange thing: They actually flagged us down to tell us ‘Stop! You can’t go this way! The bridge is gone, Demoina washed it away!’ We nodded, acted surprised, looked grateful, agreed, and thanked them kindly; then we kept going.
And they were right: The bridge over the river between Kwale and Kinango had indeed washed away. But there were recent tyre tracks down to the river which we followed. Below and just upstream of the iron wreckage of the bridge we stuck the Suzuki in 4X4 and crossed the low river. Then we stopped for a break, parking our mini-4X4 under a beautiful shady tree on the river bank:
– –
And we were right: Besides being devoid of traffic, the road surface was mostly good, sometimes great:
But the road was fine – in a Suzuki– smooth highway –
Then the honeymoon ended: We ran out of detour and got back onto the main, ‘tarred’ Mombasa-Nairobi road at Samburu: Aargh! Every so often a blob of tar would threaten to cause damage. Huge holes had the traffic all weaving from side to side so trucks seem to be coming straight at you, but it’s actually quite safe, despite Aitch occasionally putting her feet up against the windscreen and yelling at me that there was an oncoming truck. Like I couldn’t see it. Its rather like slow-motion ballet. Most cars and all trucks went slowly, the only vehicles ‘speeding’ – probably up to 60km/h – were big passenger buses with their much better – softer, longer travel – suspension.
Years later, we can find the place where the bridge had washed away on online maps. Here’s the new bridge and new road on the right, with the old road just left of it, and just left of that, the drift we crossed (just left of the yellow arrow) and that beautiful tree in the top picture (red arrow) that we rested under. All the long red mud scar is new road- wasn’t there back then. The old road shows as a thinner, lighter line.
– thanks Tracks4Africa –
Then we got to Tsavo! I’d wanted to visit Tsavo since I was ten years old, and read books by Bernhard Grzimek. Armand Denis and others! Well, here I was, thirty years later! Yavuyavu! Fahari!
~~oo0oo~~
Yavuyavu! Fahari! – Joy, happiness, yes!
Michael J Allard, the witty, talented painter of the wonderful old man on his bicycle, lived in Zim on a farm, and in Ireland. He died in 2021.
