FIVE: What if I shipwreck (even while traveling overland, in a car)?

Middle of January, I had hit quite a hot time of the year. But in Mountain Zebra National Park, some lightning and stormy clouds added nicely to the scene as if copied from a coffee-table book: zebras peacefully grazing, a bontebok galloping
slowly into the scenery, secretary birds staring at me couriously, and in the background the mountain range tenderly pinned by flashes of lightning.

Perfect.

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When the first loop of road was finished, I decided to kill some more time in the park and do the second loop, described by the park ranger as “a kind of scenic drive”. Still mulling over the question of what he might have meant my that, I had fallen into the 24th pothole alreddy and realized that 2.5 hours of tough driving lay ahead of me. Maybe I should have hired a 4×4 vehicle instead of the Toyota Tazz…

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But there was no turning back. And then, heaven opened the tap – the thunderstorm was right above me and heavy rain started pouring down. Thanks to the Faraday effect I was less scared to be hit by lightning (though those daemons came as close as if to hug me…), but rather by the quickly worsening road conditions (take a potholy dirtroad on a mountain slope and add loads of water quickly…).

Wow.

I had to go on, because it did not seem to get vetter, neither would the water disappear in forseeable amount of time. It looked as if it might get even worse. But the real fund started when I noticed that I had to cross some streams which might be called Longkloof, Wilgerboom River and whateverelse-Kloof during dry wether, but now they were Nile, Amazonas and Yangtse competing in terms of throughput per second. I realized that I should have hired Noah’s ark instead of a 4×4, let alone my Toyota Tazz…

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But my choices were few: stay and drown, wreck the car and then drown, wreck the car, not drown but starve as it would be impossible to rescue a wrecked car from this mudhole.

I decided to go for option two or three, so I nosedived into the water cautiously. Under normal conditions I am not a scared driver, but as I saw the bow wavein front of me, I was tempted to close my eyes – until I was wide awake by the thought to NOTT KILL THE ENGINE in the middle of this thing.

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So I kicked it like…hell, hoping to hit the lane at the other side and not drift into the eternal mud and slide bacdk down the considerable slope. As you read this, you can realize that I made it, but powered by – again – adrenaline I had gained more that an hour from the allocated driving time – more than enought to spoil my buds with a fantastic lemon cheesecake in the nationalpark headquarters.

Continued in the next post … and see what happened before.