April 4,2010 - The Easter Miracle

As I said a few days ago: Africa is Africa. It's a place where anything can happen...and often does. We experienced it firsthand on Easter day. We'd packed up our camp in Chobe, loaded the trailer and were headed for Linyanti – a place none of us had ever been before. Now that we had our favourite truck Sally, we felt sure that we were safely on our way.

After driving for several kilometers, we came to a fork in the road. The next towns were roughly 70 kMs in either direction. Confidently, we chose our road and headed on. After whiling away most of the afternoon enjoying the scenery flying by, we got to a really big hill that went down and then up an equal amount. It was very familiar; we had been here before on another safari. As we crested to the bottom of the ravine and started up the other side, there was a terrific noise. Suddenly, no matter what gear BK put the truck in, Sally was going nowhere. It was about 4 o'clock, and, after considerable frenzied conversation, we theorized it was the differential (the thing that makes the truck move forward). So a plan was made. Everyone out! We jacked up the truck to see if our theory was correct.

We'd been sitting on the side of the road for about an hour as the crew frantically worked on the truck, each of us thinking up plans A, B and C.

I asked Jessica what she was thinking. She had gotten the sat-phone out to call the office. But it was Easter Sunday. She did manage to connect with one of her bosses and he was thinking of plans, too. And because the mechanic had given us Sally at lunchtime that day, he was still on the way back to Maun … but his cell phone was dead.

Well, one piece of bush is as good as another. We did have all of our camping gear and food, so in the worst case, we could camp where we were and wait for a rescue.

But, as the title says, we were in for an Easter miracle. On this desolate road, what to our wondering eyes did appear? Two vehicles, one after the other. The first vehicle was a private 4x4 with two guys and the second was an open-air safari vehicle with seven seats. The first order of business was to get our truck up the hill. The safari vehicle tried first, but snapped the rope. Then the private vehicle tried and up, up, up our truck went.

Once on top of the hill, a plan was quickly made. The safari company, Beyond, had a tented camp all set up in Savute, which was only another 70 kilometers away. They were expecting guests the next day, but readily agreed to rescue us! They would load us, all our gear and our guide Jessica into their vehicle, as well as pull our trailer behind. And they would put us up in their tents for the night. There were even showers and toilets right in the tents! BK and KB would stay with the truck and see if they could fix it or they would wait for a rescue.

So off we went. On the way were charged by a bull elephant, who luckily veered off at the last minute or Cheri would have been gored! And as we travelled, darkness fell. In Botswana, you are normally not allowed to drive at night; it's only tolerated under emergency conditions. As we drove wewitnessed a magnificent lightning storm off in the distance with massive bolts from the sky. We also were treated to the most magnificent sky that any of us had ever seen! And then, as we neared camp, the spring hares came out! These are rabbits that look more like kangaroos and hop really high. They were our Easter bunnies!

At nearly 9 o'clock, we pulled into camp. It was hot showers for all and a delicious meal, before retiring in our tents after a very long and incredible Easter day!

Enjoy!
Cheri & John