Kruger Trip

It's hard to remember the last time we took a trip without some type of major car problem happening. Maybe it's a Bensley omen of some sort. I remember sitting in the freezing cold in the middle of Eastern Colorado one spring break when I was about 10 years old waiting for the guy to fix a water pump on our dilapidated Ford van. I also remember when I was 9 years old pushing our small rental car in the middle of Italy with heat so intense that my rubber-soled tennis shoes were actually melting on the pavement. And, I remember sitting in a greasy garage in the middle of Italy the day before my mother's birthday where no one spoke a lick of English and watching my dad stick out his thumb on the highway to try and catch a lift to a town somewhere up the road where someone actually spoke English. I previously shared our experience with the clutch when Bill and Anna were here. So, do you think it possible for us to take a trip across country without some sort of breakdown occurring? Absolutely not. We weren't more than 4 hours outside Port Elizabeth when Livingstone started to complain about his fuel pump again. Just happened to be a dirt road far up the Eastern Cape on our way to a quaint mountain village situated at the base of the only ski hill in South Africa. Luckily, Andre had a tow strap with him, so he towed us back to Dordrecht, the village we passed about 40 kilometers before. Dead in the water. In Dordrecht. At 4:00 in the afternoon. With 2 weeks worth of camping/traveling gear and a total of 6 kids between the de Jager's and us. Fortunately, we found a local mechanic, a good ol' mechanic that actually does the work himself. He proceeded to take out the fuel pump and clean it up. When he put it back in, it worked just fine. Unfortunately, this was at about 6:00 in the evening. Being the end of June, it is in the middle of winter here, so at 6:00 it is starting to get dark. It didn't help that we were on the eastern side of the time zone. So now what? Do we proceed up the mountain pass, which Andre said was very similar to the pass we drove to get into "The Hell" a couple of months ago, or do we stop somewhere along the way for the night? We opted on stopping elsewhere, as we figured a breakdown in the mountains in the middle of the night would be too treacherous. It's a good thing we did, as it snowed that night and the pass was slippery, although, I must admit I was looking forward to seeing snow in Africa. Snow in Africa? Yes, snow in Africa. I don't care if the car teeters on the edge of breaking down; being from Michigan I know how to drive in snow and would have loved the challenge of doing so in Africa on a mountain pass in the middle of the night. It was not meant to be, though...on this trip at least. We ended up staying at the "Washington Arms," a farm bed and breakfast out in the country. A beautiful place run by a Scotsman who I found out was most likely related to me, albeit 21 generations removed.

The next day we continued on our journey through the vast wilderness of the Eastern Cape, making stops in Maclear, the town where Marina was born and where her father held his first preacher post, and through the beautiful Transkei. The Transkei is one of the old "homelands" the apartheid government created years ago in an effort to completely separate the blacks from the whites. The apartheid government had acquired large sections of land and determined that is where the black people should live. Sort of like a massive Indian reservation. Unfortunately, someone absconded with the funds for these "homelands" and they ended up being huge tracks of impoverished areas. The Transkei is about the size of Rhode Island. We found it to be one of the most beautiful parts of South Africa, situated at the base of the Drakkensberg Mountains, complete with traditional, brightly colored, round mud huts. Breathtaking, to say the least. So breathtaking, in fact, that Livingstone again decided to act up with his fuel pump, again. Unfortunately, this occurred in the middle of the low mountains just after we passed into Kwazulu-Natal (the province north of the Eastern Cape), at about 5:00 in the evening, and 150 kilometers from our next destination. Dead in the water. Again. Okay, no problem. Andre had his tow strap. I had watched the guys back in Dordrecht take out the fuel pump and clean off the connectors, so I knew what to do. Just needed a lighted area to work on it. So, Andre towed us about 50 kilometers to the next town, which had a BP petrol station. Perfect! A lighted area. With the vast experiences I have had with breaking down, I have learned to always carry a toolbox with a collection of connectors, screw drivers, hoses, pliers, and wrenches. Guess what? I only had one wrench, or "spanner" as it is called here. "I think it was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the spanner." Can't quite get used to that. You can't do much with only one wrench, especially when the fuel lines are attached to the fuel pump with two nuts. Unfortunately, Andre didn't have any wrenches either. No problem. We were at a gas station. Surely they would have a wrench. Nope. None. Not one single wrench. I went over to the local watering hole that was sort of attached to the gas station and asked the barkeep if he had a wrench. None. Not one person there had a wrench in their car, even though half of them had a small pickup truck, or "bakkie" (pronounced "bucky") as it is called here, in the parking lot. Being in a crisis situation, my American mindset immediately took over. Surely someone with a pickup truck has a wrench. I inquired at the petrol station who the best person was to ask. The petrol lady pointed to a guy and said he was the owner's son and the one best to help us. So Andre and I went over to his pickup and asked if he had a wrench. I think the guy was more a pimp than a gas station owner, as he had what appeared to be a couple of prostitutes with him in the truck. "Let me take these two fine ladies home and then I'll see if I can find you a wrench." Excellent! We were finally getting somewhere. It was then that Andre insisted we continue on with the towing. "What? But the guy is going to get me a wrench!" "Bop, we need to keep going and now." "Why? Let's just wait a minute and get the wrench. Then we can both drive!" "We need to go, now." Fuming a bit, I agreed and off we were for more nighttime towing. It wasn't until about 10 minutes later that I realized why he was so insistent on us leaving. We were the only white people, in a small gas station, just outside the Transkei, with a bar full of drunken locals, with two Land Rovers complete with rooftop tents and beautiful wives and daughters. Not the small town Schoolcraft Michigan experience I was used to. This is one of the times when I truly missed being in the U.S. Had this been a small rural town anywhere in the U.S., I could have easily gone into the local bar, found the guy with the "Perlman Seeds" hat on his head and said "I've got a fuel pump problem in my truck outside. You got a wrench I can borrow?" "You got yerself a fuel pump problem? Damn, let's go fix 'er! Hey Buck, git yer brother on the phone and see if he still got that pump we yanked off that Ford. Don't worry pal, we got every wrench you want outside in our trucks!"

Have you ever been towed through the mountains in the middle of the night? If so, try imagine doing it in the complete dark. After a couple hours of towing--which involved being towed up one side of a mountain and unhooking and free falling down the other side--our battery died. That meant no headlights. No headlights on a night where there was no moon or stars. Going up wasn't as much a problem. It was in coming down the hills that provided the most "challenge." Andre would keep about 20 meters in front of us with his headlights on. That was the only light we had for seeing where we were going. Fortunately we had a couple of Motorola walkie-talkies, which served as our lifeline. "Andre, slow up because I can't see where I am going!" "Okay, Bop." "Andre, speed up! I'm about to rear end you!" "Okay, Bop." The kids held up well and we survived. As Andre later put it, it was a true test of all of our character. That night we arrived at a cousin of Andre's, who had graciously let us in and had a bucket of KFC on the table for us. I've never tasted better chicken in my life. The next day Louie, Andre's cousin, took apart the fuel pump and cleaned every piece. Louie owns a gravel pit and does all the work on the dump trucks and equipment. He's one of these, what we call "Joe Pope" type of guys (Joe Pope is a family friend who is a genius when it comes to mechanical equipment). An hour of Louie working on the pump and off we were to continue on the trip. Louie even had some of his workers take apart the brakes and finally fixed our brake squealing once and for all. You can probably imagine the squeal we picked up after being towed up and down mountains for 4 hours.

We spent the day driving through Kwazulu-Natal and saw the various homes Andre and his first wife lived in, as Andre was originally from this area. We drove through some beautiful Zulu villages--the types where women parade around with beautiful colors and without tops (too cold this time of the year for that, though). We saw more spectacular scenery. It is amazing how diverse this country is and how often the scenery changes. Kwazulu-Natal is widespread sugar cane fields one minute and a few miles later mountainous countryside. It was truly a treat to see these sites. Around 4:00 in the late afternoon…well, you can probably guess. Fuel pump. Towing. Stress. Anxiety. Fortunately, we were only an hour or so from another one of Andre's family members, which was our actual destination for the evening. Andre and Willana, our Andre's relatives, live on a farm out in the country in northern Kwazulu-Natal. They opened their home to us and we had a wonderful supper and visit. In true Bensley fashion, I again worked on the fuel pump rather than just ordering a new pump and getting the problem fixed once and for all. Andre (Willana's Andre) and I resoldered all the connectors, thinking maybe the problem was actually an electrical problem more than mechanical. I put the pump back in and it appeared to work marvously. Again, we felt we had made inroads in fixing the pump.

We woke the next morning, and it was the 4th of July, America's most valued day of the year. We spent most of the day traveling through another province, Mpumalanga, and then into Swaziland. I've been wanting to go to Swaziland and Lesotho ever since I first did a geography report on South Africa in 6th grade. Lesotho is a country that is completely surrounded by South Africa, and Swaziland is almost completely surrounded by South Africa. We found Swaziland to be some of the most spectacular scenery we have seen over the past 6 months. The mountains were breathtaking and the road meandered in and around them. Kathy and I decided this is a country we would like to come back to at some point and spend a week or so hiking and camping. Although impoverished, Swaziland was exempt from the apartheid atrocities in the past as it is a separate country from South Africa. It is actually called the "Kingdom of Swaziland" and is run by a king, whose face appears on all their money. In Swaziland you can use either their currency or the South African Rand, sort of like how we can use Canadian coins in Michigan. I once tried to pay with a Canadian quarter in Georgia and the shop owner looked at the quarter and said, "What is this? We don't take foreign money here." In Michigan and other border states, Canadian coins are as good as U.S. coins, except they don't seem to work in pop machines. Back to Swaziland: stunning, absolutely stunning. It felt good to be in Swaziland, especially being the 4th of July. Maybe it's because of the slight animosity toward America we have seen emerging in South Africa, especially since the Iraqi invasion and because President Bush was venturing on an African goodwill tour this week. Fortunately we did not breakdown until we were only about 10 minutes from Marloth Park, our final destination where we were to spend the next 3 days exploring Kruger National Park. That evening we roasted hot dogs over the fire, ate corn on the cob, and made s'mores, in an attempt to recreate what we might have normally been doing back home. However, I must say it was a difficult 4th of July. I'm sure this was coupled with the ongoing stress of Livingstone's continued fuel pump problems and our inability to take the necessary actions to resolve the problem. It was difficult thinking about the family back home at the Northport fireworks celebrating our freedom and the virtues for what America stands for. It was also difficult finding myself feeling like I needed to defend the morality of my culture and my President, especially on this night. This was the one day I wanted to feel proud to be an American and for what America stands for. As a result, I came out of the day feeling even more convinced that the American ideals of freedom and humanitarianism I hold so dearly are virtues I admire.

Marloth Park is a collection of chalets situated across the Crocodile River, on the southern edge of Kruger National Park. All sorts of wild animals roam freely through Marloth Park, including zebra, kudu, giraffe, and…lions. Yes, lions! It was only a week before we arrived that a man was nearly attacked by a male and two female lions--right outside his house! We even saw lion tracks on the dirt driveway leading up to our chalet. Lions in the driveway? Yes. We heard, from David--the groundskeeper, laundryman, car washer, etc., that lived in a hut on the back of the property--that lions often come onto the property to drink from a small pond in front of the chalet. Wow. So no wonder Andre was a bit nervous when I was out in the dark yanking the fuel pump out of Livingstone for the umpteenth time. Kruger itself was spectacular. The park is massive--about the size of Delaware--and over the course of 3 days we were only able to visit the extreme southern end. Still, we saw so many species of wildlife, all in their natural habitat. Elephant, giraffe, lion, leopard, hippo, crocodile, hyena, zebra, antelope of all shapes and sizes, rhino, buffalo--they were all there. We saw the "Big 5" (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, and rhino) over the course of a couple of days. My favorite were the giraffe. They are so graceful in their movements. One day we kept count of how many giraffe we came across, which was 21 or so. We came across a massive herd of buffalo--literally hundreds crossing the road in front of us. We also came across a pride of lions resting after a recent kill. We want to come back and spend a few weeks here at some point, actually camping in the park. Pictures and words can never describe the beauty this land holds. The closest we can relate it to is the National Geographic African specials that occasionally appear on television. Vast wilderness and wildlife. Our own animal, Livingstone, continued to breakdown while at Kruger, which added more stress to the trip. At one point I even had to get out in Kruger and pull the fuel pump out and shake it around a bit to get it working; all within a few hundred yards from a pod of hippos and crocodiles sunning on the bank of a pond. We eventually had Livingstone towed to a Land Rover dealer in a town about an hour away and rented a car for the duration of our Kruger stay. The Land Rover dealers were supposed to replace the fuel pump, which they eventually did, although they ordered the wrong pump and Andre and I had to tell them what to do to make the pump fit into Livingstone. And this was the official Land Rover repair shop. Needless-to-say, this fuel pump problem was now starting to cost a tremendous amount of money.

After Kruger, we spent two days with Andre's oldest daughter, Ankie, and her family in Leandra,near Johannesburg. Nico, Ankie's husband, is a doctor in a rural town about an hour east of Joburg. The town itself has about 3,000 people with 60,000 people living in shacks surrounding it. We found this pattern to be true everywhere in South Africa regardless whether small village or large city. The shacks and shantytowns dominate the living domiciles in this country, which continues to amaze us. Following our Joburg stay, which coincided with President Bush's visit to Joburg, we continued south through Guatang Province and into the Free State Province where we spent an evening in Clarens, a beautiful mountain town. We were even able to rent a couple of fly rods and took the kids down to the local dam to try out some trout fishing. I taught Katilee, Jack, and Bekah how to cast a fly line, which was a great joy for me. It sure made me miss the Moose Cabin, which is a family fishing and hunting haunt complete with old log cabin with a moose head over the fireplace where my brother Bill and I spend a lot of time in the river in the spring. What made Clarens different than elsewhere we visited in South Africa was the lack of brick and concrete barriers and electric fences surrounding all the houses. There was a great openness to this village and is another beautiful place where we could spend a week on a future visit. The next day we drove along the Lesotho border where we could see the country. We bypassed going into Lesotho due to the need to minimize the stress Livingstone had already added to the trip. Lesotho will have to wait until another visit.

Our final night's stay on this trip was at a beautiful country lodge called the Greathead Lodge. Old man Greathead was a trophy hunter 100 years ago and the lodge is full of animal heads hanging on almost every inch of wall space. Even a full crocodile hung on the wall. The walls were also covered with all sort of pictures of the animals he had killed during his hunting adventures. The lodge itself was beautiful and the family hosts were wonderful. I discovered they were also related to us by tying into Katherine and John of Gaunt, the great night who was the third son of England's King Edward III. What a small world indeed! We arrived back in Port Elizabeth via Graaff-Reinett, the town we visited when Kathy's parents were here, and it felt good to be back at the flat after this trip. For as much beauty and wildlife we saw, we were also plagued with a tremendous amount of stress from Livingstone and it's aftermath, both of which we could have done without.