Sunday, April 21, 2013

DOING IT

Can hardly believe I drove down from there!



IN REHANA'S WORDS


Monday April 15, 2013


“We’re doing it!” Jules and I often exclaimed to each other during our Lesotho meander. What we mean by this is that we’re finally on the road, we’re finally living our dream and we haven’t crashed or burned yet.
I knew as we came down Sani Pass last Friday that I would need time to digest what we had just done, but I didn’t expect to dawdle this long over writing it down. We’ve been in Durban for four days already.
It’s hard to describe coming down that pass. One thing I know for sure is that Jules and I are now 4x4 drivers. Just one more thing to learn – driving in sand – but that’s a problem for next week. We made it down the Sani Pass and we have a car that could take us down.
I think the best way to come down that pass is the way I did it. In the passenger seat for the worst part, clutching a just-opened can of coke in the one hand and a small dog in the other. I couldn’t reach for the dashboard or hold onto the door handle for dear life.  I could, however, frantically pump my foot up and down under the cubbyhole, searching for a brake pad that wasn’t there.
I didn’t know where to look. I was terrified when I peered under the dashboard on the driver's side and saw Julia wasn’t using the brakes, the car was actually holding onto the road and keeping us from dropping down the sheer precipice centimetres away from two of its tyres.
I couldn’t look at the road ahead of us. Not another switchback, and this one so narrow, with a cliff face jutting into its corner. I think there were only six switchbacks on Sani Pass, but it felt like sixty.
When I managed to pry my eyes away from the sheer drop below us and Julia’s shoulders in my lap and she tried to help the car round a brutal corner, the view was indescribable. I can’t string it all together in a sentence that will do it justice, but these are the individual elements: snow clinging to the southern slopes of a high peak; waterfalls cascading down brown boulders; streams of water crisscrossing the gravel and stony road; proteas in bud; the smell of rich loam and sharp fynbos; green slopes spotted with sheep and the ice rats Pikachu’s so obsessed with;  a stream that becomes a fat river rushing down a gorge.


We drove down to this

At the bottom of Sani Pass, after we climbed out of the car to unlock our diffs on the front wheel hubs (kwaai ho!), driving on the tar was tame. We were doing it!

We camped on Friday night on a farm outside Himeville. The owner, Kelvin Strachan, had driven to Somalia a few years back and was a veritable mine of information. He asked us to look for his grandfather’s grave, in Alexandria. He was also Kelvin Strachan, and had died in World War ll. Which reminded Jules that she should look up her great-uncle who died in the war. John Bryant is buried somewhere in Nairobi. If anyone has any relatives who need looking up in their war or other graves, we’re available.
We’re now in Durban, doing a last bout of car fixing and shopping. We’re headed for Mabibi, in northern KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday to snorkel till our skins wrinkle and to learn how to drive on soft sand. Still doing it.


Julia running to join us for the victory photo


Julia ran faster this time


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