December 1 - The Adventure Starts

 The Start of the African Legacy Adventure of the CORBETT Family

By Gaye Corbett

  Ernest and I have been dreaming and planning an African Adventure with our grandchildren for years and at last the Adventure has begun.

  As grandparents, we often look at what is an important legacy to leave your family when you have gone – is it money? Is it possessions? Is it knowledge? Is it wealth? I suppose it is all of those, but the most important to us is the love of life: developing the thing that blows your hair back, the thing that makes you excited to get up in the morning; and how do you do that? By experiencing life, by getting out there, by seeing how other people live, by getting involved with nature and, most importantly, by contributing to your group and others.

  So at the top of that list of experiences is what we call "an African adventure." You have to contribute, you have to experience life and you have to keep your wits about you or you will land up in a spot of bother which one way or another you will have to get yourself out of.

  Of course, these adventures are what blows our hair back! It is rough, tough and full of the unexpected and we hope that they catch this bug from us and go on to experience many more such adventures, with or without us.

The perfect crystal clear morning

Home for the next few weeks

Gaye and Ernest Corbett

The Henley's

So OFF we go!

Day 1

  We had our first hiccup on Friday. While trying to get her caravan packed up, Jacqui opened up a side flap and Luke happened to be standing right under it. It unfortunately opened with a jolt and landed on his head, pinning his head between the hard flap and the wheel. Oh my gosh, he was really quite badly hurt. A panicked trip to the doctor established no broken bones or serious damage. He just looked horrifically battered and bruised. However, the doctor did advise that he not travel for 24 hours so they could monitor him for concussion. This meant that they would leave a day after us and have to catch us up.

  Well, that is never a problem for Mark, as the first two days involved long distances and I knew Mark was not looking forward to having to drive with us in our slow hippo cars. He has a Dodge, which is sleek, fast and befitting the racing driver that he is. I also know it was a bit of a relief for him as he’d been trying to finish all his projects before embarking on the trip and he never has enough time for that. This unexpected delay bought him those few extra hours that he needed. We plan to spend two days at Guma Lodge so that would give him time to catch us up.

  Our day started very early at 5 o'clock! We’ve been looking forward to this for months so we didn't even need an alarm to get us up and going. Our scheduled departure time was for 6 o'clock but the Henley family was a little more difficult to get going. Tracy, who is the driving force in that family, had been up packing and doing her last business things until very early in the morning, so she wasn't much of a driving force that day. We eventually moved out at 7 o'clock and headed for Zeerust, where we had arranged to stop for breakfast.

  We ceremoniously drove out of the gate and turned right, drove down the road turned the corner and waited for Guy and Tracy. They didn't come, and didn't come, so we called on the radios and they didn't answer; something must be wrong! Eventually we used the cell phone only to find that they had turned left (which was the correct way to go, by the way) and were already on the Krugersdorp highway… Ooooops! The first miss! We learnt two things: a) someone's radio is not working and b) we need to stick together! Fortunately, our hippo is quite a bit quicker than Guy's one so we caught them up pretty quickly.

  Ernest had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that our radios were working. He had had them all serviced and made sure that they all talked to each other. Rudi had spent many hours installing them, but somewhere between all of that we couldn't talk to each other! Modern equipment is such an incredible advancement, yet such a curse when it goes wrong and for a bunch of technically challenged dummies, it becomes very frustrating. The radios are a vital piece of equipment on a trip like this and they’re a great safety net when you have three cars that need to be coordinated.

  We are all such a bunch of self-determined, stubborn individuals that we all tend to go in different directions if we aren't kept in tight formation and that control is achieved by this little thing called the radio. So I moaned at my poor henpecked husband for at least half an hour about the fact that he obviously Norbert-tested them after installation, until I decided 'we are on holiday, and to hell with it.’ Thank God for cell phones; they are a great backup, even in Botswana.

  As I said, the first day is always a long haul; Joburg to Kang is approximately a 10 hour drive and most of the way is a dead-straight boring road. We are lucky in South Africa because all our main roads are fenced, but in Botswana there are no fences so there are cattle and goats all over the place. The verges are fortunately very wide and the grass always quite manicured, but that attracts all the grazers and for some reason the grass is always greener on the other side, so the goats keep crossing the road, followed closely by the cattle.

Ernest, as you may know, doesn't slow down for anything so I spend my time pressing the non-existent brake pedal on my side of the car. We twice unceremoniously left the road... Once because the car in front of us, who could brake quickly, stopped for a cow that Ernest had not seen. We were a little close to him and as our hippo does not stop as quickly, Ernest decided to cross in front of the oncoming traffic, which had thankfully slowed down because of the cow, and we careened straight onto the side of the road and went bumping down the open field next to the road. We missed a few trees and managed to turn before we hit the fence that happened to 'existence' just at that point.

  Ernest then geared down, turned the hippo’s nose towards the road, back up onto the tar and we were off without missing a beat… Except the beating of my heart, which definitely missed a few beats. I must admit I was very impressed at the springs on the hippo, and at my husband’s quick thinking.

  The second roadside detour happened when a cow decided to cross the road, got 10 steps in, had a 'senior moment' and couldn't remember where she wanted to go. That time we had fortunately slowed down a little (emphasis on ‘a little’) and we passed her on the inside. Again, it was a bumpy road with a slope that makes you feel like you are surfing down one of those waves and you just know you are going to hit that sand at the bottom of the wave. Well, fortunately I don’t have a brake pedal on my side of the car, as I would have hit it and we would have turned over. Ernest’s name is 'Put Foot' and that worked for him.

  When you sit in the car for three hours looking at a straight road, you starting thinking about all the things you have forgotten to bring. I swear we have everything including the kitchen sink but even after spending two days pushing loaded trollies around the supermarket, there are still things that I have forgotten. I suddenly remembered the eggs, how on earth could I have forgotten all the eggs? Fortunately there are little towns all the way up to Botswana, and would you believe it, they all have a Shoprite or a Checkers. However, to get in and out of them is a nightmare. They were all packed with shoppers so I’m glad I was only buying eggs and not my usual trolley-load.

  We arrived at our previously-booked lodge, 'The Kalahari Rest, at just before 6PM. A little later than expected, but then breakfast, petrol and supermarket stops had taken their toll. The little lodge / campsite was delightful. We took a chalet for the bath and the toilet but slept in the trucks as there were swarms of mosquitos in the chalet. Apparently there is no malaria there (we hope) as we got hundreds of mosquitos inside the car and inside our nets, and we were bitten to hell. It made us realize that we have to be a lot more careful as we go further North, as the malaria risk increases.

  We decided to eat at The Kalahari Rest restaurant… a mistake, as the food was a bit dodgy and poor Tracy landed up eating a very meager salad for supper – good for the figure! But anyway, it saved hauling out all the cooking stuff. The owner of the lodge has-hand reared a Wildebeest, which wonders around the lodge, into the reception, into the bar and stands over your dinner table waiting for her food. Oh my gosh, you get the biggest fright as this beast comes walking up to you and tries to get you to scratch her head. She actually placed her head right onto my front and every time I stepped back she would take another step forward. I didn't know what to do – scream and run or push her away. When we realized that she is completely placid and hasn't harmed anyone, we all relaxed and just enjoyed the moment of being so close to nature.