After much organising for Olifants river Dave and I quickly organised a trip to Bushmans due to too much water on the Olifants. The plan was to do a two day stretch with an overnight stop somewhere after estcourt. However this plan went to pot when a slight hum in my engine turned into a blood curdling grind, just outside Warden. We where towed into Warden where I was informed that my gearbox had infact beaten the bullet. The car was fixed at the local garage/scrap yard/petting zoo/fanta bottle repository by a rather suspect looking character. Justin's heart was stolen by a local girl on a four wheeler.
We headed down to Estcourt and stayed a Bruce's (from Xtreme equipment) place. We had a few beers and played French poker, I lost and had to wash the pot.
On Sunday we headed down to the putin and sorted out drive round thanks to Bruce. A low level meant the river was a little boney, Dave can vouch for this after he broke and lost his paddle on a slightly submerged rock. It was a long paddle to the takeout on Weenen road with lots of interesting navigation due to the exposed boulder gardens.
Despite the mishaps it was a killer trip, thanks to everyone who came along. This trip was a classic case of if you want to do it sometimes you just have to make it happen.
4 comments:
Yup - turns out hanging on to two separate pieces of paddle (which don't float) is a lot harder than it seems... Ouch - I still feel like I've gone 36 rounds with a Heavyweight boxer, and now I need to get a new paddle... bollocks. I can't really complain too much though - a paddle is way cheaper than a gearbox... I wonder if I could make one out of fanta bottles...
Trip photos
Also - well done Neil for deciding to take the long-ass-kayak-paddle as a spare instead of another croc paddle... paddling a kayak with a croc paddle would have been not-good-times...
I think that Justin would be very disappointed if the Pink Mohawk he fell for didn't get a mention... he left part of his heart in Warden! Poor guy!
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