OOPS
Yes, a Hilux can also get stuck
We are from Windhoek and were quite overwhelmed by the pretty town of Graaff-Reinet and the Camdeboo National Park, and then overjoyed about the rain in January 2017! After three weeks in Port Elizabeth, we had two days to explore this part of the country on our way home through the Kgalagadi. But they would turn out to be two very eventful ones. The staff at Camdeboo gave us the number to the combination locks needed to drive the Drie Koppies 4x4 trail. We drove through puddles on the whole route since it had rained the day before. After driving around for three hours we came to a gate without a combination lock. What to do now? It was already after 4 in the afternoon and we couldn’t drive all the way back and still make it out of the park before closing time. So we took a road that was clearly marked with a ‘no entry’ sign in the hope that it could be a short cut. Or at least perhaps run into someone who could unlock the gate for us. A sign at Diepkloof had warned that the road shouldn’t be driven in wet conditions or pending rains. And then suddenly I heard Tiaan say: “We’re stuck!” and the Hilux made a sound that didn’t bode well. Tiaan gets out and sinks up to his knees in the mud. We had done shopping in Port Elizabeth and Mum had added provisions (bottled curry fish and pineapples) so the Hilux was loaded, to say the least. Tiaan had attached our high-lift jack with a DIY-patent to the back of the bakkie just before we left Windhoek and now we had a chance to use it. But every time we cranked it, the jack sank about 20 centimetres into the mud. Our flip-flops were wet and heavy with mud and we saw thorns everywhere, so to walk and look for things like rocks and logs was difficult. Not that there were much of those around in the first place! Eventually we dragged a dry tree stump underneath the jack so it wouldn’t keep sinking. Luckily the mud started drying too and we could use our little camp shovels, which I later renamed “The soup spoons”. We also ended up using some droppers from a broken fence under three of the wheels. The dark clouds were still above our heads and at one point it looked as if we were stuck in a river. Three hours later, at half-past-seven in the evening, we finally got out. What a relief! We went up Diepkloof again and arrived at 21:30 back at our campsite in Graaff-Reinet. The next day a man called Albertus in Graaff-Reinet struggled for two hours with a high pressure cleaner to get all the mud off and we even had to remove the tyres to make sure all the mud was out. Thank goodness for my husband who decided to pack the Hi-Lift at the last second, otherwise we would probably still be there.