How I met your mother

When technology fails you in the middle of nowhere, your mind visits some strange places, says Cyril Klopper.

Where has the trail gone? I wonder as the dry riverbed I’m driving in ends against a black wattle thicket. Wait a minute… ah, up ahead it takes a sharp left, over the river’s embankment. I frown when I see how high the embankment is. The Isuzu mu-X I’m driving isn’t really designed for such obstacles.

I’m in the Eastern Cape, scouting for an interesting back road from Gauteng to the Addo Elephant Park. When I was planning my trip, the Katberg Pass seemed like a good candidate and my wife told me about the nearby Devil’s Bellows Pass she had tackled 13 years prior with a VW CitiGolf. Back then, we were newly wed and she worked for Nature Conservation. She had to drive the Devil’s Bellows to take census of invasive alien plants, and she remembers how she had to stack rocks to get het Golf through ditches and holes. But she never mentioned embankments! I get out to have a look. Yip, I’m going to have to stack rocks. The mu-X doesn’t have the necessary approach angle and ground clearance to get over this embankment without assistance.

I find only sand and twigs in the riverbed, and so I walk up a slope to collect rocks from a ledge. Along the way, I discover the overgrown remains of the original road – this is probably where my wife drove in her Golf. I hadn’t seen it earlier and mistakenly followed the river’s dry course!

It takes me almost an hour to carry enough rocks from the ledge to the riverbed, but I’m finally ready to attempt it. I get back behind the wheel, push the starter button and crawl up my ramp. Occasionally, I peek through the open window to see if the front wheels are pointing in the right direction.

I carefully make my way up the stone ramp and the Isuzu’s nose lifts skyward. The front wheels come to a rest on top of the embankment and I lift my foot off the accelerator pedal and pull on the handbrake. Goodness, but the Isuzu is at such an angle, it feels as though it could launch like a rocket to the moon!

To make sure the rear wheels are going to follow up the ramp, I open the door and look back. Yes, it’s looking good. Suddenly, the Isuzu’s engine stutters and dies. What the hell? I hit the starter button and the motor cheerily sings: “Chee-chee-chee-chee-chee...” but achieves nothing.

I SIT THERE for a while and ponder the issue. Surely it has to be fuel, but the tank is a quarter full? Then I realise the Isuzu is at such an angle that the diesel is at the bottom end of the tank, and now the pump is sucking in empty air.

I climb down the running board and stand with arms akimbo next to the stricken vehicle. If I could just get the Isuzu level, the pump will draw diesel again. I could put the automatic transmission in neutral and try to push the Isuzu from the top, but then there won’t be anyone to pull up the handbrake – and if this car gets rolling, it will tear headlong into that black wattle thicket. And that could lead to huge damage.

My wife was lucky to be able to follow the original trail and not deal with this embankment. It’s our 14th wedding anniversary today and I would like to call her to say thank you for the good years thus far and for our beautiful child, but there is no cellphone reception at the foot of Devil’s Bellows.

My wife and I met in England in 1999, when we both worked in London in an effort to make enough money so that we could tour Europe. Six years thereafter, in a lion research hide in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, I went on bended knee to ask for her hand in marriage.

Suddenly my nostalgia is interrupted by a cunning plan: I can get the Isuzu off the bank by digging out the soil behind the front wheels so that the Isuzu can roll back on its own accord while I keep my hand on the handbrake. I pick up a branch and start digging away. It’s hot and I understand where the pass got its name. After stabbing at the dirt for about an hour, my hands are raw and bloody, but the wheels are free and the Isuzu should roll back when I let go of the handbrake.

I get back in, push the starter button – “chee-chee-chee” – so that I can jam the gear selector into neutral. Then I lower the handbrake ever so slightly and the Isuzu indeed slowly rolls back. Success!

…I do remember a giraffe’s coarse tongue against my face and a little blonde girl beaming with delight as she embraces a llama

BACK ON LEVEL ground, I press the starter button, now with full confidence that the pump will draw diesel. The starter motor is eager, but the engine refuses to cooperate. A light with a wrench symbol flashes on the instrument panel. I press the button repeatedly, but nothing. The fuel hoses or perhaps the injectors are blocked by air

bubbles, I realise. I get out and sit morosely in the shade of a tree and sip on my dwindling water supply.

I’m so miffed at that starter button. In older vehicles, you can turn the key one click until the diesel pump and the coil switches on (without starting up the engine). Then you switch everything off again, turn the key one click again to prime the system, and repeat the process until, with a little bit of luck, the air bubble is flushed out. With this newfangled automatic starter button, such delicate MacGyvering is impossible. Damn you, technology! Settle down, don’t despair. It’s not entirely true that I met my wife in England. I think back to the day our parents were first introduced to one another. Her dad and my mom chatted about holidays in the Cape and discovered that both our families vacationed in the High Noon Game Reserve near Villiersdorp in 1978. My wife and I were both six-year-olds at the time.

My future father-in-law spoke of his daughter who so loved the llamas. My mother completed his sentence by recounting how she saw a girl who held a baby llama by the neck and screamed blue murder when her parents tried to separate her from the animal. My father-in-law asked in amazement if we were the family who scrambled out from a Chev Nomad when a giraffe stuck its head through an open hatch in the roof.

My memory of 1978 is hazy at best, but I do remember a giraffe’s coarse tongue against my face and a little blonde girl beaming with delight as she embraces a llama.

I hit the starter button for the umpteenth time, and the starter motor sings its annoyingly cheerful tune: “Chee-chee-cheechee-chee”, but the engine still won’t take. It’s no good to sit here and feel sorry for myself. Judging by the lack of tyre tracks it could be days or perhaps weeks until someone does the Devil’s Bellows again.

I LAY OUT THE following on the bonnet of the Isuzu: one handheld GPS that shows the nearest town, Whittlesea, at 40 km away; one wind-up torch in case it gets dark before I get to Whittlesea; two bags of peanuts and raisins, because Napoleon said an army marches on its stomach; one Navy SEAL knife for when I have to defend against a hungry beast; and two phosphorus glow sticks, who knows what for.

I stuff everything in a knapsack along with a windbreaker and write a note to place in the Isuzu’s windshield: “Engine trouble. Name, ID number, on foot en route to Whittlesea. Departed at 3pm, Monday, November 4th. Call my wife on this number if I didn’t make it.” Drama queen.

My stomach feels hollow at the thought of abandoning the vehicle and hiking out of the mountains on foot. If only I hadn’t stopped against that embankment. If only I’d done it in one go. I wouldn’t be in this predicament. But it’s no use crucifying myself. It’s time to start walking if I want to be in Whittlesea before midnight.

I turn around for one last time and take a hard look at the Isuzu. Maybe I should give that starter button one last try.

“Chee-chee-chee-chee-chee-chee-cheechee-chee-chee-chee. Vroom.”