Slowly Getting Underway

 African Overlanders, Stellenbosch Farms

My little rondavel

I have now been here at the venerable overlanding institution of African Overlanders on the outskirts of Cape Town for a week, staying in a rondavel, the small, round thatch-roofed huts typical of southern Africa while Stanley is repaired and improved. Terri arrives tomorrow morning on a flight from Switzerland and by the middle of next week, we should be moving, although I'm reluctant to commit to that as delays are almost inevitable.

It has been a busy week. I arrived on Thursday and staggered around in a jet-lagged fog, looking at Stanley (I last laid eyes on him in July of 2018, when we put him into storage here) until I fell into bed. 

First view of Stanley

Our battered hatch-cover stickers

Friday was spent getting Stanley's engine serviced: all the fluids and filters got changed, new (and expensive!) glow plugs were installed (only 1 of the 4 old ones were in operating condition!), new brake pads and rear shocks were installed, and Danie, the mechanic here, had a good look over the entire undercarriage.

Getting a throrough once-over

Danie at work on the shocks

The camper half of Stanley hanging forlornly

On Saturday we winched the aluminum camping canopy out of the bed of the truck so that it could be repaired and re-seated. It blew sideways and backwards in early 2017 in a huge gust of wind (we had our canopy deployed, and it caught and amplified the force of the wind), and as a result it was no longer seated in the proper position. This put a lot of strain on the 4 bolts that held the camper in place, and they slowly bent and pulled out of position. In turn the camper canopy itself deformed and buckled in places. It really got bad during our 2018 trip around northern Namibia, so we decided that it was time to get it seen to. It was a very strange experience to have the canopy sitting on a trailer in the workshop here, with the pickup truck looking small and very naked, with the rear end sloping upwards since there was no longer the weight of the camper and its contents to compress the burly leaf springs on the rear wheels.

Some bucked and cracked aluminum and a useless bolt

My first-ever view of the bed of the pickup truck

Sunday being a day on which nothing is open in South Africa, we resumed operations on Monday by dropping off the pickup truck at a gearbox and differential specialist. During his inspection under the vehicle, and while test driving Stanley, Danie had noticed that the prop shaft underneath the vehicle seemed loose, and that there was a definite "clunk" at times as the vehicle was put into gear. Then when he looked at the oil that he drained out of the differential, he saw the glint of small bits of metal, meaning that something metallic was grinding itself into nothingness inside. We dropped off the truck and they diagnosed that a new differential was going to be needed, as well as a re-balancing of the prop shaft. It's a relatively expensive procedure, but necessary to keep the vehicle a going concern; the mechanics figured that sometime in the next 5000 km the entire differential would have ceased working, and it's definitely better to have it diagnosed and fixed here rather than, say, in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana!

Later on Monday a specialist aluminum welder came to African Overlanders, but decided that he couldn't really do the job properly on site. Instead on Tuesday we rented a big trailer, transferred the camper insert onto it and drove it to the welder's workshop. It was supposed to be done by tomorrow, but I've just had a call saying that it can't be finished until next Tuesday for reasons unknown.

Trundling off to the welding shop

Tomorrow (Friday), the pickup truck is supposed to be released from the differential workshop, so at least we will have transport, although we won't be able to put the canopy back on the truck until Tuesday. Then there will be lots of reconnecting wires and making sure everything is in working order. On Monday we will put on an entire set of new tires (including the spare), as the tires we have on there now have been sitting for 4 years and are dry and cracked. 

On the paperwork front, we have gotten ourselves a Carnet de Passage en Douanes (a CPD or carnet), an expensive piece of paper that is essentially a passport for the vehicle, guaranteeing that if we drive it into another country, we will drive it out again and not try to sell it in the country. It involves putting down a really large deposit (in our case nearly US$9000!) that will sit in a bank account here in South Africa and which will be released once we return the carnet, properly stamped for its entries and exits, to the Automobile Association of South Africa. It's a bit nerve-wracking, because essentially it means that we can't have Stanley break down in (say) Kenya so completely that he can't be revived. Stanley needs to be kept running long enough to make it back to South Africa, and that's always a bit of a risky bet. 

Terri transferred the money to the AA yesterday, and today we got word that the carnet has been processed and is about to be sent here by courier. This is the first time that we've needed a carnet; on our two previous iterations of Stanley's Travels, we only ventured as far north as Zambia, and since we have South African license plates on the car, we didn't need a carnet (unlike overlanders with European-registered vehicles, who require a carnet for most border crossings). Apparently Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are the four countries for which we most need a carnet, and we're hoping to hit all of them on this trip.

I've been messing around with video editing software lately, trying to get proficient enough that we can start putting out YouTube videos. I'm not sure we're going to become YouTube stars like the travellers that Terri follows, but it will be a new way to share the experience of overlanding, to go with our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter presences.

We're hoping to make it through Botswana and up to Livingstone, Zambia by late October to catch up on the goings-on at Olive Tree Learning Centre, the community elementary school that Terri has been funding, running and growing since 2007. Then our schedule is pretty open and flexible; we would like to spend a lot of time in Uganda, as well as poking around Rwanda and Burundi. We're not sure how long we'll spend in Tanzania and Kenya, as almost everything we're interested in (national parks, hiking, camping) is quite expensive, priced for wealthy Europeans and Americans who fly in for a couple of weeks. Then comes the more difficult part of the trip, as we're not sure that Ethiopia and Sudan will have their borders open for overlanders, as both countries are undergoing military and political turmoil. As I said, we will need to have a very flexible schedule, in case we need to turn around and drive back south from Kenya.

Tuesday was my birthday; I turned 54 and I keep shaking my head in wonder that I have somehow gotten so old without really growing up. I definitely feel my body more than I once did (my knees and elbows in particular), so I figure that's a signal that we need to get these big adventures underway sooner rather than later.

At any rate, it feels good to be back on the continent of Africa where Terri and I have built up such great memories. We will keep you posted on how things develop from here!

My morning view of iconic Table Mountain