I was a little Christmas heavy in that last post, wasn’t I?
I feel I need to make it up to you. Let me offer you an escape route from all the festive drab that’s surely heading our way. (I’ve changed my tune.)
And yes, while this is another gift from me to you, let’s just call it an early birthday gift. Or a token of goodwill. Or a little something to remind yourself of me.
Call it what you like. This is your blueprint into another world of Peter Rimmer, away from the carol singing and family squabbles.
Here’s an extract Peter wrote for ‘Your Magazine’, in August 1976. Hope you enjoy!
This was distributed for the residents of Bervliet, Constantia, Diep River, Heathfield, Kristenhof, Kreupelbosch, Meadowridge, Plumstead and Tokai.
A Place in the Sun
If you wish to take your wife on a do-it-yourself safari then read on, but carefully. If you see a chink of light through the road of our disaster then do the opposite of what we did. On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who thrives on not knowing what the morrow will bring then you are our kind of people. You must go off immediately and purchase the oldest Dormobile you can find and eradicate from your mind any secret information you may have stored concerning the internal combustion engine, gas fridges, jacks for lifting cars and gas stoves. With such a mind as free as air you will set out on the journey with an aura of jauntiness and confidence. You will enjoy yourself. You will certainly have a holiday to remember!
The idea was to gently tour the depths and breadths of Southern Africa stopping as the whim took our fancy. We stopped, certainly, but quite often where the Dormobile fancied!
The road took us north from Cape Town to Windhoek and then across to the Skeleton Coast up to Cape Cross on that stretch of salt road that runs beside the Atlantic. After reaching the limit of that road we came about and headed up to the Etosha Pan. From there on South for a while and due East through the Gemsbok Kalahari Park where we lost such interesting items as our spare wheel and the exhaust system. The corrugations were miniature mountains. We drove into Johannesburg making the most violent noise. But then any of you living in that city will remember us well. We apologise.
North again to Rhodesia and into the Centenary to see at first hand how the war was going. The terrorists must have thought of us as the ultimate in secret weaponry because they left us alone. Then up to Kariba and across the lake in the ferry to Mlibizi and the Victoria Falls and on into Chobe.
But let me start at the beginning.
The advice from our friends was abundant and I only wish we had taken more of it. These notes are for those of you who wish to plan your trip instead of hazarding a guess.
Buy a good vehicle. Take plenty of water. Don’t forget a manual - “What’s a manual?” I had asked, but he was gone to the other side of the Forresters Arms before I could solicit a reply.
Plenty of spares - points, plugs, condensers, fan belts, headlight bulbs, tow ropes, fire extinguishers and tools. “Take a course my lad, in motor engineering,” to which I thought my friend meant the manufacture of an automobile and by then I had bought the Dormobile anyway! Get a good map. Snake bite outfit. Plenty of medical supplies. Warm clothes - “a winter’s Kalahari night is colder than the snow”.
The word running through it all was “plenty”. Plenty was the talisman. With this commodity all would be well.
Having ignored most of this advice, the Dormobile, with 80,000 kilometers on its clock, set out with the Cape Town rains blustering and scurrying the clouds for greener waters to the South. Folks waved and smiled a little thinly. It was clear that they did not expect us to reach the bottom of Strand Street. The large trunk on the roof was loaded with wine. Someone had once said to me that the world would be a finer place where everyone born with half a bottle of wine in their stomachs. I managed a turn from the wrist while gauging the weight of the wheel and the tone of the engine noise; not that the latter meant anything to me at all, but one has to look professional at the beginning of a trip.
It is a long, long road to Windhoek, especially if after only the second day you are found to be wearing your spare pair of glasses which gave you a headache. I dislike getting out of the bed in the morning, and will go to considerable lengths to avoid this act of cold and misery. Some say that any man rising before ten is asking for a thrombosis and I quite agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately, “mine” is an early riser. An’ up, up and let’s go the moment the sun trips the switch of day. I have this tea weakness which she exploits. And that was the cornerstone of our first disaster. Before resting my weary head on completion of our second, miraculously accident free day on the road, I had stretched back from the couch of night and placed my glasses behind me on the unit that closes over the stove. Or that was how I thought it was as I sank down in a gentle world that was free of engine noise.
Now here is a recommendation that comes from my heart. If you wear contact lenses , do have a pair of ordinary glasses ready for the early mornings!
“Mine” unable to see , stretched back and turned on the gas stove with the daylight just nibbling the morning sky. I remained dogged and gave a good imitation of being fast asleep. I head the match flare and then, as bakelite will tell, dawn was upon us all of a hurry. Long, yellow flames inside mobile caravans are dangerous. Even more so if the only two remnants of the human race are stuck without their means of sight. And, of course, I could not remember where I had put the fire extinguisher. Being a man that is full of the faith in providence I had not nailed it to the wall. Now see the upheaval of sheets and blankets all clearly visible in the vicious glow of my burning glass frames which had been resting on the stove. The general pandemonium of hunt the fire extinguisher. The Gods being with us for a moment and me finding it but not being able to see which end to press. And then pressing and the jet hitting “mine” instead of the three foot flames. If the baboons had happened to be taking their turn, and looking at us, they would have had a merry time. It was only by chance the foam soaked my glasses and everything went black.
It was just as well we were heading for Windhoek, for after two days of intensive drinking and learning my first words of German at the Beer Festival, I grew used to my glasses. And that was important for the game of Etosha. By this stage, and after four hours of intensive care of this distributor, situated, as I found it, under the bonnet, I had come to terms with the true worth of spare points and condensers and the need for a manual. But, as they say in the classics, there is no pleasure without pain.
There is peace at Etosha. An animal world. A place for humans in their cage and watched by them the animals. And this, their world, their heritage to have and live and let the nature of them all be governor of their fate.
By now the tensions of a city life had gone and a different world became our life for weeks on end. And when the Dormobile played its tricks it did not matter anymore.
Then on to a troubled land. Great farm land. Rich. Valuable. Worth taking now the trees are stumped and the lands are ploughed for growing. No-one bothered much before. A farmers tank, useless in the sun, a bullet hole from end to end. And me and mine deep in the operational area and stuck to our axle in the Mutwa river. It is not easy to cross rivers without a four wheel drive! I believe we were the first tourists to take in the attractions of Mount Darwin and the North East border area. The hospitality was something to gladden the heart of any traveller.
We drove down the dirt road to Bindura to be told at the other end that we had just driven over land mine mile, so carried on into Salisbury a little hurriedly and took the road to Kariba. A ferry down the lake Kariba. 18 hours. Great turbines for the power of modern life and starting from the bush. A wish, for moments in a star filled, balmy night, to stay in the bush and bring the power of being back to earth. A true earth full of grass and trees. A drive then and straight on to Botswana. And finally we came to the banks of the Chobe river. Steep climb down to the flow of heavy water. Great trees clinging to the banks and spreading like a ballet dancer to the tip of balance, poised to watch the flotsam flowing to a new berth and confluence with the big river further down. And then the rush of life and plunge to the chasm of the gorge at the place of The Smoke That Thunders.
But we had come to the bush in easy stages. We were ready for the climate and all it gave. The night where the sky was clear enough to pick. Whole trees for logs and stews with beans and an ear of chilli for the colder night. That sweet, small fridge with a flow of frosted beers. Monkeys pinching what they could in crusts of toast and lids left off the stewing pot. Camp chairs for the evening plop of fish and the sun sinking with the richest colours of all our world. A total therapy for modern life.
But others came like a comet from the sky. Quick, indeed, but it has its drawbacks. The change from modern to ancient is far too swift.
The Chobe Game Lodge, well known as a repository for international lovers, was situated some three miles down river from our camp. And between that oasis of clean sheets and ourselves rested the limp length of the air strip. The only difference between the air strip and the rest of the bush was a lack of trees. The routine, so we were to learn later, was to buzz the hotel to confirm the booking and summon the hotel’s land rover and to buzz the “runaway” to frighten off the elephants. Even if I have to say so myself, having become a seasoned safariest!... that part of Africa is wild. The elephants rule in their hundreds.
The best time to look for game is in the evening and this was our habit… Well I heard it first and ignored the phantom of imagination. I was not prepared to accept that the animals had learnt American English. I looked in my rear view mirror. There were four of them. You can always tell Americans in the bush. The “plane” had left them at the end of the runway and seeing the return free of game had taken off immediately! After three hours alone they were in a state of heat and nervous collapse.
And then came that fishing trip with “mine” catching ten tigerfish and me only three. Weight 150 kgs in two hours and we had never fished before. The sheer exuberance of each catching a fish at the same time… But the river ran and with it time and we came to the Falls and the scenic wonder of the world. The big river. The great Zambezi. A crocodile for basking on the banks of sand. A fish eagle in the cry for food. The river God in all its power. A final talisman for setting suns and the purity of life. The wilds. We came to the river for our souls and thirst, all of us, the crocodile and me. The Elephant and the Kudu in their dainty feet to paw mark in the mud and paddle in that flow and majesty of life. The gentle world of man and beast. The bush.