Monday, April 19, 2010

The long and winding road (NOT!)

Well, having jumped around a bit in the last two posts, I'll get back on track with this one. We left Mokala Game Reserve at 6am the following morning (Tues 30th March), and headed out back through Kimberly onto the road to Groblershoop, then Upington and onto Twee Rivieren.


According to google maps, 733 km 12 hours 53 mins. First planned stop was to be in Upington (481 km 7 hours 26 mins). We were hoping it wasn't going to take us that long.

Hmmm... well it looked like it was going to be a long day. Thankfully we'd decided to break the trip by staying over at Mokala.

Well, we got into Kimberly just around 7:30am, and decided to stop at a shopping centre and get some breakfast, this took us to 8 o'clock, when we left Kimberly on the road to Groblershoop. Two things struck me as we headed out.


Can you see anything in particular in the image above? Taken through the front windscreen of my car. This is about and hour or so outside of Groblershoop, admittedly taken on the return trip, but hey, going either way it's still as straight!

Well, for me, the first was just how straight the road was, and the second just how empty! Not another car in sight. I'll have to install auto-pilot in my car for the next trip :-).

We arrived in Upington at about 11:45 (Approx 399km from Kimberly). OK, so google maps got that one wrong ... and estimated 5hrs and 38min, we did in 3hrs and 45min, without breaking any speed limits!

Stopped off at a filling station, and fortunately decided to check my oil and water reservoir. As I was checking I noticed that it looked as if the main hose feeding water from the radiator into the cooling system had started to leak. Asked the attendant if and where the nearest Nissan dealer was, fortunately just around the corner ... whew! Drove around there and asked if they could help us. We had to be at Twee Rivieren reception before 6:30pm to check in ... still another 260km to go. Plus time to repair!

Anyway they Nissan people were extremely helpful and obliging! We left the vehicle with them and wandered off to try and find somewhere to have lunch. An hour and a bit later I returned to the Nissan dealership, and they had fixed my car! Didn't have the exact spare, but they made a plan and sorted it out. Well done guys and thanks, for a mere R363.00 we were back on the road. A certain disaster averted had I not noticed the developing problem, and they had not been so accommodating.

So by 2pm we were back on the road. Eeiisshhh another long straight road:


I was interested to note that there are a number of road signs warning people to be careful because bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis) tend to cross the road.

Cute little creatures, aren't they? Well on that stretch of +-240km I counted 6 road kills of these lovely little animals, that was just on the way there, and on the return trip again another 7 or 8 fresh kills. Shocking.
Why is this happening? Are the people travelling these roads not meant to be nature lovers ... the road basically only goes to one place, the game reserve. Well, I try to stick to the advertised speed limit, and generally do fairly well at this, the cars we did see on this road were generally going much faster than us. I would imagine that the bulk of these kills happen either at night or early morning/evening. I presume because the traffic volume are so low on these roads and the roads a so straight the people take advantage of these factors and drive way over the speed limit.

Fortunately this was the only sad aspect on this trip. This post has also got too long, so I'll end off here for now.

All the best
Ivan
http://www.andersen.co.za/

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