North Gate and that infamous bridge
Trip Start
Jul 09, 2008
1
15
20
Trip End
Jul 30, 2008
Where I stayed
North Gate Campsite
Moremi Game Reserve,
Botswana
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
North Gate
. We all got out stunned but relieved that everyone was OK, but for what seemed like forever we all just stood and looked not quite sure what to do next. Water was still pouring out of his crushed radiator and the right wing of our car was pushed hard against the tyre, neither of us were going anywhere. Mind you where would we go as we were miles from any town? Out came the satellite phones - thank goodness we went back for ours (we had forgotten it after the debriefing and had to go back the next day to pick it up). It turned out that for both of us the Botswana representative was the same company. We knew immediately that the Germans weren't going anywhere in their car so they called to get recovered. I'm not sure how long they would have waited, most of the day I should think. Our car didn't look as bad if we could just prize the wing off the tyre we might be able to limp to the campsite. It was then as if by magic our saviour appeared; a South African, tinny in hand - and it was only 9.30! Magically he had a wrench and managed to prize the bodywork away from the tyre. He muttered something in Afrikaans and got us to put up the bonnet. He pulled a few pipes around and told us that we were also leaking fluid from the power steering - was that serious we asked? You'll need to get it looked at but you should be able to get to Maun. Looking at the German's car he dismissed it saying that they weren't going anywhere and asked them if they were the same car he had pulled out of a ditch the day before? Obviously the Germans weren't having too much luck with the driving here!
Isn't it funny when for ages you see nobody then all of a sudden another four vehicles appeared, a couple of large game drive trucks and two more 4WDs
Mending that infamous bridge!!
. We'd had the foresight to use the red warning triangle as my big fear was that other cars could plough into us as we stood in the road. With only one track nobody was going anywhere until we moved the cars off the road. Incredibly the German's car started and he was able to drive it out the way. S for us it looked like we would be able to go on now having had the tyre released from the crushed wing. We thanked the South Africans and nodded solemnly to the Germans - 'hope you'll be OK,' I said sadly. We put on our hazards and slowly and gingerly started off, it was then that another game drive truck was coming towards us - my goodness it was like the M25! He stopped expecting us to go off-road to let him pass, I got out and explained that we had just had an accident and couldn't. Apparently he wasn't allowed to go off road and demanded that we do, we stood firm and very angrily he drove round us nearly tipping out his guests - how rude but then we had heard how unhelpful the Private Lodges can be.The car drove better than we could have dared hope and we made North Gate in fairly good time. As we got there I could see there was a problem on the bridge beyond the Ranger Post. A young female ranger came out and told us a lorry had broken down on the bridge earlier in the day and that nobody could get in or out. We couldn't believe it, we had got here and now we couldn't get in - what a day! Incredibly as we were just about to make a decision and go on to Xakanaxa Campsite and hope we could get in there the tractor finally started to move, pulling the lorry behind it
Yawning hippo
. To describe North Gate Bridge as a bridge at all would be an exaggeration, it is in fact a lot of wooden logs piled on top of each over to provide a bumpy and distinctly unsafe way to cross the river. In the books it is described as a pole bridge but it was still not what I expected. The broken down lorry had caused some damage, but this was not a problem, a few more logs were piled on top and it was fixed - or so we hoped. Bravely we let someone else go on it first, just to check it was indeed safe and wasn't about to disintegrate the moment we drove onto it. Then it was a minute of the most bone-shaking metres we had ever driven. The logs seemed to rattle and spin beneath our tyres, were we to have survived a road accident only to be swept away downstream? Incredibly we made it to the other side and the relief was palpable.
We decided that the accident was not going to ruin our holiday and the leaking fluid only came out when the engine wasn't running so why not go for a game drive. This is a lovely area exploring close to the Khwai River and the best place to see hippo. We even had one running across in front of the car, its little stunted legs carrying it pretty quickly when you think of the quivering weight it is carrying. Once more the GPS came into its own as it is very difficult to get your bearings with the numerous tracks in the road. We realised right turns were a slight problem as the plastic mud flap had been displaced in the accident and grated on the tyre every time we turned, slightly embarrassing and were we going to frighten any wildlife in the area with such a rasping noise?
North Gate campsite is lovely but the facilities were the worst we had come across. They were obviously in the process of building new ones - goodness knows they were needed but sadly for us these were far from finished. There are lots of baboons and vervet monkeys around and you have to be really careful not to leave anything that they could take. We lost a bag of rubbish, contents strewn over the ground before we even knew it was happening and we thought we had been careful and vigilant. We had even heard of cameras being taken and lenses crushed - they will steal absolutely anything.
