Pom Pom

Camp #2 was at Pom Pom Camp in the Okavango Delta, only accessible by small plane as noted in the previous post. As a result, we were very much secluded from the entire world and were joined by only two Canadian couples and Cecil, camp host and one of the most interesting people you could ever meet. Days were spent cruising around looking for the leopard, enjoying sundowners. Nights started with fabulous food and cocktails around the campfire.

Full set of picture of Pom Pom Camp may be accessed here:

Here's our "tent":



and our view of the Delta:

Bush Flight - Kasane to Pom Pom airstrip

We left the Elephant Valley Lodge around 11:00 a.m. or so and went directly to the airport in Kasane. We were met by a guy who took our bags, went to find our pilot, took us through the x-ray screening, and then into the "departure lounge." (JP: where we stayed for all of 30 seconds) I kind of muffed the tip exchange. I think he was pissed. (JP: We put Ryan in charge of all the tipping, we thought it would be a good idea.)

So we walked onto the tarmac and were greeted by our pilot. He was a laid back Canadian dude named Richard who had been flying in Botswana for about 6 months.


Here's the plane: a Cessna 210.







Here's Katy and me inside right before takeoff. Katy's nervous.

JP: And this is even before I took the controls. I was telling both of them the entire week that I wanted to fly the plane, they said there was no way ...







Takeoff


Here's Jon Pan holding down the controls (JP: I didn't even need to ask, I think he saw me eyeballing the controls):




















Panelia Earhart







As we neared the Pom Pom Camp, the pilot dipped down to look for game. We dove to the left and to the right and saw a few things. Here's the view.
















After taking these shots, I started to feel really queasy. The landing came just in time.





Here it is:

Cubs feeding, driver fearless

Lion hunt

Chobe National Park

Full pictorial coverage of the game found at Chobe may be found below:

Chobe Game Drive #1

Chobe Game Drive #2

Here's a sampling:

Eugene, incredible vision. Able to drive in darkness.

Elephants, they eat dirt for the minerals to make their tusks strong

Giraffes, they're tall (my personal favorite)

Warthogs, they're just ugly

Impalas, buddies with the baboons

Nile Croc, super jaw strength, surprisingly spry (no zoom used)

Hippos, they make their presence know. They like mud too.

Cape Buffalo, one of the "Big 5"

and Lions, fierce

Elephant Valley Lodge

A sample from Elephant Valley Lodge by Chobe National Park. For the full gallery, click here:

Elephants at adjacent watering hole

Our accommodations

Milo, the zebra mongoose

With Charles

more Vic Falls

I almost forgot, we have some videos:

The thrashing sounds of Victoria Falls




and "Hey Baboon!"

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls at sunset

We've been writing quite a bit about our first week. Some may think a bit too much, you can talk to the Editor-in-Chief about that, but if you remember our post about Week 2, we promised more pictures. We will keep our promise (at least I will), but who knows what the EIC will decide to do.

Our idea is that if you have any questions about the pictures, where we were, what it is, anything at all, just ask, we'll answer. Deal? Deal! Alright!

Pictures of Victoria Falls may be found here:

Here's a preview:

Rainbow over Vic Falls

Resident baboons (we saw a lot of baboons, up close and personal)

Katy and Ryan before getting closer to the Falls (before crossing over to Knife's Edge, comfortably dry)

On Knife's Edge, in the "mist." Very wet.

It can't be that dangerous, can it?

Even though most of us now have two stamps for arriving in South Africa, we have not left the airport until now. We were looking forward to starting Week 2 off on the right foot with a relaxing evening in Johannesburg, but ...

Is Johannesburg really as dangerous as they say? We wouldn't know, we really didn't want to find out either since the only reason we even spent a night in Joburg was because of our flight schedule. We stayed out by the airport, better safe than sorry. Here are a few observations:

• Johannesburg feels like a European country, except more dangerous
• Business style hotels are the same wherever you are in the world, they all have some sort of continental breakfast or breakfast buffet in the morning
• I really really like hot showers but maybe not as much as Ryan

Even though we didn't make it into Johannesburg proper, maybe Joburg is as dangerous as they say, this is what we learned:

• our hotel was more securely guarded than the U.S. embassy in Lilongwe
• there are places where you can have your car equipped with flame-throwers to fend off would be carjackers
• no one takes cabs, to go out to restaurants, the restaurant will send a car to your hotel to pick you up and then return you to your hotel after dinner
• we went to the restaurant by the hotel and had to go through two doors, both manned by security

With all this in mind, we were stoked to be going out to dinner, looking forward to a nice meal:

a bottle of South African wine

and trying to get used to not having Lemon Squeezy and Cheese on Toast with us, it'll only be the three of us from here on out


For one extra photo go here: Johannesburg

Start of Week 2

How's everyone doing? If you've made it this far, thank you.

Our goal for Week 2 posts, less stories, more pictures, we promise.

Lilongwe Strikes Back!

Lilongwe must have a close relationship with Rumphi, maybe it didn't like the way we pre-judged Rumphi, we should've sent an apology to Lilongwe too, lesson learned. Either way, Lilongwe must've been upset at us. You'd have thought we were safely back in Lilongwe, said our good-byes with Moya and should have had a nice quiet night before flying out the next day. Boy, were we wrong.

On the bus, Dan mentioned receiving a message about an incident back at the house with his roommate and a Rasta front-man son of the landlord. Details not really important, we'll get back to that. Malawi wasn't going to let us go quietly:

After spending the entire day on the bus traveling back to Lilongwe, we were hungry so we decided to go to a restaurant for dinner that Dan had mentioned previously. We took a cab from the bus depot to the restaurant. The restaurant was not located in an area from which it would be easy to hail a cab, so we asked the cab driver to return in about an hour to drive us the rest of the way to the house. I don't think the cab driver understood what Dan was saying. Anyway, I don't remember what the specialty at the restaurant is but once we walked in the doors, the power went out, Lilongwe was laughing. (Fortunately, they had some food cooked, it was something).

We waited around awhile after dinner for the cab driver to return. He never did. So we made out on our own. On the way out to find a ride, Katy puts one foot in a gaping gutter and fell flat on her face bruising both knees and scraping up both hands pretty bad. Katy fought back tears.

Dan negotiated with the driver of a flat-bed truck who was parked next to an adjacent gas station to take us the rest of the way to the house. It worked out pretty well actually.

So this brings me back to the incident at the house while we were away. Like I said, details of what happened aren't too important, I really don't remember. The important part is that there was some sort of altercation and the guy from the VSO who was renting the house decided, without consulting Dan, to move everything out of the house, including all of the mattresses. Lucky for Dan, he had locked his door and there was still one twin mattress.

After all of that, we thought we would have to sleep on the linoleum floor without blankets or any other cushion for our last night in Malawi. Very compassionately, Noel, who worked at the house, lent us a foam mattress and blanket for the night for Katy, Ryan, and me. He insisted his family didn't use the mattress themselves, but I have my doubts. Thank you Noel!

Malawi had one more surprise in store for us, however: our flight from Lilongwe to Joburg. Someone wasn't feeling well on the flight before us, not feeling well at all, not feeling well at all and sitting in the last row. We were sitting in the 2nd to the last row. It didn't smell very good, like the smelly guy sitting on the bus but a little worse. (RS: They threw a blanket over it and sprayed some air freshener, but that was about it. Jon, Katy, and I were sitting as close to the mess as anyone on the plane could sit.)

Later Lilongwe.

Tail Between Our Legs

It's been such a long time since I've put together a post, I've forgotten where we left off, maybe someone will refresh my memory ...

Oh yes, that's right, we're still in Rumphi, we're still hours from Lilongwe, it's now Saturday and we need to get back for our Sunday flights. We're fine, we have the entire day ... what was that? Shoot, I forgot we don't have a vehicle.

So here we are, still in Rumphi, merely a couple hundred miles away from Lilongwe, we got up super early to start our day, we'll be fine. First leg, Rumphi to Mzuzu.

If anyone has been in a developing country, you've probably seen them, the small mini-vans that whiz around towns, packed to the gills (I had to look up the origin of this expression, amazingly, not in Wikipedia), yes, I know you've seen them before, I have too. We've all seen them but how many of us have actually been in one? Wow, I'm impressed. I've never been in one myself, not until this day.

Let me back up. The night before, we were discussing our options with how to return to Lilongwe. Since another rental was not an option, it was down to public transportation, either bus or even possibly renting out and entire mini-bus for our trip. What we decided to start was we had to at least get to Mzuzu, a slightly large city that has a bus depot and then figure out our options from there.

So here we are, with our bags bulging out the back, we pile into the bus, the 5 of us and 15 others for a total of 20. We were like clowns in a VW Bug. And I thought our prior sleeping arrangement were close quarters, at least it was only for an hour. Here's a look inside:


That was taken from the last row, me and Dan are sitting in the opposite facing seats, like the seats in the first couple rows of a Southwest flight, except much tighter.

We arrive in Mzuzu and are delighted to find that a bus to Lilongwe was still at the depot. The night before, we thought the bus would depart too early but we discover that much like traffic signals, bus schedules are suggestive too. The buses depart only when full and fortunately, it wasn't full but close enough that we didn't have to wait too long. About an hour later, we're on our way. Here we are in our seats, in the very rear of the bus:





Did I mention the engine was beneath our seats? It was rather warm but we did very well, just happy to be heading in the right direction. We met some people on the bus, played some cards and made fun of Ryan.

RS: Playing cards without a table:



7 hours later, we finally made it back to Lilongwe sans Hilux.

We did have to say good-bye to Moya. I don't know where we would've been if it wasn't for Moya.

Thank you Moya!

Moya and Daniel

The Midas Touch

So Mellissa and I drove back to Matuhnka to pick up a tow bar. Mellissa and the two Dutchmen stayed behind while the training mechanic and I drove back to pick up Dan and the Hilux in an old, open-aired, Landrover jeep. I sat on the bench in the back holding the tow bar.

The tow bar is a hollow iron tube about eight feet in length that connects on one end to a hitch and has on the other end an eye through which you can string rope to connect to the car you want to tow.

I really enjoyed the ride down the hill. The sun had cast a spectacular scene across the valley we were driving through, the temperature was perfect, and I was taking it all in in the open air. It doesn't get much better than that.

This gives you a sense of the valley scene:


When we got down to the mechanic's yard, we started to connect the tow bar to the Hilux. The mechanic connected the bar to the hitch on the back of the jeep, and then used rope to tie the bar to the underside of the HIlux. He was a little too close to the Hilux, so he got in the jeep to move forward a bit.

The problem was, the jeep would not start.

Great. Well, at least we're in the right spot to break down.

The mechanic toyed around with the battery connection but to no avail. We disconnected the tow bar so we could push start the thing. We were on an incline so we tried rolling the car backwards to get it going in reverse.

A heave and a ho and a . . . that didn't work. We pushed it up the hill to try it again. No luck.

It had started raining and I started feeling a bit desperate. Would nothing work on this trip? We're on a dirt lot so if we don't get the Landrover up and running soon we're not going to be able to tow the Hilux out of the mud.

Okay, so we'll try push starting the jeep on more level ground; we'll push it side to side. A number of guys who were hanging around the side of the road came over to help.

We pushed it one way. Nothing. We pushed it back. Nothing. We tried the downhill trick again but this time facing forward. Nothing. We pushed the jeep back up the hill to try again. Finally, on the sixth attempt, we got the Landrover to start.

Okay, now let's see if we can tow the Hilux.

We reconnected the tow bar to the jeep and tied it to the Hilux. Dan got in the HIlux to steer and off we . . .

Nope. The rope broke.

Dan got out to tell the driver that this wasn't going to work. Apparently, they tried the same thing the night before when towing the Hilux back up to town and the rope broke every time. The mechanic said, don't worry, we'll double tie it this time.

So they double tied it and sure enough, we got the Hilux moving.

What a relief. I was really looking forward to getting back so that we all could hang out and enjoy a meal together for the first time since leaving Nyika a day and a half ago. We drove the Hilux to the gate of Matuhnka, turned right towards the gate, and, without warning, we were cut off by a an open bed truck passing us on the right. (Remember, we're driving on the left hand side of the road, so the right turn is like a left turn - it's as if you were making a left hand turn and someone from behind passed you on the left just as you were turning).

Thankfully the mechanic slammed on the brakes in time to avoid a collision. The Hilux couldn't do the same, however; its momentum carried it towards the jeep. The Hilux would have slammed into the jeep had the tow bar not jerked it back in place. While this was good for the cars, it was bad for the tow bar. It bent backwards, creating a major crease near the end of the bar. We were extremely lucky that the bar didn't rip apart during the rest of our ascent to the guest house.

I felt so bad. The NGO folks had done us an enormous favor by helping us sort out our car situation and allowing us to store the Hilux on their grounds. They lent us their tow bar to bring the Hilux back up the hill, and what did we do? We broke the damn thing.

Granted, it wasn't entirely our fault, but everything we touched seemed to turn to . . . well, something other than gold.


http://www.whatihaveread.net/i/0022.jpg

Tale of Two Cities

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was an afternoon to drink beers, play cards, and read magazines in the comfort of a shaded, guest home oasis, it was an afternoon to haggle with a jumble of amateur and professional mechanics in an exposed dirt yard over a disassembled mess of automobile that no one could manage to start."

I'm not sure who wrote that, but I've always liked it.

It was now about 3:00 p.m. and Dan still wasn't back. It was clear the car was irremediably broken and that we'd be spending another night in Rumphi. It was also clear that we needed to change course because we had to get back to Lilongwe to catch our flights the following morning.

So we struck up a conversation with one of the directors of the NGO to see if we could borrow her cell to call Dan. She told us that it wasn't safe to have our car worked on by mechanics in town because they don't have the diagnostic equipment to recognize the problem, they don't have the parts necessary to fix a problem if they do recognize it, and they aren't particularly well trained to fix the problem in the first place. She opined that we were likely to find our car in worse shape than when we left it. For that reason, she said, they don't trust their own vehicles with the mechanics down the hill. They have all of their vehicles serviced on the premises.

Part of the NGO's occupational training program included a mechanic's yard. As luck would have it, the Dutch mechanic they use to train their students was in town for the month. She suggested that maybe he could go down to town with us and assess the situation with our car.

About fifteen minutes later, the other director of the NGO, the Dutch mechanic, and a local student offered to drive us down to check out what was going on with the car. Mellissa and I jumped in the car with them while Jon and Katy stayed behind.



When we reached the mechanic's yard where our car was sitting in shambles, we spotted Dan with his face in his hands sitting by the side of the road. This had not been a good day for him.

We walked up to the car to witness quite a scene. It wasn't just the two mechanics we saw the night before working on the vehicle. There were probably eight to ten guys huddled around the car pointing and arguing and taking things apart. I believe that three were actually affiliated with that mechanics yard and the others, as far as I could tell, were passersby who had taken an interest in our vehicle and stuck around to offer their own opinion on the matter.

We all got out and walked up to the front of the car to talk to the mechanics. The front bumper was completely removed, the radiator was on the ground as were a few other engine components that I didn't recognize.

The guys from the NGO had a look at the engine and walked around the car to talk to everyone there. I walked around to the passenger's side of the car (left-hand side in this case) where a mechanic (I think) was sitting in the front seat taking apart some electrical device.

The Dutch mechanic turned to me and said, "look at what this guy is doing right here. What he's doing there has nothing to do with what's mechanically wrong with the engine. I don't know what he's doing. Maybe he's swapping out pieces from your car for resale. I don't know."

My stomach dropped. I started to view our situation in an entirely different light. We had trusted these mechanics to help us out. We believed that Moya would find us someone to be honest and fair with us. Now, I felt like we were being had for the clumsy, rich, and stupid Americans that we were in that moment.



So I walked up to Dan and told him that we needed to get the hell out of there. We had to call the owner of the car and tell him there was nothing we could do to get the thing running and that we were going to have to leave it in Rumphi for him to retrieve. The folks at the NGO were kind enough to let us leave the car at their facility, so we could tell the owner he had his choice of leaving the car with the mechanics or leaving it at the NGO. Dan agreed. The poor guy was so worn down he probably would have agreed to anything.

Dan called the owner and made the arrangements. Mellissa and I were to return to the NGO to pick up a towing bar to bring the Hilux up the hill. Dan would stay behind, settle up with the mechanics, and then walk over to the minibus depot to inquire with a minibus driver about the cost of renting out an entire minibus to take us all the way back to Lilongwe the next day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . .



JP: Katy and Jon are enjoying tea and afternoon snacks over a game of gin rummy.

Oh Dearest Rumphi, Please Forgive Us, We Had You All Wrong

Dearest Rumphi,

Please forgive us, we had you all wrong. Maybe we caught you on a bad day, but we were still too quick to make judgment. There is more to you than hospitals, no running water and food and full hotels. But after meeting Moya, we should've known you had much more too offer.
Thank you for not holding it against us. Please accept our sincerest apologies.

Cheese on Toast, Lemon Squeezy, Science, Katy and Jon

----------------

It's amazing how quickly things can change, especially while traveling. After one of the longest and most interesting days of our lives, we awake to find ourselves safe, clean (hot showers) and surprisingly well-rested (considering our sleeping arrangement).

Despite the difficulty with finding lodging, we end up at what has to be the best place to stay in Rumphi, Mutunkha Centre for Orphan Care, an orphanage and vocational school for boys that has a guest house; it's an NGO run by a very patient and understanding Dutch couple. Our Rumphi oasis.

Minus Dan, we begin the day with a tasty English breakfast and our first meal in 24 hours:

Now with the sun up, we discover that we're near the top of this hill overlooking a little valley that could be mistaken for California wine country, tranquil and beautiful, the only thing missing were vineyards. Not a bad way to start our day, good spirits once again, but there were still a number of unknowns for the rest of the day:

1. Where's Danny? How's he doing?
2. Will the Hilux get fixed?
   
3. Another night at Mutunhka?
4. Will we make it to Nhkata Bay?
   
5. Will we make it to Lilongwe?

But for now, we'll not think about it, we'll just enjoy our morning and be glad we're here
and not where we were last night ...

Rumphi, Malawi: Continues to Lack in the Milk and Honey Departments

We had perused the Rumphi section of our Lonely Planet guide and noticed there weren't a whole lot of options for places to stay. The first place recommended was a guest house that Dan and Mellissa had stayed before when they were in town for Dan's research. They said it was pretty small but clean enough. We're not all that picky at this point.

So the mechanics dropped Mellissa, Moya, Jon, Katy, and me off with all of our stuff at the guest house. The front area was a pleasant outdoor space where a few people seemed to be enjoying a drink or two. It looked promising. The "lobby" wasn't as inviting. It was illuminated by a harsh green florescent light and contained a single couch and chair in an otherwise barren room.

We walked up to the attendant. "Are you still serving food outside?" No. "Okay, well, we're five people. Do you have any rooms to accomodate us?" No, we're completely booked.

Great.

No fear, Moya was on the case. He said he knew of another guest house down the road. He told us to hang out in the "lobby" with our bags while he checked whether the other place had any rooms available.

About fifteen minutes later Moya returned. The other place had no space for us. He also tried another place but to no avail. He knew of one other place that was a little bit out of town. He said would try to get a hold of them by phone. He went outside to make a call.

I thought we were going to have to plead with the guy up front to let us sleep on the couch and floor of the lobby. At this point, that idea did not particularly bother me. I was tired and wanted this day to be over.

Moya came back after another five to ten minutes or so. He said he finally got a hold of this place outside of town. They were sleeping over there but his calls eventually got someone out of bed. Thankfully, they had rooms for us.

So Moya hooked us up again by grabbing a friend of his from the bar we were in earlier in the day for lunch to drive us up to this place we would stay: Matunkha.

Too Much Tyson

It's dark, it's late, we're tired, our car is broken, and we have no idea how to fix it. At the mechanics' direction, we rolled the dormant hunk of metal to a dirt area in front of a general store about twenty yards off the road.

Now, I think I was the one in the group most bothered by our situation in front of this general store, which is why I've been charged with writing this post. I admit that I tend to get a little paranoid, but I think objectively, this was not a good scene.

When we pulled up, there were a number of guys hanging around the general store drinking a local brand of firewater called Tyson. A handful of these was clearly drunk. One guy was doing a hip gyrating dance on the steps of the store. Another guy was stumbling around in a daze and slurring his speech.

We were now positioned inside a community of residences and little stores. The surrounding structures made us invisible from the road. So there we were from about 9:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.: a group of five muzungus -- one of which of Chinese heritage, which is even more exotic to Malawians -- in our fancy car with all of our money, passports, and other gear in the back, with a broken engine affording us no way to leave, in a tiny community about five miles outside a small town in a remote area of Northern Malawi, one of the five poorest countries in the world, surrounded by a number of guys who were getting piss drunk off of a local firewater, and situated in a spot where no one could see us from the road. What's the expression: like a keg of gun powder? I always screw up idiomatic expressions.

Anyway, I was comforted by the fact that we had Moya in our corner, who was very good with people. However, I feared that he could be easily overwhelmed. I had already gotten the sense that some people didn't take kindly to the fact that he was helping us. When we were still up on the side of the road, one guy came over to ask for money and Moya told him to keep on walking or something to that effect. While the guy was walking away he yelled to Moya in broken English (so that the rest of us could understand) something about how Moya thought that us white people were god. That exchange was in the forefront of my mind while I was watching Moya calm down a drunk guy who started jarring with one of the mechanics.

Luckily, nothing precipitated out of this potentially dangerous situation, but I was on edge the whole time. At one point, one of the drunk guys came to sit down on the step next to Mellissa and Katy. His balance failed him and he fell off the ledge. When Mellissa declared "too much Tyson," he asked her to repeat what she said. So she said it again. He started busting up laughing like this was the funniest thing he had ever heard in his whole life. Good. He's happy drunk.

So back to the car. The mechanics couldn't figure out what was wrong. They poked and prodded and turned the ignition but to no avail. Eventually they figured it was an electrical problem. Well, they weren't trained in electrical work but they knew a guy in town who was. Around 10:00 p.m. they gave this guy a call.

He showed up about forty-five minutes later with a crew of another three or four. They all looked at the car but couldn't figure out what was wrong. So we devised a plan: all of us except Dan would go back with the electrical mechanic's crew to find a place to stay in Rumphi for the night. One of the mechanics was going to grab a tow bar and return to tow the Hilux back to the mechanic's shop for more tests the next morning. Like the good captain of a sinking ship, Dan stayed behind with the car.

So Katy, Mellissa, Moya, Jon, and I hopped in the bed of a truck and headed back up the road to Rumphi.

Have Radiator, Will Travel

So we pushed the Hilux over to the side of the road. The car was billowing smoke from under the hood. Our troubles garnered the immediate attention of everyone at the intersection. One guy started yelling "konnichi wa!" to Jon in a harassing tone that I didn't much care for and that bothered Jon as well.

After we managed to get the car off to the side of the road, a number of people came by to see what was the matter with our smoking engine. Dan related to us that when he had broken down in a different vehicle a few months earlier in Lilongwe, some of the people who came to offer their assistance expected compensation for their efforts. To stem any prospective requests here, Dan firmly told the passersby that while he appreciated their concern for our predicament, we were not in need of their help.

We examined the front of the Hilux and saw that it was leaking water. The epoxy didn't hold.

So we waited for the car to cool down and, after awhile, added more water to the radiator. Jon, stepping out of his adopted role as decisional agnostic, strongly advocated for restarting the car and pushing on. His idea was that we could carefully monitor the temperature gauge and pull over periodically to add water to the radiator as needed. Dan favored going to Rumphi to have the holes in the radiator fixed permanently with epoxy and a blow torch. In the end, we didn't have the option of doing either.

After the engine cooled for a good half hour, we refilled the radiator with water and tried to restart the car. Nothing. Not even a wimper.

At this point, I knew the car was kaput.

Dan resolved to elicit help from a friend he had met while doing research in Rumphi a few months earlier. He had hired a guy named Moya to help translate Dan's field research questions and help analyze the data they collected. Moya was well connected in Rumphi, so well connected in fact, that he was set to run for local political office in the next election cycle. Dan knew that Moya could recommend a mechanic.

Let me pause here for a second to give Moya all the thanks he is due. First, here's a picture of him with Squeezy:



Moya saved us that day, pure and simple. Without him, things would have ended far worse for us, I'm quite certain of that. If you see this man, you should shake his hand and maybe push him a few soft dollars for his political campaign. McCain and Feingold don't need to know nothing about it, if you know what I mean . . .

So Dan called Moya who luckily had not yet left town for a scheduled trip to Lilongwe. When Dan explained our situation, Moya said he would walk immediately over to talk to a mechanic he knew and give Dan a call back. Moya went to the mechanic's place but the mechanic was not there. He called Dan to tell him he would try another mechanic in town. When he got to the second mechanic's place, Moya called Dan again so that Dan could talk directly to the mechanic.

The mechanics agreed to take a public minibus down to take a look at our radiator; they had no access to a functioning vehicle.

Here's a look at the approximate location of the mechanic's yard and the place we were stranded. As you can see, we were fairly lucky to have broken down relatively close to town.



You can't see the scale that clearly, but we broke down about five miles outside of town.

Anyway, about a half hour to forty-five minutes later, Moya and two mechanics showed up to take a look at our car. Dan told them about the epoxy the mechanics in Nyika had applied and that the car was leaking water. He also told them that we had tried unsuccessfully to restart the car.

The mechanics looked at the engine and removed the radiator.



They said they'd take the radiator with them back to their garage where they would permanently fix the holes with a blow torch. So they got back on a minibus with our radiator to return to Rumphi. Moya stayed behind with us.

About two hours later, around 8:00 p.m., the mechanics returned. They had fixed the holes we could see as well as a couple holes that were hidden from view near the bottom of the radiator. At this point it was dark so we gave them our camping headlights to use to reinstall the radiator.

When it was back in place, we tried to restart the car. Just as I feared: this car now has bigger problems than a leaky radiator.

The mechanics wanted to try push starting the thing. Well that won't work because it's an automatic but we followed the mechanic's instructions anyway until he realized it was an automatic.

Then, for a reason I don't understand, the mechanic had us push the car over to a dirt area in front of a general store about 20 yards off the road.