Saturday, May 12, 2012

Stranded in Kafue

Our trip started out wonderfully! On Thursday we got up by 5 and were on our way by 6. First we picked up Ethel from Good Shepherd and got through town before the morning traffic started. Our trip to the park was uneventful. We stopped briefly to get gas and that was a slight dilemma. They had just run out of diesel at the gas station but some of the men standing nearby said they had a stash that they were saving, and filled up our tank. We were hoping the fuel was still good and they didn’t mix it with water, and thankfully they were being honest and everything was OK.
We got to our campsite before lunch. We stayed at a camp called Mayukuyuku. It was quite a ways off the main tarmac but it was within the park itself so we knew the chances of seeing animals were pretty good.

Gibson helped us set up our campsite and tents and it looked quite homey. We had the best campsite right on the bend of the river—the view was just gorgeous. The camp itself was rather small, only a camping area and some tented chalets but it was very nice.

After lunch we decided to go on a game drive in our own vehicle. It was going to be a marathon drive from about 1-7, and Mrs. Birner even brought her own spotlight so we could be out a little after dark. We packed the cooler of food since we didn’t want the monkeys getting at it, and then headed out. Before really starting our drive we stopped at another lodge, Mukambi, where we were hoping to see their “pet” hippo, Basil. Basil is a young male and when he started having troubles with the dominant male in the pod, he sought refuge at the lodge. He’s been coming back ever since and will even come right into the reception area and take a nap. Sadly, he wasn’t there at the time.
We went on pretty much all the same loops that we took when we came with Dave and Dee. We saw impala, puku, zebra, waterbuck, elephant, and buffalo. We were on the quest to see cats, so Mrs. Birner wanted to take us to a loop where she had seen 5 cheetahs with her husband a year ago or so. We had some trouble finding the right road but eventually some guys in a white pickup truck pointed us in the right direction. On this loop Erika and I got on top of the car on the roof rack for some better game viewing. There were definitely some really bumpy patches and we had to hang on for dear life. Our first issue was reaching a pretty big divot that was very steep. We barely made it out of there. The tires were spinning, the engine was revving, and Erika and I were hanging on with all we had. Thankfully, we made it out of there. That should have been our first clue.
Our second clue was when we came to a part of the road where we lost track of the road. The grass was too high, but since we were high up on the roof I thought I spotted where the road led, and sure enough it was. So we kept following it. We ended up coming to a flatter area which is the definition of savannah and I thought we were out of the woods. Little did I know…
Right as we rounded the corner we saw another ditch, this one had water in it. It was quite a bit less steep than the other one we got through, and Sue was afraid to turn around and go back through the one we had almost gotten stuck in last time. So the 4 wheel drive was put on and we tried it.

…we got stuck.
We almost made it through but the back tires got stuck in the mud and kept spinning. We tried several times to get out but couldn’t. We were so, so stuck. The feeling of fear and nervousness set in immediately. I was sure there’d be a way to get out, but there really wasn’t. At first Sue said we should sit tight, but us girls voted to at least try something before it got dark. At this point it was about 4:30pm. The back bumped was really bogged down into the mud, the exhaust completely under water. We thought be trying to push from the back would help, but it didn’t. I only succeeded in getting mud on me. After our failed attempts I realize we really were stuck and not getting out of there any time soon. We were in it for the long haul.
At first we were in very good spirits and joking about the situation and chatting. When the sun finally set and we were in darkness, that’s when we got more worried. We were in lion territory, and being so low in the divot, we couldn’t see what was coming. We thought we would see lions, elephants or other animals walk past our car, which we thought would be pretty cool, but after being stuck there for so long we realized not seeing animals was actually a blessing. We tried using our cellphones to call someone but there was absolutely no phone signal and the emergency numbers didn’t work either.
We had food and water along, which we also realized was all God’s hand at work. We also brought 1 sleeping bag as a blanket for the roof rack, so that kept us “warm” at night. When we decided to go to sleep at about 8 I climbed in the back. Ethel, Erika and I were all in the back, E&E on the 2 fold down benches and I was on the floor in the middle. I got the blanket since I was on the floor; I also only had capris and flip flops on, so I was thankful for a warm blanket. We slept on and off for a while and as it got later it also got colder. At 11 we had a terrible false hope moment. The moon rises so late, so as it was rising over the grass it looked so much like a spotlight on a car. We were sure we were being rescued! We started honking and rejoicing, but then realized it was only the moon. L Eventually everyone was shivering and freezing and I felt too guilty having the blanket on the floor so we all climbed to the front seat and put the sleeping bag over us. That kept us much warmer! Because Ethel and I only had flipflops on our feet were so cold! Ethel found a scarf to wrap around her feet and I wrapped an extra pair of clean underwear around my feet. Whatever works! Sue got cold by the window though and also wanted to stretch out her legs so she moved to the back. The girls slept for a few more hours. At 3am or so, Sue was shivering so bad and had a mini panic attack about what could go wrong—bush fires, elephants knocking us over, people having no idea that we were gone or no idea where to look for us etc. Seeing her so worried also made us get more worried as well. But after more huddling together for warmth and sleeping on and off, the sun started to rise. We made it through the night with no dangerous animal encounters!
When it got to be about 8am, we decided to take more action in getting ourselves out. We used a table knife that was in the cooler to cut grass to try to lay under the tire for traction. We also cut branches off trees and tried to gather mud clumps. We took the lid off the cooler and put it under one of the tires in the mud, to use kind of like a ramp. Erika took a shirt off to put under another one; Sue took off a tennis shoe—we tried anything we could to give the tires some more grip. We tried pushing again, and watching wish tires were spinning still. Unfortunately, after all the hard work, we failed. We even took off the two spare tires we had on the roof rack, hoping the lighter weight would help. Nothing, nothing, nothing worked and the praying continued! The whole time we were working we kept honking the horn to ward off animals, and we made someone the spotter, to keep watch.
After our failed work, we took a break and rested in the car. I decided sleep would be the best way to forget about our situation, because at this point I was feeling really down in the dumps. There was nothing else to do anyway. Erika and Sue tried to start a smoky fire to get a smoke signal out. They tried swapping a Q-tip in petroleum jelly and lighting it by using the cigarette lighter from the car. Erika tore pages out of her book to try to get a flame going, and then they were going to add green leaves to make it smoky. The fire refused to start though, so another failed attempt. All that was left to do was wait again and honk the horn every 5 minutes or so… Around 11 I woke up and just stared out the window. I saw a moniter lizard over by the water so I watched that for a while. Then I swore I could hear a vehicle. However, we had thought we had heard a vehicle so many times before but it was only the wind and our hopeful imaginations. This time was different though. To me it sounded like the rumble of a truck, and Ethel agreed. I was hoping and praying so hard—I was just about to reach my breaking point of hopelessness. Erika climbed onto the roofrack to see if she could see anything, and Sue started honking the horn like crazy. AND THEN WE WERE RESCUED!! We saw a truck come around the corner. Erika started shouting and waving and I Sue and I just burst into tears. Ethel and I hugged each other, and laughed and cried with relief. I can just picture that truck with 4 men in the back. I have never felt so relieved and happy in my life. Words cannot describe that.
They were men from our camp and were rather annoyed at us. We had asked a guide at Mukambi if all the loop roads were open and he told us they were. The guides from our camp said we should have asked them before going on a drive and they would have told us what was open and what was not. So that was definitely our fault. We apologized profusely and told them we were so happy to see them. One of the guys even had a gun, so we hopped out of the car and didn’t even give a thought to lions or whatever else could have been in the bushes. At first they tried what we did—pushing the back of the car and trying to get it up the hill. When that didn’t work they decided to pull us out the back. They got the tow rope out and looped it on the back bumper. Then with Sue driving in reverse, they pulled from the other direction and got us out. Needless to say we tipped them very well because we were just so overjoyed to be out. They told us that they did notice we never came back the night before so they were looking for us at night, but stopped looking around 9:00pm. Then they started again early in the morning, eventually finding us at 11:30am—19 hours after getting stuck. We followed their truck all the way back to the main road, it was comforting knowing they were right there with us guiding us back. As a bonus, we saw wild dogs on the drive back. There were about 10 in the pack. Wild dogs are extremely rare to see, so we were thrilled to see them. Sort of a compensation for being stuck for so long. J It took a good 2 hours to get all the way back to the campsite. When we saw a map later we realized we were the farthest possible place from camp that we could be when we got stuck. Praise the Lord for his answered prayers!!

When we got back to camp we showered and ate some viennas cooked over the fired and just talked through our whole ordeal. In hindsight you always feel better. It felt cool to have such a good story to tell. In the moment though, it was terribly scary! After recuperating for a bit we decided to take a night game drive with the camp in their vehicle. We figured they’d not be too keen to let us out by ourselves again. So we took a lovely game drive with a British couple. We were following a lion trail but never did see any. We didn’t see much on the night drive, but we did see some elephant, genets, and a porcupine. After the night drive we ate some supper. We made pudgy pies—cheese and peanut butter ones—which we delicious. Then we went to bed. As you can imagine, we were all exhausted. I slept like a rock! It was awesome because I could see the brilliant stars through the top of the tent. I could also hear the hippos grunting and we were sure at one point there was one feet from our tent since we were so close to the water up on the ride. We heard a large rustling near the bushes and then a big splash into the water. Thankfully we didn’t have an encounter with it.
It was cold in the tent but nothing compared with the car. In the tent I was on a lovely firm air mattress with a sleeping bag and then a huge down comforter on top of me. It was a wonderful night sleep!
Next thing I knew my alarm was going off at 5:30 for our morning drive.
We did a self-drive again (this was Saturday morning). We took the loop that we took the night before, hoping to see the lion. We didn’t see them but we were sure we heard one grunt and roar. We also checked a little quarry area and we saw 2 hyenas! Those are very rare to see in Kafue, way rarer than at Luangwa. We were so happy—Ethel wanted to see hyenas so badly.
Then we headed out to the main tarmac road to get to the other part of the park. As we were zipping along the tarmac I noticed some puku staring off into the distance looking pretty alert. Then I saw the lion. He was a little in the distance but in some grassy area so I could see him pretty clearly. I yelled “lion, stop, stop, stop!” Since we were going pretty fast, Sue screeched to a stop and had to reverse quite a while. But we saw it! It was a male—just like I was hoping we’d see! He was an older male, with a big mane. As we were trying to get pictures and look at it, Sue looked behind the car and there was another lion! Dejavu from Luangwa! It was a younger male just sauntering along behind the vehicle. He must have been right next to the road in the grass on the other side. He was walking toward his buddy over in the grass. Erika even opened the back door to get a better picture. Don’t worry, the lion could have cared less about us. We were so happy to see the lion—and right off the tarmac! We never would have expected that.
The rest of the morning drive was pretty good. We saw the usual things: elephant, warthog, waterbuck, and we saw 3 huge kudus, right next to the road, including a huge male with the gorgeous curling horns.
We were minutes away from seeing a cheetah. We came across another vehicle that was on a self drive and we just asked them if they had seen a cheetah, not expecting them to say yes, but it turns out they had just seen a cheetah and had been following it for a while and it just walked off into the tall grass. The puku that were standing around we making their alarm calls for a good 10-15 minutes because they knew danger was in the area. We parked the car and waited, hoping the cheetah would come out, but it didn’t. Bummer L

We got back from our morning drive around 12. We had lunch and then started packing up our tent. By 3 we were all checked out and headed out. As one last game viewing I spotted some hartebeest in the grass while leaving the camp.

The drive back to Lusaka was uneventful, which was such a blessing. I read my book and took a wonderful nap.
When we got home I unpacked, threw everything in the laundry, and had leftover spaghetti for supper. Then we went over to the guest house to tell Dave and Dee about our adventure and watched TV while we blogged.

Overall the trip was wonderful! We saw wonderful animals even though we were stranded for 19 hours. The getting stuck part was very scary but it provided us with a great story, and we learned a great lesson from the ordeal. Don’t go anywhere without telling someone where you are going or finding out information first. We also got some experience with testing out our survival skills. J
I am happy to be home and able to sleep in a warm bed tonight. What an adventuresome weekend!

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