Ha ha… What do you expect  ?
Nice & early the Eurotrash packed up & left on their big bus, taking every toilet roll in Spitskop with them… Mosquito repellent too…  Eish… Shame on them.

The Bokke won, the English made history, & I prepared to leave Upington & the Kalahari, making a run for the Karoo.

This country, & the tough people living in it, has made a lasting impression on me.
I’m a coastal, low altitude, sub-tropical boy,  this… this’s another world.
A hard, brutal world of incredible beauty &  contrasts, that previously, I was only ever aware of on the TV weather reports.
I don’t know if anyone, not born to it, could survive out here, away from the towns, I mean.
I don’t think I could.
But, Wow,  what an awesome place.

If this trip doesn’t go any further than here, it will have been worth the effort.
The Kalahari’s huge, its exciting, its humbling & Nyati’s only travelled a small part of it, but it’s woken something in me.

I felt that, like at sea, God’s hand is close here. It has to be, you’re not going to survive otherwise.
Then again, perhaps with so few souls per square kilometre,  you get more attention.

Nyati’s back tracking to Kiemos now.
Whenever we leave somewhere I’ve started to grow accustomed to, I’m aware of a build-up of inner tension.
Maybe it’s apprehension,  maybe anticipation…
It’s strong today.

Kiemos’s a serious blast from the past. It’s like being “a bit pregnant”… It’s kinda touristy, but not.
Stuck in time, some would say.
These quaint shops, houses & people are LIKE THIS. I didn’t see ANY tourists… Except me.

But then.

“Oh hell”… Nyati’s started making rude rattling noises… Funny how noises have different levels of scaryness all of their own.
This was a bloody loud one, but tinny in texture.  Tinny noises are not usually serious in the “terminal” sense.  Exhaust brackets & loose inspection covers make tinny sounds.

Nevertheless Nyati was telling me something. So hop to it.

“Stop, get underneath, get down & dirty. Find the problem before it becomes serious & bites us in the arse”.

I always listen to Nyati.

“Ah… This’s nice,  cool in Nyati’s shade, soft in the sandy road edge… Bloody oily though”… Hope, pray, LOOK.
Aha… I KNEW it… The clutch inspection cover’d come loose.
No problem to replace the two little missing bolts from out of “the second drawer down”. But, there’s a lot of oil drips here that weren’t here before.
Eish, bolts loose wherever I look.

So, Okay,  I’m not a mechanic,  but hell Man it was cool (in at least two senses of the word) under there.
My tension eased with every bolt I tightened, Nyati stopped the dreaded drip, & I felt bloody good about the prospects of getting to Cape Town before giving Nyati a serious mechanical service.
Nyati knew I was doing my part.

The sign said, “Kalahari Waters”.
A contradiction in terms, like “Virgin Active”
The place made me play the old Beatles music, yellow submarine, lucy in the sky, stuff like that.
Retro, & genuinely FAR OUT Man.
I signed in for an overnighter, & stayed until the beer ran out, four days later.
Like, so bloody cool Man.
Kalahari waters was a backpackers delight in the middle of a vineyard…
Check out the dormitory on the back of the old truck.
The Gypsy wanted to stay.
Zoe would say, it was “Epic”.