Near death experience – research your route! Thank goodness for Audrey!

marymoscrop1
Oct 29
7 min read

I did not write a blog yesterday – think I was too traumatised – at the very least I was too exhausted. What should have been a 5.5hr drive from Knysna to Addo turned into an 11-hour marathon of a journey and I can honestly say I have never been in such fear of my life – and when you consider that I have been Wing Walking, Parachuting, Shark Cage Diving etc., that is saying a lot.

We set off at 6.30 am following the sat nav – I mean, what other option do you have, and picked the route that was showing as almost an hour shorter than the rest.

Given that the main roads have been fine for the whole trip, except for around Knysna which all seem to be being upgraded, we had no concerns. The route took us a different way to how we had exited town on previous days, but we assumed we were going in a different direction. We went through a township and saw lots of kids setting off to school and even more adults walking the few miles to work (our assumption, as there was nothing even close to the township) and we were soon on a dirt road…. Nothing unusual there, we have been on them before...then we saw a sign for King Edward VII tree (600 years old, with a height of 37 metres) and from that point on, the road disintegrated. There was nowhere we could turn round, so our only option was to go forwards.

This is not our pic - we were too scared to think about taking pics, but it is one of the better stretches of road and quite low down!

Turns out we were on Prince Alfred Pass – it is one of the oldest passes in South Africa, 68km long and reaches 1040m (3,412 ft) above sea level. It was built in the 1860’s and I don’t think it has been touched since then!

We were literally hugging the side of the cliff. As Larry Ash would say ‘There are only 2 kinds of car that can go there – a 4x4 or a rental – we had the latter.

Of course, we got a third of the way through the pass and hit a MASSIVE pothole – I literally could not have avoided it, and even though we were going slowly, we burst a tyre. We pulled over to have a look, and saw we had a flat – then we looked up and saw baboons… we sharp hopped back into the car! There was absolutely no mobile service at all, and we had not seen another car, so there was nothing for it but to drive on, and on, and on.

Now we are two independent women who know how to change a tyre, but every time we found a space big enough to stop where we were not causing a hazard, more baboons came. Given that it had been drilled into us to keep away from them, they could be vicious and have been known to attack cats and dogs, we did not fancy our chances of hauling all of our suitcases out of the boot to get to the spare to then try and change the wheel.

We were both terrified – I was putting on a brave face for Emma, and she was putting on a brave face for me, at the same time we were both thinking of all the horror movies that start with two hapless women doing something silly, and I kept thinking I could hear duelling banjos in the distance behind the baboon calls.

We did see one building that we thought we would ask for help at, but when we got closer it was surrounded by barbed wire and had huge signs saying ‘trespassing prohibited’ and was definitely NOT giving off a friendly vibe.

We carried on – at this point the brakes were starting to fail (I did not tell Emma this until later) and the amount of dust we were throwing up was really worrying. Very long drive written short, we came to a small shop by the side of the road and went to ask if we could use their telephone. (What3words dodged.recorders.entangled) This is where we met the godsend that is Audrey.

I think I am a strong independent woman, but she is the definition of Wonderwoman!

She asked if we had a flat and we said yes, and she asked if we knew how to change it, and we said we thought so, but we wanted to call for help (included in the cost of the rental, so why wouldn’t we?). She told us to get the spare out and she would just set her child off with the homeschooling tasks that she had to do, and she would come and help. She did not help – she did it all!

And by all I mean she called the garage to ask why the wheel was seized on, she brought hammers and screwdrivers (which were not included in the tyre changing kit in the car) she announced our jack was useless and went and got her own – in the end she had to use both of them, and several men also stopped by to ask if they could help, but she shooed them away. Honestly that woman is my hero.

Add to this that she was serving in her shop, minding the cattle, stopping two cows from fighting, home schooling her child AND changing our wheel!!!

It took quite some time to get sorted, and there is no way that Emma and I could have done it alone, even if the baboons helped, but she would not take any money for her trouble – she kept saying she was happy to help us. Then she offered us soap and water to clean up – I pointed out that we had not done anything (she would not let us help!) and she was the one who had been lying in the road finding the jacking point and whacking the wheel with a hammer and was covered in grime. She then offered bin liners to wrap the wrecked tyre in so it did not mucky up our suitcases.

We bought some stuff in her shop, along with some cookies and she made us coffees to go, then as we were leaving, the guys in the two 4x4s that had also tried to help us, actually escorted us the rest of the way out of the pass – one in front and one behind – everyone was so kind, but Audrey was not done yet…..

She had given us directions to a tyre replacement garage, and she gave us her card and asked us to message her when we were out of the pass and safe – she said if she did not hear from us in an hour she was going to drive along the pass to make sure we were ok. We went to one tyre place but they did not have the kind of tyre we needed, so we set of for the next, only then to get a message from Audrey with a pin to another place that she had called to see if they had the tyre we needed and they were waiting for my call – what an angel!

It turned out that they did not have the right tyre either but they did swap the spare from the front to the back for us as it would be a safer drive, and I finally managed to get hold of the roadside assistance service for the hire car – they said we needed to drive to Port Elizabeth and they would swap the car (rather than swapping the tyre)…..

Finally we set off to our Safari Lodge – but the roads were still not kind to us – once you turn off the main road here, it is a 50km drive on more dirt track up to the lodge, but at least we made it in once piece, just in time for dinner 😊

As we drove up to the lodge we encountered a group of giraffe (just 2 in the pic but there were loads), just having a mooch about – only today did we find out what a treat and a rarity that was!

This place, Kuzuko Lodge is gorgeous – very stylish. I will include pics in the next blogs I have no doubt, but this is the view from the main lodge, and our bungalow is the one in the middle below.

Just before bed I got another message from Audrey to check if we had arrived safely and to hope we had fun on our safari. What a lovely lady. I have a good mind to write to the President, Cyril Ramaphosa to tell him how proud he should be of her. In fact, I will.

Fast forward to 5am this morning, when we got up for coffee before going out for our first game drive. We wrapped up warm, I had a long and short sleeved T shirt on, a thin jumper and a windcheater, but I was glad of the unexpected waterproof, fleecy poncho they gave us for the duration of our stay here – what a fabulous idea.

We set out to search for very elusive chetahs this morning -it took quite a while but we found the female one who was looking for her breakfast – she is so well camouflaged!

We saw lots of Vervet Monkeys,

massive baboons (much bigger than we have seen before)

Springbok, Warthogs, Eland, Impala to name a few

and just as we were about to go back to the lodge, our guide got a radio message and turned the truck around – someone had spotted endangered white Rhino, so we went back to have a look. What is lovely is that there is enough time to take a few pics, but also to really be present and just watch the animals.