Day 5 - Kasane to Savuti MarshNext day after breakfast we set-off at about half 9. We stopped at Kazungula to fill up all the vehicles and jerry cans and then slabbed it 120 km on tar down to Pandamatenga. We stopped at the Engen to fill-up - this time they had petrol, but the pumps were not working. WTF. Before Engen the petrol station there was owned I think by Kwa Nokeng guys (who now own another garage there, but that serves only trucks and sells minimum 200 litres of diesel I guess to the trucks going up Africa) and I never had problem getting petrol there. Now with big corporation with disinterested employees taking over, it is basically useless.
I would have prefered to fill up anyway just to be sure, but we came prepared with enough spare fuel, so no biggie.
We pushed on another 20 or so km south on tar until we came to the southern end of the big fenced off farming area (I'm guessing leveraging the cottom mud in that area to grow stuff), where we turned west onto a double track following the farm fence on the outside. The very sandy track kept us on our tiptoes as on the left there were trees and bushes overhanging and on the right the track run right next to the fence that we didn't fancy crashing into at speed. After about 15 km along the fence we came to the end of the farm and fence and came upon a cutline running south/north along the western boundary of the farm.
I have been here before and knew that turning north would take us back to Kasane along the Chobe eastern boundary (the one shown in the video in the prior post). So we turned south to connect to 19th parallel cutline, but to my surprise the cutline ended in about 500 meters being completely overgrown by bush. I was completely perplexed as I would have sworn I have ridden through that cutline 5 years back (which I did when I checked my old GPS tracks later), but for some reason they left the bush to close it off.
I told the others to wait there and turned back and went investigated up the cutline to see if my memory just failed me - but no it was really heading up to north west and I started recognizing some particularly memorable swamps straight away. But I have noticed a small winding double track disappearing into the bush in the general western direction, so I called the rest of the group and out of alternatives we decided to try that one.
As I said, it was winding tight double track and leading the caravan I was on my tipy toes as there was a good chance we may run into an elephant or stuff. The tracked veered south and north in places, but in general kept going west towards the cutline I could see on my GPS about 10 - 15 km away. We came upon a waterhole with pump and signs of animals everywhere, but we didn't see any.
Eventually to my relief the track did spit us out on the correct cutline. It was wide open, well maintained and we were able to open up. The cutline took us for the next 160 or so km first through some forest reserve and then west along the southern boundary of Chobe NP. The cutline continued to be in a good shape (unlike another cutline running in parallel about 40 km to the south which I have ridden some time ago) and we were making good progress moving 70 - 100 kmh most of the time. We have seen few elephants and giraffes - no photos, youngster may have fallen a sleep for a bit - but unfortunately no lions this time.
About a half way through there was a sudden drama, when I rode over a branch and the bike started making horrible rattling sound. I stopped assuming that the branch got stuck in the front wheel, but upon closer inspection we found that I have lost the screw holding the the bottom subframe bolt on 690 in, the bold wiggled itself out and the chain got stuck on it ripping through the plastic chain guard. Nice.
Here are crappy images of the problem:
Luckily the chain didn’t break. I had a blonde moment, and without thinking I loosened the rear wheel, took out the back stops and pushed the wheel as much the the front as possible trying to get the chain off the bolt, but no luck. The rest of them let me first to learn valuable lesson and then Milan V pushed on the seat compressing the shock and the chain came off the bolt. An experience African hand, my ass.
We then scavenged subframe screw I have lost from a footpeg, assembled everything back together, drenching the screw in Loctite, and were off again.
Few dozen km later we were about to run into Savuti marsh and stopped at a place where small double track veered of into bush heading south west to Mababe about 50 km away. I knew from a people I talked who have done 19th parallel in 4x4s, that Savuti marsh cotton mud when wet can be the end of the road and may force us back. They have also done it in in December - i.e. in rain season, had a jolly good 160 km drive all the way to the marsh, and then spent 2 days cutting trees and stuff crossing the next 40 km to Mababe.
From my research I knew where they went wrong - they drove all the way to the end of the cutline, which dead ends slap bang in the middle of the marsh about 2 km from the Mababe gate to Chobe NP. They could actually see the communication tower at the gate, but couldn’t get there through the mud and so had to backtrack to the dryer section and cut their way through the bush. They didn’t know that there is an alternative - the double track we just came upon that bypassed the marsh through the bush all the way down to Mababe village about 50 km away.
I went to check the track out, while the rest of the gang stayed at the turnoff and amused themselves by taking pictures and going for a walkabout around nearby waterhole. They were definitely much more confident in wildlife dense bush than I am, that is sure.
The track was clearly very rarely used, but fine. By the look of things so was the cutline so I went to investigate that one for next 5 km and it looked that despite rains we may be fine. So I came back and suggested to push on the cutline in a bid to make it to Khwai village about 70 km away still that day, which would give us an early start for the safari into Moremi next day.
But again, I was outvoted - the rest of the gang was keen on at least one night camping out in the bush and for some reason found this particular section of cutline appealing. I have explained, that we are going to camp next to Khwai river anyway nursed into sleep by lion calls and hyenas squeaking, but they didn’t budge, so we just moved about 100 meters further on from the waterhole, found the place with the least density of elephant paths and set-up a camp.
I do not have mane pictures from this day, so will have to pad it up with these from the camp:
Two most esential things for african bush camping - alcohol and pepper spray:
We sat around the fire long into the night finishing bottle of Tullamore Dew, and discussing shit ranging from non-duality to economics of pizza business. No wonder the youngster retreated to the tent early, I wouldn’t be able to listen to that kind of rubbish sober.