Up at the crack of dawn and we left Kimana at daybreak headed for Tsavo West infamous for it's associatio with man-eating lions at the time of the building of the railway from the coast to Uganda. We passed a group of ellies on the way to the main road and headed down that lovely corrugated road to Oloitoktok where we filled with diesel and found a small supermarket. The night before we'd made a "wishlist" of things we wanted - unbelievably we managed to get almost everything!
Then it was back up the road to the turning to Tsavo - we'd seen it earlier, so that should be ok....
We soon got to the sign and followed it onto a tar road - which stopped in a gully about 100m later. What? Looking back up the main road there was a small wooden sign indicating a dirt track to Tsavo, so we reversed and headed for that - by this time followed by a small boy with his hand out begging. When we got to the track an old man sitting by the roadside gave us a toothy grin and said "this is the right road!", the track itself crossed the gully but at this point it wasn't deep, the young boy caught up with us as we crossed so we gave him a pen, he asked for more....!
The track evened out quickly and we were on our way, passing small farming communities, it seems that the Masaai don't live this side of the road - maybe these are the Kikuyu that we heard speaking in Oloitoktok? The road wasn't really too bad, after an hour we'd covered something like 40km when we entered another small settlement, to find a barrier across the road. Barriers aren't unusual, they are oftened manned by bored policemen who ask you "where are you from, where are you going, what are you carrying?" or similar. This time a police/army person arrived, armed with a rifle, looked in the cab and told us we couldn't proceed without an armed escort....those are the rules. But don't worry, another vehicle is due "soon" and all will be ok. At the same time all the local vendors appeared with their "standard" carvings - we suspect they buy these in bulk somewhere - they are even rumoured to be produced in China from exported African wood.... After a while of telling them "Hapana asante" they finally relented and we could start thinking about what was going on here - was this some kind of scam? I got out and went to sit with the police/army guy on his bench under a shade tree and started chatting - he soon relaxed and it became clear that there had been a kidnapping on this road - ten years ago - and that since there had been a rule that all foreigners had to be escorted. Sure enough we heard a vehicle arriving - a KWS Landcruiser pulled up with an important looking bigwig in the passenger seat and a chauffeur - KWS are almost paramilitary and these guys were dressed in uniform - the passenger looked like a general to my eye. They agreed to provide our escort - I explained that we are slow, but they insisted that they follow us (I had hoped that they would want to lead us in which case we'd have felt happy to drive slowly as they disappeared ahead....we set off. We've seen these guys driving around prreviously, they seem to go everywhere at around 100kph - we slow down to 25kph for corrugations. We tried to increase our speed a bit and ended up doing up to 40kph, I could see them in the mirror slowing down to a crawl until we were some distance ahead, then shooting forward at speed, "floating" over the corrugations until they caught up with us - this technique is fine if you're light enough and not paying for the suspension repairs yourself, but our truck is our home.
We finally hit the outskirts of Tsavo Park, but the gate was some 15km further on, we needed to get there before we could lose our tail, so we had to continue. The road took us into volcanic terrain, winding through "ash cones" and coming out into a lava flow. This was Shetani lava flow - it's geologically VERY young - only some 200 years and is spectacular looking like it only cooled yesteday. The road passes straight through the lava but with our tail we were unable to stop to enjoy it. We finally got to the gate, totally fried, said farewell to our escort and stopped for lunch before passing through the gate and starting the clock.
Feeling refreshed we went to see the KWS guy on the gate - it seemed that yet again there were almost no other visitors, he was glad to see us and very welcoming. Into the park - this place is very different from Amboseli in that Tsavo has a lot more vegetation - small tress and bushes everywhere, wildlife spotting will be a lot more difficult here - however this also means that there will be different wlidlife and particularly so for the birds. It wasn't long before Sue had spotted a large bird of prey, so we stopped, turned the engine off and watched. This was repeated many times over the next 3 hours. We saw Oryx - the first we've seen since Namibia - these are slightly different but it's good to see them again.
Once into the park the tracks improve considerably which helps with viewing as it isn't neccessary to concentrate on the road ahead so much.
On a long downhill into Rhino Valley Sue spotted a couple of hornbills in a bush close to the road. As normal we stopped, she wanted a photo so the engine went off to reduce vibrations. As Sue was aiming the camera and the engine was dying I spotted something odd on the dashboard - the GPS had gone into "battery mode", the axle temperature monitor faded slightly and the truck voltmeter dropped. Odd. At this point something told me to check the starter - turn the key - nothing - dead. Oops!
Soon after the truck started dumping air pressure from under the flatbed - it does this when voltage is cut, this alerted Sue to the fact that something might not be quite right....
After a bit of fiddling in the cab trying to work out what had happened (is it the ignition switch, is it the master cut-off, is there somethng else obvious...?) I decided that it was time to get out and have a look outside for clues. Now let's not forget that this is lion country - a good look around, ask Sue to keep a look out, I step out and have a quick look at the outside of the truck - nothing obvious. Under the bonnet - the main connections look good - what about the batteries? Open up the battery box and all looks ok. By this time Sue was in the back, still keeping a look-out, she passed me an electrical meter and I measured the batteries - one was down to about 10v - and under any load it dropped to almost zero. So, we've bust a battery through the vibrations from that road, at least we now know where the problem lies.
How to get running again? As it's an old diesel, the Mog doesn't actually need any electrical power to run - only to get it started. We're on a long hill - could we just bump-start it? Just in front of us is a culvert - a slight uphill (maybe only a few inches, but that's enough to scupper that possibility. Somewhere n the back of my mind I remembered having thought of this possibility in the build/kitting-out, didn't I get a set of very heavy duty and very long jump leads and stow them somewhere? And aren't they long enough to link the (now well charged) domestic batteries to the truck batteries? Where did I put them? A bit more searching - in external lockers so with Sue keeping a lookout again - resulted in them surfacing - not been seen for 4 years! What's more they seem long enough, so the domestic battery compartment gets opened up and Sue holds one end well apart whilst I connect to the truck batteries, I climb in, connect to the domestics, climb out, go round to the cab, the engine starts instantly. I walk back round, disconnect from the truck batteries, hand those end to Sue, climb in, disconnect from the domestics, replace the battery compartment lid, climb out and close the truck battery compartment while Sue closes the box. I've described the process in detail because this is what we had to do over the next couple of weeks every time we wanted to start the engine - we got more practiced at it, but basically that's the process.
Off we went again - only thatwe weren't going to stop the engine again until we got to the campsite and had positioned the truck. Towards the end of the day we found a small stream with a tiny track following it's bank, we followed this and saw more birds, including a really good sighting of a secretary bird. We then found a series of waterholes, the first with a small group of elephans drinking, we had been warned that due to recent poaching the ellies here are rather more nervous that in Amboseli - this was very obvious with a couple flapping their ears and watching us warily. As we couldn't stop the engine to calm them we decided to limit the time we watched them for and continued down a small rocky track to the next waterholes - a lot of birdlife with hammerkop, herons and kingfishers amongst others.
We left the park gates a little before dusk and found the campsite just after - yet again a very small track to get to it - over what were obviously small volcanic rocks, slow but easy.The camsite itself was lovely - just two other small groups there - the ground is very rocky and uneven, luckily for anyone staying in a tent there were areas where volcanic gravel had been raked to provide a flat surface - but not a problem for us.
We had a sundowner and were ready to go to sleep as soon as we'd eaten a cold supper. Overnight we heard hyena and some odd bird-like noises, but I suspect that most of the time we wouldn't have woken even if a lion HAD roared right next to the truck!
Then it was back up the road to the turning to Tsavo - we'd seen it earlier, so that should be ok....
We soon got to the sign and followed it onto a tar road - which stopped in a gully about 100m later. What? Looking back up the main road there was a small wooden sign indicating a dirt track to Tsavo, so we reversed and headed for that - by this time followed by a small boy with his hand out begging. When we got to the track an old man sitting by the roadside gave us a toothy grin and said "this is the right road!", the track itself crossed the gully but at this point it wasn't deep, the young boy caught up with us as we crossed so we gave him a pen, he asked for more....!
The track evened out quickly and we were on our way, passing small farming communities, it seems that the Masaai don't live this side of the road - maybe these are the Kikuyu that we heard speaking in Oloitoktok? The road wasn't really too bad, after an hour we'd covered something like 40km when we entered another small settlement, to find a barrier across the road. Barriers aren't unusual, they are oftened manned by bored policemen who ask you "where are you from, where are you going, what are you carrying?" or similar. This time a police/army person arrived, armed with a rifle, looked in the cab and told us we couldn't proceed without an armed escort....those are the rules. But don't worry, another vehicle is due "soon" and all will be ok. At the same time all the local vendors appeared with their "standard" carvings - we suspect they buy these in bulk somewhere - they are even rumoured to be produced in China from exported African wood.... After a while of telling them "Hapana asante" they finally relented and we could start thinking about what was going on here - was this some kind of scam? I got out and went to sit with the police/army guy on his bench under a shade tree and started chatting - he soon relaxed and it became clear that there had been a kidnapping on this road - ten years ago - and that since there had been a rule that all foreigners had to be escorted. Sure enough we heard a vehicle arriving - a KWS Landcruiser pulled up with an important looking bigwig in the passenger seat and a chauffeur - KWS are almost paramilitary and these guys were dressed in uniform - the passenger looked like a general to my eye. They agreed to provide our escort - I explained that we are slow, but they insisted that they follow us (I had hoped that they would want to lead us in which case we'd have felt happy to drive slowly as they disappeared ahead....we set off. We've seen these guys driving around prreviously, they seem to go everywhere at around 100kph - we slow down to 25kph for corrugations. We tried to increase our speed a bit and ended up doing up to 40kph, I could see them in the mirror slowing down to a crawl until we were some distance ahead, then shooting forward at speed, "floating" over the corrugations until they caught up with us - this technique is fine if you're light enough and not paying for the suspension repairs yourself, but our truck is our home.
We finally hit the outskirts of Tsavo Park, but the gate was some 15km further on, we needed to get there before we could lose our tail, so we had to continue. The road took us into volcanic terrain, winding through "ash cones" and coming out into a lava flow. This was Shetani lava flow - it's geologically VERY young - only some 200 years and is spectacular looking like it only cooled yesteday. The road passes straight through the lava but with our tail we were unable to stop to enjoy it. We finally got to the gate, totally fried, said farewell to our escort and stopped for lunch before passing through the gate and starting the clock.
Feeling refreshed we went to see the KWS guy on the gate - it seemed that yet again there were almost no other visitors, he was glad to see us and very welcoming. Into the park - this place is very different from Amboseli in that Tsavo has a lot more vegetation - small tress and bushes everywhere, wildlife spotting will be a lot more difficult here - however this also means that there will be different wlidlife and particularly so for the birds. It wasn't long before Sue had spotted a large bird of prey, so we stopped, turned the engine off and watched. This was repeated many times over the next 3 hours. We saw Oryx - the first we've seen since Namibia - these are slightly different but it's good to see them again.
Once into the park the tracks improve considerably which helps with viewing as it isn't neccessary to concentrate on the road ahead so much.
On a long downhill into Rhino Valley Sue spotted a couple of hornbills in a bush close to the road. As normal we stopped, she wanted a photo so the engine went off to reduce vibrations. As Sue was aiming the camera and the engine was dying I spotted something odd on the dashboard - the GPS had gone into "battery mode", the axle temperature monitor faded slightly and the truck voltmeter dropped. Odd. At this point something told me to check the starter - turn the key - nothing - dead. Oops!
Soon after the truck started dumping air pressure from under the flatbed - it does this when voltage is cut, this alerted Sue to the fact that something might not be quite right....
After a bit of fiddling in the cab trying to work out what had happened (is it the ignition switch, is it the master cut-off, is there somethng else obvious...?) I decided that it was time to get out and have a look outside for clues. Now let's not forget that this is lion country - a good look around, ask Sue to keep a look out, I step out and have a quick look at the outside of the truck - nothing obvious. Under the bonnet - the main connections look good - what about the batteries? Open up the battery box and all looks ok. By this time Sue was in the back, still keeping a look-out, she passed me an electrical meter and I measured the batteries - one was down to about 10v - and under any load it dropped to almost zero. So, we've bust a battery through the vibrations from that road, at least we now know where the problem lies.
How to get running again? As it's an old diesel, the Mog doesn't actually need any electrical power to run - only to get it started. We're on a long hill - could we just bump-start it? Just in front of us is a culvert - a slight uphill (maybe only a few inches, but that's enough to scupper that possibility. Somewhere n the back of my mind I remembered having thought of this possibility in the build/kitting-out, didn't I get a set of very heavy duty and very long jump leads and stow them somewhere? And aren't they long enough to link the (now well charged) domestic batteries to the truck batteries? Where did I put them? A bit more searching - in external lockers so with Sue keeping a lookout again - resulted in them surfacing - not been seen for 4 years! What's more they seem long enough, so the domestic battery compartment gets opened up and Sue holds one end well apart whilst I connect to the truck batteries, I climb in, connect to the domestics, climb out, go round to the cab, the engine starts instantly. I walk back round, disconnect from the truck batteries, hand those end to Sue, climb in, disconnect from the domestics, replace the battery compartment lid, climb out and close the truck battery compartment while Sue closes the box. I've described the process in detail because this is what we had to do over the next couple of weeks every time we wanted to start the engine - we got more practiced at it, but basically that's the process.
Off we went again - only thatwe weren't going to stop the engine again until we got to the campsite and had positioned the truck. Towards the end of the day we found a small stream with a tiny track following it's bank, we followed this and saw more birds, including a really good sighting of a secretary bird. We then found a series of waterholes, the first with a small group of elephans drinking, we had been warned that due to recent poaching the ellies here are rather more nervous that in Amboseli - this was very obvious with a couple flapping their ears and watching us warily. As we couldn't stop the engine to calm them we decided to limit the time we watched them for and continued down a small rocky track to the next waterholes - a lot of birdlife with hammerkop, herons and kingfishers amongst others.
We left the park gates a little before dusk and found the campsite just after - yet again a very small track to get to it - over what were obviously small volcanic rocks, slow but easy.The camsite itself was lovely - just two other small groups there - the ground is very rocky and uneven, luckily for anyone staying in a tent there were areas where volcanic gravel had been raked to provide a flat surface - but not a problem for us.
We had a sundowner and were ready to go to sleep as soon as we'd eaten a cold supper. Overnight we heard hyena and some odd bird-like noises, but I suspect that most of the time we wouldn't have woken even if a lion HAD roared right next to the truck!