Wednesday 18 July 2012

Hanging Out and Horse Heads...

Monday and Tuesday saw us hanging out at Seisa.  We did our small restock of fresh food at the supermarket, and sampled the bakery pies.  That night we decided to cook up the chicken roast we had brought with us, and then cooked damper (on the gas stove unfortunately).  Pretty luxurious, although we did go to bed that night with ‘damper guts’!

That night, whilst the girls were brushing their teeth on the back step of the camper, they all of a sudden looked up and not 4 feet away from them was the wandering horse, staring them in the eye.  “WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” came this gut wrenching cry from both of them, as they backed up the stairs.  The camper flyscreen door was shut, so they couldn’t get in, and were therefore effectively pinned there.  Amy, who was in the camper at the time, couldn’t stop laughing, but did unzip the door to let them in.  Glenn came out of the hut and (in Savannah’s words) ‘donked’ it away, much to their relief. 

On the Tuesday, Glenn did a heap of checks on Slim, and a few maintenance jobs.  He was in two minds about checking all the oils until one of the other members found water in his gearbox.  That was enough to make sure the checks were done.  After a while crawling around under the car, Glenn was relieved to find that all was fine.  We did discover water in our driving lights, and a few fish floating around in there like a fishbowl.  Man, that was deep water we must have gone though! 

There was a LOT of car preparation that went into getting ready for this particular Cape trip, starting well more than 12 months beforehand.  This included things like fitting winches, brand new tyres, extensive spares, breathers on diffs,  replacing clutches, and making sure we had the right gear, such as car bra’s for deep water crossings.  All this additional to what we already had from previous trips.  It was satisfying to know that we were extremely well prepared, confident in our vehicle, and we made it through without serious incident.

Some members had been slowly heading off, all with various commitments and timeframes.  Quite a number left on the Tuesday to visit another beach on the way back.  We decided to head off on Wednesday morning, and given we only had around 30kms that day, it was the worlds slowest packup, leaving around lunchtime. 

As expected, the girls were incredibly sad to say goodbye to our travelling group.  Amy also found it a little difficult to say goodbye as we had all made some lovely friends, and the kids really enjoyed all the socializing.  They were a hit with the older kids on the trip, and even quite a few of the adults took a real shine to them.  They were great at entertaining, and being surrogate grandchildren at times.  Savannah even got a birthday present from two of the families.  We were very pleased to get some lovely compliments on how lovely and well behaved they were.  We knew better, but didn’t want to rain on the parade.

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