After last week’s rifle practice, we had a test on Monday morning on everything rifle related. We then began the day-long lecture from Mark Frazer from Nostophobic Adventures on 4x4 driving. As someone who has never really needed to drive off-road other than when with the horses, this was pretty much completely new to me. Both my dad and brother are ‘petrolheads’ and love their cars, but I haven’t really followed their interest as much. Hopefully they’ll be proud of me as I now know the basics of prop shafts, differentials, suspension, tyres, and chassis – something I never thought I’d be learning about!
Tuesday then started off with us trying out our first 4x4 manoeuvres on the reserve – stall starts. We engaged 4L and front and rear diff locks on the Cruiser and gently rolled downhill letting the engine do all of the braking by taking our feet off the pedals – something I’m definitely not used to! We then had to stall facing downhill on the slope, take our foot off the brake and stay in gear with no handbrake or any feet touching the pedals. Then all you do is turn the ignition and away you go with the engine immediately braking and resuming your downhill climb. It sounds so odd when you first run through it in your head, but it’s the easiest thing to do and will be really helpful if we ever need to stop for a sighting on a downhill slope.
Next, we did a reverse stall start where we had to stall going up the hill. This one was a little more intimidating but also a more common scenario when you’re driving a heavy vehicle full of guests up some steep and slippery slopes! Once you stall you have to keep your foot depressed on the brake with the handbrake up and not touch anything else whilst you brief your clients on what is about to happen. You then have to quickly change into reverse, but on the older vehicles with worn out handbrakes they often start rolling back, so it’s best to do it quickly and take your foot off the clutch as soon as it’s in reverse. Then you release the handbrake and slowly release your foot off the footbrake, letting the engine take the strain in reverse gear and stopping you from going anywhere. Once the car has settled, you then turn the ignition on keeping your foot off the pedals and the car lurches backwards in reverse, allowing you to start braking and reversing down the hill until you’re on more flat ground where you can do a hill start to successfully get back up the hill. The most important thing we learnt from this is not to touch the clutch unless you want to speed down the hill out of control!
In the afternoon, we learnt how to do a kinetic recovery if a vehicle is ‘bogged down’, i.e. stuck up to its belly. Despite having flowing water, it was surprisingly difficult to get the Landy bogged down and we had to resort to digging holes around the tyres to help it sink! Once it was thoroughly stuck, we all assembled the recovery kit and attached the rope and bridles to each vehicle. Then it was time for each of us to have a go at doing a kinetic recovery using the Cruiser, where you floor it and the kinetic energy of the rope yanks the Landy out rather than just pulling it out with a pull rope or strap. This is often more useful when you’re bogged down and in difficult terrain like a river bed, where you could end up getting both vehicles stuck if the recovery isn’t done correctly. Luckily, we all managed it and had great fun in doing so, learning valuable skills for when us or someone else gets stuck whilst out in the field!
On Wednesday our two groups swapped over, so the other group did their 4x4 training while we did morning and afternoon practice drives on Pidwa, another area within the Makalali Reserve. It was so interesting being in another area as it is more dominated by grasses than Lufafa where we normally drive. It also had an incredible dam filled with different water lilies and African jacanas (Jesus birds) walking on the top of them. We don’t have any dams like this in the Lufafa area, so it was perfect for a drink stop to observe everything found there.
The big 4x4 day came on Thursday when we had our assessments. We had to demonstrate the stall start skills we had learned but this time on an even steeper hill and in the Landy which was much more difficult as it doesn’t have diff locks! We then had to demonstrate a mud recovery in the dam at campus where the Cruiser. Thankfully, our excellent trainers Mark and Andre obviously taught us well as we all passed and will be reviewed again in the next month or two so that we can get our accredited 4x4 certificates. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we all learned a huge amount that will no doubt be invaluable in our careers.
We finished up the 4x4 paperwork on Friday morning and had a practical observation test in the afternoon, encompassing what we have learned with track and sign, and which species we have learned over the past two semesters. I think we all did better than we thought, and we know more than we expected to by now. This doesn’t mean we can relax though as there is a lot more learning to come!
As Saturday was the start of our off week, we all had a braai on Friday night to celebrate the end of semester at camp, before most of the South Africans left in the morning to go home. There’s no rest for us internationals however, as we had our driving lessons in the morning to prepare us for our driving tests on Monday. I think we all found it pretty straight forward and were hoping our driving tests would be the same!
After picking up our hire cars (a strange thing to do after having a driving lesson and being qualified to drive, but without a SA licence!), we headed back to camp and popped into Mahlahla for dinner and to watch the rugby, as well as to catch up with a few friends. Sunday was a pretty relaxed day for us all and we decided to play the game ‘Exploding Kittens’ in the evening to ease some pre-driving test nerves, which was a great laugh and definitely needed by all!
I’ll post another update about our driving tests and our week off in the next blog, but wish us luck!
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