6th June 2000
2h30 in the morning and panic struck!!! I was revving through a donga and stuck when Dale tried to go through next to me and ended up in the same predicament. As he rocked the vehicle forwards and backwards revving to get through, the sparks suddenly began to fly! Next there were hordes of smoke and the flames followed. FIRE!!! We screamed to tell Dale while I jumped out grabbing the fire extinguisher. Dale hurled himself into the back of his vehicle and ripped out all the burning electrical cables. That soon killed the fire but the smoke and smell hung around as we determined the damage. Luckily not too bad. With the jolting through the donga the batteries powering the lights in the back of the vehicle had shifted and caused a short. It was just a matter of replacing all the cables, which we headed off back to camp to do.
Although only the first fire we’ve ever had, the consequences are terrifying with all the camera gear in the vehicle. That ended our evening with Tjololo who was likely to be in Kruger within the next hour.
At sunset we had found Tjololo leaving the Sand river close to where we thought him to have been at dawn. He moved on south marking, then left the river bank heading east before resting up for several hours. Only around 01h30 did he move on again, until disaster struck and he carried on oblivious to our fate.
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