River trip 6 tot 10 aug 2015

[Herrie]

Mooi voël fotos ook!

[ricster]

Tick bites???.... Alex, you clearly did not drink enough in the evenings.....hahaha.... Red wine is not the preferred favorite of the ticks

[Tinus lotz]

Me thinks its him and ben in that broke back mountain tent. .......lol

[bogeyman]

Alex,
I get bitten so much , the ticks get sick when they bite me

Symptoms usually start with slight fever , headache and a stiffness in the neck muscles similar to onset of malaria.
Tick bite fever is not bad and lasts a couple of days , but tick fever(yes , there are 2) is more serious and can get you in hospital.
They also leave parasites in your body that is difficult to get rid of.

Worst are those pesky pepper ticks that are too small to see. They bite and run. When bite 1 starts itching , it is already at bite 4.
Only good thing about ticks is when you have to ask somebody (hopefully your wife ) to help you find them.....

[ricster]

hahahaha.... so finding them an be fun???

[Alex Roux]

Mooi voel fotos ook!

Die bruin slangarend het ek gesien by die begin punt van die Klein Letaba. Heelwat later kom Piet verby, toe sit hy lykmy nogsteeds daar

[Alex Roux]

Tick bites???.... Alex, you clearly did not drink enough in the evenings.....hahaha.... Red wine is not the preferred favorite of the ticks

As far as empirical evidence can go, I can positively confirm that red wine is most definitely not a tick bite deterrent!

Me thinks its him and ben in that broke back mountain tent. .......lol

Just for the record, we were in seperate tents!

Thanks for the advice, Christo.

[Peter Connan]

...Continued

TheObstacle11ODP.jpg (420.87 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle12ODP.jpg (396.49 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle13ODP.jpg (449.76 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle14ODP.jpg (401.46 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle15ODP.jpg (428.91 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle16ODP.jpg (392.23 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle17ODP.jpg (485.31 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle18ODP.jpg (385.1 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle19ODP.jpg (383.59 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

TheObstacle20ODP.jpg (424.59 KiB) Viewed 2790 times

[Peter Connan]

Eventually we made it through. By this time it was 11h00, and we were rather famished, so we swallowed a fast meal.

CarefulODP.jpg (432.7 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

PKODP.jpg (297.53 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

SplashODP.jpg (376.06 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

Mud1ODP.jpg (420.6 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

Not much further, we found the other guys having a far more ornate and complex lunch. Thanks for the burgers Graham!
Since a number of guys had left for home already, we realized that this was probably our last opportunity to get a reasonable gruop photo.

Us1ODP.jpg (394.17 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

Us2ODP.jpg (409.29 KiB) Viewed 2784 times

We then carried on with the intention of finding a campsite reasonably close to Giyani, but the locals in that area have comprehensively mined (read "destroyed") the river, and so we turned around and came back part of the way.

In the mean time though, some of the guys had found a pretty large waterhole and decided to have some fun. This seems to have gotten out of hand a little, culminating in the death of David's 4.2 TDI. Unfortunately I have no photos of this, so if somebody could contribute a few, I would appreciate it.

[Stefan]

Thanks for the trip-report Piet - sounds epic!