Firstly this car was a write-off when I bought it, not surprising when you think that the car was found by Thandi. Just her way of saying “wouldn’t it be nice if we could drive together?” – buy the car. I had to pay a 1000 out of my next month’s salary, and it had gone wrong by then; the guy had sold to a dupe as is. I refused and the bguy advertised the debt in the paper. When I bought my second car people told me that the first one had become known as a month-end car because it only worked at month-end when I could afford to pay for it to be fixed.

Rather stupidly I had persisted with my unfounded faith in the car even to the extent of inviting a friend to tour SA in it. The problem began a few days before I went to Jo’Burg. I was in Matopos having spent a wonderful day with Nano driving around, and we were starting on our way back to the campsite. Suddenly steam started pouring out of the engine. Nano contributed by hightailing it into the bush thinking the car was on fire. The steam rose high in the air, and the park rangers all stormed over to where we were fearing a bush fire. Some guy at Matopos patched it up a bit,, and I drove back to Bulawayo where I was told it was the radiator. It was patched up and I returned to Francistown only to discover on the way that there was a problem and I could only do 80 kph. This was good as I planned to drive down to Jo’Burg to start a tour.

So the next day I drove to Jo’Burg at 80 – between 800-900 km. I was driving for more than 12 hours that day, and as result despite all worries I was able to meet Gavin at the airport.

We stayed at the backpackers a few days waiting for the fuel injector, and then we started our journey to the Garden Route reaching Port Edward the first night. We looked at the map and the N2 was the main route via Umtata, but we thought it would be nice to go over the top to St John’s, and we did. Apparently this was dangerous at the best of times but especially so with a dickey car. We rode our luck, not thinking we were doing so, and reached St John’s finding a very nice backpackers in a beautiful part of the world.

Next morning we were going to drive off but we had a flat. For some reason this wasn’t straight forward and we stayed another couple of days when we drove off. We had picked up an Aussie traveller at the backpackers, and he was going to join is for a while. Well we reached Butterworth, and had a puncture just outside. We put on the spare to find that it had not been sorted at St John’s so we staggered into a Butterworth garage to sort it out. We hung around there a couple of hours and drove onto East London. But just outside East London the head gasket went, and we were in East London backpackers a couple of days where Gavin’s snoring became a talking point.

We headed off to King William’s Town where we decided to stop, but I am not sure why – I don’t think we had a car fault. Leaving King William’s Town we drove through Ciskei, beautiful but deserted country until we reached the top when the car suddenly came to a stop. Even though there was nothing in sight we reached a garage after walking 400m, and he told us the big end had gone. He couldn’t fix it so the guy produced this breakdown truck and towed us back to King William’s Town at 20kph – 4 hours.

I had learnt never to trust Indian guys in this part of the world but it was December 22, and no-one else would touch the work. He promised that he could have new cylinders delivered the next day. Same story the next day, and then December 24 he had to drive back to Durban for Xmas but would get onto it as soon as he returned from holiday. The same excuses followed until New Year’s Day when we gave up and he gave us 7500 rand for the car and we hired something in East London. We then had one of those driving marathons, and drove through the night until I was almost falling asleep at the wheel just South of the Botswana border when I woke Gavin. We got back to Francistown in around 18 hours.

Using the hire car we went to Bulawayo and up to Vic Falls with Nano insisting on coming although flu was flattening her. Sadly those two days in Zimbabwe were the only two days Gavin could say he had a holiday.

I soon discovered that my own problems had only really just begun. The bank in Francistown would not cash a rand cheque, so I phoned the Indian guys and asked them to go ahead and try to fix it. I kept phoning them and nothing happened.

I knew that nothing happening thing so I contacted a lawyer through South African AA – I was a member in Zimbabwe. I asked this lawyer to chase it up – he did nothing. Until two months later I got a phone call to say the police had found the car dumped in Dimbaza. After a few phone calls the car was delivered by a forecourt garage to a mechanic in East London recommended by AA South Africa. I received a bill for 1800 from the forecourt garage for doing what appeared to be nothing. I asked the lawyer to help me with this but he was in cahoots.

A month later this East London garage said they had fixed the car so myself and two friends – one to drive – came down to East London for our Easter break. We collected the car and drove 10km on a test run and the car crashed out again – problem with the fuel tank. They fixed that the same day, and the next day we took the car out and after 15km it did not work. The engine was overheating again and needed a new fanguard. The garage said sorry we cannot get one, even though I had travelled 2000km after they had promised they had fixed the car.

I went to some bush guy who said he had fixed something up, and the car seemed fine – at least to get us to Francistown without having to lay out even more money. Off we drove and it seemed to be going fine. The heater gauge was in the red but it always was!! 20km outside Schweizer-Reneke the engine seized. We had the two cars one with a seized engine, and we were hapless at the side of the road when a pastor stopped. He towed the seized car to Kairuz Ford, Schweizer-Reneke, and then invited us back for a meal to stop overnight.

That was strange. We went back to this nice farm house to a man who was really nice with a beautiful family. In fact he was an ex-pastor, and he had invited us to tell us about how he believed that aliens were watching over us, and how he used to go to the Kalahari desert to look out for them. He produced a video from some American guy. It was all so pleasant and – alien!

Meanwhile the AA lawyer had continued to act in his own interest and he sued me for the money I owed the forecourt garage – money I had refused to pay because they had done nothing; a year later I was paying in a Francistown courthouse. Eventually the lawyer told me that the forecourt garage had to fix the car up as it was a mess after having been dumped in Dimbaza. Meanwhile I had complained to AA South Africa about all the charlatans their office had recommended, but as usual with everything to do with SA and my car nothing was done.