Each year as Christmas and the holidays approach we anxiously await what challenges might be thrown at us during a time most of South Africa’s businesses close down for long periods of time. Which turns anything that can not immediately be fixed or McGyvered on site into a mission to Mars – and seemingly taking just as long.
The last two years its been our vehicles that kept us busy trying to find any mechanics willing to interrupt their end-of-year repose to help us out. This year we were ready to breathe a careful sigh of relief as with the Christmas Eve drive in the bag all still seemed well and everything was up and running.
Then the storm hit… and we lost our wireless link from Djuma with the worst possible timing.
Yesterday morning Connor and Alex managed to establish on which leg of the link the problem occured and this morning, with great support from Eric at Bushguru, we managed to pinpoint it further to a broken mast pole in Hoedspruit. We then did breathe that sigh of relief as that was much easier to get to and fix than the top of Mariepskop. Connor jumped in our trusty bakkie and drove out to Hoedspruit and together with Eric quickly got the link back up and running again.
Now the question remains what caused the mast pole to snap of like that on Christmas Eve?
My brain tells me it was most likely the storm, possibly a branch snapping from a nearby tree. But somewhere deep down I would like to think that, just maybe, it was clipped by “someone’s” sleigh…
