Gabs Again

Following the trend of recent events, my move to Maun has once again been unexpectedly pushed back. On Saturday Tim, our chief pilot, and myself were planning to drive together up to Maun so that he could do my orientation and training flights in the Delta this week. We left early in the morning and had made it the whole way to Serowe (nearly halfway to Maun, or about 3-4 hours driving) when we began having problems with my Land Rover. The water temperature gauge has been acting strangely for quite a while, so I didn’t think anything of it when the gauge dropped to zero for the last hour or so that we’d been driving. As we drove into Serowe, though, I noticed water streaming out from under the hood and could hear that the pressure relief cap was, well, relieving pressure. So we knew something was wrong. We were stopping for fuel anyway in Serowe, so we let it cool down a bit and then continued on our way. After a bit, strange things started to happen and the engine started losing power and surging. We stopped and decided to try removing the thermostat to see if a stuck thermostat was causing the overheating problems. We couldn’t find the thermostat (a nice man in a Land Cruiser stopped to help us out), but discovered when no water shot out the hose where we took it apart that the cooling system was nearly dry. Anyway, to make a long story short, we decided to turn back to gabs rather than risk getting stranded along the remote stretch of desert between Serowe and Maun, where cell phone coverage would be irregular and passers-by few. On the way back, the vehicle was fine (we think a big part of the overheating might have been the strong headwind we had on the way up – the land rover isn’t really a highway vehicle to start with). So now I’m back in Gabs and will spend this week trying to get the problem sorted out so that I can either sell it or take it to Maun with me later. That’s the latest in my saga of attempts to move to Maun…I’ll keep you posted. Now looks like I’ll probably make my next attempt next weekend, but we shall see.