Swaziland Day 2

Just after midnight I woke up having a coughing fit I stayed up outside the trailer for 45 mins coughing and then Ellie came out saying she could hear the fridge beeping because of low power.
We decided just to unplug it and when we got back in the trailer to go to bed I realised the power bank had run out and our fans had stopped working. I then spent 20 mins getting the right leads the right way around so we could run them from the USB on the trailer which was fine until 2:30am when the trailer started beeping telling us it was losing power.
At 3am I just decided to switch the whole trailer off and we sweated in the 28°c night air until I gave up trying to get to sleep at 5am and just got up.
I was annoyed the battery hadn’t lasted but the readout on the power panel does tell us that the fridge is pulling 2.5amps per hour. You can only use half of the ampage in a lead acid battery which is what we’ve got and as it’s a 90ah battery we only have 45ah to play with at best.
At 8am we decided to plug the car back into the trailer and just let it run for an hour. The power panel has a built in DC to DC charger so I should be able to half full the battery in that amount of time.
So I plugged the car into the trailer and where the panel normally says vehicle it didn’t. I flicked some switches and nothing. I turned the car off, unplugged it, plugged it back in, nothing. Then I checked the fuses. One under the bonnet, one on the power panel in the trailer, 2 around the battery and nothing.
After 90 minutes I traced the wires from the car all the way back to the power panel, with my new Allen keys I removed the power panel and straight away I could see that the plug to the Dc to Dc charger had snapped off. It looked like whoever had originally put the wires in had forced the plug back into place and broken the 2 connecting pins and yesterday we went over umptine speed humps and then the gravel road to get here and they have shaken loose. Now we can’t charge the trailer whilst driving. This is a problem I don’t think I fix.
Now we knew what the problem was we knew we had to move campsite to somewhere that had power so we had a shower and then drove the mile and a half back to reception where there was wifi and while Ellie searched for a new camp I hired a mountain bike for an hour and headed out.
I left the reception at 11:30am, I was going to be an hour and they wouldn’t charge me for rental as they knew we were leaving early. I took a drink, wore a helmet and took off trying to get as much mileage under my belt in an hour.
I passed Giraffe, followed a couple of warthog, rode past a huge heard of Impala, saw a hippo outside the bird watching area and stopped for a drink next to a huge Monitor lizard. 50 mins in I was just up the road from the reception and I decided to go home down the mountain bike trail. On the map it looked like one trail but as I got into it it split off into different trails that weren’t in the map. I realised later that these were probably wide game trails. As I went flying down a hill I had a pop and the front wheel started going down so I pulled the back brake but it was already to late. The front wheel went from under me and I face planted into the gravel.
I was ok, I got back in the bike and carried on, I had 5 minutes to get back and I knew I wasn’t far away but when I came out of the trail onto the road there were no numbers on the trails. I turned right and rode very slowly now as the front tyre was almost completely flat and after 5 minutes I was back at the trailhead I had just just gone down. I was riding in circles.
I turned around and decided to keep riding until u found a track number and I did. Track 13, it didn’t look anything like the map but I needed track 11 so I carried on for 20 minutes downhill and came to track 16. I was going the wrong way and now I was 20 minutes late, I’d run out of drink, my hands and arms were covered in blood and it was 35°c.
I did think to myself is this really how I die? Lost in the bush in a mountain bike cooking myself to death?
I turned around and even though it was uphill with a puncture I managed to get back to track 13, I checked the map again and thought I figured out the right way and with no sign of track 12 I finally stumbled on track 11 and the route to reception. I limped the bike back home and told them why I was late. Ellie was waiting she had already told them I’m never late there must be a problem and they were about to send out a search party. They didn’t seem to bothered about the puncture.
Back at camp we started taking the trailer down. I had a quick semi-cold shower and at 2:30pm we left and drove 4 miles down the road to the Mlozi Nature Reserve. Once we had checked in we had a 2 mile drive through the bush to reach our campsite. We are the only ones in the whole park and even though we are 2 miles away from anywhere this camp has power.
As we pulled in to the camping area we were greeted by warthog and then we pitched up. It took us 45 minutes including staking down the awning and putting the groundsheet down. We were impressed with ourselves.
As soon as the tent was up I went for a cold shower but even though the boilers aren’t on the water is still boiling because of how hot it is, luckily when I came back from the shower there was a gentle breeze so u managed to air dry and cook down.
We have a lovely shady spot that the pigs were enjoying until we got here and it’s very peaceful.
There are lots of hikes and a cafe at the opposite entrance 5 miles away so we might drive up there tomorrow.
By 5:30pm we had, had dinner and it was still 30°c outside but threatening rain. We so want it to rain to cool it down.Read more