I think we can make it

We had thought we booked a van and driver for the day at 11 am today. . . but apparently we had not been specific enough and nothing had been set up. We moved to our plan B and called Chipe – the guy who we met at the hotel and we were going to call for a van on Sunday. Chipe was able to help us, though he would arrange two cars. Outstanding – we were going to be set to go when they got there. Where were were going was another story. Apparently we were going to go around 12km, and stop at the side of the road and find a trail leading to a large hill/mountain and wander up the trail. Sean had mapped this all out, with the help of google maps, and though there remained questions about whether there were really trails, we were going to go for it.

Chipe and his pal arrived shortly after to meet up with us, a serious negotiation took place on price – as we were booking 2 cars and 2 drivers to wait for us til we got done with the hike. They agreed to hike with us and look after us, and we came to what we believe was a fair price for all. Finally, we hit the road. We got a few kilometers up the road and I started smelling burning rubber. I assumed it was just something in the air from local burning, but it was getting much more intense. Finally, smoke started billowing in through the front vents of the car and the car started filling up with smoke. Our driver pulled over and I was about to dive out of the car to get some air, and noted that the interior door handle was completely broken off. I quickly opened the window, reached out to open the door and jumped out of the car. When he opened the hood, I was expecting to see flames, but what we saw was melted wires, and melted plastic. Fairly serious melting. He disconnected the battery, and peeled the melted terminal covers back, and then ..of course..we all just stared under the hood. It didn't look like we were going to make it to the village. In this picture you can see the heavy duty diagnostics going on. After some knowing nods of doom, our driver called the other car, and they returned to share in our puzzled staring under the hood. We all agreed that melting wires could not be good. We agreed that car 1 would drop the first half off, and then come back for our car, and they would deal with the car after that. However..we had not counted on Wolfgangs power of car repair. As we were wandering around a dried river bed, watching numerous women carry all manner of items on their head - with no hands.if you can believe it....they yelled out to us to come back to the car. Apparently Wolfgangs glare at the wires cause the car to fix itself, and we all hopped in to continue to meet up with the others. We assume something must have stopped working, but we never did learn what that was. We proceeded to start our hike through fields being farmed by many different families - maize, grapes, tomatoes, gourds were things we could identify. The sun was very hot, but it was a beautiful day. More about the hike and a wonderful dinner later, as it is quite late here now.