The Mountains (Eastern Cape) Cont

Our next port of call was to see an old friend from our days in Botswana. Becky now lives in Port Alfred on the aptly named Sunshine coast which is only a short drive from Addo. She and her new husband John own a very nice garden centre there and in the UK we spend a lot at our local garden centre so it was all we could do to stop buying something ourselves!

We haven't seen Becky for nearly 20 years so we had a lot of catching up to do, so much in fact that we ended up staying for the night.  It was great to see Becky after so long and to meet John and we all enjoyed a good night out in Port Alfred so much that John failed to get up to open the garden centre the next day!

Unfortunately our time with them was all too brief as we needed  to move on. Taking Becky and John's recommendation we were heading for Chintsa Bay further up the coast. The drive up this part of the coastline is lovely, much nicer than the Garden Route which we feel is a bit overrated.

We had booked to stay on a campsite at Chintsa West but when we arrived we didn't like it at all it was so awful it made George look good! However by a stroke of luck nearby was another site called the 'Rendezvous' so we decided to look at that. It was lovely, almost deserted with loads of trees and a small path which led straight onto a deserted sandy beach - perfect.

We were greeted by an elderly old gent who went by the name of Ralph Jones, not Welsh as we thought but South African born and bred. Ralph has led a chequered life as farmer, chemical company manager, prospector but now in his 80's he still manages to keep very active looking after the site for the absentee owner. His Father was a passionate collector of snakes, especially the Black Mamba, and Ralph is currently writing up his life story.

His lives on site in a permanent Caravan which he shares with Whisky his Jack Russell, a cat and George the African Grey Parrot - a gentleman of the old school Ralph is certainly one of those memorable characters that travelling throws you from time to time!

Since De Hoop Rupert had been leaking clutch fluid down the pedal and I was fairly certain the master cylinder needed replacing. We had a spare with us so the next day we popped into the Landrover dealer at East London to see if they could do the job as I was sure they would do it a lot quicker and easier than I could.

There's a sort of unwritten bond amongst Landy owners, (we wave to each other when we pass on the road (well to Defenders & Series models anyway!) and I'm glad to say that ethos prevails with the Landy dealers here as well.    

Even though we hadn't even rang to make an appointment they got Sean one of their top mechanics to take a look and he confirmed it would need changing sooner rather than later. It was midday on a Friday but without hesitation they took the Landy in and started work on it straight away.  Luckily we had a spare as they didn't have one in stock, it took them about 3 hrs to change it out which I reckoned was more than half the time it would take me.  When he finished Sean talked me through how to do the job without the need to take the clutch pedal out (which is how the Haynes manual says it should be done) and we held onto the old cylinder to act as an emergency backup.

Sean had also noticed that the drive belt was showing signs of fatigue and we should keep a close eye on it. I took a look and actually found it was splitting along its length not across it as is normal. Sean actually inserted a pen into the split and we agreed that must be changed straight away so it was back into the spares box again to get our spare belt out but this time I bought a replacement spare at their spares dept later.

The way it was splitting was very strange, even Sean said he had not seen them go that way before, the only thing we thought was perhaps a small pebble had somehow got trapped in one of the pulleys and it was shredding the belt as it went round - needless to say we were just grateful we had caught it before it went at some in opportune moment.

Total cost to change master cylinder and drive belt was R 580 (approx £58) excellent value UK dealers take note! Many thanks to Brian, Mike & Sean for their help when we needed it.

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