The Perils of Owning a Landrover

We are often told that we are in the lucky 0.1% of people who get to live their dream. And everyone who says it is absolutely right. But two weeks after arriving back in Namibia from the UK, our dream seemed to have become a nightmare.

It´s not that having Henry´s gearbox fail was the end of the world, any vehicle has problems especially when you use it mercilessly every day on tough roads. It´s not that trying to source new parts in Africa was challenging, time-consuming and expensive – that´s the deal when you´re a nomad. It wasn´t even that we had to stay in the city for a month with little to do and no end in sight – Urban Camp had practically become our home, the staff had become friends and we enjoyed being with them all

It was none of that. The nightmare unfolding in front of us was that every time we fixed one problem with Henry another occurred, the problems sometimes overlapped and every time something else went wrong it was a bigger thing, a more expensive part, a harder issue to fix. James was literally spending every day under a Landrover – hot, oily, tired. Most of the time he was trying to find or fix problems on the side of a dusty road with only the few tools we carry. And as he said, he never wanted to spend his life as a Landrover mechanic.

I was fed up, frustrated, bored – feeling like a completely useless spare part all day every day. Every time I made plans they were sidelined by Henry´s issues.

James was tired – physically and mentally, as well as tired of having cuts and bruises and a headache from being underneath Henry all the time and wrecking all his clothes with oil and dirt.

And we were burning through our money faster than we could keep up with. In fact our entire travelling budget was in freefall.

We have been through a lot on our travels so far but living the life of a nomad has always made it all worthwhile. Even when we rolled down a mountain we had never once considered changing anything or giving up. Right now though we could not see a future for ourselves travelling in Henry. We hadn´t actually travelled anywhere new since we left Angola two months ago and had no confidence that we could start again any time soon – in fact we were nervous every time we drove to the shops these days in case anything else blew up or fell off.

But we´re pretty sturdy when it comes to dealing with challenges and this time, as every time, we just got our heads down and ploughed through, dealing with each issue as it arose, trying not to think too hard about the future.

The gearbox was on its way from Johannesburg – gearbox paid for, courier paid and duties paid. It was due to arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday the following week.

The clutch was being built in the UK and would be picked up by the courier on Friday – clutch paid for, courier paid and duties to be paid on arrival. It was due to arrive at the airport on Thursday the following week and be released 24 hours after we filled in customs forms, emailed them over and paid the duty.

The agent dealing with our permanent residency was a star and confirmed our extended stay until October.

Our carnet provider was working on Henry´s new carnet but we could only start using it when we left the country. So they had contacted the AA in South Africa who were now in the process of granting Henry a 3 month extension on the old one so he could stay until November.

On more practical matters, we were busy patting ourselves on the back for always carrying a tent with us for emergencies. So with Henry about to go into hospital for over a week we set it up at Urban Camp and made ourselves a comfortable new holiday home

We took the mattress out of Henry to sleep on – it wasn´t a bad solution but after a few days we missed the springs it normally sits on and our backs were creaking a little!

All our belongings were now either in the tent or stacked and bagged on the benches at the campsite – including food, kitchen equipment, toiletries, clothes…we felt like vagabonds

We managed to buy a mains cable and extension for the fridge so we could take it out of Henry and plug it in on the floor.

And finally, we managed to hire the smallest car on the planet for 8 days in the optimistic hope that everything would go as planned and Henry would be back with us by then

We were no longer the royalty of overlanders in our swish Landrover but we weren´t doing too badly!

On Friday we had confirmation that the clutch was built and on it´s way to the airport. We also had confirmation that the gearbox was with the courier in South Africa – all as planned. So we took deep breaths, drove Henry to Ollie´s workshop via the hire car company and work started dismantling his insides

First the props came off and the transfer box came out

Then the gearbox

And finally the clutch

Ollie set about taking the transfer box apart. He found the seals and bearings weren´t in too bad condition but as everything was out we decided to have them replaced to reduce the chances of needing to do this again anytime soon.

The clutch looked a bit worn and shabby, it would probably have lasted a few more kilometres but the decision to replace it along with the gearbox had been a good one

As for the gearbox itself, we couldn´t take it apart to see what had failed as the suppliers of the new one wanted it back unaltered. It was clearly not in good shape but we had no way of knowing just how bad it was.

I spent the next day meticulously cleaning all the parts of the transfer box with petrol – the gears and bearings are beautiful things, James decided he would make a table out of some when we find our forever home!

He spent his day cleaning the props, revealing just how much damage the sand roads had done to the paintwork

And taking all the parts off the old gearbox that we needed to keep hold of

But we have an Ashcroft output shaft on our gearbox and it´s tricky to remove, especially when it´s been so heavily used for so many tough miles. Ashcroft have a special tool that we would never expect to find over here and after over an hour the shaft was still firmly stuck in place.

So James and Ollie decided if they couldn´t buy an Ashcroft removal tool they´d make one!

And after a stroke of African ingenuity, a lot of sweat and muscle and about half an hour, the output shaft was free and the old gearbox was stripped and ready to go

It had been a long and hard day´s work but we had been successful, everything was ready for the next stage. We towed Henry back into Ollie´s workshop where he was locked up safely alongside a few friends

The new gearbox was due to arrive at Ollie´s on Tuesday morning. I spoke to the courier early and he said it would be before midday with a call an hour before. But by midday we had heard nothing so I chased them up. By 3pm still nothing and they said it was too late to deliver today. There would be no-one at the workshop for the rest of the week so we ended up having to load our old 120kg gearbox into the tiny hire car, drive 50km to the courier´s depot, swap it for the new gearbox and take that back to Urban Camp for the night! They had left it so late to arrange all this that we arrived at the depot 15 minutes after it should have closed but the kind-hearted supervisor waited for us and kept the place open until we got there.

I´m sure I don´t have to tell you that by now our nerves were in tatters but at least we had a gearbox.

We needed something to happen that wasn´t all about broken Landrovers so on Thursday we had rebooked our two farm viewings that got cancelled when all this started. Our hire car could not go on dirt roads so we arranged to meet the agent at the end of the tar road in Karibib and travel to the farms in his 4×4.

The first farm was only 4,300 hectares. I know, I know, huge, but not really! We were only seeing it because it was close to the one we really wanted. But when we got there we found it was stunningly beautiful, a landscape to die for!

Rock formations, river beds, mountains – this put our Maltahohe farm in the shade in a big way

But it was long and thin and the long boundary ran along the main dirt road which meant easily accessible for poachers and thieves so not a good security feature. In fact, it was actually a small slither of land that used to belong to the big farm across the road but the owners didn´t want it any more. There was no house, no infrastructure, no boreholes – and the owners wanted twice the price it was worth.

We carried on to the second farm, 80km away. The landscape was still lovely but not quite as breathtaking as before

The big appeal of the second farm was its size – just over 7,000 hectares – and the price – being set at a level which was within our budget.

But the price reflected the condition of the property. On the positive side the views from the house, built on top of a small hill, were spectacular

All of this land would be ours – including the mountains all the way around. Being able to look across your land from your house is right at the top of my wish list so this was perfect.

But the house itself, along with the outbuildings, were in a very sorrowful state. No toilet, no kitchen, no power. The owner was drinking rainwater off the roof. There were four boreholes across the land but only one provided water fit for human consumption – the other three couldn´t even feed animals and some were so bad the water couldn´t supply crops. The only one that had good water was right on the edge of the property by the road, 4 km away from the house. The owner said you couldn´t put a pump or solar panels on it as they would just get stolen by passersby and commented that all his horses and donkeys got stolen a couple of years ago as well. So there was no obvious way to get the water to the house – hence drinking rain water.

I left feeling very upset that the lovely, kind and genuine old man living there clearly had no money and was living in such conditions. I wanted to buy the property – both to help him and so that we could live in such a beautiful place. But the security issues worried me and made me feel uncomfortable. And when James and I discussed it later on he said he absolutely would not want to buy it as he could see no solution to the water problem.

We are happy to buy something run down and make it great but if James can´t find a way to solve a fundamental problem like water then my guess is that there is no way. We told the agent neither property was right for us and I was very down about it for a couple of days afterwards. We had got so close to finding what we wanted but just not quite there.

Around the same time we had received the accounts and business plan for the Arnhem Caves Lodge that we had visited a couple of weeks before. They showed a small going concern as we expected given it had only been open a few months. The bookings were increasing every month but then it was the height of the season. We weren´t very excited about this option and had been warned by many people to think carefully before entering into a business partnership with anyone.

The positives of this option stopped us from saying no straight away but then one of the owners started bombarding us with texts all the time, insisting that we tell him what offer we were going to make then telling us they had other offers that were even higher than the absurd price they had quoted us. Kobus did some digging, he knew the previous owner who said he would not go into business with those people in a hurry and laughed at the price they were asking. It all seemed very strange, especially as they had only bought the place 8 months ago, spent N$2M on renovations and were now trying to sell it again.

So yet another option disappeared – I text the pushy owner asking him to leave us alone to think about things and wished him luck with the other buyers. We haven’t heard from them since!

At this point we were just left with our exciting farm near Maltahohe where it had all started and this was still our favourite option. We were building ourselves up to making an offer when we received the strangest text from the owner. She was warning us to be careful about some of her neighbours and not to trust people. She expressed concern at who we were going to ask to be our 51% silent Namibian partner.

We contacted Heike to ask what was going on but she was as surprised as we were.

We explained to Heike about our Namibian Trust which meant we did not need a Namibian Partner. We also talked to her about the idea for Johnny to buy the 6,200 hectares and for us to buy the 10,300 hectares. Heike was not convinced the owner would like that and we realised that this was going to be harder than we had hoped. Heike managed to drag figures out of me in our call before we were ready to make a formal offer. In fact I had not had chance to agree with James that we were making an offer there and then but when I told him what had been said he was reassuringly relaxed about it. We´ll see what comes, he said.

What came was an angry and upset response from the owner! She had really wanted us to buy her farm as she loved our vision for it. But she didn´t want to sell part to her neighbour and she wouldn´t accept any reduction in her asking price. The best she offered was to throw her Toyota Landcruiser in to the deal!

So that was that. No more exciting 16,500 hectare conservation reserve in Namibia. And no other options on the table. We were gutted. We needed to get Henry back up and running and get out of Namibia quickly before the disappointment consumed us.

But he was in hospital with no insides, Landrover parts were winging their way across the world towards Windhoek and we were living in a tent and driving a tiny hire car that could only just manage to go up and down the Windhoek hills. We weren´t going anywhere in a hurry!

On the positive side we had become permanent fixtures at Urban Camp and the people there were endlessly helpful and supportive. I was greeted with ´Good morning/evening Miss Jennifer´ whenever we went up to the main area, special tables were booked for meals, the best wine was recommended and our washing was always done same day even though we never paid for the express service.

In fact we had become such a permanent fixture there that we even featured in their Google marketing photos!

The manager, Kristi, is amazing – I don´t know how she keeps that whole place running so smoothly day in, day out. She never seems to take a break but always has a smile for everyone and a few minutes to chat. She took my birthday to heart and arranged for us to go to a blues concert in the city with her and her partner

James and I then went to a very nice restaurant in the evening to finish off the celebrations and the owner of the restaurant drove us back to Urban Camp in his own car to save us waiting for a taxi. Namibia is such a friendly place to be! Although our real family is always the best….

Meanwhile, the day we had gone to see the two farms our clutch finally arrived at the airport in Windhoek. We struggled to find enough internet signal to send the required form and pay the bill – the agent who was showing us the farms had to keep driving up and down the dirt road trying to find a good signal!

We had been aware of the requirement for the customs form and so had printed, signed and scanned it beforehand to be ready. But then the courier surprised us with another form that was required so we had to call on my sister yet again for help – we emailed it to her, she printed it, filled it in and emailed it back to us so that we could send it on. It´s amazing how creative you get when you´re a full time traveller.

Things move slowly in Africa but eventually the clutch was released from customs and arrived at the courier´s office. We dashed over to collect it very early the next morning. Ollie was already waiting for us at the workshop and we set about rebuilding our petulant Landrover.

Shiny new parts littered the workshop

I was no longer able to help with the work but James spent the first day replacing the master cylinder and clutch spring whilst Ollie rebuilt the transfer box – watching him work was like watching a master

The next day was Sunday but Ollie was determined to get this job done so we were back on the case that morning. It started off very exciting as we towed Henry back onto the pit. As I steered it was unnerving to see down to the ground moving beneath me where the gearstick ought to have been!

It was a four person job to tow, steer and guide his wheels over the pit that was almost as wide as he was

Once in place James and Ollie got the new clutch in. I sat watching, powerless to help and therefore feeling the pressure more than anyone!

After a few delaying tactics on the part of Ollie we were finally ready to put the gearbox in. Why delaying tactics you might wonder? Have you ever tried lifting a delicate piece of machinery that weights 120kg over your head and trying to manoeuvre it carefully into place with a hundred other pipes, wires and who knows what else in the way? One wrong move and a bearing, seal or piece of plastic casing could be broken and we would be back to square one. I couldn´t blame him for his nerves.

With the gearbox still on the floor, James turned one end of the shaft whilst Ollie dabbed grease on the other end

The shaft wobbled and clunked, far from being smooth it was worse than the one we had just taken out. It turned in an oval shape and clunked at the top every time.

We all looked at each other, this surely wasn´t right. James took a video of it and we sent it to the supplier. We tried to call but it was Sunday and no-one was around.

We had no choice, we couldn´t put this in, not until we had spoken to the supplier. So everything was put away again and James and I drove back to Urban Camp with our heads pounding and our hearts in our toes.

That evening I think we hit rock bottom. We could barely speak to each other and nothing we did took our minds off anything. James admitted later that he had just wanted to book a flight out of Namibia and give it all up. I wasn´t even thinking that clearly, occasional thoughts about the cost of buying and shipping another gearbox collided with dreams about the supplier telling us it was all fine. But otherwise my mind was a blank as I sat staring at the ground in front of me fighting a pounding headache.

The supplier finally came on line at 8am the next day and we managed to speak to our main contact there. He wasn´t at all happy, he shouted at us for trying to disturb him on a Sunday. Even when James explained that we had had a team of mechanics waiting to put the gearbox in he didn´t calm down. He sent us a video of another gearbox doing exactly the same thing as ours and snapped at us that it was all fine.

In fact the video didn´t show the other gearbox doing what ours was doing at all but when James pointed that out he repeated that it was all fine.

So my dreams from the day before had come true but it felt as though they were still just dreams! Short on options but long on hope we called Ollie and told him we were on our way back. He had promised to wait until midday to hear news so was ready and waiting for us when we arrived.

But the problems were far from over. At 11am three members of Ollie´s staff arrived to help with the heavy lifting. There was no-one there who was skilled or experienced in doing this and Ollie didn´t have the lifting equipment most mechanics would have in Europe.

The gearbox was lifted by hand. Ollie guided his team, James shouted to be careful about this and that as the heavy gearbox wavered side to side, back and forwards, hitting everything in its way, almost being dropped. Eventually they gave up and it was put back down again, everyone involved sweating buckets. I felt as though my brain was going to explode

They tried again, it was the same story. James kept catching my eye, silently crying out to be anywhere else but here. Eventually I couldn´t watch anymore, I thought I was going to have a stroke! I walked away and rang my sister, needing someone to talk to who would just listen and make sympathetic noises. She was great and we chatted for about half an hour. I didn´t want to go back into the workshop but finally I saw some of the guys walking out so crept in to find out just how bad it was.

To my relief the gearbox was in and James was busy cleaning round it. I crouched down and whispered ´Well´? ´It´s in´ he said, ´but I don´t hold out much hope for the seal, it must have been damaged with all that´.

Finally the transfer box was reinstalled, a much lighter piece of equipment but a similar trial getting it in. Oil was replaced then the props put back in and by 4pm we were ready to try him out.

We should have been jubilant but we weren´t. We had a new gearbox that was likely to be as bad as our old one, a seal which was likely to be damaged and a Landrover that seemed to enjoy throwing problems at us. What was there to give us any hope?

We took Henry to the end of the dirt road then turned away from the city towards the airport – a long, straight tar road where we could test him out. The gearbox was smooth and quiet. The clutch was tight. Whilst Henry was in bits James had taken the opportunity of shaving some of the manifold cover off which had been too close to the turbo actuator rod to see whether that would help with the strange loss of power we had been suffering with over the last few months. It had, Henry was pulling up the Windhoek hills like a train.

In fact we felt as though we were flying. My headache started to subside for the first time in a week and the deep furrow in James´ brow looked a little smoother.

I drove Henry back through the city to Urban Camp whilst James took the hire car. I couldn´t believe how smooth he was driving, I actually enjoyed being in him for the first time in as long as I could remember.

Seeing Henry sitting with us back at the campsite was almost as good a feeling as when we got him back after the accident. He may be a nuisance these days but he´s still a core member of the Sidetracked family and our home

We made popcorn

And had a small glass of wine over a raging fire that evening to celebrate

We were back! We were rocking and rolling! I sat back and gazed up at the sky and the trees, appreciating the beauty that is the travelling life for the first time in many, many weeks

James had a quick look underneath Henry before we went to bed – he was spewing oil out of every orifice…..