Truck Stuck in the Serengeti

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Sunday 01 March, 2015 by Uncle Spike

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Adventure travel is rightly famous for its ‘adventure’, and none more so than overland travelling in a converted large truck. One such trip we experienced was a three week overland adventure across East Africa, traversing Kenya and Tanzania.

There were a number of notable events, but one unlikely to be forgotten overnight was the coming across of a swollen riven and damaged roadway deep in the Serengeti, with darkness just a couple of hours away.

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Normally, such an incident would not have posed a great problem, but our large converted Mercedes truck wasn’t as agile as a small 4×4, and therefore needed more road space. Even though the truck had large rough-road tyres, jacked up reinforced suspension, it was also a number of tonnes over the weight of a small jeep, and as a result, presented further challenges when faced with ‘missing’ chunks of roadway, surrounded by deep slippery oozing mud!

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As the Serengeti is an enormous area of 30,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq miles), and with no hope of turning back that late in the day (we were miles from the entrance gate by that point), there was no other choice but to press on. The first challenge was to try and rebuild the road, where the river had washed away a large section of the dirt road.

The cook and third member of the team kept a careful watch on us as we worked; and rightly so, as the river had its fair share of resident crocodiles and hippos, and the surrounding woods and grasslands home to elephants and big cats, all roaming wild and potentially up for a late afternoon snack. 

We weren’t particularly worried as we’d been camping wild for a time by that point, but with darkness approaching, the sense of urgency was real – normally we’d have the truck parked up, camp fire burning and all tents set up in a circle long before the approach of dusk.

Slowly, a large pile of heavy rocks piled up by the road, ready to be put to good use – we’d earned our dinner at least.

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It was work for all hands, with a couple of tonnes of rocks recovered from the riverside, passing them along to the driver and his mate to build up the missing section in a way that would support the weight of the fully-laden truck.

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The roadway muddy as hell too, which made for some interesting truck manoeuvring just to get it in place to cross the river. With a couple of shovels, a lot of grunt, and well-placed large steel track-boards, the issue of the mud was overcome as the sun was starting to head off for the day. 

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After a couple of nervous false starts where the rocks started to shift, forcing some quick repacking and holding of our collective breath, the truck inched forwards towards the flooded bridge itself. We just stood there like lemons at this point, just hoping our efforts hadn’t been in vain. After all, that truck held all the food, camping gear and all our possessions, as well as representing our ‘security and sanctuary’, so a lot was riding on those few tense minutes! 

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And that was it… almost two hours behind schedule and the light fading, the truck safely crossed the river. Of course, only one driver was on board to minimise the risk, having taking the presumption that the bridge hadn’t been weakened by the flood, and could take the extra weight. The rest of us had to wade across – but with the wreckage of a jeep to be seen further down the river, we agreed it was worth the discomfort of wet feet!

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With camp set up after dark that night, it was all hands back to work once again to rustle up an evening meal as the camp was made as secure as possible, all set to the sounds of the Serengeti at night. Had a great night’s sleep after all the excitement, even if one ear/eye refused to cooperate, as is the way when camping wild.

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