Madagascar
Entire village helping us out
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Johan Kruseman
Updated on 8 September 2024
Updated on 8 September 2024
So far, our 30-year-old Pajeero was holding strong. But day 4 almost became fatal for him. With 40 degrees Celsius outside, his cooling system couldn’t keep up anymore. And in the middle of a dried-up river he copied the example of the zebu’s: strike. After the motor just came to a hold while driving, the start engine didn’t manage to get it going again. The sound of the trying start engine was however enough to get the attention of a nearby village. Within 10 minutes we had the entire village standing around our car. And moments later in front of our car, pushing it back up the hill to get enough momentum pushing it down. Pushing a 4WD fast enough through loose sand to get its engine started is hard, but after four tries the 20 villagers and we managed. While keeping the engine running, whoever was fast enough jumped on the back of the driving car and there was one lucky one who even managed to climb inside the car and was lying there as a king at the back seats.
As a big thanks to all who helped, we gave them our cookies and beer supplies and some money. The village elder got the whole package and everybody made a circle around him under the tree. All goods where displayed orderly next to each other to be able to equally share them amongst all. When we left there was a big “merci” shouted after which they went back to the distribution process of all the new goodies.
Some 10 minutes later our car made a second attempt to strike. Now it was a 30-minute walk back to the village. Since our car was on a more solid road, we asked if about 10 villagers would like to help out, but they were so eager to help out that again the whole village followed us back for 30 minutes to our car where they got it to work, this time in one time. Also, we had met a fellow 4WD car and since we had lost bits of trust in our Pajeero we asked them to follow us, just in case of…
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Traveled route: Antanarivo, Antsirabe, Ranomafana, Fianarantsoa, Andrambovato, Parc d'Anja, Parc National d'Andringitra, Isalo National Park, Toilara, Anakao, Ifaty, Mangily, Salary Avaratra, Ambohitsabo, Andavadoaka, Morombe, Manja, Belo sur Mer, Morondava, Allée des Baobabs, Relais du Kirindy, Belo-Tsiribihina, Tsingy de Bemaraha
× Entire village helping us out
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Pajeero on strike
And indeed. The journey had been too much. Pajeero was up and couldn’t deliver anymore. To underline this, he puffed some black smoke into the cabin, saying “don’t even try….”. So, we hooked up our car to the one who was following us. This
Madagascar
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