We went to a farm to see some mesosaurus fossils. A mesosaurus is a creature that lived before the dinosaurs. It lived in the swamps. It looked a bit like a crocodile. The farmer’s son found the first fossil, but they are not allowed to open any more, in case they damage them. You can see the bones of the ribs, tail and feet. The head has disappeared. There was also fossilised poo called copralite!
He also showed us some very cool rocks, called dolerite rocks. They were formed when the magma from a volcano bubbled up through the soft clay, but didn’t reach the surface. They are covered in desert varnish which is manganese dioxide. It is black and very hard. It makes the rocks ring. He played us a tune…. See the video!!
We also learnt about quiver trees. They are called quiver trees because the bushmen hollowed out the branches to make a case for their arrows. This is called a quiver! It is actually an aloe – like the national flower of Lesotho!
I saw a massive bird’s nest in a tree!
It was very interesting.
Viscous fan – in a nutshell, this stopped working efficiently, causing overheating on the mountain passes in Lesotho. I hadn’t considered this as a cause (the fan had only about 30k on it), so thanks to Paul at The Centre in Durban for the idea. Chatting/swearing about how to lock the fan mechanism in the campground (sorry mate, I didn’t get your name!) let to the revelation that people in a Jeep had tried to use epoxy, but the heat killed it pretty quickly. “Aha!” thought I, i’ll drill some channels and slap in a few self tappers. It worked flawlessly, problem solved until he fan was replaced back in Durban with a shiny new one.
Light relay – whilst driving back in the dark from Dune 45 to the campground, we lost our high beam headlights. Inconvenient (as there was game around) but not the end of the world as we have VisionX lamps on the bumper (with fog covers, but better than nothing). I have identified the fault as a failed relay in our Boomslang light harness, an easy fix once I can get on the roof to my spares box (or talk Margaret into fossicking around).
Lost suspension bolt – this one was a bit more serious. Whilst juddering along the most corrugated road on earth, one of the rear shock absorber mounting bolts vibrated out, and we didn’t immediately notice (the juddering was that bad). A few km later we stopped for a breather, and something made me check the shocks… the shock mount on the chassis had been bent off at nearly a right angle to where it should be, the shock was dented and its dust cover ripped off, and there is a gig shiny dent in the floor where the shock had been hammering it. In true bush mechanic fashion much swearing was deployed, buying time for a solution to be dreamed up before family meltdown occurred.
roaming.kiwi 