Dan's Adventure

Its 7am on day 2 in the Masai Mara, we’re leaving the campsite in our mini van when suddenly we stop. Our driver, John, gets out and looks towards the rear tyre but doesn’t notice anything wrong with it. As we turns to look at the front his facial expression tells all, we’ve got a flat. Five ,minutes later, the tyre is changed and we’re back on the van, now without a spare.

After listening to John’s tales of close encounters with various animals the previous day, I got a bit concerned when he started asking if anyone knew what to do if we broke down whilst in the Masai Mara. Considering how close we had been to lions and elephants the previous day, we listened with care.

According to John, if you break down, the safest option is to wait until another safari van appears and get them to nudge the van out of danger, into a place with good visibility so that the broken down van can be towed away. A flat however is a different kettle of fish. Nudging a van with a flat forward would likely result in it getting stuck, so the flat really needs changed. The question is, how to change it without becoming a lion’s dinner? Three vans is the answer. One in front and another on either side so that the person changing the tyre is out of view from the lion.

Luckily for us, the van survived without getting stuck or breaking down while in the Masai Mara, but another van from our tour group wasn;t so lucky. They came across a van that had got stuck so they kindly/bravely got out and helped push it to out of the mud. I’m not sure I would’ve been up for doing that, especially since no one on the stuck van got out to help push!