This has been a really fun week. Rifle test on Monday was fine, then we started 4x4 theory. Lots of technical terms thrown around like differential and transfer case and I’m genuinely nerdily happy that I understand it all now. Well, when I say “understand” I mean that I can explain each term or process individually, or in the specific terms in which we learnt it, but if you asked me to link it to some other process or how it changes the handling then I would still be lost! But it was super interesting nonetheless, especially given that I’ve never done any sort of mechanics or car maintenance before and it’s such a useful thing to know.

Our first practical session on Tuesday morning involved going to the top of a fucking big, rocky hill and driving down. Mark, our instructor, took us all down then back up in the Land Cruiser, showing us how to do it and talking it through, then half of us stayed in the vehicle to have ago one-by-one, while the other half got out at the top to have coffee and wait. Downhill is pretty simple: put the vehicle in low range, put it into first or second gear, then just let the engine carry you down the hill and don’t touch any pedals. It feels so counter intuitive to not be braking whilst going down a hill, but in low range and low gear, the engine braking of the cruiser stops you going too fast. Well, you can brake a little bit if you need, but the main rule is just that you cannot press the clutch. The gears and the engine braking are the thing that’s stopping you careening down the hill; if you then disengage the clutch you would then just start free wheeling down the hill with little control. On the way back up the driving is pretty similar, just chug your way up in 1st gear and the vehicle does pretty much all the work for you.

The hardest thing to practice is doing reverse stall starts when you’re pointing uphill. Because you can’t use the clutch, if at any point you find yourself stalling, or need to change gears you just have to let yourself stall. Once you’re stalled you can jam your foot down on the foot brake, put the handbrake on (if it works!) and quickly change into reverse gear. From there you have to slowly release the handbrake… then slowly release the footbrake… so at this point you are only hanging on the engine and no brakes whatsoever, it is so disconcerting! Then the scary part; as soon as you turn the engine on the car lurches backwards down the hill and you have to steer safely backwards and apply the footbrake gently to stop your descent, then you can change back to first and reattempt the uphill climb! The whole process sounds terrifying if you describe it, and when you’re in the car while someone else is doing it, it feels like it’s really difficult, but when you do it yourself it’s actually so much easier than it seems. We did it once each, with stall starts when going both up and downhill then sat and had coffee and rusks while the other half of the group had their turns, sitting on this beautiful hilltop with quartz boulders and shiny flakes of mica scattered across the floor.

Photo by Georgie Hall

After the hill work we went over to the river bed where we saw the lions the other week. On both sides of the river the entry points are just muddy slopes, and the river bed itself is sand with a couple of streams running across it. All in all, it looks horribly daunting to drive through. We did the same process as last time, drove through it with Mark telling us what to do, then took it in turns down the mud slope, across the river bed, up the opposite mud slope, then up another hill doing a reverse stall start while we’re there. Even when the others were driving it seems really hard to do, the vehicle slips and slides on the mud and you think that it won’t make it up the slope, then on the reverse stall start we had to reverse back down the slope around a corner, making sure we didn’t crash into the parked land rover while we did it! It seems like it’ll be really challenging but then when you do it yourself it’s actually completely fine. The vehicle really does most of the work for you and makes you feel like you’re a good driver even though I’m definitely still shit at 4x4! Before heading back to campus for lunch Mark parked the Cruiser in the middle of the stream and told us to change the tyre… We’ve done tyre changing before but trying to figure out how to jack up the vehicle when there is no hard surface on which to plant the bottom of the jack and it’s just sinking into the sand is not that easy! After a trawl down the riverbed we found a suitable rock to place the jack on, but the problem then is that it’s too slippery and the jack just skids off of it with all the weight of a 2 tonne vehicle on it. We figured that we needed to cover it with something but we were kind of reluctant to take our shirts off to see if that worked! Luckily someone realised we can use the rubber floor mats from the front and luckily this vehicle actually had them!

Photo by Georgie Hall

That afternoon we were back in that river bed, this time practicing recovery. Mark purposely got the land rover stuck in the river to simulate a rescue scenario. We then had to attach all the recovery gear, meaning me practically lying down in the river in a foot of water to crawl half under the Landy to attach the ropes to the chassis, then connecting the bogged down Landy to the Cruiser as the recovery vehicle. We then had to take it in turns to drive the recovery vehicle to haul out the Land Rover, and also to be driving the landy as it got pulled out. The hardest part of the whole scenario was actually getting the Land Rover stuck in between each recovery attempt! Land Rovers may be kinda shitty for many reasons but they are damn hard to get stuck! We were doing what is called a snatch recovery, meaning we used a kinetic (read ‘stretchy’) rope to go as quickly as possible (well, 2nd gear anyway) and use the elastic potential of the rope to hoik out the other car. It probably makes no sense from my description, but the video kind of shows it. Basically it’s just not the same as attaching a normal rope and just pulling it out slowly, it’s much more fun but also has much more potential to go wrong if you fuck it up! But that was quite a fun afternoon getting nice and soggy in the river.

Photo by Georgie Hall

We had a day off from 4x4ing while the other group had their day doing the hill descent and recovery and just went on game drives for the day. We went to a few area for a change which was really cool; not many animals to be seen but it’s a beautiful wilderness reserve where only research takes places so there were no other game vehicles around and the grass is over head height which makes for beautiful, eerie scenery. Sadly our drives are quite boring from now on because everyone has to practice giving information about all the boring things like trees and insects rather than just looking for animals. Seems a bit dumb because it would actually make the most boring drive for real guests, but we have to show that we know it.

On Thursday we had our 4x4 theory tests in the morning then our assessment in the afternoon. We went out into the reserve to a huge rocky dip that looks absolutely treacherous and each had our turn at going down and back up the other side, doing both uphill and downhill stall starts on the way. Kind of fun when the brakes don’t really work! Actually I kind of prefer that they didn’t because then you learn what to do when they don’t work. Not really much point practicing in a perfect car where nothing goes wrong! But we all passed and it was, again, much easier than it looks. It makes it fun that we know that the vehicle can do it but it looks so impressive to guests- I’m even impressed and I know how (relatively!) easy it is. Friday was lovely because the other group had to go off at 5.30am to do their assessments while we got to sleep in because we’d chosen to finish all our paperwork the night before! Is there any better feeling than being able to stay in bed and stretch out across the whole thing while your boyfriend has to get up early?! But they all passed as well and then we had pancakes for breakfast :)

The afternoon was taken up with our end of semester practical assessment, where we go out into the reserve and have to identify trees, grass, tracks, dung, insects - anything our instructors come across that they can make a question from really. It’s felt like such a long semester that at this point I kind of didn’t care how well I did, couldn’t be arsed to revise and was fully expecting to not do very well. I read through my tree notes but decided that I just couldn’t be bothered to stress out about it, and actually I ended up doing really well! Got a few questions wrong but got 3 bonus questions right so ended up with 39/40! Pretty decent end to the semester :)