DIY Tow Truck

Our truck does not appear to love us as much as we love it. It's a difficult relationship. Over the weekend we took it out to Rusizi park. It was sunny and breezy with the cap off. It was so much fun to drive through the brush and touch the leaves. 

But it got stuck in the sand. As you leave the river and approach the lake, the road becomes soft sand in the dry season. Our truck isn't heavy enough to gain traction and at one point Mike heard a "ping" which he believes is the transfer case, aka, the thing that makes the 4-wheel drive work, busting. Luckily we were with another car full of people and through the magic of tow straps and planks we were able to dislodge from the sand after some very dusty work.

Overall it was actually a good trip. We saw hippos sunbathing on a sandbar. A baby hippo who didn't want to nap with the others was antsy, nipping at his mother. I saw my first crocodile in the wild in Burundi. (It wasn't Gustave, though.) We also saw this amazing stretch of beach with a trail of hippo footprints, something else I hadn't seen in Burundi.

And I saw how those tow straps that Mike insists on carrying around actually work. I'm glad he insists on that. If there's one thing that's driven home on a regular basis here, it's that there's no AAA to call for a tow.