Temporarily Immobilised
A Comprehensive Field Guide to Getting Stuck, Unstuck, and Stuck Again
By Peter Rau
They say — and nobody is entirely sure who “they” are, but they say it with great confidence — that if you’ve never gotten stuck, you’ve never tried hard enough.
By this measure, I have tried very hard indeed. So have many of the people we’ve stumbled across on our travels. This is their story. And mine. Mostly mine.
Ze French Family
On a trip from South Camp in Nxai Pan toward Baines’ Baobabs, the route takes you through a long tree line where the sand is deep, soft, and entirely without mercy. It is, in short, a trap. And in this trap, on this particular day, sat a small Land Rover heroically towing a trailer approximately the same size as itself.
On both sides of the trap, other 4x4s had wisely parked and were watching proceedings with the quiet sympathy of people who are very glad it isn’t them.
The French family — mother and son — were outside in the heat, placing floor mats under the wheels and digging sand away from the tyres with the grim determination of people who have been at this for some time. The Land Rover would lurch forward over the matting, achieve perhaps a metre of progress, and promptly sink again. The smell of clutch hung in the air. This had been going on for a long while.
Eventually, noticing that nobody closer was stepping forward to assist, I walked over and offered to help. The family, by this point sweating and exhausted, accepted with considerable relief and zero hesitation.
First diagnosis: tyres at 2.9 bar. Second diagnosis: low gear, first. Both deeply unhelpful in soft sand.
I deflated all four tyres on the Rover, and the trailer’s for good measure. May I drive it out? Oui, s’il vous plaît. And out it came. Everyone continued happily on their way.
Vive la tyre pressure!!
Ze German Couple
Different tour, same general area, same magnificent Botswana sand. This time: a German couple in a rental, solidly stuck just short of the Baines’ Baobabs turn-off.
They were, it must be said, not suffering in silence. The Nissan, they informed us, was an absolute piece of junk. What they had really wanted was a Toyota. The Nissan had opinions about this and had expressed them by sinking to its axles.
Tyres: 2.7 bar. My brother-in-law produced his sand tracks. I deflated, asked if I might drive it out, received enthusiastic permission, and extracted the Nissan with what I can only describe as insulting ease.
I advised the gentleman to disengage the diff lock and drive in 4-wheel drive high. He nodded with the polite scepticism of a man who is still thinking about the Toyota
.That evening we ran into the couple at the camp. How had it gone from there? She looked up with shining eyes: “Oh wow — he drove like a god!”
The Nissan was not mentioned.
Happy Getting Stuck
I once led a group of friends into the Moremi, having been there before and therefore theoretically knowing what I was doing. Most of us were pulling trailers or off-road caravans. This is relevant context.
We were routing from Xaxanaxa toward Third Bridge when an elephant — in an act of what I can only describe as deliberate mischief — pushed a tree across the sand spoor directly in our path. I stopped to assess the situation. Stopped perhaps slightly too abruptly. Our vehicle, affectionately known as Box, surveyed the shady spot it had come to rest in and decided: this will do.
Stuck.
Now, the people around me expected a certain reaction to this news — mild concern, perhaps, some muttering. What they got instead was a small celebratory movement. A slight jig, if you will. Why, they asked, staring, are you happy about this? Because, I explained, I had not gotten stuck in the sand in decades. This was practically a milestone.
The real culprit, as it turned out, was tyre pressure. When you deflate to 1 bar in the cool morning air, the heat of the day does its work quietly and without announcement. By afternoon, you’re back at 1.5 bar or higher — and nobody noticed. Everyone immediately deflated. I took a spade to the sand in front of the wheels, climbed back in, and extracted Box and trailer in one smooth movement.
The occasion deserved a small jig. I stand by this.
The Daring Couple
On the Bodumatau route in the Moremi, we came to a water crossing that we all navigated without incident — selecting the sensible, shallow line and proceeding with dignity.
One couple, however, looked at the sensible line and decided they wanted something with more flair. They selected a more spectacular route. They then became comprehensively bogged down, their vehicle sitting on its chassis with the high centre of the track wedged firmly beneath them, wheels spinning in a purely decorative capacity. Everyone converged to help, and everyone had an opinion. There was discussion. There were gesticulations. There was that special energy that occurs when several people with different ideas are all trying to solve the same problem simultaneously.
My brother-in-law cut through the deliberations by producing his sand tracks. They were pushed as far under the rear tyres as possible. The vehicle came free with remarkable ease, to general satisfaction and a slight sense of anticlimax after all the preceding drama.
Sand tracks: consistently the hero of this story.
River Crossing Gone Wrong
One weekend I decided to show my wife the beautiful Gysmanshoek Pass near Heidelberg. A quick day trip. Lovely area. What could go wrong?
The week before, it had rained quite heavily in the area. We arrived at a low-water bridge to find the far bank had been washed away entirely. No matter — we would simply ford the river beside the bridge. My wife, gamely, waded across on foot to test it. It looked manageable. At the far side she hopped neatly onto the sandbank and waited for me to follow in the car.
What neither of us had noticed was that just before the sandbank — right where she jumped over — there was a deep trough. The front wheels dropped in. The front bumper made enthusiastic contact with the steep far bank, which was not interested in being driven over. To the left: the bridge. To the right: a large tree stump. Behind us: the river bank. Forward: not possible. Reverse: also complicated, as the rear of the car promptly met the riverbank behind us.
We were in the river. We could go forward and backward within the river. We could not, under any circumstances, get out of the river. By this point, a growing audience of local children had gathered on the bank to watch. They had excellent ringside seats on the steep bank.
What followed was this: a man in his mid-fifties, somewhat generously built, removing his jeans and shoes, and wading around in the river in his underpants with a shovel and an armful of rocks, attempting to reduce the gradient of the far bank to something a vehicle might reasonably negotiate.
The children were getting very good value. Eventually — to considerable applause from the assembled gallery — we got out.
Stuck on a Little Rock
The Pella area near the Orange River is magnificent country, laced with tracks both new and ancient. One of them, the Lelik Pad, runs from Klein Pella farm to the Pella mission. Somewhere along an old section of this route, you descend a steep bank into a riverbed.
On this particular day, that bank had become what I can only describe as a short cliff. We walked around and found a more manageable entry point. As I drove in, I spotted a small rock in the riverbed that I needed to avoid.
I did not.
The right rear shock absorber attachment found that rock with pinpoint accuracy and the vehicle beached itself — chassis on rock, wheels spinning uselessly, the whole thing pivoting gently like a very expensive compass needle. Diff lock, low gear, every combination tried. Nothing. Just spinning and pivoting. And there was absolutely nobody for miles.
Out came the bottle jack. Too large to fit in the gap. Used a smaller jack to create space for the larger one. Slowly — incrementally, painstakingly — the Land Cruiser lifted off the rock by the narrowest of margins. And then, with the bottle jack still in place underneath, I drove off the rock.
I retrieved the jack from the sand, took a moment, and we continued without further incident. Some victories are quiet. This one was mine.
The Bogged Down Italians
On our last evening game drive before leaving the Moremi, we spotted two men waving at us from across the Khwai River. Their rented Land Cruiser was parked nose-down a bank at the water’s edge, in the manner of a vehicle that has committed to something and then immediately regretted it.
Their waving had a certain urgency to it that distinguished it from a friendly greeting. We couldn’t drive to them — their car was blocking the crossing track, with steep banks on both sides offering no alternative approach. The only option was to walk through the river — which, as it happens, is also the best way to read a crossing before you drive it. You can feel the bottom, judge the depth, identify the line. I waded across to assess. The Italian gentlemen’s rental was thoroughly stuck. The diff locks, it emerged, appeared to be non-functional. I waded back to fetch my vehicle.
Mid-crossing on this return trip, a safari vehicle arrived carrying tourists, its driver understandably puzzled about how to proceed past the stranded Cruiser. I indicated a line — get out of the track here, keep going before you turn. He followed the first part of this instruction, then turned slightly too early. The safari vehicle’s rear wheel dropped back into the steep side of the track and the whole thing listed heavily. Alarmed sounds from the tourists. The guide reversed back into the track, corrected, and got through exactly as originally instructed.
I continued across, climbed the far bank, and parked behind the stuck Land Cruiser. I delivered what I considered a thorough safety briefing to the two Italian men — what to expect, what I was going to do, how we’d get them out.
They listened carefully. Then they turned, pointed at my wife, and said: “You drive.”
My wife blinked. “Me? It’s your rental.”
“No — you drive. We don’t know how.”
My wife, who had also not done this particular type of thing before, received the briefing I had just given the Italians. She climbed down into the Cruiser — the bank was steep enough to require actual climbing down — and on the second attempt, pulled it free. The imprint of the rear differential in the mud gave some indication of how stuck it had actually been.
But wait. There was more. Having been rescued, the two gentlemen announced they did not, in fact, wish to drive through the river themselves. We must do that too. After crossing their vehicle, I waded back across the river for the fourth time, leaving their car safely on the far bank. We then watched as the two Italian men made their own way across the river on foot — two elderly gentlemen, trousers rolled to the knee, sheer white italian legs descending into the Khwai like a scene from a very niche travel comedy.
It was, genuinely, beautiful.
Too Lazy to Deflate
I include this story as a cautionary tale, and I include myself as the cautionary.
We were travelling the notorious A35 west up the Kavango panhandle — a road that begins pleasantly enough as reasonable tar before gradually revealing its true character. The potholes started small and graduated to dimensions that could comfortably accommodate a compact car. Other vehicles wove across both lanes in an elaborate collective choreography of avoidance. In the better sections you drove next to the road. In the worse sections the road simply ceased to exist.
We eventually turned off toward Guma Lagoon. The track seemed manageable. A little sandy in places. There were two signs along the route — actual physical signs — that read: Please deflate tyres. It was hot. It wasn’t that far. I did not deflate the tyres.
We nearly got stuck twice. But we soldiered on with the breezy confidence of someone ignoring two written warnings in a row.
At the gate, the attendant informed us that our vehicle with the caravan was too large for the main track and we should take the track to the left, around some trees. We turned left. We went around some trees. They were, it transpired, the wrong group of trees. We had described a confident arc around the wrong tree island, into very soft sand, and straight into the steep side of the treeline.
Solidly stuck.
All six tyres deflated to 1 bar — Cruiser and caravan. Shovelling. Sand tracks. Engine revving. Grunting. Eventually, we reversed a bit, and then our little pantechnicon pulled us out of the sandpit and made it to the campsite.
The following morning we drove to Tsodilo Hills with properly deflated tyres and had absolutely no trouble whatsoever. Returned in the afternoon: no trouble. The tyres, it turned out, had been right all along.
The next morning, packing up to leave, we spotted fresh tracks ahead from a large 4×4 truck that had passed earlier. We followed them confidently. The truck’s wheelbase was, as we shortly discovered, considerably wider than ours. The sand got softer. We got stuck.
We got out. We could see, quite clearly, the correct route from where we were standing. Way to the left of us.
All six tyres deflated again. Shovelling. Sand tracks. Humour — because at this point laughing was the only reasonable response. We extracted ourselves three times before reaching the correct track.
The signs had said to deflate the tyres. Both of them. In writing.
I have no one to blame but myself, and I make peace with this every day.
They say if you never get stuck, you’ve never tried hard enough.
I have tried hard enough.
Happy travelling. — Peter Rau