South Pare Mountains: Chome Trip II

The road to Chome with awesome vistas.

Our friends that live in Chome are moving at the end of this month so it was a good excuse to get back up the mountain and pay them a visit (Trip I). For a normal weekend we drive the 1 1/2 drive south to Same on Friday night, then drive the remaining three hours up the mountain the following morning. It makes for a long trip back on Sunday but the drive (sans highway portion from Same) is actually quite fun as there are tons of birds on the way so frequent stops break up the trip.

The mountain road is narrow, steep, and full of ditches and sharp rocks but the scenery is beautiful with expansive views of the plains to one side and impressive mountains on the other. This time of the year the mountains are green with vegetation and small waterfalls run over escarpments as the clouds roll off the mountains in the morning.

As we started up the mountain we passed over a particularly rocky patch. I suddenly heard one of the tires spewing air and I quickly reversed down to a flat patch of ground that we had just passed. I was happy that the tire punctured there because there are VERY few flat areas on the road up. We parked the car and assessed the situation; a jagged rock had literally sliced open the side of one of the front tires. No worries, we had a spare and a jack. Had I ever used the spare or the jack? No. But I had seen the jack used when the car was getting repaired in the workshop.

Well, turns out that we had two jacks and they were both very small. I put the jack on a flat rock and put it as close to the car as possible, then jacked it as far as it would go. It did not appear to have moved the car at all. I was a bit frustrated and trying to think of what to do when an older man passed on the road and stopped to help us. We explained our situation and he obviously had a bit more experience than us as he matter of factly told us there was no problem. He instructed us to jack as far a we could, then stack a separate pile of rocks to act as a lift for the car, take down the jack, re stack a taller rock on the jack, then lift it again and repeat the process. This incremental jacking process took us three "reloads" before we could remove the tire. The secondary pile of rocks was also under extreme stress and when we lowered it while we were finished we realized that two of the rocks had broken. But, we were successful in changing the tire.

At least we were stuck in a very scenic spot.

Jack situation.

A close look at the jack situation

The whole incident delayed us a bit up the mountain but we still arrived to Chome with plenty of time. We went on a very nice walk to some forest areas, checked out a waterfall, and hung with our friends at their house for dinner. I'm always very happy to be in a village and live the "village life" though I wish we could have spent a few more days there!

A view of the mountains while in the plains. Early morning clouds.

View of the plains from the road up.

Doing some birding.

Super bad ass spider.

It ain't a village visit without some river crossings.

On a hike.

Waterfall action.

View of the plains in the morning, above the clouds.