The case of the missing phone and other mountain adventures

I spend easter with great friends, mountaineering in a car, which is what South Africans call a 4×4 drive.  This is basically attempting to channel your expensive SUV through crevises, over rocks and around boulders, where pedestrians have difficulty walking.  To make it more fun, we cram the whole family, and then some in a car and off we go.

The men laughing, the woman screeching and the kids shaking uncontrollably makes everything more interesting.

But seriously, it is a lot of fun.  We reached an altitude of 2000m above sea-level which might not seem like much until you fall off the cliff.  What makes it more special is that you realise that this specific spot is not accessible by any other means, unless you have a horse or/and hiking boots.  And some time.  It is unspoiled nature, far from civilization, unless off course you consider civilization to be forty vehicles parked on the edge of a valley.  (I promise to post a picture as soon as I remember to download them from my camera.)

I did mention that I went with friends because fortunately for my insurance company, I don’t own a full 4×4.  I have a 2×4.  And the difference between the two is that I have an excuse to be a passenger.  Besides, who am I to argue if my friends want to punish their vehicles in the name of FUN.

I have to say some of the “obstacles” that we had to navigate through seemed downright impossible to do.  And I am using the plural reference as the driver, for my anxiety levels were right up there with my mates.  Not to mention the ladies who preferred to get out of the vehicle and force the kids with them.  It took some convincing as kids are not known to be the best hikers, especially if the chosen path takes them up a hill and there is an option of catching a lift. We all know what happened to Jack and Jill.

Evidently during the exercise of removing all the children from the vehicles, Princess dropped her phone.  She has a nice chip on the corner of it in case she forgets.  Wife wasn’t impressed with this incident, as it was a brand new phone and being in the middle of nowhere, there was no reception, not to mention Wi-Fi.  Why would she have the phone in the first place?  Wife confiscated the phone for safe-keeping, she is a teacher after all.  Princess didn’t contest the decision as my kids know when they need to shut up.  Wife has been shaking it up all day.

We arrived back at camp at the end of the drive as we wanted to spend the night with tents and fire and wine and company and shit.  Shit only joined our happy place later that evening when Princess wanted her phone back.   You see, it was at that exact moment in time when the Wife realised that she didn’t know where the phone was.  Her place of safe-keeping disappeared, it no longer existed.  In other words, Wife forgot what she did with that damn phone.  There wasn’t even alcohol involved.

What happened in the next two hours can only be described as hell for any man…having to search for something.  Unlike Harry Potter, most men are bad seekers.  Which is why we married women, so when a rare occasion presents itself, like a female not being able to find something, what hope on earth do we men have of finding it?  But I tried.  We all tried.  Until the fire almost died and we still needed to eat.  It was dark and it started to rain, so the search was postponed as a result of poor weather conditions.

Wife was at it again at the crack of dawn.  I know this because she wake me whilst scurrying through our bags.  I wanted to fake sleep but she made it impossible when she started looking through my sleeping bag.  After I wiped the sand from my eyes, I started feeling sorry for her.  I know that expression of hopeless confusion, I’ve seen it in the mirror.  Often.  At this point I was just ecstatic for not handling that phone at any time.  Which made me blame-free.

We had to leave early so we didn’t have to assist with packing up everything.  I’m kidding, jeez.  My friends promised that they would continue the search for the missing phone.  Princess remained strong for most of the search, but cracks started to show when we got in the car to leave.  It seems that her whole One Direction experience was on the phone.  Earth as we know it, would not be the same without that phone.

On the way back, Wife ran through a million scenario’s (for the hundredth time) of what she did with that phone.  We came to the conclusion that it was stolen.  It makes sense though, forty families travel to the middle of nowhere so that one thief would have an excuse to steal a phone in a remote area.  The two friendly, innocent looking teenage girls who said hello when we arrived, turned into hard-core, juvenile delinquents by the time we left.

You can’t blame us, we spend hours searching through the same places without success.  A normal, average looking suitcase became the source of our insanity and highly compulsive nature.

We got home in low spirit and I started unpacking the car.  What else was there to do?  Then, hiding in the corner, highlighted by a perfectly placed ray of sunlight, was my camera bag.  It had a strange bulge on the side like it was happy to see me.  Low and behold, tucked away in an inconspicuous pouch was that frigging phone.  So it wasn’t stolen after all, sorry Romy and Michelle.  This is also the same reason why I haven’t touch the camera since then.  I feel violated as it made a pass at me.

When I nonchalantly handed the phone to my wife she was more than relieved and grateful.  She hugged me like that time I gave her a wedding ring.  Come to think of it, the last time I saw my Wife that happy was when…oh wait, the kids might be reading this…

The moral of the story?  Don’t let your parents take something for safe keeping.  They are getting old, so there is a risk of you never getting it back.  Not that the Wife is old or anything, #justsaying.