12. Calvin’s camp

Monday 18.9. - A nice surprise waited for me at the morning. I had 21 ticks on my body. Somebody would maybe say that it is too many, or that he had not so many of them whole his life. It was nothing new for me. Half a year ago on the sandstone area Labák in Czech Republic 48 pieces visited me. Those little creatures horribly like my blood. Nice too meet you too. Ivan Be gave me great exceptional advice: “Grease it with the toothpaste Kazo, to save the salve.” I was idiot and done it. The toothpaste dried out, ticks were still living. Perhaps they liked it and I had to do detoothpastation. After an hour I finally could pull out the ticks.

Rado with Šaňo went away 4 o’clock at the morning and before 6 o’clock they climbed to Out of Africa. About 8 o’clock, a helicopter landed in near Tsara camp. We watched it with binoculars. Several sahibs were on the board. Some Americans. They must come everywhere in maximal possible comfort. They were flying around, made photos from bird perspective and they disappeared as quick as they came. Hundred % commerce.

We called our camp Calvin camp, it had everything human settlement needs to be a human settlement. A command standpoint identical with canteen, tent, place for lying – hanging portal ledge, canteen, bedrooms-our tents, parking place and even an auditorium that was visited by natives. It is interesting that they were watching us whole day, but they just occasionally stepped over the border of our camp. The auditorium was a playground too. A swing was hanged here and I played with a hackysack here regularly (kicking of small ball filled with rice made from sock). Besides that, we had a dump here, shower and nearby was WC and source of water. One day Calvin will have a climbing school here and we will be 6 main climbing instructors.

A very sophisticated cooker was used in our kitchen. Two holes in ground joined under it’s level. A pot, which was fully covering the hole, was placed on it. The second one was used for getting a wood to keep a fire. It was functioning better than MSR. Perfect invention. The biggest trouble was with water. It lasted few hours to make it drinking. This was Dula’s domain. The procedure was as follows: firstly to get 20 liters with mug from muddy well to the canister, bring the canister to camp, then put a MICROPUR pill to the water for 2 hours to make it clean from infectious germs, 1 hour of filtration, dirt goes away and finally boil the water that we were doing rarely. We were nine together, it means about 40 liters per day. Poor Dula. We saved him often from doing this hard work when we drank vine and beer whole day, sometimes we helped him with filtration.

About 10 Jack gave us a lift to Camp Catta. Calvin went with us too, he wanted to try climbing again. Rado with Šaňo conquering the Out of Africa had an easier part done. They have to have there damn hot weather. We came under Lemur Wall about 11:30. This time we used an shortcut through high grass. The journalist went once again to climb Ebola, but 2 pitches now. I left Simko filming on belay station and I abseiled to the left to Star Trek. This is how we named our project. Ivan Kely was ready to finish the second pitch. He did not anticipate, we neither, that settling of 7 bolts will last more than 4 hours. Cooperation in the wall was exemplary, every one of us knew what to do. Only rarely we stood somewhere, because the ropes entangled. The battery in camera was empty. Simko abseiled down and devoted himself to Calvin. The rest of us was continuing up. We let it be at 5 PM. Totally we got climbed nearly 100 meters and settled 20 bolts. I or Dosky will climb the upper end tomorrow due to the agreement. Šaňo with Rado were doing hard job on Tsaranoro Kely. I would like to climb Out of Africa too.

We crawled wasted to camp about 18:30. Simko with Dula were preparing the dinner. Africans still did not come from the wall. Right before it got dark we watched the wall with binoculars, but we did not see them anywhere. They are certainly down and are coming to camp. About 8 we were very nervous and so we went opposite to them. Anything can happen. Ivan Kely fortunately perceived the headlamps and we were again in full arrangement. Boys told us their experiences, 14 pitches of beautiful climbing in the solid rock, plates, friction climbing and so on. Dula’s good dinner will taste them good surely. Suavatury!