Two days in the desert.

The last two days have been tough. Instead of writing this entry from
Windhoek I'm in a tent at the top of a mountain pass on the edge of
the desert. If it's gonna be like this everyday there's very little
chance I'll make it to Maputo on the bike. I always knew this bit
would be tricky, it's one of the few untarmaced sections I'm following
and there's the added weight of carrying all my food and water.
This is also one of the most beautiful areas I'll be riding through,
proper desert with huge red dunes and true African savanah with herds
of Springbok and Ostriches. I've seen a few Jackals some
klipspringers and some kudu, luckily no Lions (though I did think,
mistakenly, that I'd heard one last night)

Swakupmond didn't go according to plan. Instead of disembarking to
find my bike on the plaform, all there was, was a lot of mist
(Swakupmond is a cold misty place, look up 'Benguela current' for some
explanation) and a big salt factory - they have lots of that here too.
The two station security guards said this was normal and that the
containers holding my bike would soon be opened once the right
people arrived in about half an hour. It was still dark so that didn't seem too bad. An hour and a half later, still nil velo. The security guards then
realised today was Hero's day (their national holiday) so no one would
be coming to work at all. Bugger! To cut a long, not very interesting,
story short I eventually got hold of my bike and finally rode down to the beach to
touch the Atlantic at quarter to ten, four hours after arriving! Still better late than never.

So after getting my feet a bit wet and selecting a suitable sized
piece of driftwood as a souvenir I was finally off! I'd been beginning
to think I'd never actually start this ride.

Entering the desert was quite daunting. It looked huge, to my right
were the massive red dunes the Namib is famous for, to my left yellowy
white sand stretching to the horizon. At first progress was good. The
air was still cool from the atlantic and there were frequent 'no dust
sections' which basically meant tarmac and over which I could move very
rapidly.

I didnt pass much. There were the occasional inselbergs moving
along the horizon like far off icebergs. I saw a few Welwitschia trees
(these are amazing things endemic to the Namib, can live to many
thousands of years old... and look nothing like trees) I passed quite
a few signs for uranium mines telling me in no uncertain terms to keep
out. No fear of my disobeying that!

After a few hours I started seeing grass and thought the mighty
Namib had been conquered, that wasn't so hard. What was everyone going
on about. Skeleton coast, not likely, a bottle of water and a good
pair of shoes should see most people across what I'd covered. Of
course this was not the case, stupid boy! The grass soon vanished again and
I was back surrounded by sand and this time no 'dust free's.

Eventually. The grass came back, but it brought unwelcome company...
sand on the road! You may not realise the significance of this if
you've never ridden a bike in sand (yes I know some of you have never
riden a bike at all, didn't your parents ever teach you about the
correct priorities in life? Crawl, Stand, Ride bike, Walk, Run, Talk?)
So progress was now painfully slow. My bike was heavy and the sand was dry, like the loose stuff
you find on sand dunes, not the nice packed stuff down by the waters edge. For
some reason when you push a heavy bike through sand the front wheel
turns slightly toward the side you're walking on and you almost have
to push the tyre through the sand sideways. Not fun. As I said progress was slow and
very hot, by now I was drinking a lot of water. At least the mountains
were now visible on the horizon, but unfotunately that was close to where the sun was too. I had little time before sunset. And as I'd revised a few days ago heading into Windhoek, there are no long sunsets in the tropics. Sun down = get dark quick.

I'm not sure at what point I realised all was not well with me.
Perhaps it was when I started (quite seriously) considering
riding all night and all the next day in an effort to get to Windhoek in record time and claw back that extra day. Or maybe it was when I started finding it almost impossible to pick the
bike up whenever it fell over in the sand. Anyway by the time I
finally stopped for the day I felt very faint and was shaking I felt so weak and
my lips kept fasiculating. I drank more water. Still felt terrible.
What was wrong with me? Then I noticed my clothes. I was wearing a
navy blue top and this was streaked with white streaks. I don't mean
just like you get after along summer run, I looked like some kind of
LSD induced tiger. Sh*t I was salt deplete. Not good! I'd anticipated this and
brought a kilo of salt with me, but which pannier was it in? There are four of them! I
eventually found it and mixed up a sugar and salt solution. This
tasted great and I drank so much I almost vomited. After about ten
minutes I felt much better and just a little bit stupid - but another
mistake survived, just.

To cap off a difficult evening, in case of running into difficulties
I'd arranged to call England by eight pm each night. Namibia (in
common with most of Africa) actually has pretty good mobile reception
and anyway, just in case, I'd borrowed my friend Maria's brother's
sattelite phone. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but I just
couldn't get the thing to connect, it seemed to pick up the sattelite, but do no
more than that (error CC38 what ever that means). I was by now quite worried my parents would be very concerned I'd perished on my first day! After all if I had a sattelite phone there should be no reason other than death or kidnap to prevent me calling in.

One thing did perk up my spirits though. As I was laying in my sleeping bag looking out at
the yellow grass and the stars a small bird which looked like a black
legged stilt (I couldn't bring my bird book sadly) flew down, seemingly
interested in the light from my head torch. It came so close I could
almost touch it and could certainly hear it breathing. So that was cool.

Next day I woke and got out of bed late (see next post for explaination, I wasn't being
lazy). I felt much better than I had the evening before. I'd just ridden
across a desert and spent a night alone in the savannah this is the
kind of adventure I'd dreamed about since I was a little boy.
Brilliant! I felt great!

I set off down the road heading for the mountains. Hoping to conquer
the Bosua pass by lunchtime. I didn't care so much about the sandy
patches now. Anyhow they were getting less and less frequent. This
was amazing. Riding across the early morning savannah. It would be at
least three hours before anyone driving from Swakupmond or Windhoek would be likely to reach this point. I had it all to myself. There were small herds of Springbok, some
larger antelopes too far off to identify and tens of Ostriches
everywhere. I counted 40 running together at one point.

After my failed communications of the night before I'd written out my
fathers email address and phone number with a short message and
decided to flag down the first three cars and ask them to phone him
once they got to somewhere they could communicate. The first people I
met were on their way to one of the mines (I guess one of the uranium
mines I'd passed earlier) they kindly agreed to contact England for
me, not only that they gave me a burger, a salad and loads of water,
before heading off telling me I was a nutter to be out here on a bike.
I was beginning to think they might be right.
I later met Mr Vilberts who also gave me supplies (this is all in
another post) he had lead an interesting life all over southern africa. Including a spell trying
to grow rice in the Caprivi, but had to give up due to the quilea
bird. He and his fellow farmers had tried lots of things to control
them including finding their roosts and then blowing them up with
helicopter fuel and handgrenades in the night. He said this had almost
no effect on their numbers. I mentioned Ivo's dad (Clive Elliott) who's
spent a large part of his life controlling these birds, amongst other
things. He thought he new the name.

As the day went on I began to pass into more mountainous country and
the sand stopped. I was also getting better at using my water. I'd
learnt a lot from the near disaster of the previous day and was now
mixing salt and sugar with every other bottle. I'd also realised water
is not just to be used to control thirst, but also for keeping you cool. This is after all
what my body was planning to do with most of it anyway. Left to my own
physiology this would be at the expense of valuable salt and energy
actively transporting the salt. So I'd started pouring water into my hat before poping it back on my head and dampening my neck and shoulders. My thermometer was reading
37degrees in the sun by this point (should I have taken the shade reading? Well after all I was in the sun too!) Chad had lent me an ingenious device used by the British in Iraq. This uses silica granules and wraps round your neck slowly evaporating over about six hours and keeping the
vital brown fat there nice and cool (keeping your brown fat cool is
essential for preventing heat stroke and is an area particularly exposed to the
sun as a consequence of the forward leaning posture of cycling). These techniques were
working very well, but I did eventually resort to sleeping for half an
hour in the shade of the first tree I passed (since the ocean!) at around two in the afternoon.

After my cooling slumber I continued my quest searching for the Bosua
pass. I really wanted to see it since it was a major milestone to get
to and would indicate I was making progress, and I would feel better being on the East side of it. However I also knew from what I'd heard that the pass and I were unlikely to exactly hit it off once we finally met, we were never going to be friends. Our paths eventually crossed just before four in the afternoon. The sun was a little less harsh than earlier. Had we met at midday as I'd originally intended the outcome could have had a very different. It was steep. For those
of you who know Hard Knott pass in the lakes, this was worse. Think
more along the lines of a red ski run. People round here drive pretty
immense 4x4's, Chelsea tractors they ain't, even so they'd felt the
need to pave the steepest part of the road to give enough traction. I
guess even these vehicles just couldn't make it up on dirt. I'd planned on using my
lowest gear (I'm on a sort of mountain bike, just without suspension)
and to go vey slow, zigzagging if needs be. No. This as not going
to happen. I walked or I suppose pushed the whole way, twenty paces at
at time, before the lactate built up too much, this was weightlifting,
not aerobic exercise. The whole pass was only one km long, but it took me
over and hour, had two false summits and I drank two whole bottles of
water in the process. It was tough, but I made it.

It was past five by the time I reached the summit so had to camp right
there. As I laid back to do a very sweatty entry in the video diary
I'm keeping, I had my first moment of elation (you may have read
earlier that I'd been told to expect these). I'd initially been using my camera
to video but the battery had gone flat so I was now using my phone. I
switched it on and almost immediately heard the chime of a text
message! It was from Jen saying she was finally watching four weddings
and a funeral (a great film) but more importantly it meant I had reception. That has to be one of the best texts I've ever recieved. I can't describe how
this felt. I called England. My parents were in Devon watching the
Dartmouth Regatta. It was all pretty emotional after the desert and then
the pass. There is a video I took soon after, but I'll probably get
embarrassed once I return to England and this may stay locked away.

I've just made a fire and set camp. As I laid back watching stars the
from the tent I just saw a massive shooting star streak across the sky
to the west (I'm not making this up) it wasnt one of those blink and
its gone, I observed it for a quite a few seconds before it passed
behind a nearby peak. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually managed
to hit the ocean. I still have a long way to go and no doubt quit a
few more hills to come, but life is good.