lorries there, waiting to cross. Sorry chaps, didn't you know bicycles
don't do traffic jams. I was first across the border.
As I rode over the small bridge into South Africa I scanned the road
ahead and the bushes to each side. I couldn't spot any felons. In fact
there were no shooters or stabists to be seen at all. I guessed they
simply hadn't spotted me yet. Pretty soon I was sure to be The victim
of a bandit feeding frenzy. All it would take was the first attack,
the first wound, once there was blood in the water they'd all close
in. I did hope I'd make it a bit further though. It would be nice for
my family to know I'd managed to make it perhaps one kilometer beyond
the border before perishing. I pressed on.
The day was overcast and quite windy. I'd originally planned on two
days to get from the border to today's destination, Mokopane, but
sitting below the Okavango Baobab I'd decided I could probably make it
in one and gain myself an extra rest day somewhere high in the
Drakensbergs. This did mean pushing myself once again, today would be
190km and this time there would be hills. I was guess I was banking on
the constant threat of imminent death to spur me on. Behind me I could
still see the small hills with the magic fountain just inside
Botswana, it was safe there. Why had I left?
For the first half of the day my route took me past private reserves,
many of which advertised themselves as hunting lodges. And I do mean
hunting lodges as in you can go there to pay money to shoot wild
things. In fact the place I'd stayed on the far bank of the Limpopo
had had a sign up in the reception listing the prices to shoot various
animals ranging from Impala to Zebra. No lions on that list, but
apparently if you're prepared to pay enough there are places you can
go which will let you shoot Lions and even Rhinos. I can't see why one
would want to do this, however the ethics of this kindoif behaviour
and it's consequences are actually quite complex and something I
thought a lot about whilst I was on this road. I think they are not as
clear cut and black and white as one may first imagine and, I believe,
worthy of further discussion. So if I get chance I'm hoping to put up
awhile post on the subject giving my opinion and seeing what every how
everyone else views the issue. Anyway as I rode on I saw quite a few
animals that like me were lucky and haddn't yet been shot. There were
plenty of herds of Impala, quite a few Klipspringers and also a number
of Steinbok.
I haddn't booked a place to stay yet in Mokopane, given I did actually
hope to make it there alive I thought this was something I should do.
I spotted a campsite with a shop that looked safe enough and stopped
in. The people there were really nice even letting me use their
address book and telephone. Perhaps trying to get me to let my guard
down so they could stab me. Well they missed their chance and I made
it out alive. So now I was riding down the road, I had a place to stay
and I wasn't dead. So far so good. I still expected to die quite soon,
but so far South Africa wasn't turning out to be quite so immediately
lethal as I'd expected.
I continued across the flat but now slightly undulating terrain. The
small hills over the border in Botswana had long since disappeared by
now. I started seeing cows and goats in the trees, this generally
means no wild animals and indeed there were no more antelopes that day.
I stopped at a little shop next to a petrol station near a town called
Barberton. The guy running it was a pretty rural Afrikkaner and we
conversed in stilted English. To be fair he seemed pretty distracted
by the radio playing in the background. The Springboks were playing
the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations. If they won this match they took
the tournament. This was important stuff and the Boks were ahead
approaching half-time. It was looking good for them. I wanted to find
out a bit more about South African sport so I decided to wait my turn
till half time and sat on the dirt beside a nearby wall, had a coffee
and ate an egg a toastie and some droewors listening to the Afrikkans
commentary.
At half-time we chatted a bit more. As you may be aware, South Africa
has had (has) it's racial problems. Apparently Rugby (and cricket)
tend to be followed more by the whites and football by the blacks. I
asked whether this was slowly beginning to change post-Apartheid.
Slowly was the response. There's hope that hosting the upcoming world
cup might spur this on a bit and the whole nation may become more
interested in football, finding a common ground. The national football
team is called Bafna Bafna, which I later found out means the boys.
Lets hope they (and we all) have a good one next year. About half an
hour after I'd returned to the road all the cars started hooting their
horns. The Boks had won the match and the Tri Nations, 'the boys'
would have to wait their turn. For today at least, South Africa was
all about rugby.
Sonja had warned me that before Mokopane I'd start running out of flat
terrain and begin to start reaching some proper hills. This began at
around 100km, just after lunch and this time there was no mistaking
these hills for mining waste, this was big stuff. I was passing just
to the north of the Waterberg mountains, which lay to my right. There
were one or two foothills north of me, but the main massive was all to
one side. These were huge escarpments and I don't this wasn't just
coming from someone who'd been stuck in a flat desert for two weeks.
The scenery was quite stunning. Big long horizons which would suddenly
stop to drop to the level of the surrounding terrain over which I was
riding. For a while this was the way things were. I would follow the
gently undulating road running along what what you fould think of as
the 'zero elevation' of the region. I was really starting to get into
these views. Little did I know the geography was going to get a whole
lot more interesting.
As I approached Mokopane the 'zero elevation' started to look like it
was changing its mind about where it wanted to be In relation to its
loftier neighbours and I'd been forced to make it up a fairly massive
hill. As I crested this, about forty km outside Mokopane Sonja sped
past in her little white car (all cars here are white, it's the law
across the whole of Africa) on her way to visit some friends. She
spotted me and rather boy racerishly skidded off the road and came to
a halt in a big cloud of dust on the verge. She was, once again, in a
one hundred percent generous mood and quickly furnished me with cool
water and a carton of fruit juice followed by a pint of freshly
squeezed orange juice. Now this morning's juice had tasted great...
but cool juice in the heat of the afternoon at the top of the biggest
hill for the last one and a half thousand kilometers tasted about as
good as things which taste amazing can taste, which is really pretty
good. Thanks Sonja, great timing! Were you following me all day
waiting for the best moment?
So all great, but I was a little concerned about time. The afternoon
was pushing on. It was now almost three thirty and I still had 40km to
conquer. My average (without stop or head winds) has tended to be
around 20km/hr. That put me in Mokopane at half five. The hill I'd
just climbed had been taken at about 9km/hr. In addition to the
slowing effect of gradient given I was approaching a fairly large town
and calculated I would probably need to avoid a number of murder
attempts during that time. I wasn't so much worried about outright
death, it was more the chances of a serious maiming that played upon
my mind. Particulary concerning would be the loss of one of my legs
since this would make hill climbs next to impossible and the loss of
both legs (or even just my feet) would probably end my journey there
and then (I know, I know, you never know till you've tried it. Perhaps
I was being overly pessimistic). Either way I hoped Getafix had helped
Sonja's squeeze her orange juice since, once more, I needed to get a
shift on...
...I needn't have worried.
A few kilometres further zero elevation evidently decided height isn't
everything and the landscape started to behave in a most extrordinary
way such as I've never encountered before. Now I do have an altimeter
attached to my bike so I am well aware that I'm quite a way above the
sea and therefore is strictly speaking plausible to drop quite a bit
and still be above sealevel (indeed there is no reason one can't be on
dry land below sealevel except I knew there were no such areas I
southern africa). What I did t expect was the long prolonged drop down
in altitude pretty much all the way from where I now was right to
Mokopane, the best part of 35km! My average speed was probably just
under 40km/hr and with very little effort. It was fantastic! What was
even better was that I had a great view of usually around the next ten
or so kilometers of the road pretty much all the time. It Was
sometimes dead straight as though a lost legion of Rome had passed
through needing something to do, sometimes snaking through a dip
between two hills before dropping off behind them. I felt like I was
on some kind of super-realistic google earth fly by.
This easy cruising distance also took me through my first South
African township. At first I was glad to be moving so fast and not
slowly plodding up a hill, since from what I'd been told this was the
favoured habitat of the worst of the stabbists. As I moved on though,
waving to people who whistled me or just waving or dinging my bell I
started realising everyone was smiling back at me and there was
absolutely no menace whatsoever. Infact a little further down the road
I became a little thirsty and rather than refilling my bottle from my
by now quite hot water bags I decided to risk it and stopped at a small
Township bar. There were about thirty men there sitting inside playing
and watching a game of pool. They seemed a little surprised to see me
walk in and ask for a coke, but all very friendly and keen to pass my
map around and ask me questions... 'so why don't you just get on a..'
I soon hopped back on the powerful one and sped back out onto the
road. Many people were starting to make their evening meals, most
domestic life seemed to be conducted outdoors, which seemed sensible
given most houses had hot corrugated tin roofs. I passed at least
three pretty well organised and supported football matches and was
pleased to get the attention of quite a proportion of the crowds as I
slid by. The combination of the landscape and the widely spaced out
shanty buildings populated with these friendly people was a like a
Utopic Mad Max Tatooine. By utopic I don't mean to imply that living
in a shanty town is likely to be a fantastic experience or a matter of
hoice for these people, merely that they all seemed so happy as I rode
past. It was a great ride.
I arrived in Mokopane in good time and easily found the place I was
staying. The family were lovely Afrikkaners and even better they
announced they were havin a Braai, excellent. I ended up staying up
later than I'd intended, chatting to the owner about recent Southern
African history sport and politics, he'd been a sniper in the Angolan
border war and we had some interesting conversation about the
psychology of a sniper. He was also a multiple 'Comrade', but more
about that another day, since as I continued through South Africa I
started to be quite regularly questioned about whether I was a
'Comrade' or not. All i'll say now is that hopefully one day I will be.
So I'd survived my first day in South Africa with all limbs intact.
Intact I'd really enjoyed the while experience. This is a great country.
No comments:
Post a Comment