To the Limpopo

I once again woke easily and this time had managed to properly sort
the bike out the night before. All I had to do was make some porridge
and coffee and get on the road. I finally managed to made it out
before six... just. The previous evening for the first time in weeks
I'd seen a weather forcast on the television and it looked like there
was a chance I might meet rain this morning, that would be a novelty!
It also appeared as though Limpopo and Mpumalanga (the provinces of SA
I'd be passing through) may be receiving rain just before I arrived. I
really hoped this would happen, it would be fantastic if I could ride
through as the spring flowers got going.

I was riding east towards the Limpopo river, down a broad valley
formed by the Tswapong hills to the north and the Mokoro Hills to the
south. The actual road remained pretty level, but it was nice to have
something in the distance to look at as the day went by. As predicted
by the weatherman there was a black cloud in the distance ahead, but
it never gave me any trouble. In fact it turned out to be a bit of a
blessing since it kept the sun off me most of the morning, it was half
eight before the road temperature passed twenty degrees and it only
just made it past thirty all day. In the cloud's shade my water
requirements were vastly reduced and I barely had to stop for bottle
refills.

I noticed that along with the increasing numbers of flowering plants I
was passing I was also seeing many plants with seeds. One of the
things I'd heard, about South Africa in particular, but I guess this
whole region, is the outstanding diversity and beauty of the region's
flora. I decided I needed to find a way to collect seeds to try and
grow once I got back home (in the garden/greenhouse of my home to
be!). Does anyone know how to grow aloes?

About seventy kilometers down the road I was joined by a new vehicle
on the road... a cyclist! In fact by the end of the day I'd ridden
with two cyclists. They were both local guys. David and then Ishmael.
They rode heroes, which are sturdy Sturmy Archer type bikes well
equiped with pumps and rear racks (only idiots like me have front and
rear racks!) they were on their way to tend cattle in the forests
further up the road. I rode about ten kilometers with David and about
seven with Ishmael. There was a bit of a language barrier and we
didn't really say much to each other, mostly just pointing at each
others bikes, looking pleased and impressed and playing slipstream
games. Though I've now got used to my own company on the road and
quite enjoy and value the time it gives me to think, it was fun having
someone else along for a change.

Riding with these guys reminded me of the charity I'm hoping to raise
money for (click on the just giving button on the right of the blog)
they're called 'Re-cycle' or 'Bicycle Aid for Africa'. They take
second hand bikes, mostly from London and New York and give them to
people in a number of countries across Africa (mostly Southern
Africa). There are a number of reasons I think this is a great idea.
Firstly, once you have a bike it is very cheap to run and maintain, no
need to buy petrol. So great for people with little money. You can
travel a lot further much more quickly and carrying a lot more than
you can walking. It keeps you fit and healthy and it keeps others fit
and happier since you are not going to run them over like you might
driving a car, you won't be polluting your local environment with
exhaust fumes or the wider planet with carbon dioxide. Win, win, win!
On my travels I've seen many people standing by the road hitching.
Outside the deepest bits of the desert it is an almost constant thing.
Some of these people seem to sit for hours in the hot sun, many only
travelling relatively short distances spending scarce resources to do
so. Giving them a bike would have a huge impact on their lives. If you
agree why not give Re-Cycle a few of your pennies. Through just-giving
I'm told there's some oind of tax break system which means that the
charity actually gets a little more money than you donate. So even if
you can just pop in 50p it all adds up.

Today was a relatively short day, only 100km and by half eleven I
arrived at Sherwood ranch, the last town in Botswana and effectively
my destination (the border at Martin's Drift where I was planning to
stay was only another 10km down the road). This was a lovely little
place with a proper frontier feel to it. There was a little petrol
station, a post office, nice little cafe selling icecream and cold
drinks and a nice tidy little general dealer selling hardwares. The
road was lined by big old fig trees providing welcome shade.

Back in Serowe I'd intended to post some some large bean pods I'd
picked up in the Okavango, but had ended up spending too long on the
internet and been forced to press on to Palapye before dark. I decided
to make amends for this and headed to the General Dealer to buy brown
paper to wrap up the precious pods. There I met a lovely lady called
Sonja, we got talking and she asked if I had plans for the evening
offering to take me on a drive late that afternoon to see the local
area and also to come to dinner with her and her sister. This sounded
great, I of course accepted and headed on to the border, dropped off
my kit on the banks of the Limpopo spending the afternoon blogging
before heading back to the ranch for five pm.

The landscape around here is generally quite flat with resonably large
hills reaching up every now and then out of the surrounding terrain, a
little like the Inselbergs of Namibia, but not so harsh and instead of
bare rock are covered with scruby vegetation. Sonja drove me around
some of the local villages. She had lived there all her life, was the
third generation of her family living at Sherwood Ranch (they were
originally Afrikkaners from Pretoria) and knew the area and the people
very well. She showed me a number of villages explaining some of the
customs. We saw one village which had just proudly built a nice new
Kgotla, the old one was still standing next to the new one. She
explained how some of the outdoor gatherings I'd seen in some villages
as I'd crossed Botswana assuming they were some kind of ceremony or
religious event were actually a sort of outdoor pub where they would
drink a beer usually made from the Marula nut (of Amarula fame). We
passed through a village called Safari. They had a sacred garden which
ran along a hillside and revered a number of old trees which grew
there. Sounded like my kind of place, perhaps they should send a
diplomatic mission to Paje? Discounting the Baobabs of the Okavango,
these trees were the biggest I'd seen the whole trip and reminded me
of the big old oaks back home at Blenheim. The garden itself had lots
of oranges trees and other plants I couldn't identify. There was
apparently a magic fountain on the hillside above, from which cool
fresh water flowed all year round. The hill was one of the highest in
the area and I couldn't see quite how there would be a spring at the
top and never actually saw it myself, but it was nice story all the
same.

Sonja and her family lived in a lovely old house, built about a
hundred years ago, surrounded by the shade of big trees (figs I think)
with big sweeping verandas. If you've ever seen 'Out of Africa' it was
a lot like Karen Blixen's house. Inside they had all sorts of very old
things much like the old house at Glenfinnan (sorry, that won't mean a
lot to many of you). We had lovely dinner of chicken, salads and fish
with Sonja's family. Then before I headed back to the Limpopo, Sonja
insisted on giving me a whole lot of great things. She really was a
very generous person. They have a lot of orange farms in the region
which are apparently known for their sweetness. I was given a whole
bottle of freshly squeezed juice for my last breakfast in Botswana.
Sonja gave me a pot of their local honey, which I bet tastes amazing
given all the local orange trees. She also gave me a large bag of
Marula nuts which are extremely tasty, though I've since learned
(unfortunately only after having eaten a large proportion of them) are
really quite hard to get hold of, even in Southern Africa let alone
London so these may well be the only ones I ever try. Finally she gave
me a whole load of small resealable plastic bags to collect seeds
with. So generous.

So if you're ever travelling between Botswana and South Africa through
the Martin's Drift border post make sure you stop off at Sherwood
Ranch and pop into the General Dealers, you won't regret it.