Plans

I hope you liked the recent posts and pictures. I have to thank the Puccini house for being so accomodating letting me use their WiFi and internet. Wouldn't have been possible without you guys!

As you can see I've had a day off today in Windhoek. The last three days fairly took it out of me, but this means I'm two days behind schedule! I'm hoping to head out early tomorrow morning and be at the Botswanan border in a couple of days and then hopefully in Maun a few days after that. I cant confirm when you will next get a blog post but I'll try and ask someone to post something to the Facebook page or the comments section of this posting each day so you know where I'm up to. If you wouldn't all mind updating mt map that would be great - internet here generally can't cope with interactive google applications in afraid.

Thanks to everyone for all the support I've had up to now (and I don't just mean the people who gave me so much on the Bosua road - though I probably owe my life to you all, special post coming up for you all about who gave me what so you can all see how generous they were)

Keep in contact so I know what your all up too. See you all soon!

No longer a dream.

"It was suddenly not a dream any more, it was tangible"

(Philip Petit, Man on Wire, describing his feelings on entering the
Twin Towers)

Well yes you're right Philip and yes, it's been all too tangible. I've
had a fairly eventful day. The flight over from Joburg was fine. For
some reason it was crammed with loads of quite scruffy looking Chinese
guys who spoke no English. It was quite funny listening to the South
African cabin crew trying to communicate by just talking louder at
them (and I thought it was just us Brits who were supposed to do that)

Then made another mistake (perhaps we should start a poll on the blog
'guess which one of Steve's mistakes will eventually kill him) mistake
was I didn't have an address for my landing card. To be fair to me I
was not planning on actually staying in a building for at least the
next three days (unless you count a train as a building?) the
immigration officer was a proper old trout and kindly informed me that
the English deport people all the time (which I guess is actually
true) and so she would therefore allow me 10minutes to give her the
address and phone number to where I was staying or I was going back on
the plane. Bugger!
After some frantic txting (iPhone kindly decided It couldn't be
bothered to connect to the internet) I had a name and number of
somewhere I had absolutely no intention of ever staying and had also
never had had any contact with... luckily it seems my immigration
friend's intelect or persevereance (one or the other) didn't stretch
far as phoning them to check and I was through! Rob I owe you one!

Putting the bike together went fine. Bit of a rush job though and I
confess I have very little idea which things are in which of the four
panniers. This will have to change.

I then set out for the short ride to Windhoek to catch the train...
er... you think it's gonna be that easy do you? I don't think so
sonny! Yes firstly the short ride turned out to be 42km. I'd not
brought any water. I'd not put on any suncream (though as you will see
this rapidly ceased to be an issue) and I'd also not put on my padded
arse saving shorts. I would make a fine Shakleton or Heyerdal!

The ride was great though! Finally I was riding my bike in Africa! I
passed weaver bird nests in the trees, hornbills were swooping across
the road ahead in that distinctive flight they do, the dry grass
beside the road was almost constantly rustling with something startled
by my prescence and I saw plenty of Wharthogs almost two or three
every five minutes! Yes it was beautiful and the hills to my left
looked lovely in the setting sun... and that, my friends, was a
problem. The setting sun! As in the sun was setting! Southern Africa
of course is at the end of it's winter and the sun set at ten to six
when I was still 10km outside Windhoek. I cleverly had no map of the
city, I'd just been trusting the railway station would be signposted,
or that my fathers genes would lead me to it. Neither of these worked.
And about an hour after sunset my pedals decided not to either. I was
in a right pickle, and actually rather shi**ng it. I felt a bit like
one of the rather shortlived extras in Tsotsi. To be fair nobody tried
anything on. I didn't even get any non-fatal stab wounds.. It was just
that I was in a pretty rundown part of town with bored looking groups
of young men on each corner sitting on low walls, with plenty of open
patchs of unlit scrubby wasteland about. (It is almost a new moon at
present) To cut a long story short I phoned home (well my sister) for
the second time since lunchtime and got the number of the place I'd
been planning to stay enroute back from Swakupmond. By now I'd already
missed the train anyway.

So am I upset. Not really. I'm now a day behind schedule, but will
also now be able to get a proper nights sleep, charge my digital
menagerie and propely organise my kit (and sort those pesky pedals;
lucky that didn't happen in the desert!) and sofar none of my mistakes
have done for me so I'm rather pleased with myself!

I bid thee Adieu, till the next time.

On the eve of adventure

"If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on"

(Lance Armstrong)

I'm very close now. Twenty Four hours and I'll be in the sky somewhere between the Sahara and the Congo. Many things have not been done today, but many of the important things are sorted and most importantly my bike stands all tooled up in the corridor outside my room. It looks good, but damn it is heavy!

Gonna get some sleep.

Yesterday a man set fire to my ears.

Yes that's right. He did.

OK it's not actually as amazing a story as the title would suggest, but hopefully it got you reading my post. You'll have to read till the end of this post for the gory details!

I'll admit I've been a little lax updating the last couple of days. Wednesday was effectively the end of the MSc, finally handed in the summer project. I won't be winning any Nobel prizes with it but hopefully it will be enough to pass muster. Its been a heavy few days of Library time, copious black sweet coffee over the road and endless editing of references so I guess I couldn't face typing anymore text for a few days.

The weather has been amazing this week so having handed in all the work there was a fair bit of sitting in parks catching up with people, checking which secret nook of Bloomsbury everyone has been hiding away in and finding out what their plans from here on are The great thing about LSHTM is you make friends all over the world, a true global village. The problem with this is a lot of my friends are about to disappear off around the globe (though I guess I'm perhaps also guilty of this, even if just on a temporary basis) and many won't be about by the time I return. Means I'll be required to head off on lots of fun trips to visit them in the future.

So what about Africa? That is why I'm writing this blog and I guess why you're reading it. Well luckily my procrastination (right word Tommy?) has induced me to actually prepare quite a bit in advance over the last few weeks. There's still quite a bit to do, but not as much I'd feared. Yesterday involved a lot of riding around London, first over to Maria's in Canary Wharf to collect her brother's Satellite phone. Her Dad had driven over from the Netherlands to pick her up and had a ferry to catch, so this was an early start (thank you Le Grand's!). Then I headed to Canada Water to visit the temple of Quechua. A gorilla I know called Hill (he's quite small blond and angry - some of you may know him) has undertaken a number of physical quests and always seems to head here before setting out to worship his god he names Decathlon. I'm not really a superstitious person, but though it couldn't hurt to make an offering and after my visit I can confirm that he has a fine church which I'm sure will keep me safe on the road.
And finally went to the travel clinic to get jabs (Rabies and Hep A) plus water filters and got enough sorts of DDT based mosquito killers to make Rachel Carson turn in her grave.

...so my ears? Well I thought it best to get my haircut and not wanting to spend £35 which (seemed the going rate on Upper Street) nor able to spend a whole morning at Tony and Guy Academy (you get a chop for £5!) I opted to go for a back street haircut for £8. Surveying the results in a mirror this morning it doesn't seem like too bad a decision. The guy who did it was Turkish with a thick accent and to be honest I couldn't understand what he was saying most of the time. So when it seemed the cut was pretty much done and he mumbled something to me and I assumed he was offering me hair wax so nodded in affirmation. So I was more than a little surprised and slightly concerned when he pulled out an industrial sized cotton bud on a steel rod and proceeded to dip this in a bowl of meths and put a lighter to it! Perhaps I'm a little naive and this Is a common practice in gentlemans barbers but I'd not experienced this before. My assailant then proceeded to put flame to my ears and burn off the downy hairs you get on the edge of your ears. It didn't hurt and he seemed to know what he was doing and as I rode down the road (sorry, the back street) away from the barbers, the smell of singed hair in my nostrils I thought it was probably a hair cut I won't forget.

Dress rehearsal

Had a bit of a practice putting stuff on the bike this evening. My bike (currently without a name, all sugestions welcomed) came back from the bike shop after it's service today. Got it done at Cycle surgery on Holloway Road and they kindly gave me the unused bits of my chain and some spare spokes for the road. So first job was to attach a front rack to let me use front panniers and get some weight off the back wheel. In the picture you can see the all important blue water bag, this will be very weighty when it is full. As is Rob's tent (the green sausage under the water bag)

Everything seems to fit on OK, does feel rather heavy though (as Tommy can testify) and that's without most of my kit.

Lizzy's wedding at the weekend was amazing. We all had an amazing time. Mum n Dad looked very proud of her and Rob did an excellent job as an usher directing everyone about, especially for the photos. There are a few pics up on my facebook site, including one he sent from the boat she and Damian sailed off down the canal in for their honeymoon. Am very envious of them, weather is perfect at the moment.

I had a bit of a 'moment' before leaving Oxford to come back to London. Last time I will see Mum n Dad before heading off and I know they are very worried about this trip. Guess preparing for it all and finishing dissertation got the better of me for a minute, but feeling better about it all now. I've just finished reading Al Humphries first book "Moods of Future Joys' about his solo trip round the world on a bike and sailing ships. He often talks about how going solo leaves you open to big highs but also big lows. So will be expecting a few more 'moments' in the weeks ahead on the road, but hopefully even more highs! I guess this is one of the motivations for writing this blog. Not only should I have a great record of this trip once I get back hopefully meet some people on the road and perhaps learn to write a slightly more entertaining style of prose through doing it, but it is also a way to share what I'm doing and stay in contact with family and friends who can leave me comments (hint, HINT!) down the right hand column of the page (please keep it clean)

Is getting late and the battery on my laptop is going flat. Sadly no smart arsed quote prepared for tonight so time for B. E. D. I bid thee adieu.

Half booked!

"in themselves they trusted"

(Sôlar lioð)

Checking flights this evening and they were running out! This was inevitable. Make your mind up, muppet!

The Mozambique flights are a little complicated with respect to baggage... and still well over a month and a half away. So I left that to speak to some one on the phone. but..... flight out is booked! BOOKED! Yes, I'm going. Scared, excited, but going!

I'm flying with Swiss and here's the proof...

Maps

I now have maps. This is good.

Here's a chart showing the distances I'm expecting to cover each day (click on the image for a larger view) It averages just under 100km each day (this is about the same as London to Oxford). There are a couple of big days near the start after leaving Windhoek. I've heard this bit of road isn't so interesting and I'm hoping I'll still be fairly fresh after a short day into the Capital and a shower and proper feed... that's the plan anyway!

There are only 2 rest days scheduled however as you can see there are 4 spare days at the end in Maputo so if I become confident enough that I'll not need them to ensue I make it to the plane I can use these earlier (famous last words). This is only an outline plan, I'd be amazed if this I what I actually end up doing.

Overview of the route

Here is an overview of the route. Starting in Swakupmond in Nambia, crossing the Namib desert to the capital Windhoek. Then on across the Kalahari to Maun the gateway to the Okavango Delta. After this the route heads south to the border with South Africa. After crossing the border the route goes across the Waterberg mountains to Mokopane which sits near some of the oldest prehistoric human sites in Africa. Then on to the Northern Drakensberg mountains and down the panorama route. First passing the Blyde River Canyon, the third deepest in the world then on past the 65 metre Mac Mac falls. The last leg Passes into and out of Swaziland via mountain passes and then finally drops down in to Mozambique to cross the coastal plain to the capital Maputo and a well earned rest!