Reading this guy’s stories still kills me. He is having some incredible experiences and I was glad to see another update on his site.

He is out of the desert now and is continuing to experience the real Africa. On a rest day they rented a little scooter to do some sight seeing:

“Two guys on a tiny scooter; here it is the norm, but it was a bit uncomfortable. We drove 90km to Banfour. On our way there the police stopped us. This big guy said we had to pay for two infringements. We didn’t have our passports and we didn’t have papers for the bike. We asked him to take us to the place we have to pay, because we don’t want to pay him. He said he is not going to, but we are not allowed to continue like this, so we have to pay him. We told him that we didn’t mind not continuing and we sat with him. After a few minutes he got fed up and told us that if we could get his photo on the background of his phone he would let us go. We took his phone, captured a picture of the proud man in uniform and set it as his background. We were set free!”

At another point they cycled into an unfenced game reserve and encountered some not so gentle giants:

“After our rest we cycled out on the same road we came in on. We were joking about how funny it would be to see the elephants in the road. I told Philip I could smell them… I really could. Sure enough, around the next corner they were standing in the middle of the road. If we were not aware of them, we might have cycled straight into them. We slammed on brakes and stood dead still. They just looked at us for a while, the bull then decided that we were too close for comfort and he came for us. Lance Armstrong would have had a hard time keeping up. We cleared some distance, stopped and checked out the situation. There was no other road. At that time guy on a scooter came in the same direction that we wanted to go. He first laughed at our situation and then he took us through the bush to another road that would lead us back to the main road. It was an amazing experience, but it could have been dangerous.”

This weekend Jules and I went camping at a place called Tweede Tol in the Bainskloof pass. It’s about 1.5 hours drive out of Cape Town and a great little place for a quick weekend away.

We only managed to leave Cape Town at about 4PM on Saturday so it was always going to be a little tight making it by 6PM when the camp site closes. Then we got a little lost on the way there (roads weren’t named what the map said they would be) so it was getting a little tense. The day was saved when we got directions from a massive Afrikaans guy with a curly mullet and a red city golf full of family. He gave us great directions and actually drove with us most of the way. He also pointed out the many speed traps along the way which was a great help.

So we got there just in time, and to my surprise the guy at the gate was quite happy with the printed confirmation I got after paying online. We were extremely lucky to get an awesome camp site near the end of the park and next to a river. We rushed to get the tent up before it got dark. Luckily, ours is an extremely simple tent and we were able to get it up in about 15 minutes – not bad for the first time.

We made a fire and then had lots of fun chatting, laughing, drinking wine, looking at the amazing stars, and playing with the camera. We got some pretty eerie pictures using the torch and putting the camera onto night mode. Check these out.

We had quite a comfortable night thanks to some great sleeping bags from my dad. They have built in inflatable mattresses which worked out great. A relatively comfortable sleep, and it was great being away from the city sounds. Jules got a little cold, I was a little warm – nothing unusual there.

In the morning I got the fire going again and then it was time for tea, breakfast snacks and packing up.

I bought a map of the hiking trails for R1 and we chose the longest route available to day hikers. A 9km hike from the camp site, up around a small mountain, and then back down to camp past a waterfall. I must say that I have never hiked along such rocky and uneven terrain. It was nothing like the Drakensberg hiking of my youth. In fact it was so rugged that we often had real problems figuring out where the path was and landed up walking quite a bit more than the 9km on the map.

Highlights of the hike itself were:

• A delicious lunch of left-overs from the braai.
  
• Awesome views.
• This shy little snake (which I almost stepped on!)
  
• Wading around in the river. It was too cold to actually swim in.

After the hike we enjoyed the beautiful drive back to Cape Town. A great weekend out of the city.

I’ll upload more photo’s to a Google album later and post the link here.

Recently I wrote about Cecil who is riding through Africa from Morocco to South Africa. He has just posted an update to his adventure diary – and it makes interesting reading.

They are now 2800 km into the trip and have passed through Morocco, Mauritania and into Senegal. It sounds like he isn’t going to miss the heat, sand and unbearable flies of Mauritania, but as usual the stories and pictures are great. Great reading for desk-jockeys like me.

Some of the highlights:

• Staying with Mauritanian camel herders and drinking fresh camel milk
• Cycling through the desert at midnight under a full moon. (It’s too hot to cycle through the day so they have been cycling quite a lot at night)
• Cecil has developed a 6 step method for dealing with the regular sand-blastings they get from trucks screaming past at “a pace just under the speed of sound”. It includes several steps for swearing and some quick moving to minimize the impacts.

A great part of the story has Cecil resting under a tree when his family pull up in a car! He wasn’t hallucinating – they came out to surprise him.

A guy I know from Knysna is busy doing something so awesome that I go green with envy just thinking about it. He and a mate are cycling from Morocco, through West Africa, across to East Africa, down through Central Africa, and all the way home to sunny South Africa. His route is about 22,000 km (about 13,600 miles) and they are budgeting on taking about a year.

They started in early February so they are are still (last time he posted to his site) making their way across the Sahara. He has already had some awesome experiences and his stories really tempt me to pack up the corporate life and do something crazy.

Until then I will have to make to with Cecil’s diary and pics. Click to the thumbnails to view higher res images.

Yesterday was Human Rights day so Jules and I headed off to have a look around at Cape Point. It is really beautiful out there and we enjoyed a good hike along the coast up to the lighthouse. I haven’t been to many places in South Africa where you get cliffs dropping down into the ocean so it was an interesting hike. We also saw some wildlife – baboons, zebra, dolphins, ostriches and hartebeest (although we only noticed them in out photos when we got home!).A enjoyable outing – although I wouldn’t recommend it if you don’t like wind!

The weather was great, the crowds were out in force, and it was really fun to do the Argus again. Because I haven’t done it for a few years I had a late start group – 10h30. I even watched the earlier groups finishing the race on TV before leaving to start!

I hadn’t done much training (total 140km for a race of 109km) but I was able to rely on general fitness and I managed finished with a time of 3:57:39 – way better than my target. Still only good enough for 12,059th out of 28,706 finishers!

What a race…

Me taking a quick swim at the Red Bridge in Knysna. The water was great and we found some otter tracks leading off into the bushes.

I did see some branches sticking out of the water under the bridge which means that there are trees wedged in down there. Quite a frightening sight considering I have often jumped off into that water. Imagine jumping off and landing on a fat branch!