Day 320 / 85

Date: 26 February 2023
Sleeping location: Venter residence, nr Louis Trichardt, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 103 / 19835 / 4998
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1300 / 172200 / 54200
Most amusingly named rest stop: Windpomp

Day in three words: Help and hospitality

After a deep dreamless sleep I woke up feeling less like a zombie but still physically exhausted, saddle-sore and stiff after the efforts of the previous day. One more push and I could rest and recover for a couple of days at a Warmshowers host, Casper, that I’d been in contact with.

I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant (very meat heavy: I think this will be a theme) and noted that every South African that I had met thus far was nice and friendly, which was a surprise as I had assumed from the stories that they would all immediately murder me. This side of the country did reveal itself a little as for the first 10km there were signs saying “Crime alert: do not stop”, and I went past a huge knife that had been abandoned on the side of the road - I’d be interested to know the story here but my guess is that it didn’t belong to a forgetful travelling chef. I said hello to some traffic police and they asked if I was going to “Lewis” Trichardt, which was a surprise as I’d been saying it “Louie” to everyone*. 

After a climb and descent through the town of Mesina on an empty, smooth new road I came into more very empty savannah, fenced off with absolutely nobody about and nothing to look at apart from loads of big “disco grasshoppers” on the road**. There was a stiff headwind once more and I was feeling pretty exhausted. I’d been in contact with Al from Harare as he was driving along the same stretch of road today, but I didn’t yet have an SA sim card so we’d agreed to just look out for one another. This meant I was reluctant to stop at the only service station that I passed in case he missed me, so I continued despite my tiredness until I reached a farm/cafe place called Windpomp after about 50km. Here they had wifi and I could message him to say I was there. I was dead on my feet at this point, with more than 50km still to go.

It was a fancy little shop and I got myself a massive lemon drink***, some biltong and a coffee and made myself a load of sandwiches. SA is clearly much richer than anywhere else I've been for ages, but that is no surprise. The owner Uta was nice and took a picture with me outside the cafe. Al arrived shortly after me and we had a good chat as I recovered my energy levels by eating everything in sight. We both had to head off before too long but he offered to carry the majority of my bags the rest of the way up to LT, which was very gratefully received. I set off with a spring in my pedal after a stop that was a tonic in a number of ways. 

My good mood lasted, despite more headwind, for 30km until the 650m climb through the mountains began. Almost immediately I hit dark clouds, a raging headwind and rain blowing straight into my face, on a pretty narrow road with big trucks rumbling by. My rear light and rain jacket went on and I just kept plugging away. The green hills turned into great red cliffs and the road went through these via two tunnels which were like the bowels of hell, incredibly dark, loud and terrifying. I had to lift Maggie over the crash barrier onto the narrow access path and I would have been in a real pickle with a fully loaded bike. The climb was relatively gentle but the headwind stuck around, the road stayed narrow and it was not fun with the trucks and buses roaring past. I couldn’t really be arsed with it all.

 

Finally, close to sunset, I reached the top and had a short descent to Casper’s. I would have been pushing it in terms of daylight hours with a full load. I went up a narrow driveway, through a coded gate, past a small house, and finally pitched up at a beautiful big house where I was greeted by a girl called Robyn. She had known I was coming but little else and had no idea about my bags. I got onto the wifi post-haste and saw a message from Al saying that he’d dropped them under a table outside “the” house, which turned out to be the smaller house by the gate. We found them in the twilight, along with some sausages, a bottle of juice drink and an enormous watermelon, all of which were unexplained but turned out to be gifts from Al. I love that guy.

 

Robyn then looked after me incredibly well and made an extremely cheesy lasagna which went down a treat. The situation was explained to me a little more: Casper Venter (the person listed on Warmshowers) is at university in Pretoria. His dad (also Casper) is a doctor who is in Paarl for a couple of months working at a hospital there. His mum (Sarah) was currently away visiting one of the Caspers, I never figured out which, but would be back the next day. Robyn is a doctor from Jo’burg who has been posted to a rural hospital near LT for a year and is lodging with Venters. Their house is enormous and wonderful and full of beautiful objects and artworks, plus three friendly dogs. Robyn and I had a good chat, although for about an hour I didn’t realise there were two Caspers and kept getting confused that Robyn had said something “contradictory” about “him”. Another interesting titbit - Sarah and Robyn met Oliver and Pauline a few weeks back when they were staying in LT. After all that cheese I didn’t last too late and snuggled up in bed, happy that I had found a seemingly wonderful place to rest for a couple of days.  

Fundraising section

I've been rubbish at telling people this so far but I'm raising money as part of this daft and pointless journey. Here's a link to my donation page:

https://justgiving.com/fundraising/kevin-davey5

I'm about to try a few avenues of getting the word out there more, but ideally I'd have a less pathetic amount raised when I do that, so please give give give. 

*Apparently the two are interchangeable. The history of the town’s name is quite interesting: originally named after a Dutch settler, it was changed in 2004 (as part of de-colonialisation) to Makhado, after a local tribal leader in the 19th century. However, other local tribes didn’t like Makhado as they considered him an oppressor of their tribes, so after nine years it was changed back.

**My name for them and probably not the official name. Basically a big colourful hopping insect.

***The soft drinks were all reduced sugar, and in Mesina I saw a man out running. All of a sudden people have too many calories instead of not enough.