Day 321 - 322 / 86 - 87

Date: 27 - 28 February 2023
Sleeping location: Venter residence, nr Louis Trichardt, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 0 / 19835 / 4998
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 0 / 172200 / 54200
Winston loves: Leah

Day in three words: Caspers: Friendly Hosts*

In the morning there was strong wind, thick cloud and rain outside, which persisted for the next 48hrs or so. Outrunning Freddy seemed to have worked. Robyn and I had a coffee together before she went off to work, leaving me with Taki the housekeeper and Winston, Leah and Charlie the dogs. Winston is a tiny and excitable Jack Russel, Leah and huge calm Great Dane, and Charlie a chilled out and friendly “village dog” which is a local mongrel that looks a bit like a Labrador. Winston definitely loves Leah; she doesn’t feel the same way but puts up with him sharing her basket, pawing her face and humping her leg all the time. 

Sarah returned early afternoon and pretty much immediately offered to take me into town to run a load of errands. On the way in she got a call from her accountants - she was in the middle of selling a business - so we went into the office and I got to re-enter the world of accountancy for 15 minutes. The first errands were failures as no shop had a replacement bluetooth keyboard and my package from the UK had not arrived. The former was annoying but I could buy one online; the latter was more of an issue as it contained a couple of relatively specialised bike components (derailleur wheels and the innermost chainring) that were getting dangerously worn on Maggie. Casper had warned me that the SA postal system wasn’t very good but I had assumed this meant “might be a few days late”, but it actually seems it’s more like “might be a few months late or just disappear”. 

In an attempt to source replacements we went to the town’s best bike shop, which was also the town’s best fishing shop, a mix I’ve not seen before. They didn’t have either component but were very friendly and gave me a free bike bottle to replace one that had fallen out of my rucksack on the bus to Mutare. The shop was in semi darkness because the whole town’s power was out, which is apparently a regular occurrence. There is not always enough electricity generation for the whole country’s needs so certain areas are switched off for a pre-determined length of time in a process called “load shedding”. There is an app which tells you when your area will be shed, which does at least allow you to plan, but it all seems very annoying.

Finally we went to a shopping centre where we picked up a SIM card and then visited a big supermarket. This was absolutely mind-blowing - in terms of variety, quality and price and it’s like being in Western Europe again. This totally changes the way I can approach my food; there is no more need to hoard and shopping is no longer "what can I get that's quite nice and affordable", it's "what do I want to eat". 

Sarah and I chatted in the car between errands and I really enjoyed her company, she’s very smart, knowledgeable and funny, not to mention very helpful. She’s also a great cook, and back at the Venter’s she made a delicious pasta with tomatoes and smoked oysters over a couple of beers (me) and a glass of wine (her). Robyn was back in time for dinner and the three of us had some more enjoyable conversation, before I excused myself for a video call with Toni and James back in the UK. All that good company and wine/beer had me all warm and fuzzy inside.

The next day I blogged for a few hours before Sarah made some cheesy toast for lunch. In the afternoon I worked on Maggie for a few hours. I had planned to fit a new chain and cassette along with the components that hadn’t arrived, but it seemed pointless to fit new stuff onto very old stuff. Sarah had offered to send on the parcel if it arrived so I decided to wait until my next rest in Nelspruit (a week hence) and start looking for new parts if it hadn’t shown up. I did finally replace the rear gear cable, which had become frayed somewhere along the mud road of doom in north Tanzania, probably by being scraped on a rock on a river crossing, but had been operating fine on about half of its strands ever since. Everything else also got a good clean, and boy did it need it.

Sarah made chicken escalopes and chips for dinner and along with Robyn we chatted again over a glass or two of wine. Sarah told an excellent story about her brother. He lives in Zim, right on the Limpopo river which forms the border with SA. In the dry season this becomes completely dry and you can just walk across, which Sarah frequently does to visit him because it’s quicker than going through the official border post. Around Christmas time a lot of people want to cross the border and don’t want to go through the official border post, because of the formalities or because they are in either country illegally, but this is during the wet season so the river is high. Her brother therefore carries people across the river on his canoe. Often the SA police are right there watching but don’t mind if the people aren’t coming into SA, but one time he was too cocky towards them and they arrested him for, essentially, being cocky. He kept having to attend court in SA and every time he would cross the border illegally on his canoe on his way to the courthouse, until eventually they gave up as they couldn’t really charge him with anything. 

After dinner Sarah set up a video call with Casper Jr, who had himself cycled across SA along a similar route to the one I was planning. He provided some excellent route advice as well as general good chat. It sounds like I can’t really go wrong in terms of passing through scenic areas. The whole Venter household was absolutely wonderful towards me and made me feel so welcome, and I went to bed full of optimism for the coming weeks.

*Well it was Sarah, Robyn and Taki really but that doesn’t work as a pun