Day 324 / 89

Date: 2 March 2023
Sleeping location: Digabane resort, nr The Oaks, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 127 / 20077 / 5240
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 900 / 173900 / 55900
Fictional character of the day: Captain Nemo

Day in three words: The mixed bag

In the morning I met Reuben’s dad Gary, who is a doctor and had been on shift until 11pm the pervious evening. He was also very welcoming and full of questions about my setup as he himself is a keen cyclist. Then Reuben showed me round their huge and extraordinary garden. His grandad is one of the world's leading orchid experts and has six massive greenhouses for growing and experimenting. The level of detail is amazing, temperature and humidity are monitored and each orchid has its own preferred growing environment, for example on wire, in pots, or on random bits of tree bark that Reuben is asked to collect from the side of the road when they're on holiday together. I headed off about 9.30 with a warm goodbye - they are a really nice family.

After zipping down the short but steep hill that I had cunningly avoided the previous evening I had to do a small detour and u-turn at the KFC to make sure I hadn’t skipped any of the overall route. I then set off through vast Eucalyptus plantations rolling across hillsides in all directions, then turned off the main road along the north side of the Tzaneen reservoir. All was quiet and beautiful, especially off the bigger roads. I had a rude awakening from this when I was briefly routed down a dirt road shortcut, which was very bumpy but firm and quiet. 

It was hot and I was thirsty so I stopped for coffee and elevenses in a sort of cafe/petting zoo hybrid establishment. This was pleasant until I tried to do some routine maintenance on my saddle, which truculently refused to be maintained; its tightening nut had become cross threaded into the bolt and would no longer tighten. I had to wrestle the whole thing out to fix it, which involved a lot of levering and sweating and swearing and took about 90 minutes. Shortly after setting off again I passed 20,000km, but when trying to video this moment I accidentally missed it entirely as I was playing with my bike computer. The landscape turned back to savannah, hot, boring and unenjoyable as it was a narrow road with fast cars passing, with only occasional monkeys providing light relief.  After a surprisingly punchy climb over a range of hills I descended down towards huge craggy cliffs and peaks reminiscent of Chimanimani, then turned left and began cycling on a long straight road with them to my right. These were the mountains I would be climbing up into tomorrow.   

I knew I was a bit pushed for time so for late lunch I just had a quick stop for massive bottle of (out of date but reduced) lemon drink and some avocado sandwiches, then set off into a headwind that lasted for the next 45km. This was not good given the tightness of my time, and another issue with tightness occurred soon afterwards when the aforementioned saddle bolt snapped entirely and my comfortable saddle turned into a flappy bit of leather on top of a very uncomfortable metal frame. Given the timing this was almost certainly due to the good twatting I’d given it earlier, but I’m not sure how else I could have got the thing out given how seized it was. Thankfully I had experienced this sort of catastrophe in Part 1 and I had a replacement bolt, so I fitted it and was on my way fairly quickly. To add insult to injury, a bee randomly landed on my arm as I was riding and stung me for NO REASON, the beestard*. 

The road ran through game reserves so it was all fenced off and there was absolutely nowhere to sleep other than a couple of extremely high end safari camps, so I kept going into the headwind towards a sensible looking place on google. I usually look into wilderness-y areas as I ride but had never previously seen any animals, so I was extremely surprised when I happened to glance left and saw two rhinos just metres inside the fence and perhaps ten metres from me. They were as surprised as I was and bolted off into the bush. I was quite taken aback by how quietly they moved, and by how small they were, and although I only saw them briefly it was a lovely moment. That means I have seen all of what I consider the famous African herbivores - elephant, rhino, hippo, zebra, giraffe, Cape buffalo** - from Maggie’s saddle, which makes me pretty happy. (I am perfectly happy not seeing any of the big carnivores without some metal and glass for protection) After this I also saw about ten impala across multiple groups, and two warthogs with baby hogs in tow. One of them with its three hoglings scampered alongside the fence just ahead of me and at a similar speed for a good minute. 

With darkness looming I went over the final rise and the descent down towards the big rugged cliffs was beautiful in the twilight. I arrived at the place on google well after sunset but before full darkness, terrified that it would be closed or not exist, but it was there and open. I think the guy said I could camp for free but it was hot and I was tired so I took one of the cheap rooms instead. I’d pushed myself the last two days but as a result I’d done more than half of the distance to Nelspruit in two out of the five days that I’d planned, leaving more time to relax/suffer and enjoy/struggle through the mountains ahead. 

*Or bee-atch?

**Not sure how the wildebeest feels about this. I’d like to see an ostrich too, but mainly because they’re funny rather than majestic