Day 325 / 90

Date: 3 March 2023
Sleeping location: Blyde Canyon resort 24.5793S 30.7760E, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 63 / 20140 / 5303
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1400 / 175300 / 57300
Post punk band of the day: Wire

Day in three words: Abel Erasmus class 

I slept really badly as the room was hot and full of an army of mosquitoes, and the fan I was using to both cool myself and blow them away went off in the middle of the night due to load shedding. As a result I slept in until 8, which is outrageous but clearly I needed it, and didn’t get going until well after 10. I then spent some more time picking up some thick wire from a hardwire shop, which I wanted to use to create a sort of crude spacer between my stove and pan to stop my food burning. They could only sell me a massive reel but the guy gave me some random offcuts for free so I tipped him a bit as thanks.  

Once I finally got going I headed towards the mountains, with a huge escarpment towering 1300m above me to the left, a great series of red and yellow cliffs rising up out of steep green slopes. The top was so high that it was shrouded in cloud. Ahead the red and yellow cliffs were arranged into craggy peaks and that was the way I was going - over the 700m Abel Erasmus pass. It was a spectacular ride. First I climbed up the mountainside with great views back over the plain below, then I popped through a short tunnel into an astonishing, massive, deep bowl surrounded by red and yellow cliffs with a waterfall in the middle.  After that I came through a short canyon into a bigger, shallower, forested bowl, then the road snaked up the side of this and came onto a wide plain surrounded by green hills. Up here the wind was blowing but for the first time in 650km it was on my side. Finally I went up over another short climb to the top, and a huge vista of green mountains and mysterious white things which turned out to be fruit growing structures. This description rattles through it but in reality it took a few hours including a break for lunch. It was a really good climb though, not too steep, lots to look at and and lots of honks and thumbs up from drivers.  There were two towns along the way and these seemed to be the "black" areas. They were more ramshackle and disordered than other areas I’d seen but still much wealthier than most other parts of Africa that I’d been through.

From the top I had a rapid sweeping descent, down 6km in 6 minutes, which would have been more fun if the wind wasn't being so mischievous. This led to a flat section through fruit farms, then into a second chunky climb which had tempting views of a deep canyon before moving into green hills. The views were not befitting of the toughness of the climb. On this climb I saw four very fancy left hand drive Mercedes sports cars with German plates, a mystery that was never solved. 

At the top of this climb I was quite tired and the day was getting on, so I decided to stop a little early at a fancy resort that had good views and hikes that were only accessible through the resort. This commodification of nature is a bit shitty considering I'm used to UK and European open access footpaths through pretty much every place of natural beauty. Camping in my own tent with access to the hikes was almost £20, more I’d paid for the room the previous night, but the guy gave me a 20% discount when I looked sad/annoyed, and to be fair it was a very nice camping area with everything well laid out and lots of shade and facilities. For dinner I went to the shop and bought some lamb sausages to put in my pasta and a £5 bottle of wine - the advantages of being in South Africa. I faffed around with the wire for a while but was completely unable to make something that I’d trust to hold up my dinner, so of course I burned the pan again. Wine was good though.