Day 327 / 92

Date: 5 March 2023

Sleeping location: Columbus Guest House, Steiltes, Mbombela/Nelspruit, South Africa

Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 113 / 20317 / 5480
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1600 / 178300 / 60300

View(s): wondrous

Day in three words: Goodbye lovely mountains

I was up with the light at 6 and immediately went to check out the Wonder View off the edge of the escarpment. It lived up to its name. A blanket of cloud covered the Lowveld and rolling forest below and the sun was a little red dot just above the horizon and a little lake, way off in the distance. The world was almost completely silent and it was an extremely beautiful scene. I watched the sun come up for a bit and enjoyed this special moment to all to myself. 

Back in reality I realised that my stove wasn’t really working and it took about half an hour to get water to a coffee-appropriate temperature. Nobody arrived at the viewpoint (or even drove past on the road) until 7.40 when two friendly trinket sellers, Patience and Lucas, appeared and we had a brief chat before I left. On the road the cloud was lying low over the big landscape of mountains and rolling pine forest, then I suddenly popped into a big one and had some very surreal visibility for a few minutes. The cloud was also bopping around everywhere at the nearby Pinnacle Rock, which as the name suggests was an impressive stack of rock in a deep and steep ravine running down off the escarpment. 

Coming into Graskop I saw an alarming sign warning of "Speed enforcement by laser" so I made sure to keep below the limit on my way to the Waffle Hut for breakfast. When I arrived at the official opening time it was just me and an equally confused employee (“I don’t really know what’s happening, it’s only my second day”) but once a very sleepy/hungover looking boss arrived they made me some nice waffles and coffee so all was forgiven. After Graskop came more sweeping road through more pine forest, mostly fast descents but with some stiff little climbs here and there. Along the way I stopped at Mac Mac Falls which was very impressive. The plateau seemed to have just split apart, leaving a narrow gorge, and the Mac Mac river tumbles over the edge of this and drops vertically down 65m. Originally it was just one stream but gold miners blasted another channel in an attempt to divert the flow, which didn’t work but did at least make it more beautiful. 

I then had a scorchingly fast descent into Sabie, checked out a mildly impressive waterfall in the park then went to Sabie Brewing Co for a burger and a sampling board of seven different beers. The lunch options here in SA are some way above the “rice and beans or tasteless corn mush and beans” of the last few months. Whilst I was sampling an old guy appeared on an old MTB with a bunch of carrier bags dangling off it in random places. He was touring (I think) but efforts to talk with him were pointless as he seemed only to be speaking random bursts from his inner monologue and wasn’t really registering what I was saying at all. It was a very strange “conversation” and I made my excuses and left quite quickly.

 

After Sabie I still had a decent pull to Mbombela/Nelspruit,* where I had a warmshowers host called Detlef lined up, starting with a long gradual climb through more quiet pine forest with ominous rumbles of thunder off to the right. Towards the top I got drenched briefly but then on the subsequent big descent I quickly zipped back into sunshine and dried myself out. After this the road was a mixture of climbs and descents and the pine forest turned to eucalyptus forest turned to fruit plantations, all the while very quiet with hardly a building in sight. This changed abruptly when I hit the town of White River and the intersection with the bigger R40 road towards Nelspruit. At the junction was a big shopping centre and the R40 was a big dual carriageway with businesses everywhere. The 200km from the bottom of Abel Erasmus Pass to here had been an absolute delight, fairly tough riding but extremely beautiful and full of wonderful diversions.  

I accidentally went into the shopping centre and on the way out got stuck at a junction which seemed to have broken "robots" (what people in Southern Africa call traffic lights) that didn’t ever allow most of the lanes to go. People, myself included, eventually got bored and started going at random intervals. Suitably freed, I followed a series of big fast dual carriageways all the way into Nelspruit 20km away, mostly downhill so at least it was over quickly. At a petrol station a random guy in a car offered me a place to stay that night - as a cyclist you do get a big welcome here. Having already done over 100km, of course Detlef lived on the other side of the city at the top of a massive, steep and relentless hill. This took me so long that he got worried and came out to find me on his scooter, which was initially very confusing because I had no idea who this man shouting at me that I was “almost there” was. I was also initially confused by his home, which was a guesthouse, but he said he's happy to let cyclists stay for free and put me up in a little studio flat with a wonderful view. He was a lot more hands off than my last few hosts which threw me a bit as I didn’t really have any food with me, so I got some dreadful/delish fast food delivered as I couldn’t face the trip out to the shops. A big five days but this seems a great place to rest and recover. 

*Another name change, but this one seems not to have stuck - I didn’t hear a single person, white or black (the use of names is often down racial lines) refer to it as Mbombela even though that’s been the name since 2009