Day 332 / 97

Date: 10 March 2023
Sleeping location: Sondzela Backpackers, Mlilwane wildlife sanctuary, Eswatini
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 57 / 20525 / 5688
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1000 / 183200 / 65200
Victims of the the thorn: 3

Day in three words: Sand and stone

In the morning my body was clearly in need of a rest so Sarah and I agreed to aim for a hostel inside a nature reserve that was half a day’s ride away. Whilst we went about our morning business two very friendly and very silly Jack Russells zipped around the place, desperate for tummy tickles. My departure was unexpectedly and vastly delayed by the discovery that I had yet another flat tyre on the rear wheel. This needed sorting properly as I was now down to one intact inner tube out of the four that I had with me, and bikes have two wheels. I’m not an expert in repairing punctures as I usually a) run tyres that mean I don’t get them, b) immediately replace a damaged tube with a new one, but Sarah was very experienced and very helpful in identifying, then repairing, the issues. We deducted that the original puncture had become three punctures - a small piece of thorn had stayed in the tyre after damaging the first inner, then re-damaged the first inner after I first repaired it, then damaged the second inner. It was now gone, I would guess bumped out of the tyre by the ridiculous road on the way into Eswatini.

Sarah then helped me further by offering to take my two rear panniers on her bike, which immediately saved me 15kg. This was a big bonus as the first 20km was on a very technical, very fun dirt road. The surface was sandy and loose, and without the extra weight my rear wheel braking was very skiddy and I had a few definitely-sort-of-controlled slides. The surface condition improved around halfway and it became even more fun, kind of like proper gravel riding with a nice light(er) bike. I was kind of sad when it turned back to tarmac. The views through the big valley were very beautiful and it was a great couple of hours of riding. It was quite a remote, rural setting and people were begging frequently for the first time since Malawi, even though this is by comparison a much wealthier country. This included a woman, dressed in nice clothes, patting her very fat belly saying she was very hungry. I pointed out the irony of this to her in a less than discrete way. 

Back on tarmac the road ran up a river valley, undulating of course because Eswatini loves its hills, and went past Sibebe, the world's second biggest rock*. Sure, it was big but had I not known this I'd have gone "oh that's a big rock" and got on with my day. To get up to the capital, Mbabane, required an absolute bastard of a climb with a middle section of a km averaging 14%. I did get one first shake of encouragement from a woman coming the other way though. Mbabane felt more like a big town than a capital city and was quite pleasant; fairly modern, clean and calm and surrounded by some craggy hills. I sat on a ledge and had a quick lunch of biltong, fruit** and an entire block of yesterday's cheese before cracking on. 

The direct route was via Mister 3, which was a very big road, but thankfully the roughly 7km I had to ride on it took considerably less than 10mins, - it was a huge downhill designed for high speed and I averaged around 70kph, about the same as the cars on it. Thereafter came a flat-ish road along a big valley through fancy stuff then farmland. It was quite boring but easy progress for the first time in a while. 

At the turnoff to the hostel it said no access to the hostel, but I asked a guy in a car and he said it was fine. Then another guy held a gate that said "no access" open for me. This was lucky because the detour was a good 15km back the way I’d already come. The first thing I saw at the hostel was a warthog trotting up and down the fence inside, and it seemed he was in charge because there was literally nobody else there, even though it was huge. Sarah turned up on her bike shortly afterwards, having been out again to pick up food and tell me not to come the way I'd come. The night porter turned up about 90 minutes later but basically it was just the two of us in this enormous hostel as the regular proprietor was on leave. We watched a score of vervet monkeys running riot in a big avocado tree then I tried to fix Maggie’s shifting issues via a big strip down, lubing the cables and derailleur and even recklessly disassembling and reassembling the shifter. Sarah then made a squash soup and together we made an enormous bolognaise. Beers and wine were distressingly visible but locked away, and the wifi was clearly available but nobody could give us a code. It was still a lovely quiet place though, with nature all around, and I decided to take a rest day here the next day. 

*Of course, rock fans, the biggest is Uluru in Australia, though it you were a true rock fan you'd know that already. A guy in the hostel the night before claimed vehemently that Uluru didn't count because "that's just a load of sand pressed together", apparently claiming that sandstone is not actually a type of rock.

**Including a banana bought from a lady by the road, and when I queried the price she said "look how big it is". To be fair it was pretty damn big.