October 27, 2019.
Another weekend up in the clouds – mountain stomping in the mighty Drakensburg, which revealed yet more of its treasures. Tearing around Champagne Castle, higher than 3300m, isn’t for the faint hearted but gee whizz we had fun. Tarrin, thanks once again for a wikid adventure, you really are the smiling queen of the mountains. This was the final sting in the tail before next month’s Sky Run. #hellofarun. And we can’t wait. 👣🤪
May Day Madness Brevet, Marlborough. April 2018.
A story about pedaling for a long time, for about 23 hours, covering 260km, climbing 2193m.
MayDay Madness, 2018. Tick.
Mandy I had no idea you are a bit of a Marilyn Manson fan?!
The scene on the first day. Lunchtime. Enter ‘Cosy Corner Café’ in sleepy little Seddon. Home baked goods in the cabinet. A couple of content pensioners eating their baked beans on toast, butter on the side and accompanied with two eggs, one has scrambled and one has poached. Pot of Tea for Two. Log burner roaring. And Marilyn Manson blasts ‘Beautiful People’ from the speakers. No one seems phased. Such a totally natural scene….
So who knew that…. People actually have barbed wire collections. Because during the years gone by, especially during different wars and such major events, barbed wire has changed. So people collect it. Mandy shared this gem of a fact during our game of Eye Spy, late on Saturday afternoon just as the rain was setting in and before it got dark. BW. It took me AGES!!!!
Then it got dark. We pedaled through Taylor Pass in the rain, and it went a bit like this:
Wonder if there’s any stags around?
Hm, not sure.
Maybe we could do some roaring.
Ok. Mandy you go first.
ROAR!!!
Wha? What was that?!
Oooh, that didn’t sound very good. (Sounded more like throwing up.) Your turn.
ROAR!!
Wha? Wow? That was terrible! Crikey!!!!!
Wow!! That was worse than yours!
(Stags’ roars always sound way better in our heads than out loud.)
Is that stags over there??!!! Oh, no it’s steers.
Oh. New game?
Mandy is a great Brevet buddy. It’s 4.30pm on Saturday. Been biking since 8am, still have another 3.5 hours to go for the day. On dusk, time to get your lights out:
Rustling through my backpack. Still rustling. F**K.
Empty bag and refill. Three times. Exactly the same way. Each time hoping for a different result…. (by the way, by definition this is the definition of insanity.)
Oi Mandy.
Yeah?
Ah, um. Lights got left at home.
Oh. Ah. Um. I’ve got spares.
YYUUSSS!!! Money cannot buy a friend like this one.
Hot food, stiff drink, quick kip. Rain sets in for good. No better way to find reason to get up in the middle of the night and carry on biking.
Nine hours of biking on Day 2. Rain. Everywhere. Mud. Everywhere. And some river crossings. What the heck?!
Peacocks and pigs can be cohabitants. They were today. Technically, cohabitation is to live together without being married. I don’t think peacocks will ever marry pigs. So in this case we’ll use this term in the agricultural sense. In this paddock the pigs were merrily trudging around in the mud, while the peacocks were standing on top of the pigs’ houses, flapping their colored feathers and all. And they were all great mates and everyone was happy. Goodness knows what happens at feeding time.
Episodes of rural wonder such as this can be admired on bike rides such as these.
As Fred Dagg once sang; “New Zealand’s a cracker…….. We don’t know how luck we are.. (he repeated).. We don’t know how lucky we are.”
August 10, 2019.
Another kief lekker South African mountain mission.
There’s a wee bit of explaining involved when you receive two GPX Routes from your hiking buddy, to download onto your watch for the pending weekend of mountain adventuring. ‘Ummmmm…. sorry Tarrin, but I’ve got a Swatch watch..🤣🤓’ But all good because Tarrin’s a true pro with all that stuff, and I stored all sorts of useful information in my brain (not on my watch) about our elevation gain, how many kilometres we’d hiked, and what altitude we were at. In summary; we climbed so high and steeply we could peek into Lesotho, the Drakensberg, and could see for miles and miles into the Free State region where the Golden Gate Highlands National Park lies. 2600m is very high. And 42km of this stuff in effectively two days makes the legs a bit wary. And happy. So very happy. We shared our route with wilderbeests, zebras, eland, jackals, baboons, and leopard too – although they’re sleek things and tend to keep to themselves. I’m not sure if any of those guys wear sports watches or not.
On our early morning hike today we saw a few rocks near the summit which were well stained with fresh blood. Aligns well with the excited screeches we heard from jackals last night from our tent. At the campsite office yesterday morning there was one lady requesting a hand for cleaning up her campsite; baboons decided to join her and her family for the weekend – food, wine, bedding – they got amongst the lot and had a great time. Just another weekend of camping in South Africa…
And then there’s the nougat. So South Africa has this rather delicious nougat covered in dark chocolate. It comes in a wrapper with the label ‘Sally Williams.’ And as we ate it on Thursday night I learned there’s actually an Afrikaans song about it. Actually. A guy called Jak de Briester has written a song called ‘Sally Williams’ nougat.’ Now, I’m not sure if Sally and Jak actually knew each other, or if Jak just liked the nougat, or just liked the thought of Sally. And as the song was in Afrikaans, I’m not sure what he was singing about exactly. But I found it all very hilarious. That would be a bit like NZ’s beloved Dave Dobbyn or Finn Brothers singing about Jaffas. Which would never happen. Well at least I don’t think it would. But after this whole nougat thing, anything is possible.
What a bloody great couple of days it was gracing those peaks and valleys. Impossible to ever get enough. 👣❤️
April 24, 2019.
Getting pulled up by policemen twice in one day, in two different countries in Africa, is what I like to classify as ‘niche tourism.’
It went something like this:
“Get out of the car, bring your driver’s license and your cash.”
“How much?”
“60 rand.”
(Two cups of coffee….) “Okay.” I step onto the highway.
“….. So I suppose you’ve caught a few people speeding today then?”
“Yes, plus you.”
“Yup. Plus me.”
And THAT, my friends, is how you deal with a speeding ticket.
I had been in Swaziland all of about… oohhh….. six and a half minutes, when I was stung by a copper with his nose down a speed camera. I can pretty much guarantee a fair bit of that fine money wasn’t going to make it back to the police station. His cop mate was standing pretty much in the middle of the dual carriage way, just waving the naughty speeders to the side. That was my second scolding from a police officer that day, (Good Friday).
The irony of my first infringement incident of the day made me laugh, (not to the policeman’s face, I was too busy tracking my way out of a ticket for dangerous driving..) About a couple of hours’ earlier than the Swaziland incident, while still in South Africa, I’d just drive through a dinky little town called Carolina. Upon leaving this town there was this bakkie (ute/truck/pick-up) in front of me, going at crawling pace; a stack of chairs on the deck high enough to seat a small school. Wobbling everywhere, I decided to duck past, and yes admittedly it was a double white line as there was a bend in the road. As I nipped past, luck would have it there was a policeman in the line of traffic behind me. Lights on, he pulled me over.
‘Good afternoon officer…’ I apologised lots, even offering the line that I thought it was only ONE white line. He asked for my license, mumbling something about a ticket. Until he looked at my license. Well, it’s not everyday these guys see a NZ one. The whole admin ticket thing got slammed in the Too Hard Basket immediately, and he wished me a good day.
Back to Swaziland. A case of organised chaos as you enter this country; cows all over the road, immigration officers nibbling plates of fried chicken as they stamped the passports. Google Maps cut out as I crossed the border, so I relied on my (crappy) memory of directions of where the backpackers was. I subsequently ended up going through the back entrance to the Mlilwane Game Reserve, one better suited for a tractor. I took these directions from a guy at a petrol station; ‘Go back down the road you’ve just driven, and BEFORE you go past the house that’s burning down, turn left down the road…’ (there was actually a house burning down.) So once down the tractor road, I took the next set of directions from a security guard in the game reserve, who sent me BACK down that tractor road again, then up another kind of tractor road. Awesome wee place. Once the paperwork was sorted, a man at the boom bar with a shot gun slung over his shoulder let me through. When I said I was heading to the backpackers he asked for a lift. ‘Good as gold’ I said, as I waited for him to go back into the office and grab his Easter Eggs, (actually). In the car he got, shotgun still slung over his shoulder. He shoots poachers, sometimes naughty baboons, he told me this as we meandered past impala, eland, wildebeest, crocodile, zebra, and the list goes on. I did not ask him if he shoots speeding dangerous drivers. Easter weekend was about learning Swazi culture, sport, adventure, getting lost, and a little bit injuring myself.. (who needs cartilage in both shoulders anyway?)
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