Fundraising status: 6632.78€ or 59% reached, it made a big jump over the last days, thanks for that and let’s keep on as we will reach 10’000 km soon. The need for education in some African country is very high and YOU can contribute to give a better future to some kids with any contribution even the smallest one. Therefore thanks to support my fundraising ! If needed, the link is still here
Stage 70: Maun to bush camp
KM: 154.97 km
HM: 194 m
Time: 4h33 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4.5
Strava link
Stage 71: Bush camp to Ghanzi
KM: 142.04 km
HM: 244 m
Time: 4:21 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4
Strava link
Stage 72: Ghanzi to Buitepos
KM: 207.99 km
HM: 268 m
Time: 7h34 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 7
Strava link
And once again, after a relax day in Maun where we had the chance to enjoy a flight over the Okawango delta (see my previous post and gallery) it is once again time to hit the road to finish the Elephant highway section.
The first day of this stretch did not start so well as after a few kilometres within Maun, a Taxi driver decide to turn and despite an emergency braking Baldr hit it.Thanks god, there was more damged on the car then on Baldr or his Bike and we could therefore keep on riding without having to call for assistance. There is not much to say for the rest of the day, we are again riding through very long boring stretches. This is so boring that made a picture of a few goats as it was the excitment of the day…We therefore drove this stretch at a quite high pace of 34 km/h and could therefore enjoy our camp for quite a while. An actually the camp was most probably the highlight of the day as we put our tent below a giant Baobab. Giant Baobab that some riders tried to climb later on… (unsuccesfully but at least we had a good laugh)
The second day of this section is a copy paste of the first one, I just replaced the goats by donkeys and horses and we enjoyed an ice cream just before camp. The fun of the day started 3 km before camp as we had to ride an awful sandy road with our small slick tires to reach our very nice camp. And the event of the day started in the early evening. As we were enjoying some local meat (African game meat is amazing) a strong storm started and as some of the riders were not expecting rain in Botswana, there was a bit of panic as some tents were still without fly… As a result, some guys slept in slightly wet tents on that night 😉
The third day of this stretch was special for me and many other riders as most of us will do for the first time in our biking life a 200 km stretch, 208 km to be precise. In order to make it as easy as possible, we decided to team up and instead of riding only with Bald and Steve as most of the days, we added Mats and Brad to our train. And once again not much to say, after having done the 3 km of heavy packed sand (due to the rain of the night) we went on for 204 km till we reached the Namibian boarder to enter into country n°9. My only highlight is that I helped two other riders fixing a flat as I was for once flat free ;-). And to our surprise, we got again some rain on that night, who said that Botswana and Namibia are dry?
Stage 73: Buitepos to Witvlei
KM: 161.65 km
HM: 398 m
Time: 6:06 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 6 + a sprite and an ice cream
Strava link
Stage 74: Witvlei to Windhoek
KM: 152.79 km
HM: 800 m
Time: 5:52 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 5.5 + 1 sprite and an ice cream
Strava link
The start of day 4 was unexpected as, following the rain of the previous night, we had a misty and cold morning (12°). As we were riding in a train with Baldr, Steve, Alex and Nick, I decided that having flat was getting boring and therefore touched the wheel of Alex with mine and broke one of my spoke. After trying to fix it on the go, we gave up and I therefore rode the rest of the day with one spoke less and replaced it at camp in the evening. After this spokegate which happen @km50, we had an easy ride till the town of Gobabis where we stopped to enjoy and ice cream. After leaving Gobabis, we faced a very strong cross/headwind and had to fight hard together (Baldr Steve and I as we lost the two other guys at lunch) to reach our camp where we enjoyed a well deserved cold beer ;-).
We started the last day of this section more or less frozen as the thermometer was showing 4° on that morning. The first kilometres were therefore not so pleasant as our body and mainly hands were absolutely frozen. On the positive side, we enjoyed some springboks running on the side of the road and crossing it in front of us (unfortunately no pictures as these guys are way too quick). The rest of the morning till lunch @89km went smooth and easy in a quite quick pace with the usual Steve and Baldr. The second part of the day was finally bringing us a few changes as the surroundings of Windhoek are quite hilly and curvy. What we did not expected is that as of km 100 a very heavy wind started to blow just as we started the main climb. As a consequence our average speed went from 30 to 15-20 maximum and it was a real fight to climb with a massive fan blowing in our face. Moreover, as we passed Windhoek airport (40 km before the city), the traffic started to increase and the Namibian drivers are somewhere a mix between Sudanese bus drivers and Kenyan drivers, meaning NUTS!… The rule on the road is simple, the biggest is right and on top of that, being a former German colony they show that they did not forget their past by driving on these small roads as one will on a german Autobahn… All that together made that I was more than relieved and happy to finally arrive in Windhoek in one piece.
And before going to camp, I passed by a local bike shop (the first proper bike shop we saw on that tour) to organize some new tires (I need some fat one for the gravel) and to change my rims to a tubeless set-up, hopefully I will be puncture free as of now.
And now time to rest in Windhoek for two days.
TIA or This is Africa
TIA or This Is Africa, is an abbreviation known by most African traveller but for the one not knowing it, let me explain it. TIA is a simple way to explain whatever goes wrong in this continent and believe me there is a lot ;-).
But let me give you a few examples we experienced over the last months.
– Going in a restaurant and asking if they have milk shakes, getting a yes sir as an answer. Then sitting and ordering a milk shake and getting the feedback “but sir, we don’t have any milk shakes”… TIA
-Doing the same procedure with coffee in Tanzania and while ordering the coffee, getting the answer I only have tea and chapati (kind of pancakes). TIA and the tea and chapatis where really good.
– In our hotel in Maun, while giving our laundry they refused to take any underwear, as I really dislike washing my clothes, I asked the lady if boxer-shorts cannot be clustered under shorts… And here we are my underwear have been cleaned. TIA
– Ordering food in a restaurant and getting 4 times the feedback, sorry sir but we don’t have that on the menu and ending up by asking him to tell us what do they have. TIA
– In many hotels we have been, we received the feedback that it was only possible to stay for one night to get asked the morning after: actually we do have plenty of rooms available, you wanna stay ? TIA
Well I could give you hundreds of other example of TIA but for me TIA is mostly about take things as they come and don’t get too excited/annoyed by all the little hiccups you will face on this continent.
And even if this is a specific African sentence, I do believe that we could/should apply that a bit more in our continent as we get very often annoyed by the little unimportant things of life and in such case, saying TIA and keep on going would bring more value to our life than focusing on this things that we cannot influence.
And here we are, after 8982.56 km, 40,539 hm and 341 hours and 28 minutes on the bike, the seventeenth section is over and I’m quite happy about it as it was by far the most boring stretch we had during the tour..
Despite the fact that I had a few light saddle soar during this section, my body is still doing good. Currently it is rather the motivation which needs a bit of support as biking hours and hours on such monotonous roads is kind of challenging.
The next section will hopefully change that significantly as we will only have 20 km of paved roads before hitting the Namibian gravel for a completely different scenery.
And the new gallery can be found here
Fred