Day 2 Vioolsdrif to O'kiep
So this brings me to the title of this ride report: "Boom Shakalaka". When we had breakfast at Orange river rafter lodge the owner asked us if everything was in order and also if we enjoyed our stay. When our answer was positive she responded with the words: BOOM SHAKALAKA and then for the duration of our breatfast until we checked out a little later everything was just "Boom Shakalaka" here and a "Boom Shakalaka" there. She was definately in an overly friendly state :biggrin: :biggrin:
So this day promised to be one of the best day's of the trip:
We started with the 4x4 dry river section in the Orange and then around Rooiberg in the dry river bed to Eksteensfontein. This section is by far one of the best technical (note: not extremely technical) and enjoyable "twee spoor paadjies" for adventure bikes in South Africa. The fact that we carried 6 days of luggage with us made the sandy section that much more interesting.
After a quick cool-drink stop at a store in somebody's garage we set off and did the stunning Smith's pass just north of Eksteensfontein.
The next section was an unknown twee spoor that would take us up and over a huge mountain to the "Highlands" of Namakwaland. We rode deeper and deeper into the mountain and then it hit us, we came to one mother of an up-hill. Now let me just explain something here: in this group we are all competent riders and never before has any up-hill defeated us but this was in an altogether different category. We looked at this thing and looked at each other and then we tackled it. We got to the halfway point but the higher you go the more steeper it gets and the more off-cambered it got on a surface strewn with small alabaster pebbles. We realized there that this was an impossible up-hill and we turned around, defeated. :'(
Now on all of my rides I have got alternative routes and this alternative we took was an undiscovered "jewel" and it took us all the way up to the top of the mountain. From there it was plain sailing thru some more "twee spoor" and single tracks all the way to Steinkopf for fuel.
From Steinkopf we took a back road south until we reached a "skelm" shortcut "paadjie" over the old airport at Nigramoep and on to our accommodation in O'kiep (5km north of Springbok)