So it started with an early morning wake up on Thursday and a ride to the meeting point at Shell Ultra City Samrand.
Waiting for Firesquirrel (Douw), Phula (Johan) and Myshond (Jan).
Tackle the Freestate and battle the wind. The wind even broke off my license holder.
We hit a fire just after Rouxville and the police had closed down the road. Douw however convinced them to let us trough. This was by far the scariest part of the trip, at times I was sure my tent and sleeping bag would melt. You could see almost nothing in the smoke and there could easily be an obstruction on the road. Meanwhile the fire is jumping the road while we are riding trough as the wind is still pumping. Obviously you are reading this so we clearly survived but next time I won't take the chance.
We made it to Mountain Shadows Hotel where we would meet up with Orange Swifty, Hondsekierrie and Raka. We arrived at 16:00 and the rest at 16:30. Soon after the power went off and was still off when we left the next morning. They do have some great views though and they managed to give us dinner and breakfast without power.
Friday was going to be an easy ride to the bash but we had to search for the correct route and eventually needed to meet up with Jules who explained that we needed to cross the river by ferry before being able to reach the bash site. Some of the scenery on the way was awesome.
At one of our stops a silly tip over ended in a painful injury to Myshond as the footpeg trapped his foot and his footwear was not strong enough to prevent serious injury to his foot. He however gamely caried on and rode his bike down the steep rocky section to the bash site (I just helped on the worst bit). By the next day however it was clear that he was not going to do any more riding, and the rest of us did not much feel like riding anyway as we had all gone fairly large the previous night. The less said about the amount of Captain Morgan consumed on Friday and Saturday the better.
We did not manage an early start on Sunday (and had yet another adventure not to be discussed here), and in the end decided that if we made it to Hole in the Wall and Coffee Bay we would be happy. We stayed at Jah Drums in Coffee Bay in tents, which was great. They made us awsome toasted sandwiches with homemade bread, played good music and provided coke for our rum. We also went across the road to Bomvu where they had a nice bar lady, rum and coke and great bar snacks. Initially I thought Coffee Bay was a dump but it soon won me over with its mellow atmosphere.
Monday and Tuesday was spent on the road and the only real standout was the great accommodation we found just outside Harrismith. After what we had experienced it was great to have a proper hot shower, electricity to charge stuff and really comfortable bed. As a bonus their food was nice and they even had underfloor heating.
All four of us arrived home safely, although Myshond finished the trip in a bakkie (thanks again Kierrie and Komin for helping out)
eepwall:
