Day 5 - Swakop to Brandberg - 339 km - Road less travelledThe next moment we wake up and it is time to get going, we pack our stuff at an amazing speed and decide to try and make it to Hentiesbaai and do the shopping there. We go through a road block just before Henties, and event the cops are fairly friendly
It seems that we have forgotten what to buy (since our "planning session" the previous day) as we stroll around in a SPAR, eventually we buy stuff.......... we load the stuff on the bike and once again gets reminded on how amazing the rokstraps are.
We need to eat and we go into a local coffee shop,
We ask the locals for directions and try and assess if the roads are accessible etc. Eswee starts talking the purest Afrikaans our ears have ever heard and we leave him to it.
We get onto the road.....
It is hard to say what road we actually travelled , but we tried to go straight towards Brandberg ..... we were suppose to travel on the pink route but i think we ended up taking something like the orange route.....
When going off the recognised roads the first few minutes are fairly stressful for some of us (not for Liam a.k.a. sandhond), you realise that you are on your own , it is impossible to capture the initial feeling, and neither could I capture the environment/escarpment on a camera. The only thin we did know for sure is that people don't come by often....
We find ourselves going through various types of environments, starting of with a black rocky area that turns into a red rock area, extremly dry places, not a plant to be seen
the only friendly face we saw was old Karools
There is truly nothing around
We eventually notice some of these legendary plants......
A bit later in the day ................ (now starting to get extremely hot) ........ we find this sign ................... again spirits are high and we make jokes of how desolate the place is ..............
Left or right ----- Moer Toe
We maybe should have taken it a bit more seriously ..........
Minutes later the landscape turns sandy and all of a sudden we are in fairly deep sand..............
I drop my bike first, luckily Eswee is close by and we pick my bike up quickly.........
From here on it starts going South ....... Liam earns his name sandhond by riding the sand like a local, he keeps his head up and keep it on the gas, from time to time he ends up way of course but he keeps on going....... i follow him and try and do some "smart riding" looking for patches of hard sand etc. etc. i manage but it is a slow process
Eswee starts suffering, he is at the back and is going slower and slower, fatigue is setting in and maybe the old Jagermeister is holding him back, he is sweating like a ....you know what
We keep on encouraging him to ride in the front, be he is not interested, he basically gets to a point where he cannot ride any further.... I put him in the shade of my bike (there is still no sight of a tree and give him water)
And I make him eat..... unfortunately this is all we had ........
Red Polony on buns
The oke is not well ................ he goes into the little cover of the veld .......... and he needs this ......
He returns and we need to rest..... he starts contemplating to just stay there, but it is not a option
We gather ourselves and continue on, ..... at this point in time everyone is tired to a certain degree, I still have no idea were we are heading and the brothers do what brothers do and start arguing a bit .......... all of a sudden the land opens up and there is hope.....
The next minute i make the mistake of going a bit to fast and hit some kind of mound with my back wheel, the bike basically flips over and I end up with only my front wheel on the ground whilst my back wheel is above my head ( a endo or a stoppie at speed) I brace myself for a big fall as my luggage hits me at the back of the head....... by some luck gravity pulls the back wheel down to earth and off I go................. big sigh .................. (my save of the trip)
Our happiness is short lived as the road turns sandy again, but this time I am in front and can take some pics, old sandhond was starting to fade on the sand and was all over the show, he was in the bushes and eventually ended up .....
Closer view
By now okes are tired, the GPS is of limited use , and so is its operator (sandhond) we take another rest. We go around another corner and behold ...................Brandberg in the distance ............
We still have hours of traveling to do........... but at least we know in which direction............
Eswee is extremely tired ......... we eventually join up with a main road again and head of in the direction of Uis
We still hit many sandy patches and light is fading fast, Eswee is beyond a point of caring and just stays on the gas, he flies past myself and sandhond, sitting on his bike as if its a low rider and just goes, we try and get the oke to respond but just goes.............................He earns the nickname Mad Dog................. only a mad dog will sit and keep on the gas in sandy areas ....... his riding position changes to a oke that should be on a chopper...............
He goes and we try to keep up.
Early evening we arrive at the White Lady Lodge at the foot Brandberg......... we are welcomed by the house pet Carlos (meerkat), and immediately me and him relate
Eswee was too tired to notice there was a meerkat even
We make our camp,
and go back to the main building to organise fire wood were we meet this German Tourist ..............
(Only later did we notice it was Liam a.k.a. Sandhond.......)
We make something to eat ....
We sleep ............... the next day we are of to Kumanjab
Topic: 3 Idiots take on NAM_KTM view (Read 6642 times)
