Keith becomes more and more uncomfortable and rides slower and slower as the sun sets. The lengthening shadows make it difficult for him to see the road surfaces, and he admits that his eyesight has deteriorated to the extent that he can’t ride at night. According to my calculations, we still have about 30km to go to Verneukpan, the light is fading fast and the road is becoming a sandy twee-spoor.
I feel a small cloud of irritation well up, but I relax and it quickly dies down. We’re at the start of an epic trip, and the ride so far has been fun. My night vision is good, and I have spotlights on my bike. We’ll be fine.
Lenthening shadows and sandier roads
It turns out that the Verneukpan camp is only 6km down the road, and not another 30km. We reach the gate and Keith pronounces it locked. I take a closer look and much to our relief, notice that although it has a lock on, one side of the chain is only hooked in.
We head out onto the wide featureless pan along dirt tracks in almost complete darkness. I am meerkatting, peering at the tracks ahead, feeling like I’m in an old open cockpit airplane on a dark runway, speeding up for take off into the bracing night. It is exhilarating!
At one point I lose the tracks and make a wide turn until I run into them again. Finally, I catch a glimpse of the camp ahead and shout out to Keith triumphantly. We’ve made it.
It is fully dark at barely 6:30 pm, but the camp has solar panels to provide light and electricity, and we quickly sort ourselves out. There is a kitchen area and ablution facilities which includes flushing toilets - WITH toilet paper!! - and running showers. Due to our late arrival we can’t stoke the donkey, and have to make do with cold water in this bitterly cold weather.
Keith boils water for tea and dinner. He is our chef for the trip due to his years of camping and hiking experience, and because my ineptitude on the bike is only overshadowed by my ineptitude in the kitchen.
Although Keith and I have known each other and corresponded sporadically for a few years now, this is our first multi-day trip, and the conversation is a little stilted as we find our way towards common ground and interest in person.
The stars and Milky Way overhead are epic, and we drag our bedding out into the open, pointing our feet to face East for the sunrise. I blow up my blow-up mattress, pull my three layers of bedding over my head, and fall into an uneasy slumber. I’m quietly determined to rise and get ready quicker the next morning…
I wake up during the night to find my mattress has given up the ghost, or the air. Two days before this trip, I’d suffered the worst bout of food poisoning and had been invalided for a whole day, losing me some precious packing time. I have two blow-up mattresses, and in my haste to pack, it seems I’d grabbed the holey one. Ah well, it is still a pretty solid ground sail.
I lie watching the Milky Way swirl overhead, then turn to sleep, feeling my hip bone jutting into the ground. I had taken a sleeping tablet for my intermittent insomnia, but its only effect seemed to be to make the stars overhead jump around in a dizzying way, and I decide to skip them for the rest of the trip. I’d rather watch the stars
I doze fitfully for the rest of the night, and I’m awake when the sky starts to lighten up in the east.
Keith is up early for his morning tea
The whole camp site... actually, you can camp anywhere on the pan, but this is where the facilities are
Room with a View
Topic: Northern Cape Crawl (1 - 8 June 2019): Slow and Slower (Read 6905 times)
