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LuckyStriker

Bachelor Dog
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
10,160
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18
Location
Bellville
Bike
BMW G650 X-challenge
DAY1 â?? Thursday 28 June 2007
Cape to Upington â?? 761km

I was having a key problem morning. First the damn front door wouldnâ??t lock properly, and then I struggled with the damn tri-circle on the garage door. Damn rusting piece of Chinese junk!
When I finally got going I was in a sweat and barely registered the chilly morning.

We got together at the Engen Winelands One-stop outside Kraaifontein. It was 06:20 on a June morning. After a quick coffee and visual inspection of each otherâ??s bikes we lit up the dark road north.

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Cold and wet morning in the Cape
S33 49 40.3 E18 45 42.3

The temperature seemed quite pleasant at first. After a short while on the N1 we were confident that we wouldnâ??t in fact succumb to an Eskimo death.
We circled around the back of Paarl Mountain and entered the cold, cold town of Wellington where people were smacking their bedside alarms out of hazy spite.

Up and over the Du Toitskloof Pass. By now my knuckles felt like granite and my fingers like bleached bone. Out of curiosity I cycled through the onboard computer to the ambient temperature display. It was 2°C and my arms were stiff as oars. Negotiating the sharp turns felt unnatural, almost as if I was moving my limbs via remote control. The pitch blackness only served to unnerve me even more.

We stopped at the single lane bridges that cross the Breerivier and each had a cigarette.
I suppose we were to discuss trivia. Perhaps about the interesting fact that the source of the Breerivier is just a stones throw northwest. But we could only talk of the coldâ?¦the coooolllldd.
I wondered out loud what a minus temperature feels like on a bike. I should have kept my bloody mouth shutâ?¦

After witnessing the dawn of our father sun from Michellâ??s Pass we filled up in Ceres (Beautiful Goddess of Agriculture) and headed off to the magnificent Ceres-Karoo dirt highway. A road that is best appreciated just after the crack of dawn.
The temperatures we dropping lower as we crossed into the Kouebokkeveld. Hello -2°C! My fingers felt like they were on fire!
At Hottentotskloof we stopped to let down the tyres. Normally you can ride the great Ceres-Karoo highway on regular pressures but recent rains probably did awkward things to the surface. We would take no chances this early on in our trip, and indeed, now and then we splashed through puddles and muddy patches.

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S32 34 11.0 E19 41 31.2

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S32 30 21.9 E19 41 17.3

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S32 10 02.3 E19 42 44.8

Kaboef took out a 1.5litre coke bottle filled with Sedgwickâ??s Old Brown sherry. Always a winner! The fag felt foreign between my numb lips but the warm heat washing down my thought was reassuring.
On we went on that most beautiful of dirt highways. The sun was a hands width above the horizon and the mica in the ground glittered like precious metal, the quarts flashed brightly and the green lichen was spread out like small pools of emerald.
The cold and beauty of the landscape was intoxicatingâ?¦okay Iâ??ll come cleanâ?¦the OBS was really to blame. We had finished the 1.5litres waaaaay before we even came close to Calvinia.

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In Calvinia we had mutton pie and red bull. Snow capped the low mountains outside town. We didnâ??t want to linger.

North, always north. That spirit breaker that is the R27 fought us all the way to Brandvlei. Its long straight tar taps into your skull and bleeds your mind dry. The distance between Brandvlei and Kenhardt is only 148km but once we finished it we were mentally drained. It is the most boring road I have ever riddenâ?¦this was the second time Kaboef and I suffered it, thrice for Butch.
It is for that reason that we felt obliged to custom the Kenhardt Hotel. Eaton (the proprietor) was away in Upington to restore a vintage Chev bakkie, so his wife kept us company. She tried her best to engage us in conversation but it took at least two beers to drive away the ghosts of the R27.

We stocked up in Upington and made our way to our first overnight spot of the trip: Monate Kalahari Rest Camp.
The camp is located 12km Northwest of Calviniaâ??s town centre along the R360. The gate is directly opposite the entrance to the Spitskop Nature Reserve. The campsites are quite good with brand new roll-on lawn and small saplings.
Every spot has a built-up braai and a lamppost. The ablutions are clean and had 24hour hot water on tap. All of the toilet seats were intact and the mirrors in one piece.
We appreciated none of it. As soon as our tents were up we started celebrating the opening day. I donâ??t remember much but there is video footage of me and Butch doing a karate Kata and performing scenes from The Lord of the Rings. When we exhausted our entire stock of alcohol, (it was meant to last for approximately 4days) we called it a day and went to bed. The temperatures hit -5°C that night. We were blessedly unaware of it.

Monate Kalahari Rest Camp is at: S28 22 42.3 E21 09 30.2
 
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