15 April 2010 Pofadder to Augrabies Falls

Sorry, a day late, but was supposed to be a "short" 136km ride, ended up being 153.04km, because of a bad section of road that I was hoping to take as a shortcut! Oh well, can't have it all my way?

I will try to give details of the previous two day's cycling (today is the 16th of April), but firstly, to put you in the picture: We are camping at Augrabies Falls National Park. This park is in a very arid part of the country, but the Orange River flows through it and at the main camp area, there is a waterfall of 56m. The current flow rate is just over 500 cubic metre's per second, that is 500 000 litre's per second plummeting down the ravine! Port Elizabeth has water restrictions currently and every household is restricted to 500 litres per day. That means that in every second, enough water goes over the fall, to supply 1000 households for a day. Multiply this by 86 400 seconds in a day, and you can supply 86.4 million households of water per day! Hope my maths is correct, but it is frightening if you look at it in this way!

We will be here till Sunday am, when we head off to Upington, following the river upstream.

To get back to the previous two days:

We had a lovely time at Goegap Nature Reserve just outside Springbok, but I knew I had a long ride to Pofadder and so managed to get going just after 7:00 am. I must confess, I was afraid of the long distance and was expecting a head wind or slightly off the nose wind, and so I decided to leave 3 of my panniers behind. (Thys and Nerina were going to bring them in the bakkie). I only carried my food for the day, kitchen pannier, handlebar pannier and just under 6 litre's of water - all of which I consumed along the way, plus a 440 ml Coke which Thys and Nerina gave me somewhere on the ride.

A big part of any endurance event, I believe, is the mental preparation. If you have not conquered it in your head, don't even attempt it, because the chances of failing are very good. Be confident, but also be very realistic about the challenge you are facing. Plan the event and try to stick to the plan. Be flexible in your attitude. What I mean is, things don't always go exactly as planned (eg. it might be a lot warmer than expected, the wind might be stronger, you might have mechanical problems), but you need to cope with changes and challenges and adjust how you react to the changes. I am battling to express myself clearly here, but what I am trying to say, is that you must maintain good spirits! If your attitude stinks, you get angry, this is a waste of valuable energy.

Yesterday, for instance, my planned distance was 138km (only 138 we said, after the 170 of the previous day!). There was a shortcut I was going to take, but after I had done 600m on the dirt road, I realised that there was no way I was going to survive on 18km of that shocking road. The options were: walk the 18km, or return to the main road and cycle 153km on tar. That is an extra 15km. Anyone can cycle 15km! But you sure don't feel like doing an extra 15km if you have been counting the kilometre's down and think you have only 33km to go. I had to make a serious adjustment in my head and prepare myself for another 48km! I felt like crying, but you know what, that wouldn't have brought me to Augrabies. So, I just had to put a smile on my dile, start pedaling and forget about the sore backside. Remember that I had done a record (for me) 170 km the previous day.

Anyway, enough of the psychology! The landscape around Springbok is spectacular, with large, orange boulder-strewn mountains and koppies all around. There are many Quiver Trees and beautiful, autumn-golden fields of grass. As you leave Springbok and head to Pofadder, the landscape changes rapidly and becomes more flat and open. Less mountains and rocks. The colours also change from orange to black. They must have had good rain in this region and even though it still looks dead and lifeless to someone from the coastal areas, the grass is standing tall and full in seed. Spectacular waving fields.

I saw my first communal nests on the telephone poles (of the Sociable Weavers). These are massive nests made of grass and a colony can have up to 300 birds living in it!

Because of the long distance to Pofadder, I tried to keep my stops short and ended up being out on the trail for 10h13, 8h38 of which were spent actually cycling. This gave me an average cycling speed of 19.68km/h which is not too bad. I wonder how fast I could have done it on my road bike?

I met another lone cycle tourer at the turn-off to Pella. I think her name was Annemarie, from Johannesburg. She is following the Orange river and started her trip at Hopefield with a 400km paddle on the river. She then got onto her bike and is visiting all the little towns along the river. Every two years, she takes 2 months leave to do some cycle trip.

Pofadder was a welcome sight after spending the whole day on the road and in the sun. Who would have guessed, but Pofadder is alive with mosquito's. You must see my legs. It looks like I have measles the way I was bitten!

After a hot and humid night at Pofadder, I got going again at 7:12, this time with my new GPS, which Thys and Nerina had picked up for me at the Post Office in Springbok. (Thanks Des, for sending it to me). As I was expecting to do "only" 138km for the day, I took on all the panniers again, plus 2 litre's extra water. (Remember, 2 lit = 2 kg!) There was slight cloud cover and not much wind to complain about. First bit had some slight downhill, followed by a long slow climb. Just after I got to the top of the climb, Thys and Nerina came from behind and pulled over to get the spare bike out of the trailer. Nerina was the first to take a turn and did a great 40-odd km. After a while, I excused myself and got going. Thys took over from Nerina and also did a 20-odd km on the bike. I am very proud of them both and I think they enjoy being out there on the road a lot.

The image on the right is of the road between Pofadder and Augrabies (The road is long, and many a winding ....)

As mentioned earlier, my short-cut was not a workable option and I had to take the long way around. The amazing thing about this arid region, is the Orange River. It runs through this area like a green ribbon and all along its banks, are grape and stone fruit farmers. They also do a lot of sun dried fruit, which sadly is all finished and done by this time of year.

Thys and Nerina found us a lovely site to camp at Augrabies, and after I had something to eat, we walked down to the majestic falls.

We had a fantastic cool night in which one could sleep last night and again walked to the falls at sunrise this morning. The rest of the day has been spent in a very lazy fashion and I think we all enjoy and need the rest.

I will log off for now, don't miss me if I don't blog again till Sunday pm.