Camping Out

The elephant highway has been a challenging section. Long days in the saddle up to 207km, which took me 9 hours on my bike to complete. Botswana was flat, the scenery unchanging. Thorn tree after thorn tree, my slick tyres wore out so I've been riding the last few weeks with my semi- slicks which means slightly harder work. I just tell myself I'll be fitter for it when I get home! To make life more exciting I ride with different people everyday. I spent one whole day riding with the sweep rider - Shanny and Henry in the morning then Alex in the afternoon. Sometimes I still ride alone and listen to my MP3 player. I ride with Sonja, Viv, Isabel, Mara, & Lloyd taking it in turns in a peloton to get through the wind. I ride with Tim and Bruce where we take 10minute turns on the front. There's meant to be prevailing tail winds but the weather doesn't seem to want to behave itself. I'm pleased to have reached Namibia, and the next 7 days are unpaved road. Woohoo!!! As well as the challenging long days the mentality of the riders has been somewhat lower. We can see the end approaching but it still seemed so far away. Only 2 more weeeks now and I think there'll be a mixture of excitement and sadness as we get closer and closer to Capetown.

3.5 months of camping is a long time to spend in your tent and now that we have reached Namibia we are below the high risk malaria area. The first two nights in Namibia I don't pitch my tent and sleep under the stars. The first night works fine, but the second night got a bit more exciting. The sky was clear when I went to sleep somewhere around 7:30pm. 10pm I wake to raindrops falling on my face. Everyone is frantically putting their flies on. I am the only one camping out and I crawl under the lunch truck where it is somewhat dryer and go back to sleep. The wind picks up and the rain gets heavier and I move over so that I'm not getting wet, and eventually I go back to sleep. At 2am I'm awake again. Its still raining and the moisture has collected on the pipes under the truck and is dripping quite heavily on me and my sleeping bag. I make a dash for it with my sleeping mat and sleeping bag to the campground kitchen, but when I get there I find that the fabric awning that shelters it is not waterproof. The only dry spot I can see is in the corner under the kitchen sleep so that is where I sleep. I wake extra early at 4:30 when James is up making scrambled eggs for us for breakfast. I give him a hand cracking eggs and drop a heap of egg shell into the mixture which makes me giggle (and everyone tells me the first thing they heard that morning was me giggling!). Sometimes we are so well supported I feel like I'm on a luxury tour and I really want this to be an intrepid expedition, which is how I felt that night!

The next day riding we get some rain, and I get nicely soaked and freezing cold on my way into Windhoek. Even though I am freezing cold and can barely see, I have a big giggle just because I am feeling so mad yet so alive!

Next time I don't pitch my tent I'll have to prearrange with someone to gatecrash if it rains!