Smiles, toots and waves

So you’re probably wondering, how are we doing? Have we been eaten by lions? Do I have chaffage? (or probably not) Why the hell haven’t I been blogging?

Well the answer to these questions in order are, good, no, no, no internet.

Right now I’m writing this blog post at the location below, Ngepi camp, and I will upload it when I come across the internet, which by the way it’s looking may not be until Katima as we haven’t come across any internet.

There seems so much to write about. What I will do is do a couple of posts of the first four days of cycling and let the photos do the talking.

If I had to sum up the first day of cycling it would be smiles, toots and waves. Every person we biked past would wave and smile, passing cars would toot, little ratty village kids would run out of the bush waving, shouting and of course waving. It was awesome. Anyways, the photos from the first day.

The bikes made it safely. We arrived at the isolated small Rundo bus station on the Agolan/Namibia border at 3am. There was only one sedan taxi there. I’m sure you can imagine our two bike boxes and two big bags of panniers jammed in there with the driver having to use his belt to hold the door in as I was unable to shut it, Mandy and squeezed into the passenger seat together. Gold.

The morning of day 1 waking up at 5.30am at our couch surfing hosts house. How the hell do we fit all this on the bikes?

3 hours of head scratching later the bikes are ready to go. Rather excited!

Katima our destination, 518km away

Quite often I would see animals in the distance and be wondering, “are they elephants?”, but no, thankfully just cows.

Mandy in her adventure out fit. Also the first day Mandy has ridden her bike all loaded up, and what better place to do her first loaded bike ride than in Africa. We actually couldn’t have asked for better riding conditions, perfect roads, flat, sealed and straight, not much traffic.

Bloody hungry, give me food.

The midday heat is pretty intense, high 20’s, pretty tuckered out. A little siesta under a tree, just what the doc ordered.

After 65km, we pulled off the side of the road out of view and set up camp for our first night of wild camping in Africa.

When the sun goes down it gets bloody cold, overnight it got down to -2 (Sich good move on persuading me to buy those last minute -5 sleeping bags). Hot drinks after a successful first day.

My next blog post will be on Day 2 and village life.