Despite having been to Africa before, today has been the hardest day of travelling we have ever experienced. Ten hours on the road to cover 600 km, or to put it another way an average speed of 37 mph. For the cyclists among our readers we have had a total gain today of 22,000 feet and we are now up in the Drakensberg Mountains. Meg has been complaining of dehydration and altitude sickness! The Eastern Cape where we started this morning is very different to places we have travelled before in South Africa and Namibia; it has suffered from under-investment for many years and the road infrastructure is fairly poor. We had completed nearly 20km this morning before we were able to get into fourth gear.
Today we had another first, something that we said we never do, that is to travel after dark on the rural roads, where you have to look out for cars without lights, vehicles with one headlight so you think it’s a motorbike, cyclist without lights - normally on your side of the road but coming towards you – oh, and not forgetting the pedestrians.
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