Scott's Cycling Adventures

That’s a very overly dramatic title for a easy day on the bike, however as I lay in my tent writing this, huge dark clouds have encircled our camp. Lightning is flashing all around us and the rain is coming down hard. Every few seconds I’m bathed in an orange glow as the flashes of lightning illuminate the inside of my tent. It would have been amazing to ride in this. Man verses nature, the storm lashing me with wind and rain as I yell back at it, challenging it to “bring it on!” A cliché right out of some movie. However I’m sure this storm will peter out in an hour or so. The storm comes as no surprise either, it’s been brewing on the horizon for several hours. I even dug a little trench around my tent to divert water, although with all the dry ground and sand, I doubt it will be needed. 

This rain will make the ride out of camp tomorrow interesting though. The hardest part of today was not the 141km of road, but the last three kilometres into camp. It was all sand, and as one rider put it, “that wasn’t a road, it’s a beach!” Riding back out on it will be interesting. I’m hoping it will actually be a bit easier, the wet sand might be a bit firmer. We shall see.

I have to say, I’m really impressed with Botswana. The landscapes are pretty dull (it’s pancake flat with small trees and the odd towering baobab tree) but the wildlife has been spectacular.  Also the long, straight, flat roads are very quiet and are not riddled with screaming children. It’s very peaceful riding, much like Sudan was, minus the nutty heat. I know for me, the constant barrage of children shouting things wears me down, regardless if it’s a positive “How are you?” or the negative, “give me money”.  The country itself seems fairly together too (excluding the abysmal cell coverage). It’s interesting to see how each country differs in its successes and failures and how they exploit what natural resources they have, whether it’s tourism or actual mined materials. Once I’ve finished the trip, I’m definitely going to revisit each countries pluses and minuses. Until then I’ll just enjoy them one day at a time. 

So what kinds of exciting things do I do on rest days? It’s not all just pyramids and bungee jumping. There are other exciting things like bike maintenance and laundry. Laundry you say!? Tell me more! Well it’s a very complicated process involving a bucket, some water, washing powder, manual labour and the cruel unyielding rays of the sun.

Part one usually involves waiting for the bucket. There are three or four laundry buckets and 40+ people who need them. Sometimes the wait can be a while. I usually pick I time that’s low volume so I don’t have to wait, either right when I get into the rest day camp (getting into camp early gives you the perks of the best tent spots and early access to washing buckets!), or about 10am the following day. 

With bucket in hand, it’s off to the nearest water source. Every rest day camp site has at least one. Next, fill said bucket and dump your filthy, dirty, salty, sweat stained clothing into it. Swirl water around and watch the colour change from clear to brown. Dump water, toss in some washing powder and refill the bucket with water. Watch the clear soapy water go instantly brown. Dump water again. Refill bucket and rinse. Watch the water go only slightly less brown. Dump, refill, grumble that the water is still going brown and just give up, it’s clean enough. 

Now you have to find a sunny spot to hang your cloths line…you brought one right? If not, you can almost always beg to rent out some space on someone else’s line. 

Now you can wring the last of the brown water out of your clothing and hang them in the unforgiving rays of the sun, to dry. Depending on the temperature, humidity and angle of the sun, it can take anywhere between 5 seconds and two days to dry. Oh, and don’t forget cloths pegs, or you will be starting from scratch when your “clean” clothing lands in the dirt after a strong gust of wind. 

Last night we had a few elephants wander past the edge of camp just after sunset. Unfortunately it was on the other side of the camp from me and I didn’t see them. I did hear the excited whispers from others around camp. 

We have been heading almost due west now for two full days and geographically we are almost in the center of the southern part of the African continent.  Looking back at our route, up until this point, I’m amazed we’ve all made it this far with relatively few problems. Yesterday we crossed the 8000km mark. The rest should be easy, right? Well, todays ride was easy on paper but anything but easy In reality.  Despite an almost pancake flat road for the entire 135km, a large section of it was pockmarked with hundreds of potholes. A few years ago the entire section of road was flooded in a very rainy season. That meant the flood plane we have been riding across was under close to six feet (2m) of water. The mind boggles at that volume of water falling from the sky in a very short period of time. After the potholes cleared up, we were introduced to a beautiful new section of road, but that’s when the head winds kicked in. The last half of the day was a struggle. No wildlife to distract, no variety in the terrain, just a long slow plod towards our rest day camp. And finally, as if to add insult to injury, the last 200 meters into camp were covered in nearly impassible sand. My tires actually sank in above the rims as I struggled through the thick very soft sand. There was a nice reward at the end though. Maun, the city we are staying in, has some wonderful gas stations with lots of ice cream bars. I had three on the way through. It was a nice little cool down at the end of a long, hot day.

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Scott Burton TDA 2019

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I’m so disappointed. Today I saw three elephants and NONE of them were driving vehicles. Elephant highway, my ass! The only animals I saw operating vehicles were a bunch of monkeys riding bicycles.

All kidding aside, today was a interesting day. It started about 3am with some medium sized animal darting past my tent close enough to kick up a sprinkle of dirt that hit it. I’m guessing that it was a impala or something similar. It was moving fast and was gone before I was half awake. The rest of the morning was like any other morning, pack up the tent, grab breakfast and hit the road hoping to see some wildlife. Unlike yesterday, there wasn’t a pack of baboons parked at the camp exit, nor was there a herd of impala racing across the tarmac a few kilometres down the road. In fact, I didn’t see a single animal till after our lunch break. Finally about 20km out from lunch I saw a huge bull elephant wandering behind a small wire fence set back from the road. I stopped and watched it walk by me in the opposite direction I was traveling. It completely ignored me. After taking a photo and a little video of the beasty, I turned around on my bike and rode back the way I had come from to get back ahead of the big guy. As I rode by it (on the far side of the road, to maximize distance) it alerted on me. It’s head snapped to look straight at me, and it’s ears popped out from its sides. I continued past and a good distance down the road (we’d been warned to give all the wild animals a wide berth) and waited to see what it would do. I wasn’t terribly worried till I saw it wander down the fence line to a spot where the fence was partially collapsed and start to carefully step over it. It was almost comical, the care and precision the elephant took in getting over the fence without damaging it further. It could have walked right through it, had it wanted to, and the fence would have collapsed like balsa wood and dental floss. Once over the fence it didn’t come straight at me, it started to move toward the road directly in front of it. I relaxed a bit thinking it would just ignore me and continue across the road to the other side.

However as soon as it got to the road it turned and looked at me again. I started walking my bike backwards as its attention had refocused on me. Suddenly the 75 meters or so, between me and the pissy pachyderm didn’t seem like that much. After a few more steps across the road it decided it wanted to see how fast a monkey on a bicycle could ride, and it started charging at me. I immediately turned around and started pedalling my ass off in the opposite direction. After about 4-5 seconds it gave up the chase and lumbered into the bushes on the far side of the road. While it never got very close to me (maybe 50 meters) it was still very exciting in a “if I don’t pedal fast enough I’m going to be elephant toe jam” kind of way. Thus ended my first cycling encounter with an elephant. I did see two more elephants before getting into camp, but they were boring and just wandered along minding their own business. 

Well, as far as first full days in a new country go, this one was pretty impressive. The wildlife here in Botswana is pretty amazing. Over the course of our 171km ride I saw a pile of wildlife. The animal count for the day was 11 giraffe, 3 zebra, 2 ostrich, 2 cuda (sp?), 50+ impala, 4634 baboons and zero elephants. I’d complain about false advertising, but other cyclists saw the elusive pachyderms, so they do exist. I just wasn’t in the right spot, at the right time. 

The road was nice and straight and flat, so it made for good animal watching conditions. Some riders don’t like the straight and flat as it can become boring, but that’s not an opinion I share.

One of the interesting things about this particular section of road is parts of it have been purpose built to double as a runway for airplanes. When I saw the first sign that said “Airstrip 1km” I naturally thought that somewhere up ahead there would be a turn off for a small airfield. However, instead of that, the road just continued on and all of a sudden widened out to two times its original width with “no parking” and “no stopping” signs all over it. I’d be curious to see what types of planes use the strip and why, but there weren’t any around. I don’t imagine it gets used very often as a runway, especially since there are no facilities for refuelling or even turning the plane around. They are probably more of emergency landing spots. A cool idea though. 

We are camped at what’s been labeled as “Elephant Camp” and have been told that in the past elephants have wandered right through camp at night. Maybe I will get to see one today.