Mozambique

Hang on a minute! What happened there? Last time I wrote I was a couple of days from completing the Freedom Trail, the solo offroad ride across South Africa. I am pleased to say that I have now completed this. However the blog has fallen behind, and I am now in Mozambique, having already ridden through the rest of South Africa and Swaziland. I had a series of long tough days cycling through the rest of South Africa and then lost cell reception abruptly, so I haven't been able to update the blog for a while. Let me bring you up to date...

The end(s) of the Freedom Trail

I rode into Pietermaritzburg on Sunday, the end of the Freedom Trail, on my own and to a tangible lack of fanfare. The kitchen in the guesthouse where I was booked in was closed for the weekend, so I walked 2km to the mall and celebrated bachelor style with a pint of Guiness and a takeaway pizza eaten in a fastfood restaurant doorway. Forgive me, I'm painting a somewhat drab picture of the end of the trail, which doesn't really do the experience justice at all.

There were actually 2 earlier points during the day when I considered that the trail had ended. The first came at about 9am that day. I spent the night on a private nature reserve at the top of a 1750m peak, although when I arrived the previous evening the peak was above the cloud level, so I had no idea about the spectacular view that awaited me in the morning. Setting off after a relaxed breakfast, I ascended the final 50m to the peak, and looking out for the first time to the East, saw the Indian Ocean. The ocean must have been about 100km away, but it was a fantastically clear morning, and there it was, the Eastern coast of South Africa. I would spend much of the day riding tar roads into Pietermaritzburg, and the sense of being on the trail faded away. The city hit me suddenly when I encountered the first traffic light I had seen in 5 weeks, and somewhat symbolically it was red. Being forced to stop in my tracks by some unseen computer somewhere marked the second point at which I felt that the trail really had come to an end.

The Freedom Trail in Numbers

I know that I will look back at my time on the freedom trail fondly for years to come, it has generated a lot memories that will stick, and I've met some wonderful people. It's difficult to sum up the experience in a few words, although if you've been following the blog you will have a reasonable idea already, so I've decided instead to sum it up in numbers.

• INFINITE number of expletives muttered under my breath (OK, sometimes shouted), usually whilst climbing hills or realising that I have another puncture.


• 3001m maximum elevation reached, although not actually part of the trail


• 2432kms of Mountain Biking


• 100kms of tar road in total


• 50 punctures fixed


• 15 kgs of luggage carried on my back


• 10 hours of servicing required on my bike on completion


• 5 inner tubes written off


• 4 languages in which I learnt to greet passers by


• 3 times I was set to give up as soon as I regained cell reception.


• 3 offers of marriage (all pre-beard)


• 2 Tyres ripped COMPLETELY to shreds


• 2kms of trail skipped when i got a lift (The Day it Snowed). And no, you can't have your sponsorship money back.


• 0 times I felt unsafe

Open letter to Freedom Challenge Competitors

If you're one of the people that's been following the blog because you are competing in either the Freedom Challenge, or the whole Extreme Triathlon this year, then firstly, good luck. The best advice I can give regarding the Freedom Trail, is that I found it to be far more a mental challenge than a physical one. With that in mind, the following things helped me complete the trail:

• Remember to look behind you - often the tough climbs absorb your attention, but the motivation you need is waiting in the valley behind.


• Take the time to stop and repair your bike during the day. I found that jumping gears or a rattling chain could sap my motivation slowly, but took only minutes to fix.


• You will experience a variety of qualities of food. Carry toilet paper. Lots of toilet paper.


• Talk to your hosts. I often found that the tensions of a bad day would melt away with an indepth conversation about cattle farming or South African crime (topic of national preoccupation). Obviously this will be difficult if you crawl into the farm at 1am and want to leave at 6.


• Stay positive. Losing your temper doesn't get you any less lost. And unless you've done the trail before, or are riding with someone else that has, you will definitely get lost. Many times.


• Your backside will take a pounding the likes of which mere words cannot prepare you for. You have been warned.

What happened next?

The end of the trail also marks the beginning of the final phase of my journey, to cycle (rather than mountain bike offroad) and camp my way to Malawi. I had a day of rest in Pietermaritzburg, which turned into a frantic race to collect my camping equipment from the post office, pick up bits of missing kit and food, and get my bike serviced. The latter turned into something of a marathon task - I dropped my bike in to the workshop at 930 and pitched up at 1630 to collect it, but it took until 1900 to finish the work. The kind guys at Hattons Cycles stayed behind to finish the job, long after the door closed, so that I could leave in the morning. Thanks guys!

With the addition of about 20kgs of camping equipment, panniers and food, my bike felt noticeably heavier despite the transition to tar roads, and the fact that mechanically, the bike has probably never been in better condition. I have been on the road for 11 days now, stopping in Greytown, Tegula Ferry (highest mortality rate from TB in South Africa apparently), Dundee, Vryheid, Pongola, Big Bend [Swaziland], Mbluzi, Marracuenne [Mozambique], Macia and xai-xai. I've heard that there have been some route suggestions on the Freedom Trail website, but unfortunately I can't view it on my phone (David: pocket PC friendly version please ;), if you've got any suggestions, then either email me (alex.butcher at gmail.com) or post a comment on the blog. So far It's going well, although I've discovered that light weight camping equipment is about as useful as a T shirt once the night time temperatures fall below about 10, which happened every night until Swaziland. My emergency blanket was promoted to regular sleeping bag wrapper, and I slept in all my clothes. Things could be worse though, on the whole I'm enjoying the freedom of picking my own route, and the challenge of increasing the daily target distance. I have a couple of 180km days coming up. My legs are getting used to the additional weight now, and with the excellent flat tar roads in Mozambique I don't see it being too much of a problem.

Swaziland

The lonely planet sums up perfectly the effect of crossing into Swaziland:

"Free of the baggage of crime and racial animosity (past or present) endured by South Africa, you can feel the undercurrents of tension fade away almost as you cross the border"



I very much enjoyed my 4 day stay in Swaziland. The highlight was riding through the Hlane Royal National Park. I'm a big fan of locally sourced food, and I hate food going to waste, so when I saw some sugar cane fall off the back of a lorry (honest guv. No, really) I was pleased as punch. Peeling it with my leatherman and taking a big bite, I glanced across the road and saw a big baboon that had had the same idea. Only, being 100 million years behind me on the evolutionary timeline, it was using a swiss army knife. I looked across to my left and finally saw a herd of buffalo, the animals that I had come so close to in South Africa but failed to spot. Well they saw it never rains but it pours, there must have been 30 around the dam about 200 metres from me.



Food logistics Swaziland style. I'd like to think that this shack hides an escalator to a 1000sq ft basement office area where hundreds of clerks man switch boards and direct millions of tons of food around southern africa. It actually shelters a guy selling cashew nuts.

Mozambique (so far)

I had visions of reaching the capital, Maputo, being another milestone on the journey. Emerging from the interior of southern Africa, I would race across the flat land of Mozambique on the same day i crossed the border, throw down my bike on the white sand and plunge head first into 25 degree tropical waters, so marking the completion of travelling from the west coast of Africa to the east. The reality has been somewhat different. I entered Maputo using the hard shoulder of the Estrada Nacional 4 toll road, which is pretty similar to the M25. I had no intention of navigating this capital on my bike in fading daylight, so I headed north up the coast aiming for the first resort hoping to camp on a beach. After 140kms, including a border crossing, my legs had had enough, and I settled for the first campsite I saw, notably not on the coast. I got food poisoning as my 'Welcome to Mozambique' present. Being ill away from home is bad enough, but vomiting all night when camping is even worse. Enough said about that I think.

Paul E gave me an excellent portuguese phrase book before I left, which has come in handy many times already. It is, however geared to a stay in Portugal rather than one of it's 3rd world colonies. I have found a couple of missing entries:

• Senhor, please deal with this stray cat before I throw it at the wall


• Is this agricultural stream water really safe to drink?


• Sorry about all the vomit around the campsite

And Finally

Well that's enough for this week. Sorry this blog has been a long time coming, but I had no internet access for a while. Thanks to my brother for somehow getting me connected to vodacom mozambique from tech-central in Balham, London. There have been a couple of late comers to the sponsorship page this week, i see, and we are tantalisingly close to the target of 3k, so if you were holding off because you didn't think I'd make it and you know that just giving won't give your money back, then you no longer have anything to worry about, I have done it. Everything else now is just a bonus.

Bye for now