Missed a few days’ of writing. Too tired. Our bodies are becoming fatigued. But we’re stopping for a rest day here at a lovely, modern B and B run by a young couple in Notingham Road. The Loxley House must be named in honor of Robin Hood. Today we rode 6-lus hours from Colenso. It was 87 K but felt quite long. We started at about 5 am, we are quite disciplined and early morning riding is sweet. there are fewer cars and you can hear all the birds and sometimes crickets and frogs. We stopped at Estcourt, fatigued and cold from a heavy mist, to discover the town had no cafes, not even a hot cup of tea. My crankiness immediately flared. We could find nothing to eat except fried chicken. We made do with buns from the Spar supermarket and hot tead made on our burner in a park. The police stopped by but accepted my “story.” Then we snuggled under a sleeping bag and it was lights out for a couple hours.Colenso, which we reached Saturday, is apparently an old town and another stop on the route of old Angl-Boer war monuments. On the bridge into town we said hello to some people and were rewarded with the usual breathtaking smiles. But iside the Battlefields Hotel it was like war was still at large. A 10 year old boy named Ullrich ran it, under the auspices of an old aunt or grandmother who never showed herself. He was very sweet with his “achs” in the German way that is habitual with people in this part. He had two drunken teenage compatriots, Wesley and Bill, whose accents were so strong we missed most of what they said. The hotel was shabby, but Qeen Elizabeth had purportedly stayed there once. At the bar that evening (we were too scared to go out, not that there was anytwere to go). I was glad to get back to our room and even happier to leave that grim old hotel.Friday we rode from Vryheid to Dundee, about 102K. We camped at a caravan park and had a sumptous dinner at the local country club, again, a vestige of times gone by. We celebrated a little with a couple celbrating their 50th wedding anniversay. The man was quite charming. Rolf, his friend or son-in-law?? or something. Apparently, the affirmative action policies of the government were wreaking havoc on the SA rugby teams. On the way there, a rather pleasant ride, with lots of downhill. Robert stopped to ask directions from a giant on a tractor. The man towered above R by more than a foot. Robert says he was a Bryan Lamkin with about 50% more weight. A white farmer, can’t remember much else from that ride except that we breakfasted in a market in a settlement and the owner was very courteous. The woman at the Ladysmith tourist office, wehree we stopped, could not believe no one had assaulted us.

The sun nearly peeled our skin off during the ride into Malelane, so we start very early in the morning when riding out from there to Swaziland. Johan the Shorter gives us a warm sendoff, attaching some purple ribbon to Robert’s handlebars. Crossing the border at Jeppe’s Reef proves uneventful, and afterwards we cruise the verdant hills, dotted with rondaval homes and occasional villages.Swaziland is a 900 square mile landlocked kingdom embedded within north-eastern South Africa. It was a part of South Africa proper until the later part of the 20th century, when King Sobhuza II wrestled away control through a series of political maneuvers and the buyback of land from the British. Swaziland is now peacefully (some say mellowly) run by King Msuati III, with opposition parties officially banned. Importantly, Swaziland enjoys a close, and, as we understand it, harmonious relationship with the much larger South African republic. It appears that with the exception of agriculture, logging and some tourism, most of Swaziland’s income comes from the money earned by Swazis at jobs in South Africa, to which they commute seasonally or daily. Famously, King Msuati has something like 10 wives (his father had at least 120), each chosen during a bespectacled “reed dance” ceremony, giving foreign tourists like us much to talk and giggle about during dinner time conversations.Once across the border, Mira found a riding partner. A wiry 12 year old boy riding a rusty BMX bike in long pants, sandals and a t-shirt. His name is Moose, or something that sounds like that. We seem to be riding through his territory, and he is very happy to tag along for about 15 kilometers. When we stop for some tea made on our gas stove, he flirts with Mira by doing a set of push ups and displaying karate moves. She’s interested enough to ask him for a primary language lesson, so when asked he teaches us a few words and greetings in Swazi. Sabona means hello is all Robert can remember of that.After another ten or fifteen kilometers, its time to find some shade, which we find in front of a small “General Trader” shop near Ngonini. It’s Sunday morning, so we simply join the dozen or so boys and girls who are out of school and who look to make a habit of hanging out underneath the store’s covered porch. The boys separate themselves from the girls, and the girls do the same, each on a different side of the doorway and each with equal interest in the foreigners and their bikes that just pulled off the national road. The boys are the first to start pounding us with absolute and curious questioning. “Why would you spend your holiday time riding your bikes all the way across South Africa?” and “What do you have in your bags?” were the predominant queries. We have no satisfactory answer to the first question. In an effort to demonstrate that we all do strange things with our time, I ask a few of them why they wait in front of the grocery all day. But they respond all too logically that they are waiting for it to cool off so they can start their weekly soccer game in the field across the street.Mira strikes up a conversation with the giggling and wide eyed girls in the other corner, each with short cropped hair and a colorful short dress. For Mira, to see them smile is a gift. They wanted to hear her sing a song, so she mustered up a rendition of Jesus Loves Me, This I Know (which Robert was surprised to hear). For this, the girls sing some in return, a song in Swazi and two Christian songs in English about soldiering for God. So innocently sweet. None of them would admit liking boys. Each said she cooks and cleans a home shared with four, five, seven or ten brothers and sisters. Each the expression, in shyness and sisterly mischievousness, of loveliness.Clouds roll in quickly later in the afternoon, making our ride toward the Swazi mountains pleasant. More children meet us on the sides of the road all day long. They wave from the yards at their homes, even chase us up hills, proving their interest. We hear “Hello, how are you?” all day long. We are then in each instance obligated to respond, “I’m fine, how are you?” which, after a moment gets a cheerful “I’m fine.” Mira laments the poverty, which she sees in the homes and the children’s clothes. Robert does not see poverty, at least not a poverty that should be felt sorry for. These children have very few possessions, but they seem very happy, well fed and living in permanent dwellings beside a well maintained road. Robert knows that most kids around the world, and certainly in Africa, have far less.Into the foothills we ride. The rain begins to fall and the temperature drops a bit, enough to soak our socks and give us an unpleasant chill. This topography is of a type most discouraging to cyclists, steep hills come one after another, the steep ups and downs mean a lot of climbing and not much distance gained by coasting. At the end of a day’s worth of climbing, no aggregate elevation gain is yielded. Logging trucks have become our companions on the twisty mountain roads, along with speedy mini-vans that are shared taxis taking workers home to their villages further up in the hills. Mira reached her breaking point about an hour after the rain started, and tears begin to flow like the rain. But we push on to Pigg’s Peak, a rough-around-the-edges logging town set against misty pine forested mountains, many of which have been logged, leaving a patchwork of green and brown. The view ahead does not interest us much, however. The task at hand is to find a place to sleep for the night.By the time we find the lackluster Highlands Inn in Pigg’s Peak, it has stopped raining. This gives Robert courage enough to suggest that we buy a camping space under a tree in the hotel’s garden rather than take a room. Even a camping space allows us access to a bath with water warmed on a wood burning heater. We then each dine on our own small chicken, broiled “peri-peri” style, with salad and chips. Our bellies full and our feet dry, we fall immediately asleep in our tent, which kept us dry this night.It’s Monday when we wake, so today when children greet us at the side of the road, they do so wearing snug wool school sweaters and white shirt and tie. The boys in grey slacks and the girls in short wool skirts. Hair trimmed closely to the scalp and scrubbed skin smooth and soft. Again they take great interest in us, where we are from, where we are going, and what we have in our bags? Spending time with them is a joy. Tour buses occasionally pass us on the road and Robert is reminded of how much richer an experience he gets on a bicycle.The rain and mist continue, so we make it a short day, stopping in the early afternoon at Hawane, a cluster of lodges near Forbes Reef. The Hawane Lodge, a few kilometers down a dirt road, gives us accommodation in its backpackers dormitory adjacent to the more upscale chalets and restaurant. It’s cutely designed to look like a horse stable, three beds in each “horses” stall, with a gated entry to each. But the real attraction here is the elegantly designed restaurant in a wonderful grass thatched roofed rondaval. The storm outside has generated enough lightening to knock out the power, so dinner was held by candle light.At our table sat two Dutch couples who had come to see the country together. One of the men had grown up in South Africa but immigrated back to the Netherlands when he was in his twenties. Now married to a Dutch woman, he has a career as a child psychologist. The last twenty years has seen quite a bit of migration out of South Africa by whites. Political and economic instability, rollbacks of political control by whites, and, most importantly for younger middle class whites, the effect of aggressive affirmative action in hiring policies favoring black Africans have meant that many whites have chosen to leave the country. Often times taking advantage of dual citizenship and ancestral visa rights in their European nations of origin, usually Britain and the Netherlands.Dinner time was spent talking about the Netherlands, never to be referred to as “Holland,” as we were told, and about our impressions of South Africa. Everyone had something to say about the barbed wire and electric fences. There seemed to be collective agreement that such is no way to live, but also that this beautiful country would be a miraculous place to live if it were more safe and stable. At some point in the conversation we were told that the US might today be in a social state similar to that of South Africa if it had the good fortune 200 years ago to kill off the native population with guns and disease. It does not feel good to have it put this way, but the Americans present could not argue the point.We also chat about the bicycle adventure we are on. Since we just started, and have so far to go, we make few claims about our final destination, preferring to say only that “we hope to get to Cape Town.” Nonetheless, the men at the table commend us for our ambition, and Robert can see a bit of jealousy in the eyes of the psychologist. He had toured the country years earlier with his wife, but by car. The main highway through the country is beautiful, modern and not too heavily traveled. But as the road drops into the __________ Valley, toward the capital of Mbane, it becomes much more congested due to rush hour traffic and road repairs. Nonethless, we snake our way to the valley floor, weaving around and between cars. Once in town, we have the first of what will become a dietary mainstay here . . . pies. They are purchased from one of the ubiquitous pie shopes, Pie City or King Pie, King Pie being preferred. But pies do not hold sugary fruit here. We talk of meat pies, for example, Rober’s favorite, Pepper Steak. Three is also chicken and mushroom and, the ill advised “mince,” which we think means hamburger. After this indulgence, we duck into a Pakistani run market area for some packaged food and a new pot in which to boil water while camping, and we are off, back out of the valley and into the picturesque and now sunny countryside.We are headed for the western border post at Sandlane, but before we get there we pass an awful looking paper mill to which all the loaded logging trucks passing us had been taking their loads. It smells terrible too, but such is the cost of the relatively high standard of life in this mountain kingdom. Just past the mess, the steepest part of the day begins. Trying to keep my spiriets up but a man we pass walking the other direction yells to us “you’ll never make it, it’s too steep.” The desolate border crossing at Sandlane closes at 6:00 pm, and we find the gates closed, arriving about 5 minutes later. Mira jumps into overdrive and offers a short chat with the lead Swazi border guard, Mr. Mbisi secures a ampsite on the lawn, giving us access to a toiltet and a campfire. While Rober prepares the only food we have, a mixture of Pakistani hair fine pasta and sardine sauce, Mira makes friends with the other visa issuing staff, Patrick and Jamison. Each is a young man from whom Mira pulls intimate like details, like when they will get married and how many children will they have. Rober refuses to eat his foul smelling culinary cxreation, but Mira has no hesitation offering it to Mr Mbisi, Patrick and Jamison over a roaring fire that they made for her. They accept the food with smiles, which Rober feels must have hid grimaces. WE are asleep soon after dark.It’s a short ride from the border crossing into the very small town of Amsterdam. At a small combined bakery and dairy we chat with the owner over breakfast sandwiches and locally made yogurt. She laments the crime that’s pounding South African society. She’s like most whies we meet here. She tiredly tells us of a recent break in robbery in which an old single woman was hurt by a gang of boys. One of boy’s father is a good mand known to the community. The story reminds rober of the novel “Cry the Beloved County,” which he is reading. When asked about her business, the proprietress laments the new (read “black”) government polcies, e.g., minimu wage rules, that make things difficult and don’t really solve their intended purpose, she says. Everything the woman says we will hear again an dagain on this journey, the warnings, the complaints, the policy disagreements, all conveyed in an almost exhausted tone. After five more hours riding through dusty farmland, we are in Piet Retif, a primary commercial and residential hub. We made a brief and less than wholehearted search for a campground with a swimming pool, we succumb to the cool and gracefully appointed LA Guesthouse. The gardens here remind me of the broad lawns found at the most upscale suburban homes in southern California. Each home here appears to have a small army of gardners and other staff who take care of the details. In a country with 35% unemployment, this is not difficult to arrange. Piet Retif is a town very much like many of the others we will see during the first half of our ride in South Africa. Decentralized, it includes a rough and tumble commercial center full of fast food shops, super markets and China stores, and one end of town the upscale homes, on the other end lies the lower rent area. After some searching we find a restaurant where we find hot sandwiches and a beer. Mira has a milkshake that she swears is the best she’s ever had.We are still looking for advice on our route, so we question the white restaurant owner about the possible routes.“We may ride up the Sani Pass through Lesotho, missing the central coast area,” Robert tells the host, “or we may skip Lesotho and made backtrack down after getting to the Sani Pass and head to the central coast.”“Oh, you probably don’t want to ride through the central coast area,” offers the man, “that place is called the Transkei. It can be dangerous. It’s best to avoid it. There is not much there, and the blacks there are harder to deal with. Best to play it safe and ignore them,” he says with well-meaning, if strangely worded, concern.” We take the information and store it away for later, when we have to make a decision about our route. The man’s advice sounds good, the problem is that in order to avoid the Transki, we’ll need to ride an additional five hundred kilometers through Lesotho, another mountain kingdom. This would mean a week and a half of additional riding.

The sun nearly peeled our skin off during the ride into Malelane, so we start very early in the morning when riding out from there to Swaziland. Johan the Shorter gives us a warm sendoff, attaching some purple ribbon to Robert’s handlebars. Crossing the border at Jeppe’s Reef proves uneventful, and afterwards we cruise the verdant hills, dotted with rondaval homes and occasional villages.Swaziland is a 900 square mile landlocked kingdom embedded within north-eastern South Africa. It was a part of South Africa proper until the later part of the 20th century, when King Sobhuza II wrestled away control through a series of political maneuvers and the buyback of land from the British. Swaziland is now peacefully (some say mellowly) run by King Msuati III, with opposition parties officially banned. Importantly, Swaziland enjoys a close, and, as we understand it, harmonious relationship with the much larger South African republic. It appears that with the exception of agriculture, logging and some tourism, most of Swaziland’s income comes from the money earned by Swazis at jobs in South Africa, to which they commute seasonally or daily. Famously, King Msuati has something like 10 wives (his father had at least 120), each chosen during a bespectacled “reed dance” ceremony, giving foreign tourists like us much to talk and giggle about during dinner time conversations.Once across the border, Mira found a riding partner. A wiry 12 year old boy riding a rusty BMX bike in long pants, sandals and a t-shirt. His name is Moose, or something that sounds like that. We seem to be riding through his territory, and he is very happy to tag along for about 15 kilometers. When we stop for some tea made on our gas stove, he flirts with Mira by doing a set of push ups and displaying karate moves. She’s interested enough to ask him for a primary language lesson, so when asked he teaches us a few words and greetings in Swazi. Sabona means hello is all Robert can remember of that.After another ten or fifteen kilometers, its time to find some shade, which we find in front of a small “General Trader” shop near Ngonini. It’s Sunday morning, so we simply join the dozen or so boys and girls who are out of school and who look to make a habit of hanging out underneath the store’s covered porch. The boys separate themselves from the girls, and the girls do the same, each on a different side of the doorway and each with equal interest in the foreigners and their bikes that just pulled off the national road. The boys are the first to start pounding us with absolute and curious questioning. “Why would you spend your holiday time riding your bikes all the way across South Africa?” and “What do you have in your bags?” were the predominant queries. We have no satisfactory answer to the first question. In an effort to demonstrate that we all do strange things with our time, I ask a few of them why they wait in front of the grocery all day. But they respond all too logically that they are waiting for it to cool off so they can start their weekly soccer game in the field across the street.Mira strikes up a conversation with the giggling and wide eyed girls in the other corner, each with short cropped hair and a colorful short dress. For Mira, to see them smile is a gift. They wanted to hear her sing a song, so she mustered up a rendition of Jesus Loves Me, This I Know (which Robert was surprised to hear). For this, the girls sing some in return, a song in Swazi and two Christian songs in English about soldiering for God. So innocently sweet. None of them would admit liking boys. Each said she cooks and cleans a home shared with four, five, seven or ten brothers and sisters. Each the expression, in shyness and sisterly mischievousness, of loveliness.Clouds roll in quickly later in the afternoon, making our ride toward the Swazi mountains pleasant. More children meet us on the sides of the road all day long. They wave from the yards at their homes, even chase us up hills, proving their interest. We hear “Hello, how are you?” all day long. We are then in each instance obligated to respond, “I’m fine, how are you?” which, after a moment gets a cheerful “I’m fine.” Mira laments the poverty, which she sees in the homes and the children’s clothes. Robert does not see poverty, at least not a poverty that should be felt sorry for. These children have very few possessions, but they seem very happy, well fed and living in permanent dwellings beside a well maintained road. Robert knows that most kids around the world, and certainly in Africa, have far less.Into the foothills we ride. The rain begins to fall and the temperature drops a bit, enough to soak our socks and give us an unpleasant chill. This topography is of a type most discouraging to cyclists, steep hills come one after another, the steep ups and downs mean a lot of climbing and not much distance gained by coasting. At the end of a day’s worth of climbing, no aggregate elevation gain is yielded. Logging trucks have become our companions on the twisty mountain roads, along with speedy mini-vans that are shared taxis taking workers home to their villages further up in the hills. Mira reached her breaking point about an hour after the rain started, and tears begin to flow like the rain. But we push on to Pigg’s Peak, a rough-around-the-edges logging town set against misty pine forested mountains, many of which have been logged, leaving a patchwork of green and brown. The view ahead does not interest us much, however. The task at hand is to find a place to sleep for the night.By the time we find the lackluster Highlands Inn in Pigg’s Peak, it has stopped raining. This gives Robert courage enough to suggest that we buy a camping space under a tree in the hotel’s garden rather than take a room. Even a camping space allows us access to a bath with water warmed on a wood burning heater. We then each dine on our own small chicken, broiled “peri-peri” style, with salad and chips. Our bellies full and our feet dry, we fall immediately asleep in our tent, which kept us dry this night.It’s Monday when we wake, so today when children greet us at the side of the road, they do so wearing snug wool school sweaters and white shirt and tie. The boys in grey slacks and the girls in short wool skirts. Hair trimmed closely to the scalp and scrubbed skin smooth and soft. Again they take great interest in us, where we are from, where we are going, and what we have in our bags? Spending time with them is a joy. Tour buses occasionally pass us on the road and Robert is reminded of how much richer an experience he gets on a bicycle.The rain and mist continue, so we make it a short day, stopping in the early afternoon at Hawane, a cluster of lodges near Forbes Reef. The Hawane Lodge, a few kilometers down a dirt road, gives us accommodation in its backpackers dormitory adjacent to the more upscale chalets and restaurant. It’s cutely designed to look like a horse stable, three beds in each “horses” stall, with a gated entry to each. But the real attraction here is the elegantly designed restaurant in a wonderful grass thatched roofed rondaval. The storm outside has generated enough lightening to knock out the power, so dinner was held by candle light.At our table sat two Dutch couples who had come to see the country together. One of the men had grown up in South Africa but immigrated back to the Netherlands when he was in his twenties. Now married to a Dutch woman, he has a career as a child psychologist. The last twenty years has seen quite a bit of migration out of South Africa by whites. Political and economic instability, rollbacks of political control by whites, and, most importantly for younger middle class whites, the effect of aggressive affirmative action in hiring policies favoring black Africans have meant that many whites have chosen to leave the country. Often times taking advantage of dual citizenship and ancestral visa rights in their European nations of origin, usually Britain and the Netherlands.Dinner time was spent talking about the Netherlands, never to be referred to as “Holland,” as we were told, and about our impressions of South Africa. Everyone had something to say about the barbed wire and electric fences. There seemed to be collective agreement that such is no way to live, but also that this beautiful country would be a miraculous place to live if it were more safe and stable. At some point in the conversation we were told that the US might today be in a social state similar to that of South Africa if it had the good fortune 200 years ago to kill off the native population with guns and disease. It does not feel good to have it put this way, but the Americans present could not argue the point.We also chat about the bicycle adventure we are on. Since we just started, and have so far to go, we make few claims about our final destination, preferring to say only that “we hope to get to Cape Town.” Nonetheless, the men at the table commend us for our ambition, and Robert can see a bit of jealousy in the eyes of the psychologist. He had toured the country years earlier with his wife, but by car. The main highway through the country is beautiful, modern and not too heavily traveled. But as the road drops into the __________ Valley, toward the capital of Mbane, it becomes much more congested due to rush hour traffic and road repairs. Nonethless, we snake our way to the valley floor, weaving around and between cars. Once in town, we have the first of what will become a dietary mainstay here . . . pies. They are purchased from one of the ubiquitous pie shopes, Pie City or King Pie, King Pie being preferred. But pies do not hold sugary fruit here. We talk of meat pies, for example, Rober’s favorite, Pepper Steak. Three is also chicken and mushroom and, the ill advised “mince,” which we think means hamburger. After this indulgence, we duck into a Pakistani run market area for some packaged food and a new pot in which to boil water while camping, and we are off, back out of the valley and into the picturesque and now sunny countryside.We are headed for the western border post at Sandlane, but before we get there we pass an awful looking paper mill to which all the loaded logging trucks passing us had been taking their loads. It smells terrible too, but such is the cost of the relatively high standard of life in this mountain kingdom. Just past the mess, the steepest part of the day begins. Trying to keep my spiriets up but a man we pass walking the other direction yells to us “you’ll never make it, it’s too steep.” The desolate border crossing at Sandlane closes at 6:00 pm, and we find the gates closed, arriving about 5 minutes later. Mira jumps into overdrive and offers a short chat with the lead Swazi border guard, Mr. Mbisi secures a ampsite on the lawn, giving us access to a toiltet and a campfire. While Rober prepares the only food we have, a mixture of Pakistani hair fine pasta and sardine sauce, Mira makes friends with the other visa issuing staff, Patrick and Jamison. Each is a young man from whom Mira pulls intimate like details, like when they will get married and how many children will they have. Rober refuses to eat his foul smelling culinary cxreation, but Mira has no hesitation offering it to Mr Mbisi, Patrick and Jamison over a roaring fire that they made for her. They accept the food with smiles, which Rober feels must have hid grimaces. WE are asleep soon after dark.It’s a short ride from the border crossing into the very small town of Amsterdam. At a small combined bakery and dairy we chat with the owner over breakfast sandwiches and locally made yogurt. She laments the crime that’s pounding South African society. She’s like most whies we meet here. She tiredly tells us of a recent break in robbery in which an old single woman was hurt by a gang of boys. One of boy’s father is a good mand known to the community. The story reminds rober of the novel “Cry the Beloved County,” which he is reading. When asked about her business, the proprietress laments the new (read “black”) government polcies, e.g., minimu wage rules, that make things difficult and don’t really solve their intended purpose, she says. Everything the woman says we will hear again an dagain on this journey, the warnings, the complaints, the policy disagreements, all conveyed in an almost exhausted tone. After five more hours riding through dusty farmland, we are in Piet Retif, a primary commercial and residential hub. We made a brief and less than wholehearted search for a campground with a swimming pool, we succumb to the cool and gracefully appointed LA Guesthouse. The gardens here remind me of the broad lawns found at the most upscale suburban homes in southern California. Each home here appears to have a small army of gardners and other staff who take care of the details. In a country with 35% unemployment, this is not difficult to arrange. Piet Retif is a town very much like many of the others we will see during the first half of our ride in South Africa. Decentralized, it includes a rough and tumble commercial center full of fast food shops, super markets and China stores, and one end of town the upscale homes, on the other end lies the lower rent area. After some searching we find a restaurant where we find hot sandwiches and a beer. Mira has a milkshake that she swears is the best she’s ever had.We are still looking for advice on our route, so we question the white restaurant owner about the possible routes.“We may ride up the Sani Pass through Lesotho, missing the central coast area,” Robert tells the host, “or we may skip Lesotho and made backtrack down after getting to the Sani Pass and head to the central coast.”“Oh, you probably don’t want to ride through the central coast area,” offers the man, “that place is called the Transkei. It can be dangerous. It’s best to avoid it. There is not much there, and the blacks there are harder to deal with. Best to play it safe and ignore them,” he says with well-meaning, if strangely worded, concern.” We take the information and store it away for later, when we have to make a decision about our route. The man’s advice sounds good, the problem is that in order to avoid the Transki, we’ll need to ride an additional five hundred kilometers through Lesotho, another mountain kingdom. This would mean a week and a half of additional riding.

Got up before the sun in Piet Retief and were on the road by 5:15. Rode until 8 -50K- and had breakfast in Paulpetersburg. Met a nice retired man with a pudgy nose named Hans who had a great German accent. He flagged us down as we were riding through town. He pointed us to the town “museum” (a one room devotional to the German forebearers of Afrikaaner culture) and gave Robert detailed informtion. He rediliy answered my questions about early SA/Boer history. He was very kind and had a gentle, qute helpful way about him. Robert says Hans reminded him of his dad. Also met Thomas, an Indian engineer and third generation South African. He talked a lot, and articulately, about his own thoughts, perceptions and ideas but he was interesting on the subject of white/black relations and SA today. “Just accept it,” he said, and I took that to heart. My judgements stymie my enjuoymnety. He was a purist and unfortuantly the product of this is pedantism. But a very nice, well spoken and interesting guy. Anyway, rode another 7K until the heat sucked me dry and we sheltered ourselves in the shade to eat yet another peanut butter sandwich. during this rest, we say a cyclist com up the hill after us, on a training ride and he stopped and chatted. Constant stares and incomprehensible calls from passengers on passing trucks. Made another 42K to near Vryheid. The way is always too long and there’s always a hot shoulder to climb and a truck belching smoke and grinding its gears just foot from the minute space we claim ont he roads. But a beautiful suprise: an early evening lightning storm in the east with the sun setting below the clouds and casting a blush on the hills. We made it to our garish lodge on the outskirts of Vryheid just a minute ahead of the storm.

Robert and I cycled in intense heat from near Nelspruit to Malelane and ended up in a beautiful, riverside inn with views of Kruger National Park. The river behind the inn had its own family of hippos. They snort and snuffle just like horses and their eyes blink in the folds of their eyelids and they must weigh about three tons. They look like dino-cows. We rode 50K, Robert wants to note, and a hellish couple of hours it was. We found out it had been about 43 degrees (Robert doubts it was that hot. Maybe 36 degrees). Anyway, it was really hot and Robert felt dizzy after the ride. We passed from shade to shade and could barely made the short distances in between. We stopped for lunch of fruit under a small tree by a farm. A woman and I met in a store said she had seen us and thought we were crazy. She was wearing a remarkable, ruby red top – the only other white in the “black” store. “the bleeacks” is what they say in south Africa with an Afrikaner accent. She told me that she was training for the karate world championships. She had an offhand, glittery manner that suggestd she wasn’t satisfied being the supply representative for a plastic bag company. The food at the black store was pap, and the neck of chicken in a delicious, oily sauce. Also fried egg on bread with spots of jam. Strange, but after the ride we just had, it tasted great (says Mira). The ride of the previous day was only 12k and we ended at a lovely compound outside Nelspruit. We swam late at night in the pool under a golden moon and talked to the host, Doug, about animals. The ride out came after a muggy, riting ride in a bus to Nelpruit. We were accompanied by three jocular Portuguese going to Mozambique. The most jocular kept referring to his woman as my future ex-wife. The bus attendants were particularly courteous. It was an efficient ride, unlike other service experiences where if you don’t catch the waitress or cashier, she’s sure to get tied up for an hour helping someone else. But that’t my American impatience. We rode out of our inn in Malelane for a half day tour in Kruger National Park. We saw an elephant- graceful, sensitive, with ears like huge flower petals, that I didn’t know that—and a white rhino, several giraffes, a hyena eating some prey and a leopard hidden in a bush. The leopard was watching the hyena angrily since the leopard had killed the warthog the hyena was pulling the guts out of. The hyena kept looking up a little guiltily. The leopard’s spots make it almost invisible in the bush. All the animals were beautiful but the overriding experience of being in thier landscape and seeing them all co-habitating makes nature seem very civilized. Our guide told us gruesome stories of how leopards kill humans and of a guide pulled up into a tree and made into a meal. Our fellow sightseers were a Spanish couple, Vicotoria and Augustine, stationed in Mozambique, working for the Spanish government. All of the talk and familiarity with Africa is exciting and I see one of the juvenile hippos now eating with his giant jaws along the river bank. He’s followed by a small gang of white herons who seem to be waiting on him for something, maybe seeds. I’m watching from the hammock here on the deck, living in luxury. To go from this to the crowded streets and strip malls and zooming cars is an unpleasant transition. No wonder whites love to vacation here. There’s no crowding and it’s all familiar at the lodges and inside the safari range rovers. But then you miss meeting up with some beautiful, precious things, like the high schooler I met on the road yesterday morning who was willing to smile to sweetly and tell me he wanted to be a journalist, or the two farm women weeding sugar cae who were sitting under a tree eating their lunch. We flopped nearby and when I shared some nectarines they opened both palms and thanked me so gratefully (does gratitude like that really exist?) One of the women said a prayer. Or Timothy, walking on the road with his mother, Emmaline, who drank most of my arrange flavored water and would have talked all day. Why is his mother wearing a knit hat in this heat, I wanted to know.Now two elephants majestically descended to the river as I’m sitting in the hammock, to drink and amble along the shore. Robert has come out of the room just in time, his mouth tastes of cookies, to take pictures. He’s relieved I’m keeping this journal, so we can post to our blog. We were facing an information jam since we hate paying a lot for the Internet here in SA. The elephants ears are like fans and one has large tusks. They take their time. When you look at them you see so much beauty. Beyond the 36 muscles in their tusks and the evolutionary interest in their size and features, they have a delicate beauty. Robert now wants to mention more about the cycling. We started this trip in Jburg where we stayed at the Backpaker’s Ritz. The city is like LA, with suburbs keeping things inaccessible. Moving the bikes around on planes, taxis and buses was not a big problem, and no more than it would be be getting them around at home. We had to negotiate/pay a bit for a big taxi at Paris and Jburg, but neither leg of the flight requird that we pay an excess baggage fee. The boxes each counted as one checked item, not to exceed 50 punds.By the time we got to Nelspruit, I was too tired to contemplate more travel with the boxes, so I put the bikes together right on the sidewalk in front of the bus drop off point. No problem, except the nagging realization that I had brought too much stuff. I’d get rid of some of it, but I don’t know what I will not need.The ride to Karino in the evening for our rist night in Katkop was a little scary after we took the advice to use the main highway as it is safer. We rode as it was getting dark, and the traffic is fast, but the dirvers seem to stay off the leftmost part of the road used by pedestrians and bicycles.Of course, the second day of riding was not fun in the heat. We found the river lodge in a suburb of Malelane, right on the crocodile river the other side of which is Kruger national park. We actually did not want to stay here because it is out of budget, but once the owner, Johan, saw what sad shape we were in, he gave us a double for 300R. On the patio we see hippo, elehpant and birds. I liked the giraffes in the partk. I say that ½ day in the park is all one needs. The guide kept telling us that it is not a zoo, but in all honesty it is not natural either. The animals come up to the cars and they maintain vegetation and water for the animals. It is a semi-natural experience (next to a golf country club).There is plenty of wildlife in Africa. You know how when you watch the National Geographic channel, you wonder how long they need to wait to get pictures of animals. Well, the answer is not long. They animal stuff happens all over the place. We are watching elephants play by the river right outside the back of our guesthouse. Cool.Sunday, Nov. 5It was a hard day of riding—90K through muggy heat, then a small squall that rained pretty hard for the space of a few miles. We rolled along over low hills, the verdant farmland of SA giving way to slightly steeper topography in Swaziland. We made good time until the heat and humidity made us seek some shade at a grocery. We were the center of the absolute and unwavering attention of two gangs of kids, one boys and one girls. The boys were interrogative—one bakkie driver cross-examined us on how we managed to take our holiday and why in the world we would take a bike ride to Cape Town. We are by now used to the incredulous looks this news produces. The gang of boys were very funny—they spoke to us familiarly and mostly wanted our stuff. Several of them studied us. We befriended a 14-yr-old on a rusty bike, he said his name was something that sounded like ‘Moose.’ He rode several K with us and showed us his karate moves. But when we got to the grocery some of the other boys teased him and he was cowed. The way they question—going straight to the matter or whatever interests them—would make anyone feel vulnerable. The woman in the store asked me about my ring and was very friendly. All the while kids came in for bread, dressed mostly in dirty, ragged clothes. Robert said it’s their day off, they’re in their cast-offs, but I wasn’t so sure. There is a common chorus from the little kids to give them money. Everyone wants to say ‘how are you’ but then their smiles make any weariness I feel disappear. We trundled along, had our adventure at the grocery store, and continued on, to eat lunch under a tree while the first raindrops feel, and I thought ‘an adventure around every bend.’ And then we hit the first 5K incline into Pigg’s Peak and it became extremely difficult. With the elevation it turned cool and then cold and we were out of water. I had shared much of it with Moose. My twin fears, thirst and cold, began to flare in my head. Around the 10th arduous kilometer, I became very angry. The wind, the aggravation of the loud, fast car, the cold, made me furious. Then I bawled. Robert tried to comfort me—I was a baby. My despair continued with another 5K of long inclines. Finally found an inn with camping and a hot bath fed by a wood-burning furnace. I’m trying not to think of the many other days ahead that will be like this. If we make it. We are feeling a little shaky. It’s a long route and difficult.But then I think about the little Swazi girls—about six of them—at the grocery store. They all crop their hair close and to see them smile is a gift. They wanted to hear me sing a song but I felt on the spot and could only think of “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.” So we struck a deal: they would sing me one for an exchange. They sang a Swazi song and two Christian ones with a theme in one of them about soldiering for God. They were so sweet. So incredibly sweet. They all said they didn’t like boys. They said the clean and cook at home and all had five, seven, or ten brothers and sisters. They were the expression, in all their shyness and sisterliness and mischievousness, of loveliness.Robert would now like to tell the real story. The ride started at 5 a.m., which was great. We needed an early start in order to beat the heat and get in some miles before the sun got too hot.We crossed the SA/Swazi border after about four hours.During our ride, the children and adults all took notice of us and everyone wanted to say “Good Day” or “How are you.” Mira loves talking to the children, so that is fun.We stopped for tea and a snack by the side of the road and a snack by the side of the road and spoke with many children. Many cars honked their horns as they drove by. A kind of “thumbs up!”The ride went well and about 10:30 we stopped to wait out the sun at a grocery.Wednesday, Nov. 8Monday we rode 45K from Pigg’s Peak to the Hawane Inn outside Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland. Had Dutch company at dinner and slept in the Inn’s dormitory, made out of an old horses’ stable. Tuesday was a 90K day to the southern border. The worst day: steep, unending inclines and heat. Some hills so steep our front wheels came off the ground. Still in dramatic landscapes but marred by ugly wood mills and broad swaths of clear cutting. Had a rest on a peak where a woman asked me to send clothes for her twin boys. Rode 7 and a half hours—a record—and missed the border closure by five minutes. But the border officials were incredibly hospitable. Mr. Mbisis was the head and he brought us into the compound to set up camp. A couple of others—Patrick and Jamison—pulled out firewood and made a fire. Robert cooked up Pakistani pasta bought in Mbabane with a can of beans a fish and the pot went around. We talked a bit to Patrick and exchanged addresses. He was serious and less idly curious than the other younger people we met. He wants only one wife, he said, and two children.Then today, Wednesday, a relatively mild 63K through Amsterdam, where we talked to a shop owner about the alarming rise in crime and ate her tasty breakfast, to Piet Retief. A desolate kind of stretch—logging and logging trucks and bullet-fast cars and some chicken farms and, saddest of all, a heap of dead baby chicks by the side of the road (they looked so gentle lying tossed there)—am trying to cultivate gentleness in the way I say hello to strangers—and Piet Retief not much to spake of but a nice bedding-down at the L.A. B&B. Some chit-chat with the owner of a restaurant where we had delicious ice cream. We promised to send him a California flag.