It is 5am when the alarm goes off. Helga and I almost bump into each other head first from the noise of the alarm which we are no longer used to. It at least makes sure that we are immediately wide awake. We slowly walk towards the kitchen, press the coffee machine to life and gather the last clothes and things that need to go into the car. An hour later we drive in a convoy from the courtyard towards the Tankwa Karoo desert.
We are being separated from James when we run into an old militairy truck with dead batteries who is also on its way to AfrikaBurn. Helga and I stop to help them. With a set of starter cables we try to boost the batteries, but when I see the wires giving off smoke I quickly pull everything loose and tell them that we cannot take any risks here. They will have to find another truck to help them out. They look disappointed, but they understand. The owner of the truck tries to convince me again that is a converted 12v system, but I won’t budge. We have too much to lose. We get into the car and start to chase James and his trailer. The road changes to sand, filled with corrugations and loose stones everywhere. The horizon is filled with dust clouds and other people on their way to Burn, one of the largest clouds in the distance will probably belong to James and Yolandi with their heavily loaded trailer. The moment we get off the main road, I have to pull up on the side of the road to let another car pass. When we continue the car pulls me strongly to the left and when I lean out of the window I can see one of the tires getting flat rapidly….Sh*t. Puncture. We put the car on the side of the road and quickly change our tire. We have some experience by now and within no time we are back on the road again towards the entrance of the festival. We are being welcomed by a merry group of people who are totally into the festival vibe. To our relief we quickly find James and Yolandi, we unload the stuff we brought for the organisation and start looking for a good spot to set up camp.Around us the desert turns into a giant encampment while we are concentrating on setting up our tent. We work until the last light, start again in the morning and are not finished until late afternoon. For our standards we are glamping. In the past 12 hours we managed to build a kitchen, set up a large gas cooker, a braai and set up a large tent from scratch to protect us against the sun, wind and sand. Both our cars are parked next to the tent for extra stability and kind of gives the idea of two sundowner decks. I ride around on a bicycle and plough through the desert sand. Most of the ground looks like a solid mass, but some places are rougher and the sand seems to come out from underneath. I’m amazed by all the bedouin style tents, the strange (mutant) vehicles and the artworks that were all transported over the same road we came from and are now built up to be looked at and burned at the end.
It’s the middle of the night when I lift my head of the pillow. I crawl out of bed on my hands and feet and look through the window of the narrow little room we sleep in. Through the cracks in the single glass window I can smell burned plastic. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness and the vague outlines outside form recognisable shapes. A Landrover Defender is parked in the courtyard. The car sits heavy on its leafsprings and leans slightly backwards. I try to look through its windows, but I can’t make out very much since the inside is meticously packed top to bottom. Next to the car is a large open trailer. It has been packed to the brim. My hands slide over the wet window-frame and I have to wipe away the moister on the glass to see more. By now, my eyes are fully adjusted to the dark. Our car is parked in the corner of the courtyard, surrounded by walls and a gate. We are also a bit heavier packed, but you can hardly see this through our closed off windows.
I peer in the distance where see the glow of a small fire. The house we’re staying at is located next to a small “park”, more like a patch of grass. During the day people collect rubbish from the city, to burn on the grass at night to get a little warmth. It’s a very cold night and I hope they collected enough rubbish to stay warm. I let go of the window-frame and feel my way back to my pillow. My head falls onto it and I hope to catch my sleep again soon. After we approached the organisation of AfrikaBurn, Helga and I managed to be able to buy tickets through the re-selling of the tickets. Our enthusiasm went through the roof and we immediately changed our itinerary to accomodate this detour. We get the opportunity to stay with James and Yolandi in the days before AfrikaBurn. We met them when we stayed in Cape Town a few weeks earlier and they are also going to Burn. James and Yolandi are both industrial designers and they totally fit in hip Cape Town as we came to know and appreciate it.James takes this AfrikaBurn “project” very serious, as he does with all the projects they take on as a company. He puts his staff and workshop to use to make this a memorable festival for all of us. The fully packed trailer and cars are a result of this. We are taking everything to build a huge tent made out of fabric, wooden poles and rope, we are even making a kitchen and we’re taking 8x25L jerrycans with water. By bringing some stuff for the AfrikaBurn organisation, James managed to get us early access tickets. We leave one day before everyone else and this means we have one more day to make our camp before 12.000 people come hurdling in.
Langebaan, a sleepy town close to Cape Town. Nothing happens here until the wind picks up. When it does, it seems like everyone drops what they’re doing and head towards the water.
Langebaan lies next to a shallow bay which is surrounded by low dunes. When there is wind, it is the most ideal place for kite and wind surfing. In the few days we spend here there was no wind unfortunately…the sun is blazing on our tent and after two days we give up. Cederberg, April 11, 2016A small patch of green finds it way through the small valley, the rocks are grey coloured and made out of granite. A farm has camping and mainly has climbers around. We find ourselves a spot next to a large rock and surrounded by climbers and boulderers we share stories around the campfire. The next morning, armed with a bouldermat, we are starting our search for some good routes. We don’t have to walk very far…We hang around for a few days and leave to drive towards Wuppertal and Ceres. Why down and not up towards Namibia? We got tickets for Afrikaburn!
The neighborhoods we drive through show us a wide variety of colours. The brand new highway we drive on splits the suburb in two. We see kids play soccer on the side of the road where a sign tells us we are allowed to drive 120 km/h…sheep, goats and cows all seem to look at the same thing: the patch of grass on the other side of the road. A large sign tells us not to stop on this road, and if you really have to stop call the police for assistance.
We’re driving towards a large city, a gust of wind picks up a variety of white and grey plastic bags and blows them over the road and into the streets. We get in behind all the small city cars and manoeuvre our way through the small streets of Capetown. We’re invited by a scouts organisation to camp on one of their campsites. This campsite is on top of a hill called Signal Hill which basically divides the city in two. From the hill we can walk to the city in about 20 minutes. The caretaker of this property is the well known South African Braam Malherbe. Braam is a adventurer, a conservationist and multisporter. Recently he ran the total distance of the Chinese Wall, 89 marathons, a marathon a day. He also walked north to south on the Northpole and is currently in the preparations of his next trip: The Cape to Rio sailing trip, but rowing the entire distance. I feel excited to finally meet someone who has taken adventure travel to a model in which he can provide for himself and his son. We seem to be on the right track because we meet a lot of interesting people over the next few days.
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Helga slams the car door shut with a loud bang. Sweat trickles down her forehead and her breathing is rushed. I react to the bang, I let the clutch come up and we immediately start moving. We can hear the branches swishing around us when we drive through the fruit trees. When we reach the main road we can finally pick up the pace. A few days earlier we heard that one of the roads leading us out of Montagu will be closed entirely due to roadworks. This road is our only way of getting where we want to go without having to drive many more kilometres.
When Helga’s breathing is back to normal she starts to prepare for her role as navigator. She suddenly looks at me and asks: “Where are the maps?” I try to divide my attention, not my strongest skill, and wreck my brain where those maps are while driving through a busy pass. I can see both of us running out of the small reception area while the sprinklers try to liven up the sad looking grass and we try to avoid getting wet. We’ve used the maps to get information from the owners of the campsite, who just recently moved here from Botswana. The maps are probably still there…At the same moment I can tell that Helga has reached the same conclusion. This is one of those moments where you wish the cabin of the car was a bit bigger. We make a u-turn and pass the long row of cars trying to get out of town while we drive back to the campsite where we eventually find our precious maps. We now know the way and decide to try our luck again. We end up being one of the last cars to get through before they close the road to start the explosions to improve the road. We are very lucky, but it still takes about 20 minutes before Helga talks to me again. We are now on the most southern point of the continent of Africa: Cape Agulhas.
Stellenbosch March 24, 2016 Even though we’re 10.000 km from home, we sometimes feel like we’re at home. In Montagu we met some climbers: Canadian Becky and South African Johann. They invite us to their home in Stellenbosch, an offer we don’t have to think on for very long. Over the next few days we stroll through pitoresque Stellenbosch with friends, we run, climb, go to pubs and walk through Franschoek NP.
Malawi, our 6th country in Southern Africa. We fill up our tanks with fuel (220 liter) and do some grocery shopping before we hit the border with Malawi. Africa is dry and the last few years it has suffered from extreme draught. We heard that it hit Malawi pretty bad a few years back with severe food shortages due to failed crops. Because of problems with import and political instability Malawi has also known periods of fuel shortages. Since we have two tanks and our jerrycans we can drive around for 1600 km before we have to fill up again.In the supermarket Rinus gets into a conflict with some of the locals. Usually the lines for the cash registers are pretty long here in Africa and you would say that after 8 months here we would be used to these lines… Well, no, and especially Rinus has a hard time dealing with it!In some supermarkets, we find out, the trick is to put something on the counter as soon as you walk in. After that, you leisurely fill up your cart, trolley or arms with all the other groceries. Then you walk to the counter, where that one item is still waiting for you. Finally, you skip the line, get in front, since you were obviously there before and “forgot” some more items. People from Africa seem to accept this, they’re friendly and used to wait in line for long periods. Well, Rinus isn’t. He is like a terrier who bites down on his place in the line and will gladly tell everyone in the in the supermarket multiple times how the principle of a proper cue works. When we get to the car, I’m glad our tyres didn’t get slashed in the meantime..It turns out to be a public holiday in Zambia which we find out when we are about to cross the border. All the employees are lazily hanging around in their office, watching the inauguration of the president on a small tv while eating a fresh load of bananas. I stick my head through the small opening in the window to let them know that there are people here waiting to be helped. Eventually, the least lazy officer walks towards us. With his fingers full of banana, which ends up on our passports, he stamps us out of Zambia and we continue to the Malawi side. We fight our way through a thick layer of money changers and get to our car to drive to Malawi.Malawi doesn’t have a public holiday, but they’re not very keen on working either. Fortunately, we are expert border crossers by now, so 45 minutes later we are in Malawi. Our first impression: Malawi is poor, poorer than the other countries we’ve travelled through. We also notice that there are more mosques and muslims to be seen. Here in Malawi, it seems that everyone has a business in something and they will always tell you all about it. As soon as we leave the car they will try to sell you their goods. When we stay in the car they will call you from a distance, or tap your window. When we drive past they still shout out to us from the other side of the street to get our attention.This is all different to the Africa we came from where people tend to display their goods and wait for us to stop by instead of actively walking up and selling it to us. The capital, Lilongwe: we appear to be in a cocktail of raw blues, a sultry but humid heat, covering us in a blanket of exhaust fumes. My feet, worn in flip flops, get very dirty when I walk from our city campsite on the hill down towards the centre. Cyclists come towards me, tense faces to get the old bicycles up the hill.I hear someone walking behind me and step up my pace as much as the humidity allows me. Not enough, I am soon joined by a young man who introduces himself to me. He tells me he goes to school to be a carpenter. Also, he informs me that he grew up in a large family and that his parents don’t live in the city.Even though I was not really waiting for this conversation and I need all my concentration to keep my feet on the small path in front of me, I am answering his questions obligingly.It doesn’t take very long for him to begin his selling pitch. It’s a way of approaching that apparently works for western tourists: Introduce yourself, tell them where you come from, about you siblings, your education and then try to sell your goods when they take a pity on you. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t work with me. I get some cash from the machine and with a wad of money the size of a phonebook I start to walk back up to the campsite. I get the same story as before, but this time from an elderly man who I think has long since passed the “going to school” age. Around him I can smell a very pungent body odor, which makes it hard for me to breath the already hot city air. I wonder why he walks up the hill at this time a day, while his younger and smarter colleague walks down… The next morning we meet a young wood craftsman who makes miniature cars. We give a few photos of our Landcruiser and he begins very enthusiastically to build ours. It’s late in the afternoon when we finally leave the city. We get in line behind a long cue of beaten up cars and while dodging the potholes, we get out of the city as fast as we can. Our camp for the night is at a small pottery in Dedza, a small village south of Lilongwe. At night there is a lot of noise and we have a hard time figuring out if it’s a fight or a party. I decide to get out of the tent and make some noise myself by beating against the fence with a stick or something. It’s a full moon and it lights up the whole area, but even so, I still see no one. I climb back into the tent and put in some earplugs before going back to sleep. The next morning the owner of the pottery tells me that the noise had to do with a chicken theft from one of the neighboring houses. The person who lives right behind the campsite had something to do with the theft and the people from the village had decided to tell him, that night, that he will not get away with this the next time. We had just decided to tell him we were moving on, but after hearing this story we decide to stay another day since it will probably be a lot more quiet this time.
We’re invited by a scouts organisation to camp on one of their campsites. This campsite is on top of a hill called Signal Hill which basically divides the city in two. From the hill we can walk to the city in about 20 minutes. The caretaker of this property is the well known South African Braam Malherbe. Braam is a adventurer, a conservationist and multisporter. Recently he ran the total distance of the Chinese Wall, 89 marathons, a marathon a day. He also walked north to south on the Northpole and is currently in the preparations of his next trip: The Cape to Rio sailing trip, but rowing the entire distance. I feel excited to finally meet someone who has taken adventure travel to a model in which he can provide for himself and his son. We seem to be on the right track because we meet a lot of interesting people over the next few days.
