Monday, September 17, 2007

Selati Africyle Day 1

After entering the Cape Storm competition to win entry into the Selati Africycle tour and hearing that I hadn’t won, I thought it was all over..  That was until Monday morning when Steve (my original partner) rang me up saying the others had pulled out and we were in if we wanted.  After consulting our bosses, I was still able to go but Steve wasn’t, so I needed to find someone in a hurry to come with.  Luckily Neil (no 125th on the list!) accepted so it was a case of finding tickets to get to OR Tambo on the following Saturday morning.

 

Day 1

So off we were early Saturday morning on our way into the unknown – neither of us having done 750km’s in a week before!  At the airport we met Pierre, the representative from Cape Storm.  We were coincidentally on the same flight.

 

On arriving at Jhb we got our box of goodies from Pierre! 3 pairs of top of the range bibs, 3 shirts, arm and leg warmers and even a cranium cooler???  We were almost on our way, a quick pop into Budget, and one fully loaded Chico later, the N4 was ours.

 

We had organized to drive to Nelspruit’s Kruger International Airport.(KMI)  the problem was that trying to find its location on the internet wasn’t so easy, on the 3 sites I found that gave directions they all said it was in a different place!  Anyway luckily the road markings were good and we eventually found it.  Logistically putting this race on is quite an achievement, and us getting to the start in Badplaas was pushing the organizers limits.  You see KMI ended up being about 25km the wrong side of Nelspruit to Badplaas.  Eventually though we were picked up and made our way to Badplaas.  We missed the pre race briefing but we arrived in time for the important stuff, supper.  We ate that first supper like it was the only food we were going to get for the next 7 days!

 

Then it was off to get our race bags which we had to pack all our stuff into.  These bags would be collected at each start and taken onto the next stop for us, sometimes taking a detour or 2 but eventually arriving where we ended up!

 

The accommodation on this first night was at the Aventura resort, which was very nice.  Our roommates left a little to be desired though.  Jafta and his buddy, shuttle bus drivers,  firstly locked us out of our room, then went drinking at another chalet, then came back at about midnight and proceded to shout at each other.  When they finally went to sleep they left the TV on.  Worse still they were up at 4am and still hadn’t mastered the art of whispering!

 

Well that was the end of Day 1….

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