June 19th to June 21st: Upington

Upington proved to be the perfect place for us to heal and re-outfit. It turned out that the guesthouse we stumbled upon the previous night was better than we could have ever imagined. The facilities were tremendous and they had a high-speed internet connection. More importantly, however, our hosts, Ansa and Eben, were unbelievably nice and took us in as if we were part of the family. We told them that we were in need of a doctor, some books, and a bicycle shop, and they immediately got to work sorting these things out for us.

First we took our bicycles to a nice bike shop and left them for a day to get fully repaired and maintained so that we could focus on the other issues confronting us. Herman, an incredibly nice man who was working at the guesthouse, offered to drive us around for the day to take us on all of our necessary errands. The most important and interesting errand ended up being the trip to the doctor.

We were planning initially to go to the state hospital, but the family at the guesthouse insisted on taking us to their family clinic where they assured us we would get much better care. They said the state hospital is where you go just before you die, and was not suitable for us. Upon arriving at the local private medical clinic we were almost immediately seen by Dr. De Klerk, a very entertaining man. Eric and I each had a slew of injuries that we needed to have inspected. First up was Eric’s Achilles’ tendon, which Dr. De Klerk explained was injured from too much bicycling. Next up was Eric’s knee, and this too turned our to be another “overuse injury caused from too much bicycling." My knee had the same problem, as did my left hand, which had become extremely weak.

Because of the nature of our injuries, Dr. De Klerk said the best thing would be to stop bicycling. Seeing as this was not possible, he gave us some high strength anti-inflammatories and told us to ice as much as possible. It was difficult to know exactly what medication we were receiving because of heavy accents and different names in different countries, but we had faith in Dr. De Klerk’s work. Worried about the prospect of extreme pain, Eric asked if we could get some Vicodin. Doctor De Klerk looked a bit perplexed, but then nodded his head and said that he could give us some. However, when we realized he was preparing to give us a prescription for Viagra, we explained the misunderstanding and decided it was time to leave the clinic.

After seeing the doctor and fixing up our bicyclesm as well as taking 2 days off for some much needed rest and relaxation, we decided it was time to go. We said our farewells to Ansa's and Ebens’s family, as well as Herman, and set off for the second segment of the Kalahari. After that… Botswana!

-Aaron