Last Days of South Africa part 3 (Pics included)

June 27th, Day 16:

We woke up a bit later than we were expecting due to the excitement of the prevoius night and had breakfast at around 9:00am. We gathered up our things and decided to hit the road for Mafikeng, despite the fact that we had no idea where we were going to sleep that night, seeing as Mafikeng was too far to make it in one night and there was nothing in between. However, after an hour of riding or so we realized that our bodies were finally starting to feel the affects of extreme fatigue. We were struggling to hold a speed of 13mph, and when we are fresh we can ride several hours at 15mph. Also, my knee was feeling awful, and Eric's achilles was getting worse and worse. We finally decided that we would just have to stop for the day and rest. We hoped to hitch a ride to Mafikeng so that we could sleep well and take a rest day the next day, but after several hours of trying to hail down pickup trucks things were looking a bit hopeless and we had resigned ouselves to potentially sleeping out in the cold and hoping our bodies felt better the next day.

However, just as it was getting dark and hope was running out(as seems to be the theme of this trip) a Rastafarian man pulled up in a pickup to check out how we were doing. His name was Nkodi, but unfortunately he was not heading to Mafikeng but rather a small rural settlement 30km down the road. We thanked him for his kindness in stopping, but declined the ride, figuring that we might as well just sleep where we were and avoid the hassle of loading our things into his truck. However, right after we left we realized how stupid we had been, as it would have gotten us 30k closer to our destination.

However, Nkodi was no ordinary man, and just as we were cursing our stupidity he returned to us with good news. He said that he had decided that he would go visit his girlfriend in Mafikeng that night, and that we could stop at the first place for an hour or so while he packs his things, and then continue on to Mafikeng. We immediately thanked him and started cramming our bikes into the back of his truck, which turned out to be an extremely tight squeeze. Even worse however, was that only one of us could sit in front with him because if traffic police stopped us Nkodi would get in trouble for having three in the front so I was resigned to squeezing into the back with the bicycles, which I can safely say was the least confortable ride of my life(and somehow was not illegal, while three in the front seat was, go figure...).

We pulled into his home in an extremely rural black settlement as the sun was setting and it was an extremely picturesque scene. Eric and I attempted to converse with the local children in our makeshift Tswana while Nkodi packed up his things. The children were a bit shocked to see us, but gave us a nice little tour around the area nonetheless, even showing me their favorite donkeys while I got to hug for a bit. It was an awesome experience and we got to see a part of Africa that we never would have seen otherwise, and are very thankful to Nkodi for that.

Things then got even more difficult as Nkodi packed his things into the back as well, which took quite a bit of repositioning, but luckily I was allowed to sit in front this time, seeing as it was now completely dark and Nkodi figured the police would not notice. My ride was not as comfortable as I would have liked however, as I was forced to site with one leg on the drivers side, one on the passengers side, and the stick right between my legs, which made for some pretty awkward shifting. We also didn't have a spare, so we prayed to the Rastafarian God Ja that we would make it safely. After an hour or so of driving Nkodi gracoiusly helped us search around the city for guesthouse despite the fact that he had passed his girlfriends place some ten kilometers back. After finally finding a room for the night we bid Nkodi farewell and thanked him for all of his help as he had really saved us from a potentially awful couple of days.

We then went out in search of food in Mafikeng, as much like the night before ended up at a gas station convinving people that we were not lying about being American bicyclists. We ended up meeting a guy name Llebo who took us around Mafikeng and showed us his favorite club. Once again we were the only white people there, but everyone was very friendly to us. However, we were quite tired so we only stayed for a short time, then Llebo drove us back to our lodge and we went to sleep. The next day we would rest and take care of some business.

-Aaron