I wake up with minimal congestion and a clear head, yay! “It’s a beautiful day”, the birds say. I make a simple breakfast of rice cakes, peanut butter and banana and a coffee. After posting the “On smoking and five-way stop streets” article I hit the road!
Beautiful roads. Tropical vegetation and listening to:
which is great. I am beginning to feel like I’ve relaxed to a point where I am wanting to learn things again.
I stop at the big Shell garage that is always playing great local house over shitty speakers and a little child is enamoured but me.
Safe slow driving. The lack of a rush is palpable. I rarely hit 40km/h, am shifting down to first fairly often and the last 20 kilometres of dirt take me almost as long as the tar section. But I love it, it’s what I’m here for. The kids are yelling sweets as always, life bustles.
Gareth meets me at Mdumbi backpackers and we have a chat about horse poo. Siya is volunteering here. I meet Isipileh and his broken bicycle, we fix it together. He helped me find a campsite and then he cycled along with me on my run down to the beach.
Gas gysers Never how I want; always too hot or too cold. Is it a lesson?
I have a weird situation whereby I am daydreaming about someone coming up to me and saying - “Oh I heard from our mutual friend that you would be here today and they told me to give you a hug” and then I hear “Leo!” and Bas De Vos comes and gives me a hug. Haha.
My lack of Xhosa is obvious, and I vouch to change it.
Jemma gives me a bit of tabacco.
Bad and Cam cooked crayfish and a mud crab they had caught (named Murdock). It was as delicious.
We chatted for a few hours while some other people pulled in and played some very loud but respectable old hits. Dogs keep coming into the kitchen trying to get lucky with some leftovers.