Oct 22nd

October 22

Aussenkehr - Ai-Ais

50 miles

Steph:

Oh man, today was tough for me. It actually started out very nicely. As per Antonie's advice, we took the dirt road to Ai-Ais. It was fine at first, a few sand patches here and there but relatively smooth. The landscape continued to be awe inspiring. Rocky, crumbly mountains to the left. On the right, nothing. Absulutley nothing. It made me feel very small and insignificant. We were completely alone. I think we saw about 7 cars that day and they looked like mirrages in the distance with a puff of dust behind them. The sun and heat started beating us down around noon and there's no shade anywhere. At one point, I was going donwhill and went a bit too fast. I have about 22lbs of water on the bag of my bike that likes to wobble around, so that's hard to control on this kind of road. I hit a patch of sand and went down pretty hard. Erik thought I had broken the bike, which wouldve been a bad thing way out in the middle of nowhere. But we were both OK. My mood really began to sour after that though. The road was taking it out of me. Our shoulders and arms were super sore and we just wanted to get to this town. Well, we finally did get there and it ended up NOT being a town. Instead, it was a spa/resort thing with natural hot springs. I wanted to cry thinking about having to push our bikes back out of the canyon. Luckily they had camping spots. Wooo! . Expensive camping. We had been going for over 9 hours, so it didn't matter at that point. The good thing was there was a pool! Cold and delicious! After dinner we passed out for 10 hrs straight.
Oh, something really gross happened to Erik. Haha! Really. Gross. He can tell you about it though. :)

Looking back the way we came.

Erik:

Made it to Ai-Ais. Forget gravel roads. They kicked our butts.

We left and pushed through sand and dirt for a bit. The roads are comprable to the gravel toll road we took in RSA, if not a bit worse.

At one point, going down hill I heard a yell, slammed on my brakes and looked back to find that steph had hit a sand patch and crashed. She and the bike were both OK. Just a little bruise on her knee, shin and pride.

The landscapes were still spectaclular. The mountains are huge, barren and imposing. There are vast stretches of nothingness with these behemouth, rocky gaurdians watching over them. Even at my most grumpy/hot/tired phase, the landscapes still inspired awe.

A funny side story. We camped right next to the river at Antonie's the night before which has the general aquatic wildlife you would expect to find. Anyway, so I was pretty tired and foggy in the brain in the morning. I did the usual shake the shoe out to make sure nothing is there before putting it on. I fumbled putting my socks on, and didn't feel like correcting the lumpyness in the front was a requirement. So my right foot was cramped at the toes (I assumed because of the sock situation). Didn't care... for about 5.5 hours. Then all my toes fell asleep. But it was hot, I was grumpy and stopped for a water break anyway, so I finally got to the point where I wanted to fix my sock. Took my shoe off and my sock was perfectly fine. Applied on my foot as though I had been doing it for years. Very expertly done. So now I was confused. Why had my shoe shrunk?

I looked in it and saw a black blob at the end, that really could only have been some leaves or something.

I turned the shoe over and shook vigourously.

Out came the dead frog.

Steph screamed for a bit and I, myself felt terrible. Death by foot can't be a great way to go. Also, it explained the new stains on my sock.


Steph:

Ahhhhhhh! Blehhhhhh!! So GROSS!!!