Oct 24th & 25th

October 24

Bush Camping – Grunau

58 Miles

Steph:

Since we only got about 8 Miles out of Ai Ais the night before, today we had to cover ~36 miles of dirt road and then 20 miles of blessed tar to the town of Grunau.

I'm not going to go into detail about our "death march".

Bottom line: the dirt road slowed us down, it was hot, it got hotter, no shade, ran out of water, it was really hot, didn't eat all day, no water, got heat exhaustion. Barely made it.

We stayed at the first hotel we saw and the staff were extremely helpful. They went above and beyond in trying to get us what we needed. That night, after headaches and the dry-heaving and the uncontrollable shivers, we crawled (literally) into bed and looked forward to our day off tomorrow.

Lessons learned:

• Always be fully stocked on water.
• Don't underestimate dirt roads.
• Don't run out of food.
• In this weather, it is imperative that we are off the bikes and under shelter between 11am and 4pm.

Erik:

We weren't prepared for this day. We were basically out of water by the time we got to the tar B1 road. Longest 19 miles Ever. Clostest we've been to giving up. By far, our hardest day yet. Both had heat exhaustion and were in bad shape.

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October 25

Grunau

rest

Steph:

I actually woke up feeling much better than I thought I would. The compression tights did their magical job of saving my legs and now we both just had to start replacing all the fluids and energy that we had lost. We also had to figure out what to do next. The next town was Keetmanshoop and was 100 miles away. The next town after that was Mariental and was 144 miles away from Keetmans. Not exactly something that we can do with the limited amt of water that we carry. Let alone in our current state. So we decided to try and hitch a ride to these places and go from there.

We rode out to the gas station and set up shop. What we needed was a empty Baaki (pickup truck) that was heading north. Easier said than done. There really aren't that many people that come by here. Namibia is, after all, the least populated country in Africa. Most were big freight trucks and the baaki's that did come by were already loaded with hitch-hikers or tourists still nervous about driving on the wrong side of the road. We actually almost made it on a big truck, but that fell through when the driver wanted to charge us and just lay our bikes on top of the spares wheels underneath the truck. No thank you.

New plan. Go back to the hotel, get some more rest, wake up at 3am and see how far into the 100 miles we get before it gets hot. Bleh.

As he was checking back into the hotel, Erik met Allen Hatch. He was on his way up to Windhoek and offered to make room for us in his already packed SUV. It was very nice of him. We went to bed relaxed and relieved.

Also, I've been wrestling with this all day. Do I think we're cheating by hitching a ride? I don't know. In a way, yes. We're supposed to be biking through africa. But then I think about yesterday and how bad it got, and I honestly don't think we have a choice at this point. Not a responsible one, at least. So yeah...I'm cool with it.