20 November - 100 Miles

20 November

100 Miles

Ghanzi – Sehithwa

Steph:

We actually left early today! And were awake! And the wind was at our backs! By 11am we had covered 60 miles, so we decided to try to make it to Sehithwa (100 miles) that day. The only town in between was Kuke. Not a town, a village. It was really cool. All traditional huts, each with a little yard. There were kids racing around on donkeys and people actually seemed productive. We stopped for a coke at a little refreshment stand and met Petros Petros. He is a miner from Francistown. I love talking to the locals. Petros was really nice and gave us a tutorial on the local delicacy, Mopane Worms. These are moth larvae that hang out in Mopane trees. They are highly nutritious and pretty popular among several tribes. Petros made it very clear that these worms (actually caterpillars) are meant to be eaten either cooked or dried. He told us not to fall for anyone saying that we should eat them raw. I guess they're really quite gross when they're raw. Noted. Thank you Petros.

At around noon, it turned very hot and our clouds disappeared. We still had to ride 40 miles so we left at 3pm. Way too early for me. The water in our bottles wasn't just luke warm, it almost burned. We later found out that the temperature was over 110F. About 30 miles from Sehithwa we were ready to stop for the day, but that was not going to be an option. The dry season was so intense here that animals were literally dropping like flies. There were cattle and horses lying dead and decaying left and right. I had a big issue with this. Not only was I feeling way over heated, but the smell was overwhelming and there were hundreds of them. On top of this, we were losing sunlight quickly and the wind was not helping us move forward. FINALLY, we arrived in Sehithwa where we met Louis and Jacques, two brothers from South Africa that are in the process of building a lodge there. They took us in, gave us electrolytes and fed us a delicious steak dinner.

Our 100 mile day ended on a very pleasant note, eating steak and having fun conversations until midnight. :) Thank god for good people!

A giant termite mound

It's so hot!! And everything is dead!