ExpAfrica: Pure Adventures’ big adventure

I wanted a good story. And I’ve got it. They’ve had me howling with laughter. What follows is just a taste – minus facial expressions and tons of other funnies that I couldn’t hope to capture. 

At 21h25 on Thursday night, Day 4 of Expedition Africa, we saw headlamps on the hill. Pure Adventures finally coming in to T4. I haven’t seen them since the start but kept up with news of this team – what news there was.

In short, they only came off the first hike (end at T1) after 36 hours (Tuesday night at 18h20).

Considering that the team got to the Chain Ladders at lunch time – very respectable – something had to have gone horribly wrong up on top of the Berg.

According to Mike De Haast they went on ‘Tour de Lesotho’. He reckons they covered 125 kilometres on that leg. They found a hydroelectic station, the escarpment (five times) and every other feature except the pass they wanted to go down. At some stage they slept up top on the mountain, but only for a few hours before continuing their meandering. They almost missed Rockeries – heading for another pass in the next valley, but fortunately corrected and came down the mountain.

So they get in to T1 at 18h20 on Tuesday evening and 3.5hrs later they head off on the cycle to T2. That seems to have gone ok – a fair three hours ride. And then things got wobbly again. Very wobbly.

“It took us six hours to find our boats!” says Mike.

I asked what happened – afterall, the boats were across from the swim – with a blazing fire – and only a short distance from the transition. Maybe 1h30 from transition to boats (including swim).

It all began with a shortcut. The easier route was to walk around (on a road perhaps?) but instead they took a shortcut. This put them about 500m off where they needed to be for the swim, but swim they did – across a ‘bay’ to a spot on the same side of the dam!

I asked whether they’d seen the fire on the other side of the dam but because they were in the wrong place anyway, they didn’t see it. So they swam from darkness to darkness. This was around 01h00… and very cold.

They got out and then walked around for hours. “That place with the bridge,” says Russell, “we crossed it five times!”

Eventually they got back to the transition and tried again. This time they found the right place, swam again and were warmed by the fire.

“It only took us six hours to find our boats,” says Russel. “It took Issy seven hours.” He laughs.

Mike reckons they did 25 kilometres looking for the boats…

So now it is daylight and they get on the dam. This would be on Wednesday morning – in daylight.

They start paddling and then get on to the river and then, thinking that the darkzone meant darkzone for everyone, they get off the river. They encountered some serious rapids, including a waterfall and totally figured the darkzone made sense because it really was too dangerous to be on the river. Good decision, actually! With the water level dropping rapidly (hahaha), rapids were appearing almost by the hour that weren’t there even the day before.

They ended up at a homestead. They knocked on a door and the guy was pretty puzzled. He only rents but went to ask the owner if they could stay. Co-incidentally the owner was having dinner with another tenant on the property.

“Se vir daar karavaaners te v-off,” the team hears him say. (the translation would be “Tell those caravaners to go away” (but with a ‘naughty word’ used).

And then Robyn, the local vet, comes running out. The owner was having dinner with her. Robyn’s brother does adventure racing so she knew exactly what they were up to. Doors opened wide and the team was showered with food and hot drinks.

“Fish fingers,” smiles Thea-Marie. “And boiled eggs.”

The first confused chap arrives with a stack of sandwiches. Russell uses his hands to illustrate a substantial stack.

“We had them for breakfast this morning,” Thea-Mari adds.

By 6am they’re back on the river and headed for CP14, which they reached around 09h00 (Thursday). Their bikes were waiting and they were to cycle from there to T4, skipping the Spionkop Dam part. Mike says they didn’t wait around and were promptly on their bikes and well underway.

The team considers cycling to be their strength, especially having Thea-Mari, who is a top-notch South African cyclist.

Everything is going well and then they pass through a settlement. I don’t know the name but I remember driving past the sign for the Emmaus (something like this) hospital.

And that’s when it happened. The crash.

They’ve got rumble strips on the road to warn cars to slow down. Hano’s front wheel got caught on something and he went flying over his handlebars.

“I was right behind him,” says Mike. “He went off like this.”

Mike gets up to demonstrate Hano’s flying-over-the-handlbars body position. Mike cranes his head and chest forward holding both arms back.

“And then he skidded down the road. 15m at least. On his face. We were going 50km an hour! Down a mine shaft! They’ve even got those bumps on the road to slow the cars down!”

The others jump in.

“How he didn’t break anything… Not arms. Not collarbone.” says Russell. “The map board isn’t even scratched.”

“His helmet didn’t break. Sunglasses didn’t break,” adds Thea-Mari.

“The saddle got chowed. His shirt is shredded. Looks quite cool,” says Russell.

Mike shakes his head. “I seriously thought he was dead. He was lying on the ground on his stomach, face planted in the tar, arms behind and not moving.”

Hano was wearing a Buff around his head but even so a pool of blood was forming. “If you go back there you’ll see it – exactly where he was lying,” says Mike.

“I went up to him calling ‘Hano, Hano’. He didn’t move and then I heard him groan. He was definitely out for the count for a bit,” explains Mike.

They were in the middle of the road, watched by bystanders and surrounded by taxis.

They ask for a doctor and the people point across the road. Hano had wiped out not more than 100 metres from the hospital entrance.

After some discussion and to-and-fro Hano was attended to by the local doctor, Olivia, who stitched up his forehead and cleaned the grazes on his left arm and left knee, digging tar from the wounds.

They spent three hours at the hospital and then off they went.

Mike knows this area pretty well and after getting the CP they backtracked to the road instead of going up the mountain and through the forests. I think this is the same route that Merrell Adventure Addicts took which gained them around 40 minutes on Cyanosis. I’ve heard many teams saying how difficult the forest was.

And, now they’re here.

If you exclude Hano’s bruised and bashed up face, I’d say that this team looks the best at midway of any of the teams.

“And it is not like we’ve slept,” says Mike. “Up to now we’ve only had 10 hours of sleep in total.”

Hano has been seen to by the medic here, who took a bit more tar from his knee. They’ve eaten and are now sorting out their maps. They’ll sleep for three hours and then head out. They’re energetic and enthusiastic and very determined to do whatever option Stephan presents because they want to cross the finish line.

So, from here they will cycle (definitely not the hike for this team!) to Sterkfontein Dam and then they’ll do the paddle and final hike. I just hope they find the hotel… (update: they and other teams did the morning group cycle).

To summarise this epic tale…

“Navigation,” says Mike. “It all comes down to navigation.”