So we start off to Capetown. We–Headley and I, a well-built 24 year old and a slightly scrawnier 21 year old, weighed down by an old beat up army bag + AmEx messenger satchel and a blue oversized camping pack, respectively. We’re heading from somewhere in mid-south-western Lesotho down to the nipple of Africa, at the very tip of the underhanging southern coastline.
We get up at the asscrack of dawn, and I alway hate it when guys say asscrack, like it’s adding a special air of vulgarity to a natural phenomenon that just had the rotten luck of happening when the only thoughts that can chug through a guy’s mind, still frozen in a sleepy iced-up state are pretty much vulgar ones.
But despite the ass-crack phenomenon, we’re mostly optimistic and start off strong, although maybe we’re not as talkative or as lucid as we would be at a non-crack hour. The first hop skip and jump of this trip is getting out of Bethel, this nice little town tucked off in a valley somewhere in mid-south-westish Lesotho amid a pleasant confluence of apple and peach trees and into somewhere with paved roads capable of sustaining greater-than-donkey speeds.
So the first step is getting to a village like a couple miles away called Mount Moroosi, and it’s too early for even the 4×4 pickup truck that sometimes carries people for a couple Maluti to wherever they need carrying across the bone-jarring ruts and washed-out streambeds that seem to make up most of the valley. We start walking.
The sun’s barely up and already it’s doing the sun thing and making everything hot and bright, except there’s some pretty dark&ominous cumulonimbus numbers moving in from the west, and somehow because of high altitude winds or updrafts we’re standing in bright Lesotho early morning sunshine getting soaked in a hi-intensity sub-saharan rainshower complete with thunder and lightning somewhere far away but rain definitely Right Here, complete with a rainbow across the valley surrounded by a double-refracted reverse rainbow as a result of sunlight reflected off the valley and then back through the raindrops as opposed to the normal rainbow, which comes from sunlight going straight through the raindrops, at least that’s what I can glean from Headley’s explanation.
And I start to get warmed and drenched I get a bit more talkative, mostly because I’m still seven hours away from riding in a jam-packed superheated minitaxi with my knees against my chest and a five-gallon bucket of Home Pride PVA Acrylic paint tucked beneath my legs, several sustained hours of which is bound to take the conversation out of anybody.
After a while, the rain slackens, to be replaced with a blazing hi-altitude 7AM sun that cooks us until the rain starts steaming off our clothes. Soon enough, we’re drenched again, with sweat this time. We pass through a village where a little native kid shouts out from his outdoor cold-water-tap shower “Hi. Goodbye. Money me”
Crossing a bridge and kicking up dust—the rain’s been gone just 15 minutes and it’s dusty again already, we start picking our rocky way down to the chocolat-y river churning like three hundred feet below. I tune out in the heat & think about the trip ahead, from Bloemfontein to Capetown, which is like eleven hundred klicks each way once we get to Bloem and we’ll be driving every bit of it on the SA highway system. I’m more than a little antsy about driving since the only cars we can rent are manuals, and the first time I’ve really driven stick per se was last night.
“Headley,” I said(last night), “I’ve got to drive down at least 600 klicks tomorrow and I’m never been behind the wheel of a manual per se”
“No problem” he said, so we busted out the old Bongo Japanese import 4WD diesoline[sic] minivan and I got behind the clutch and lurched and clutched our way around the Lesotho (Lesoothoo) countryside on roads that aren’t even close to paved, and it would be a major improvement if at least some of the boulders were moved off to the side of the roads. It’s Christmas night, and in the spirit of the holiday we give a couple Basotho a lift to the town of Pumone half an hour away, picking up some more hitchers (“Dumela, N’tate. Leiugai? Pumone? Hop on in!”) along the way until the minivan’s packed and there’s nothing to do but put a cassette into the ancient sound system and bounce our way along under blindingly bright African stars until we get to Pumone, where like the entire village is drunk and dancing in the street(singular!) and a taxi has its windows down providing the requisite oonsk-oonsk music and when I stop to let out our passengers the entire smiling dancing city swirls around the car like you’re pouring water into a bucket, and if you think learning to shift into 1st is hard, try learning on an uphill with a lot of drunken dancing Basotho who won’t move more than 6” off the front bumper.
I suddenly realize that after surviving last night, I never have to worry about my driving ability again.
I snap back to the Here&Now and we’ve crossed a fast river in a little tin boat and are now jammed into a minivan(i.e. taxi) with ~20 other people on our way down to Quthing and from there via another minitaxi (they’re never ever full, you can always fit one more, and my knees are touching my chin and I can’t turn my head without waking up the sleeping people jammed next to me), another taxi to Mafeteng and from there a dusty ride to Van Rooyen’s gate to cross into SA, and one more long taxi ride in a blazing hot minivan(everyone here makes a point of riding with the windows tightly closed no matter what) with my legs wrapped around a five-gallon bucket of what I become acutely aware is a five-gallon bucked of Home Pride PVA acrylic paint, and we’ve been travelling 9 hours and we’re in Bloemfontein and neither of us has the wherewithal to speak anymore, so we wordlessly get our rental car and I clutch-shift out of Bloem and head south South SOUTH on the N1.
1,000 klicks later and it’s 3AM and we’ve been switching between driving and sleeping and Headley pulls off on the shoulder at a 3,000m pass overlooking Paarl saying he’s too tired to drive anymore, and so after a few tripod pictures of the glittering city below and the icily bright stars I put the car in neutral and we roll down the hairpin turns, pulling off to the side occasionally to let a double length 22-wheel trailer by at like 120 kph.
Capetown’s not really a 4AM kind of city, so to kill time I point towards the Cape of Agulis, the southernmost tip of the continent and since we’re back on a safe+sane section of the road I work back up to 5th and head out at 120kph towards Antarctica.
This area is the Winelands of SA, high mountains surrounding grape-filled valleys surrounded by temperate climates, and there are no lights for hundreds of square klicks at this hour, so I thread our VW Chico up and (neutral) down the mountains. Headley’s still dozing agains the window at 5AM when the sky starts to lighten and I’m engine-in-neutral rolling down a couple km in a nature preserve, pausing occasionally to avoid the springbok and occasional ostrich that venture into my lane. I pass though without making any fresh roadkill(or in the case of the ostrich , us-kill) and we roll into the town of Caledon.
Maybe it’s the sleep-dep or the effects of 1,100 klicks with the windows down at 120kph but my lids are starting to feel awful heavy, plus the added discomfort of having one of those monster African bugs fly through the open window and into my neck earlier in the night at like 140kph, drawing blood at impact and splashing bug-guts around my neck in a kind of MAD/D(Mutually Assured Destruction/Discomfort) final blow. I pull to the shoulder, rubbing my eyes with one hand while the other subconsciously tenderly explores the lump on my neck. Nudging Headley awake, I crawl into the passenger seat & lean against the window still warm from Headley’s head and pass into unconsciousness as we roll south through SA’s rolling pasturelands, the sun just boiling up behind the morning clouds and illuminating 1000s of square km of golden waist-high grasses.
Another couple hours and the smell of sea air wakes me up. We park our Chico and walk the last 870m down the point of Agulis, All around me are shattered, improbably slanted upthrusts of rock as a result of Africa sliding under Antarctica’s tectonic plate.
The sun is just high enough to start heating the ground, and the early morning winds whip at my shirt and send stinging sand into my bare ankles. Waves from the Atlantic & Indian oceans pound into the slanted rocky shoreline, throwing spray and a fine mist into the air.
I roll up my pants and walk South into the water, right and left feet in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, respectively. I turn back North to look at this gigantic continent towering over me and say “Good morning, Africa”
