Day 110 Tuesday April 30 Springbok to Garies

 by Henry

117 km, 1339 m total ascent, 26°C maximum. There is an autumnal morning chill in the air.

We ended up having a gusty tailwind or a cross-tailwind most of the day.

 

Cape Town appeared as a destination on a sign today.

 

 

Ostrich near the highway this morning.

   

Three different views of the Richtersveld with mountains in the background. Today’s ride was quite hilly. We started at 900 m elevation, dropped to 400 m, climbed back up to 900 m, and ended up at 200 m. In between, there were numerous intervening ups and downs.

  

The final 10 km of the day was a great downhill cruise with an expansive view of the valley below.

 

Garies, as viewed from the N7 exit ramp. We arrived relatively early at 1 PM.

Colleen had surprised the group at last night’s rider meeting with an announcement that TDA had reserved a guest room for everyone in Garies. This required reserving nearly every room available in town. TDA has also pulled this off in prior years. Normally, the plan would be to camp in the city park, but because of the combination of failed infrastructure and severe drought, there is no plumbing or water for showers or toilets in the park. To help conserve water, we were asked to limit our showers to 3 minutes in our guest rooms. 

 

We stashed our bikes in the congregation hall of the local church overnight. TDA staff members would be sleeping in the hall to guard them.

Our daily bags had been dropped off at each guest house ahead of time, so all we had to do was walk to our assigned guest house and check in.

We were informed ahead of time that there might be electrical “load shedding”, so electricity could be turned off for many hours. It turns out there are national elections next month, and there was no electrical outage today . . .

About six different guest houses were utilized. We were assigned to Die Kleine Werf (The Small Farmyard), which consisted of several buildings.

 

The entry to our room, which was in this building.

The tourist shop next door had delicious carrot cake, and good coffee.

We took an afternoon nap in an air-conditioned room, an incredible luxury.

 

We walked back down the main street to the church for our usual daily rider meeting at 5:45 PM, followed by dinner at 6 PM.

Tomorrow is our longest remaining riding day in terms of distance, at 160 km. We will be greeting the long-awaited Atlantic Ocean.