Day 2 - the sahara ride

Being a democracy we let a late start dominate the general plan. This did make a bit of sense due to the late hour we came in, but the cooker was going when we got moving.

The general consensus was that our saddles were not as comfy as the previous day, but the scenery was great. Before we knew it, the scratchy bits started. We ignored the rifle signs and headed up the wagendrift valley, to get some water at the empty lodge. Another gem of a spot in the wildernis.

By now the mercury was surely in the 30's and shade is hard to find in these parts. Having a new GPS with the route loaded we followed some teething red herrings before correctly riding up a sandy dry river bed that went on and on. Some pushing and swearing finally got us onto the nicely graded main road.

Not for long as we took the sneaky unmarked north entrance route into Anysberg reserve. By now lunch was required in a shady spot and the famed mevrou fourie from klein spreutelfontein gave us a willow tree. We were expecting at least some coffee and maybe some beskuit but her legendary hospitable reputation seems to be something I read about on the internet.

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

Doing our best to escape the heat with a snooze, we finally realised that a swimming pool was only about 25km at the reserve camp. Unfortunately most of it was saaaandy. It takes skill to keep the bike going and don't put a foot down until you're about to fall over.

Even though it was 'just' 65km, camp was an awesome oasis. We had booked a cottage here, the big splurge of the trip. Main reason for this was that camping was 'fully booked'. In the end we shared the entire place with two ladies camping. Our cottage was actually being renovated as they were adding a third braai to go with the drum.

The big attraction here was the pool. It's an old reservoir with a deck, so we pretended like we had cold beer and did diameters.

Anysberg is an interesting place, it's only been a reserve for 10 years and the cottages are very nicely spruced up cottages. But karoo worker's cottages are made with corrugated roofs and they suffer from hotboxalitis. Not bringing tabard we were inbetween a rock and a hot place,with all the mozzies buzzing outside.

So that's how we ended up with fancy duvets under the stars....