We’re cycling in Mozambique just the other side of the border of the Kruger National Park when we come across a group of men working on a fence.
We stop a short time later and discuss the work party. Most seem to think the fence was being put up. One cyclist thinks it was being taken down. I ask a television crew who filmed the workers: was the fence being taken down or put up? The answer: it is being taken down.
Welcome to the Tour de Kruger and Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, a five-day odyssey by bike to celebrate the establishment of the giant park.
The idea was to begin the tour at the brand-new gate of Giriyondo, coinciding with the opening by President Thabo Mbeki. The South African side of the border post is ready, but the Mozambicans are still building theirs. So we drove 10km or so down south to where an inauspicious gate was opened to allow us through.
There were about 100 cyclists, backed up by more or less equal numbers of supporters who’d cook the food, put up showers, drive Land rovers and trucks, run the bar, fix bicycles, massage weary muscles, hand out anti-chafing cream for weary backsides and take care of a thousand other tasks to run a tour like this.
Kruger officials do not allow cyclists to traverse the park, so we were ferried to the border. We were encouraged to carry bear bangers in case of attack. This is a cylinder the size and shape of a stubby pen that makes a ferocious noise when released, the noise frightening the animal. They have been shown to work in Zimbabwe, tour organiser Colin Bell of Wilderness Safaris solemnly told us. A quick check with the other 10 members of our group as we left border control showed, however, that for reasons not entirely clear, no one had chosen to carry a bear banger with them.
Large sections of the fence with Kruger have been taken down and people familiar with the area report seeing game, but the tour was to pass with few sightings.What we did see was mopani bushveld in its vastness.
The area across the border is almost uninhabited, save for a few villages, which seem to hark back to the Iron Age. They appear at least as old as the giant baobabs that grow in some of them. How people survive in so bleak an environment is anybody’s guess. There appears to be no food, no water. The villagers’ dogs lie thin and listless, clinging to life in the extremities of existence.
Markus Hofmeyr of SANParks says the reintroduction of game into the Limpopo National Park began in 2001 with Peace Parks funding. Twenty-five elephant were introduced, but all returned within a couple of months. Two years later, a group of these elephants returned to Mozambique and is still there. Sanctuaries have subsequently been established in parts of the park and more border fences have been removed, surveys showing that the area is being colonised by animals.
Day one
Our route took us 86km on day one to our overnight stop at the village of Chimangue. The cyclists carry fancy technology on their wrists or bikes. Among others, these measure heart rate, altitude and temperature. We’re in an altitude range between 300m and 100m and have cycled through temperatures approaching 40°.
The days quickly take on a routine. We’re up before the striking African sunrise and pack a bag to go on a flatbed truck directly to the next stop. A smaller bag goes with the Landrover that travels with each group. Landrover club members bring just one of a set of volunteers who provide time and equipment to make the tour possible.
We eat a breakfast of rusks, bananas and muffins washed down with tea or coffee and cycle 20km or so to the first tea stop. Here we wolf down fruitcake, dried mango, chocolate, energy bars, wine gums and apples, while quaffing Powerade and more tea and coffee. If you’re nibbly in between, there’s more food on the support Landrover.
Then we cycle another 30km to the brunch stop, where we eat baguette sandwiches with tuna and chicken or cold meats with toppings of fresh salads and a nutty couscous salad.
After another 20km to 30km we arrive at the overnight stop, where we eat chicken and/or beef burgers with the freshest chips. Supper is a culinary tour de force from bush caterers Mango. The menu is too varied to detail here, but take it as an indication of the standard that every night it is accompanied by freshly baked bread.
Day two
We take a loop along a track even less well-travelled than those we have been on until now, traversing cliffs overlooking the Shingwedzi. The view from the tea stop is of the riverbed below and a sweeping, vast expanse of mopani bush. It is easy to imagine, as more fences come down, that this wonderful vista will team with life.
And then, after lunch, a kill. We pull out of the lunch spot and cycle a few kilometres when we see vultures circling a few hundred metres off the track. Several of our party, sans bear bangers, head for a closer look. Renzo Blasa arrives in his Landrover and points out that if the vultures are in the air it means the lions are still feeding on the carcass. We decide to cycle on.
And now, Makandezulo A. Our route is marked by arrows, which tell us at infrequent forks in the track which way we should go. One, it turns out, was set incorrectly. We end up on a 25km expedition through bottomless sand. We push, curse and fall off. It is very hot. We run out of liquid. Spirits sink. It seems the sand will never end, that we will spend the rest of our days pushing our bikes through deep, soft sand. The track has a name: Makandezulo A.
Amazingly, we find out later, four riders in group one cycled all the way. Such is their technique, fitness and endurance. But we’re also learning to deflate tyres in soft sand and generally how it is done: bring your weight back, wiggle the front bars to break down resistance, choose as easy a gear as you can and build up as much speed as possible. Drinks that night, as a consolation, are free.
Day three
There’s more sand as we head towards the Limpopo. At Mapai (a relative metropolis compared with what we have seen) we drink cold 2M beer and eat fresh rolls from a wood-fired oven.
Our cycling tops blow in the wind on the washing line of the Samaria mission station as we pass by. Here too is the tree in which the woman gave birth during the floods of 2000.
The mission has been contracted to supply heavy-duty vehicles to help move the 80 to 100 tons of equipment travelling with the tour. It emerges that a clinic, which the mission is building, has stood incomplete for two years because of a shortage of funds. Wilderness Safaris offers to match donations by cyclists and R36 000 is raised for the building to be completed by the time the tour passes through next year.
Our tents that night are pitched in the riverbed of the mighty Limpopo, which has its origins as the Braam-fontein spruit in Johannesburg. I have done much of my training for this event along this spruit. Improbably, the spruit has more water in it than the Limpopo, which is not flowing at all.
Day four
We head north along the Limpopo flood plain towards the Pafuri border post where we’ll re-enter South Africa and the Kruger after travelling through forests of fever trees and avenues of baobabs. We can cycle this portion of Kruger with the permission of the Makuleke people. Dispossessed of their land between the Luvuvhu and Limpopo rivers in the 1960s, the Makuleke were one of the first successful land claimants. They opted for their land to remain part of the Kruger. Concessionaires now operate tourist facilities there on their behalf.
Day five
We don’t even notice the two buffalo near the gate as we head off 40km to the buses and a tar road back to civilisation. We’ve cycled 350km and are high on the wonder of wilderness. We’ve paid R8 000 each for the privilege or raised this money from sponsors.
More than 30 sponsors kick in further to ensure that the maximum amount goes to the two beneficiary charities — Children in the Wilderness, which brings rural children to parks for environmental and life skill orientation, and Peace Parks Foundation, which is amalgamating these and other parks. In all, R360 000 was raised. Peace Parks’s Craig Beech, who rode the tour, says the intention is for it to become an annual fundraising event.
My best moment was cycling alone on day four toward the border post at Pafuri. Some of the Mozambican buildings still have no roofs or windows. In Cold War times, there was no border traffic here. It was a heavily fortified, no-go area. Now we have brunch in no-man’s land between the two countries and cross from one to the other by bicycle.