Go by bike from Pietermaritzburg to the Cape and no end of people will express surprise at your undertaking. Some will offer an opinion on your sanity.
On day 13, in the part of the Karoo known as the Camdeboo, this fellow stops his car and does just that. Now he gets out and introduces himself.
Normally, at such a time, you shake hands, but his hands are covered in blood, as is most of the bottom half of his body, his shirt, trousers and shoes. ”We got a kudu,” he says.
It is early nightfall and it is not clear where the kudu is, perhaps in the boot of his car, having being butchered to pieces. We have many kilometres to ride and we do not stop to ask.
I call ahead to tell our hostess for the night, Lisa Henderson, that we are on our way. ”Watch out for kudus,” she says.
I wonder what the warning can mean, but both our hosts last night and tonight have cars that are in for repair because of damage sustained by kudus running into them.
”They see the car lights and run at them,” says Steve Thomas, a Capetonian, who is my riding companion. So bad is the problem that one of the two hosts, the Jordaans, who run a game farm in the Swaershoek area, blast their hooter when driving on their farm at night, to stop kudus running at them.
We are well lit up with lights on our handlebars and helmets. I wonder what I would do if a kudu ran at me. I have a whistle in easy reach. Perhaps I could blow it?
But thoughts of being taken out by a kudu do not last long. The moon is full and we are traversing yet another stunning part of our country. Here we pass from poort to poort, criss-crossing dry river beds in endless, sweeping descents. It is as though these poorts have been put together as a giant jigsaw puzzle, just for our riding pleasure.
But let me go back to the beginning. Since 2004 a group of mountain bikers have made an annual pilgrimage to the Cape. Starting in Pietermaritzburg the day after Comrades, 13 people have since managed to complete the 2 300km ride to Paarl. All finishers get the same prize: a Basotho initiation blanket.
This year saw 16 entrants start the Freedom Challenge, of whom 14 were to finish. There is only about 60km of tar on the route, which traverses the most remote and pristine parts of the country.
It connects the country’s longest mountain ranges. On day four we enter the Drakensberg, only leaving this mighty range six days later. The trail also takes you through the Stormberge, the Bamboesberge, the Elandsberge, the Perdeberge, Baviaanskloof, the Droeberge, the Swartberge, the Anysberge and the DutoitsÂÂkloof, a total ascent of 36 000m, or four times the height of Everest.
In parts you follow historic paths where hunter-gatherers traversed or, from more recent times, disused bridle paths and wagon routes. You can also expect, at times, to be doing no more than following a compass direction as you seek the shortest route through the mountains.
Riders stay at prearranged stops where they can wash, eat and sleep plus pick up two-litre plastic boxes of supplies such as energy supplements and bike spares. Most of these stations are farmhouses but they include a school, B&Bs, trout and hunting lodges.
The riders carry everything else they need with them, including enough warm clothing to take on the worst weather the winter can throw at them, medical supplies, food, drink and bike spares.
For days as we work our way along the Drakensberg through KwaZulu-Natal and into the Eastern Cape, we hear reports of a cold front coming our way. One day, out of the hamlet of Rhodes (day eight), the wind starting blowing at gale force, strong enough to make you brace against the wind to avoid being knocked over.
The next day (day nine), it is snowing and the world is white. There is even snow in Jo’burg, for the first time in 26 years.
I have fallen behind the main group (day seven) after cycling with a stomach bug, which leaves me making numerous bush stops and reaching for the Immodium. Rehydrate keeps me going.
There are four inches of snow on the ground and heavy snowfalls as I start the day at first light. I wonder if I should be using snow tyres, which I have heard of, but do not know how these differ from normal tyres.
I know that as long as I am moving I will keep warm, so am not too worried about the conditions, which at higher levels are blizzard-like. Temperatures are usually relatively warm when it is snowing. Johannesburg-based Mike Woolnough records minus two in the worst of the snow compared with minus eight one morning at Toekomst in the Karoo.
I point my front wheel at the snow and start pedalling. I am in a cellphone reception area and my phone rings. Race director David Waddilove offers me an easier, shorter route because of the adverse conditions.
I take the tar road, which is almost deserted, to Molteno, and enjoy the spectacle of watching the few motorists who have ventured out, try to deal with the snow and ice.
A truck stops and a man emerges to grab my bike and give me a lift. I explain I don’t want a lift and then watch as they try to get the truck going again. Even though it has double wheels at the back, it cannot get purchase and starts slipping backwards.
I feel guilty that these Samaritans are in trouble because they tried to help me. After 15 minutes, they manage to get going and pass me with a cheery toot.
My gears freeze up, reducing me to a single gear. I am pleased as it is a good story to be able to relate. I try to chip the ice out, but this doesn’t work. But a dollop of Squirt, used to lubricate the chain without attracting dirt and dust, works. I have gears again.
The next morning, day 10, we drop into the Karoo, riding past the Vlekpoort, near Spitskop on the way to Hofmeyr, where in previous times tens of thousands of springbok skins were put on rocks to dry.
Tens of millions of these trek bokke, as they were known, came in great waves, particularly at the end of the 19th century. Today, single individuals still make annual treks, in some areas to join the local, domestic herds.
Because the domestic animals no longer trek to the best pastures, they are emaciated versions of the fine animals of former times. If we had to choose a buck for a national sporting emblem now, it would not be the withering springbok.
It would be the kudu, an impressive creature that thrives because it can easily scale a 1,8m fence or, as one hunter told us, ”3m if it has a koeël [bullet] behind it”.
The fences are coming down. The economics of these areas are changing as the nature conservation authorities, in part using foreign money, buy out farms to add land to the reserves at Addo, the BaviaansÂÂkloof and Mountain Zebra.
Addo aims to become the largest game reserve in Africa, bigger even than Kruger. It is punting its malaria-free status as a big draw- card to foreigners.
One farmer says a few years back land values were R500 a hectare. Then they doubled to R1 000 and now are at R4 000 as public and private entities buy up land. In a single case an American investor has spent tens of millions of dollars buying land to create a vast wildlife area.
So, marginal farms are rapidly being taken over for wildlife use. At the centre will be huge, publicly owned conservation areas with private areas adjoining.
Many farm houses are deserted. Farms are becoming larger and larger, but this still does not mean that the larger entity can be farmed economically. New buyers are often from the cities and use the farms for recreation only.
The kudus are coming back. One farmer tells us that 10 years ago there were no kudus in his area. Now there are plenty. Another has three on his land for the first time in yonks. The deserted farms have helped to bring these animals back, he says.
I ask one farmer why the fellow we met days back was covered with blood. There is a ritual among hunters that when you kill your first kudu, you cover yourself in its blood.
We cycle around the Darlington Dam (day 14) on the Sundays River. Soon elephants will be swimming here. Four cheetah have recently been introduced into Mountain Zebra Park (day 12) and six rhino are still getting used to their new home after a week in the Baviaanskloof (days 16 and 17).
South Africa is known as a country of contrasts, but no greater is this contrast than when you come up over the Drakensberg from the former Transkei into the southern Drakensberg. While 13ha may house a whole village in the former, the latter will support a single cow.
A striking feature of the area as you leave KwaZulu-Natal (day two) and cycle into the part of the country at one time known as no-man’s land and later the Transkei, is that the people are all linguists. You can stop, as I did, and ask a group of teenage girls how many languages they speak. The answer: four, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho and English.
Leaving Pietermaritzburg you cycle through large swathes of commercial farms under land claim. Cross the divide into the southern Drakensberg in the Eastern Cape and there are no such claims.
Not that the area is without a violent history, such as at the Tierberg near Prince Albert (day 17) where 120 Bushmen were massacred in the late 1700s.
The longest stretch is the 160km in the Karoo between Willowmore and Prince Albert. There are few farms here. We have battled headwinds for several hours when we see an aardvark and settle down to watch it. It gets closer and closer. Eventually it is only 10m away.
When we tell locals about this sighting later, all say this nocturnal creature is almost never seen.
”I feel so vaak,” says Thomas, who in his time has cycled across both the United States and Europe. We have only seen five cars the whole day, so we sleep in the road, being rudely awakened in a bit of time by the arrival of a sixth car.
A week into the event it is already hard to remember what day of the week it is. As the days pile up, the intensity of the experience means that what happened earlier seems to have occurred an eon ago, in another lifetime it seems so long ago.
Emotions can get raw. The single focus on what needs to be done coupled with the mesmerising beauty of the landscape means that the tears flow easily. But this is not crying. It’s weeping, from the sheer joy and intensity of it all.
By week three I am in a blissful, very happy place with no thoughts to think. I’m emotionally in neutral, at one with myself and my magnificent environment.
Then there are our hosts. If there is just one reason to cycle the breadth of this country it is to experience the warmth and generosity of the people who host us. This includes a poor community at Vuvu (day five) where we sleep in mud huts with tin roofs, and farmers who take us into their homes and lives.
Almost every day we wonder how Waddilove found the back routes that make up the trail.
The fact that it is an old right of way means that modern travellers can still use it. The title deeds of the farms often designate public rights of way, including old wagon paths. We, not infrequently in our route descriptions, are told to ignore the ”no entry” and ”road closed” signs.
We open and shut numerous farm gates and climb over or under locked gates that can be as high as 3m.
Our presence contributes to keeping these public rights of way open and, when I am asked in McGregor (day 21) if I am a freedom rider I answer with no small measure of pride in the affirmative.
Waddilove put the route together in 2003, cycling the whole thing from Cape Town to Pietermaritzburg. In 2004, he and two others cycled it in reverse direction. The trail has been named the Freedom Trail because it was first raced in 2004, coinciding with the country’s 10-year celebration of the advent of democracy.
Towards the end, I ask Steve Thomas why he is doing the ride. ”It is like Dick King or Paul Revere … ” he says, without finishing his sentence.
The first rider home, Maarten van Dalsen, reached Paarl on the 17th day in a record time, achieved in part through one session towards the end where he cycled non-stop for 37 hours. Thomas and I are last home on day 23, well within the 26-day cut-off.
We climb Lehana’s Pass on day six, a vertical one-kilometre ascent over about 5km, and rest near the top beside a cairn. We have come up the back of the dragon which now sprawls at our feet.
Earle Wakeford worked in mine rescue for 13 years on the West Rand before recently taking a package. He finishes the event even though he twisted his ankle badly in the early part of the ride. Now he rests alongside his bike.
”How can you explain this to anyone?” he asks, pointing at the mountain sprawling all around us. ”How can you describe this?” He is in good company. Alan Paton could only describe the hills through which we cycled a few days earlier as ”lovely beyond any singing of it”.
Now we are surrounded not by hills, but by mountains. Behind us is the Tenahead, a mighty buttress which soars so large and high that it appears to defy gravity. As I look at it, I think, as I do frequently as we visit yet another spot of crushing beauty, that English is not a language of the mountains.
Likewise the poort. You could not be a wagon driver, a horse rider, a hunter-gatherer or a mountain biker and not make use of poorts, natural cuttings that you use to traverse through the mountains. They follow river courses and are distinct from mountain passes. We cycle through the Karoopoort and the Perdepoort: you could not translate these as Karoopass or Horsepass.
It is hard to sum up an experience as life-affirming as this with words, which just won’t do the job, so let me use an image. It is not that I have enjoyed, liked or loved it. I am like the man with blood on his hands and the bottom half of his torso: I have revelled in it.