Old Legs Tour Angola 2024 – Day 9

Jaime had been on the nebulizer the night before, and Linda had joined the dreaded flu that afternoon, harbingers of things to come. This flu is terrible.  The first 36 hours is dreadful. Add to that long days, sleepless nights, relentless and uncomfortable bone-jarring uplifts on terrible roads…Shortcut sensed the mood was turning ugly.

Shortcut attempted a peace offering, on a mission to bring tea to his two darlings. But his plan backfired spectacularly. Cornered by his troops, trapped and on treacherous ground, he was issued a stern ultimatum: “Rethink this!” Sensing danger in the room, he spied a gap in the doorway and made a daring escape, only to collide with another group of disgruntled mutineers who made similar noises.

Luckily though, Captain Shortcut had had sufficient rest and having regained his composure, proposed a strategic retreat: ending the day 85km short at Barotsi Tiger Camp in Mongu. The mutiny was temporarily quelled by this concession, and to his great relief, the revised route raised a cheer or two.

Sunrise over the Zambezi River, over the Ngonye Falls somewhere to the east, was just beautiful, and breakfast whipped up by Silvia was wolfed down by the hungry pack, led as usual by the Watermeyer brothers. In the light of day, Whispering Sands truly lives up to its name.  The views from the restaurant are spectacular and were certainly worth the toil that it took to get there.

After breakfast, Christopher was in some dire need of running repairs. Our engineers, Laurie and Mark, quickly identified that the disconcerting clicks and occasional grinding noises coming from the undercarriage were not associated with any visible or invisible problem. Gus asked whether they had checked the U-J’s, and even as the words left his mouth, he was scrambling to suck them back in as he met their insulted stares.

After some quick repairs to Christopher’s roof branding, we set off for Ngonye Falls, a mere 6km away. Two hours later, we arrived.

Yes, you guessed it, this intrepid group of adventurers got lost. Again. Remarkably, the blame was not on Captain Shortcut this time, and even better, the falls themselves were so spectacular, the water, the incredible volcanic rock sculpturing, the spray… that the mutiny dissolved and all was forgiven as we sat and looked in awe at the falls in front of us.

We lost Alastair “the Forager” Watermeyer for a short while, but having travelled over 9,000 km through Africa with him in the past, all our money was on him slipping off for a skinny dip in the Falls. Unbeknownst to our hapless adventurer, eagle-eye Dave had spied him, and as we speak, is holding him to ransom for the rights of the video of Ali slipping off his kit and lying blissfully in the cool Zambezi water, baring all to the sky with the waterfall pumping behind him.

It was now midday, and we still had 180 km to get to our destination of Mongu. We started the ride knowing that it was not going to be the full distance, made more difficult by it being a really hot day, but everyone seemed to be happy to be on their bikes again, and we had fun learning to peloton together. Despite the illness ravaging so many of us, we set a very respectable pace of 24 km per hour into a headwind over a 50 km distance.

Meanwhile, Jaime had been left behind, and Alastair, ever the gentleman, noticed and turned around to ride with her, taking turns to ride into the wind, swapping after each kilometer peg. There is a reason Adam chooses to uplift on tar roads; they are straight, hot with no shade, and Updulating. If you’ve followed our blogs over the years, you will know that Updulating is not a typo; it’s just a more accurate word to describe what it’s like to ride on undulating terrain.

As you have gathered by now, our days are long, and there is a lot of riding, but also a lot of uplift when we aren’t riding at all. This is because our destination is further than we have ever attempted before, and we had not considered the punishing toll that bumpy backroad travel would take on our sick passengers in the back of Christopher.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, we finally rolled into Mongu, the search for accommodation and a campsite proving fruitless. Then, a distress call crackled over the radio: “We need a mechanic; the white car is down”. Luckily the Old Legs team lives for adventure, so we embraced the challenge with our usual enthusiasm. It turned out to be a case of mistaken fuel, diesel instead of petrol. Laughter could be heard throughout the town of Mongu.

At least Shortcut isn’t in the hot seat tonight.

Thanks for following our journey to raise money and awareness for pensioners in Zimbabwe – we love reading your comments and are so grateful for your support.  Your encouragement travels with us – a vital part of the #PowerBehindThePedals!

Until next time, Have Fun.  Do Good.  Do Epic.

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