Expedition Africa

Rapids and Rhinos

Rob Howard / 07.05.2013

On Day 2 the race is spreading out but the competition at the front remains very close and through the first night and second morning the lead has changed hands several times. Leaving Transition One the leaders were the 3 S. African teams who had taken the Ifidi Pass. Heading into the transition at Muweni Cultural Centre they were a little downcast, thinking they had made the wrong choice, but spirits lifted when they arrived to find themselves in the lead.

The centre is a small camp with a reception area and kitchen, and several sleeping huts, ideal for a transition, though the race had to put up a large marquee to house the bike boxes.  When teams had unpacked and assembled their bikes they could mark up their route from the master maps onto their own, and for this leg had to waterproof the maps as they had a swim ahead of them at the beginning of the next stage.

Arriving in the dark and after a tough first stage the teams took great care with their map preparation, but the fatigue was starting to show and mistakes were being made.  Haglofs Silva were very thorough on their map marking, but then left a map holder in their bike box, which had been packed away onto a trailer, and worse they left one of the maps behind and had to return to get it, losing a lot of time.

It was a relatively short ride to T2, but Merrell Adventure Addicts were also feeling the pressure of competition and missed CP10, having to go back and get it after arriving at the transition.  Perhaps being rushed due to the mistake, Donovan Sims crashed off his bike while they were going back to the missed CP receiving a nasty scrape on his leg.  This needed medical attention, which lost the team more time.

Stage 3 was the long paddle and this began with a cold swim to reach the kayaks.  It was only a few hundred metres but even with the heat from the braziers burning on the far side teams were shivering violently after clambering out of the water. Once on the water the paddle was a mix of river and reservoir, with several portages and towards the end a 4km section of rapids.

Before reaching the rapids Haglofs Silva had retaken the lead, but it was still close with the top 5 teams arriving there within an hour. These were Haglofs Silva, Merrell adventure Addicts, Cyanosis, Raidlight and Red Ants, who were falling off the back of the lead group a little.

The rapids were not severe, but were testing enough to cause a few spills.  Cyanosis had a boat tip on the first rapid, and by the end Red Ants had taken 3 swims and lost a paddle.  They described themselves as ‘a bit overdone’ at the end of the stage.

This was at the boat club on the SpioenKop reservoir which is within a wildlife reserve. So while getting the first two cps of the following ride the teams were on the lookout for giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and even Rhino, though no one reporting seeing one of those. (Except race director Stephan Muller who said was standing nearby when he put out CP15.)  Teams passing through at night will miss this chance unfortunately as they begin their second ride of the race which takes them to midcamp at Transition 4.

At mid camp all teams will have an enforced 4 hour stop and a hot meal provided, and on night two that is likely to affect the leading 7 or so teams.  They won’t be the only ones in bed however, several teams have been stopped for the whole night at CP14, as they are not allowed onto the rapids in the hours of darkness.  So, one way or another it will be a more restful night for many of the Expedition Africa teams.

Full leaderboard details, timings and tracking are on the live race website at http://www.kineticgear.org/