Expedition Africa

The Injisuthi Road

Rob Howard / 09.05.2013

When teams left mid-camp for their second trek they were setting out from the aptly named Champagne Valley, and the Drakensberg Peak Resort.  The valley is a place of vivid green lawns, plush shops, hotels and picture perfect ranches all served by an excellent road.

When they finished their trek they emerged from the abseil section into the Injisuthi valley, which runs close to and parallel to the Champagne Valley, and is a very different place altogether. The road here was full of potholes and flanked by women workers who cut the wild grass at the roadside, their faces painted red with mud and large floppy hats protecting them from the sun. This valley was full of small farmsteads, thatched huts, schools bursting at the seams with children, cattle, goats, and hundreds of people walking along the road.  There could not have been a greater contrast.

From the abseil the teams emerged in an uninhabited reserve, but finished the trek at the Eqhiweni School at the start of the inhabited section of the valley. The transition was inside the school compound, and like many schools here it housed many hundreds of smiling, and very curious, children. It was here the teams put their bikes together again for the 163km ride on the next stage, which they began by riding down the potholed road, one which was busier with pedestrians than cars.  It certainly didn’t have any other mountain bikes on it.

One team destined not to make the ride however were Merrell Adventure Addicts, the defending champions.  They arrived in a poor state, and a downcast mood, uncertain whether they could go on.  New team member SanMari Woithe had severely blistered feet and Donovan Sims was still suffering with his leg injury from a cycling accident early in the race.  There followed an uncomfortable 3 hours during which the team separated, each settling somewhere around transition to come to terms individually with whether they could or should go on, and the prospect of quitting the race.

Craig Carter-Brown seemed the most relaxed, laying in a tent and teaching one of the marshals various knots, and in the end all came together to make the decision that they must withdraw, a hard thing for S. Africa’s top team of recent years to do. Sims rang Race Director Stephan Muller to tell him, and the team then got a lift back to race HQ with their injured team Captain Graham Bird.  (It had been hard for him to watch from the sidelines as well.)

The next team to arrive where another S. African team, Red Ants, and their mood was very different. They were cheerful and joking, though Brian Gardner was more subdued. Nathan Thompson asked him, “What’s happened in the last 20k, you’ve lost all your personality?”  Gardner replied, “I never had one anyway!”  They were all sat close together eating, very much a unit.  Since Merrell’s bikes were there and they had no exit time they figured out their rivals had withdrawn, but as Corbus van Zyl said, “It really makes no difference to what we do – we just carry on.”

As they were finishing unpacking their bikes to carry on the klaxon went for the school break and they soon had a huge and inquisitive audience surrounding them and watching their every action. From the children’s viewpoint to see such strangely dressed people taking bikes out of boxes and assembling them must have seemed strange, even incomprehensible. Then, just before they left the klaxon went again and the crowd reluctantly returned to class – well most of them, a few were late and who could blame them.

The team then rode out of the school gates and down the Injisuthi Road for the first 20km of their mammoth ride, which would take them back towards the finish line.