Expedition Africa Part 1 - A Near Perfect Race

German Cuevas/AdvFeel Communication (Edited by Rob Howard) / 11.06.2015

When you think of an adventure race, what will come to mind are many ideas that may be difficult to gather in one real race, but at "Expedition Africa 2015 in Swaziland" you could say that much of what I thought of as an ideal race was fulfilled.

I was wondering this morning as I was about to start writing this and was looking at the live race website.

I'll write anyway, whether from home you know everything from the fantastic photos and videos of the race. A large number of photographers were following the race hour by hour through the event, looking for interesting locations and press updated the web and Facebook information. Maybe at times there was a problem with the internet or phone connection as you might expect in Swaziland. It is a country where children go walking barefoot to school for 15 km or more, hotel boilers run on coal, and there a thousand more examples of a country where people do not have many facilities.

But it is not a backward country, the telephone connection is very good as a whole, they have a very acceptable major road network although other roads have countless potholes and the riders found this out when the covered 155km on such roads.

By following the Team Peak Performance at the end of the long bike section could you see that it was almost impossible to stay on the bike.  There were endless ups and downs full of small ruts, a real strain on the forearms as trying to maintain pressure on the handlebars was an impossible mission ...

The first section of Expedition Africa Swaziland 2015 was climbing the mountain of Sibebe Rock, a mountain that is a huge chunk of granite on which there is little vegetation. It was spectacular to watch the runners, becoming a small group of ants crawling on top, with the sun rising behind the hill, or as small shadow profiles on the ridge, tiny, invisible, if it were not for the zoom lenses. The descent was slightly easier, moving around typical country fields in low, very dry vegetation and some groups of granite boulders between 1 and 3 meters in size.

This entire section was an endless trek between small huts constructed with mud or with material that could be scavenged, through some parks with lot of small animals. (Here a small animal is one that is no bigger than a person, impalas, and a host of other different species.)

Section 2 was at the entrance of Malatoja Nature Reserve and was a section of short but intense activity with a rappel and a good number of jumps on a canyon stage. Some racers told us later that the water was really cold.

After leaving the canyon teams began a kayak section of 22km, crossing a quiet river and ending at Maguga Dam Reservoir. Here are the teams arrived at a small beach next to the reservoir. The first came in at 6 pm, but here it's the dead of night at that time. And they had to climb an artificial rock wall about 10 meters high if they did not want to walk about 2km to go around. One of the Estonian team started walking in that direction, but quickly returned and took the shortest route.

After 2.5km walking they came to the Nature Interpretation Centre on the other side of the dam. A group of people had gathered to pray and you could hear them singing right next to where the boxes were stored. .

At this point the teams climbed on their bikes to travel the next 69 km, crossing some nature reserves and they were covered in the red dust of the roads, a fine powder that makes it almost impossible to breathe.

The next transition was an uninhabited house on a plantation. Some teams took the chance to sleep or eat in peace here, by the fire in a relaxed atmosphere. When we arrived in the morning, the leaders of the race had left about 4 hours ago and we met the mid-pack teams. All were very happy and they told us how good the course was, and how cold it was at night. In the highlands the temperature dropped to 4 degrees C.

This was the beginning of a short trek of 4km and a cave discovered by Swazi Trails Adventure. The distance took about 60 minutes through narrow galleries in a circular loop with some tight squeezes.

Some racers preferred not to go in. “Is this necessary,” they asked, “it comes back out to the same place. I think I’m out.” They preferred to wait, chatting with the race marshal.

After this section racers started the gruelling section of 155km through Barias reserves, where you could you see a large numbers of animals. They even passed a place full of crocodiles and hippos called Wall hippos ... Lucky it was not kayak section!  

A small trek then took them back towards T4 (also TA7).

Part two to follow.

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