Expedition Africa
The Party is Over - The Last Teams are Still to Come
Kerryn Krige / 13.06.2015
We're waiting for our last two teams to cross the finish line. The SIM cards on the trackers seem to have run out of airtime, so we're trying to load data manually so we can track them. We know they are not far - but just not sure on how far that not far is.
Last nights party was fun - amazing how adventure racers, stiff from 450kms of racing, can transform a wooden deck into a dance floor. Then Michelle, who has been heading up operations here at Race HQ, somehow rustled up 60-odd beers for a showdown of Who Can Drink The Fastest. With an upturned bottle of beer on his head, Tweet Graham Bird came through as the winner, proving that adventure racing and beer drinking are highly compatible.
What was great about last night is that conversation moved past war stories, and folk got to chat to each other. The Backpackers has an enormous braai, several metres long, and in the smoke and fire, the chatter was varied from "what is this braai thing?" (a question that was followed by enthusiastic explanations of building fires and secret family recipes for boerewors) to countries and home towns ("New Caledonia? Sorry? WHERE?).
Team Royal Airforce were fulfilling their finish line requests for lots of lager, impressive considering they'd finished only 3 hours earlier.
Many of the South African teams took part in the Swazi Xtreme races in the 2000's, and there was a fair mix of reminiscing. Amazing what beer and nostalgia does: by the second round of drinks, the Swazi Xtreme was an effortless flat race, filled with laughter, big blue skies and frolicking lambs. By the third round, the race practically had its own soundtrack of choirs and violins. By the fourth round we were all going to head out and redo the race as we were invincible.
It was a great evening - festive and fun, silly and relaxed.
Naturally, it's a quieter start this morning as hangovers and stiffness have slowed wake-up times, but we're excited to cheer our last teams across the line, and celebrate at prize giving tonight.
SleepMonsters
