OSTRICH EGGS AND CLAMPED PIPES

We arrived in Cape Town without further incident and spent 2 weeks fixing things. We had the king pin in the steering column repaired, we shopped for pipes and engineering places for braising, filters, bike spares for servicing my bike, food, more pipes, books, clamps, etc. Theo fitted the inverter, the solar panel on the roof, the fridge is working on gas as well as electricity, our shower works and he’s fitted pipes to run the veggie oil. We managed to catch up with old friends but I felt like a foreigner balancing on a bar stool and all that concrete and noise and throwing banana skins in the dustbin seemed wasteful. Pavements, shops and electrical gadgets replaced mountains, peacefulness and fynbos. I missed simplicity but was disappointed in how easy it is to slip back in.

A friend decided to catch a lift with us as far as Oudtshorn to visit some friends. Luckily Arno, our passenger, is easy go lucky since our trip started with problems. Previous mishaps like broken gear levers seemed trivial compared to this. We got as far as the Worcester tunnel when the fuel pipe started sucking air so we plakked there for 2 nights while Theo tried to tighten the clamps and bleed the fuel pipe. We eventually got Keith (brother in law) and his diesel mechanic buddie to come through to help us out. They were startled at Theo’s assortment of connections, pipes and clamps but they managed to get us going again.

The Meiringspoort Pass between Prince Alfred Hamlet and Oudtshoorn is really pretty and I lost count of the times we crossed the river drifts. Unfortunately the Swartberg Pass was not possible in our long bus since the sign recommended 4 x 4 vehicles.

We arrived at Oudtshoorn, a town renowned for ostriches, the Cango Caves and crocodile farms and stayed with our biker friends, Martin and Peta. We enjoyed their hospitality for 2 nights, braaied yummy ostrich steaks and ostrich sausage, visited a dusty museum, and bought a ostrich egg. I’m looking forward to it for breakfast although 1 ostrich egg is the same size as 24 regular eggs. I’ll tell my mother, who is fascinated at the amount of eggs we go through, that we’ve progressed to ostrich eggs, that should give her a laugh.

Then we joined Arno at the farm in Oudtshoorn. His friend works and stays on a huge, busy, dairy farm called Bakenkloof. Life there is simple and I loved it. I was in my element walking around in wellies in the mud and brushing the horses, and drinking wine around a fire watching the sunset, and feeding the calves milk from a bottle and picking peacan nuts and sitting on a crate in the sun shelling them. Piet’s wife showed me how to make butter and she gave me delicious buttermilk, yoghurt and milk. Theo made a huge peacan pie for everyone and we were ready to leave to travel further north.