The rain that started last night certainly cooled the temperature down, unfortunately the rain didn't stop. In fact it was still so heavy at 5:30am when we woke that we were uncertain whether we would actually be moving on. By 7am it had eased enough that we could put the tent down.
While dropping the tent, a mystery was solved. The day before, we had lost a bag of malaria tablets and were unable to find them anywhere. It seems that one of the towns monkeys must have grabbed the bag from the tent thinking that they were good to eat. Having discovered otherwise, somehow they got shoved back under the tent. We hope that no ill effects have come to the monkey, although it looks like it realised that they were inedible pretty quickly. With the tent packed away and our bikes loaded we were pleased to see that the rain had pretty much stopped. By 7:30am we were good to go.
For the next hour it was going pretty well and we arrived back in Mtubatuba in good time. We bought some snacks at the local supermarket and then set off to join the main road. Having checked the right way to go with four locals, we ended up doing a 6km detour down completely the wrong road! We have now finally learned that there is absolutely no point in asking a black South African directions. They either don't know but still guess, or are just completely clueless. The most annoying thing about the detour was that Debs was fairly certain that the road we needed was the one right beside the supermarket.
When we got back to the road we were supposed to be on, we set off at a decent pace. The weather however was determined to make our day on the road as awful as possible. The morning's rains returned with a vengeance and we were soon thoroughly drenched.
At one point the rain got so heavy that it was unsafe to continue. Despite having a flashing rear light, the spray was so heavy that we were concerned about being hit by a speeding vehicle driving in the hard shoulder. Fortunately the rain eased again and we carried on towards Empangeni.
We may have had to endure rain and soggy clothing, but somehow we managed to keep in good spirits all day. Shortly after 2pm we arrived at the Panorama guest-house, which is of course up a steep hill, and got checked into a nice room. Our lovely host has let us use her tumble drier, so we will have some dry clothing to wear tomorrow. Our shoes however may be a different story.
While Debs was resting, I headed back into town to get some dinner and food for breakfast tomorrow. The continuing rain means that we will be holing ourselves up in front of the TV for the rest of the day.
Udo, who left St Lucia much later than us, arrived shortly after 5:30pm having ridden hard all the way here. It will be good to have a beer with him tonight, before we head our separate ways tomorrow morning.
We have a shorter day to the Zulu town of Eshowe ahead of us. What it loses in distance it makes up for in altitude and we have a day of climbing. We will be hoping that the rain has stopped by the morning, not least because we should be camping again tomorrow night.
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