Up at 5am this morning, which is fine as thanks to the noisy workers staying in the next tent we wouldn't have been able to stay asleep anyway. Shortly after 6am we loaded the bikes onto Angus' car roof rack and set off towards Butterworth. We were immediately thankful that we had taken a lift when we were greeted by a thick mist obscuring the road and surrounding hills. The main roads are fun enough as it is, without the added risk of being barely visible!
Despite being for the main part very rural, we don't feel that we have missed much by not riding this section. The landscape was certainly not as dramatic as we had been cycling through for the last few days. Passing Nelson Mandela's house was a bit of a highlight. We had obviously planned on stopping on the way through to ask if we could camp in his 'Ground Force' prepared garden, had we have been cycling. Having seen the fence and security outpost, it would be fair to say that the answer would have been no!
Passing Butterworth, we stopped for a coffee at the bottom of the Kei Cuttings. The cuttings were originally a border post separating the Transkei into its original two districts. Now it is a good place to stop for a coffee, especially if you are cycling. The steep nature of the cuttings makes it a good place to fortify yourself for the climb out. Obviously we didn't have to worry about that, as we were dropped just the other side. At a little after 8am we said a very grateful thank you to Angus and pedalled on our way towards Chintsa West and our home for a few days, Buccaneers backpackers.
Thankfully by now, the mist had lifted and we had a pretty easy 40km ride to our destination. The steep, rocky, dirt road down to the reception was a little unexpected and is going to be fun on the way out. Fortunately that isn't for a few days though!
Having checked in, we headed down to the camp-site and found ourselves a shady spot under some trees. Once we were settled in, we headed to the pool restaurant and had lunch and then sat down to wait for the advertised treasure hunt to start.
It wasn't so much the treasure hunt that had attracted us, as the promise of free wine! On top of the beers that we had had during lunch it looked to be a fairly drunken afternoon. Showing our true competitive natures, we are pleased to say that we won the treasure hunt, by quite some margin. In truth we didn't have a huge amount of competition, but you can only beat what is in front of you. We certainly attacked the challenge with plenty of enthusiasm, especially in the case of our team leader, the very excitable Debs. Better still the prize was a free dinner in the restaurant, which was great as we currently have no supplies with us at all.
The treasure hunt was followed by volleyball at which I have to confess to being pretty terrible. The wine and beer was probably why I seemed to spend a large amount of the match on the floor with the ball bouncing unreturned beside me.
The Mexican dinner in the restaurant turned out to be pretty good, but for two people who had been up at 5am and then had a rather full afternoon, it proved to be the last act of the day. To say that we have enjoyed our first day at Buccaneers is something of an understatement.
Congratulations on winning the treasure hunt.
ReplyDeleteLove from Mum and Dad xx