This report may be a little bit delayed due to various fall recreational activities (Motard/Dirt Bike riding, kayaking, skiing, good singletrack, shoveling snow, etc) distracting me, but it definitely needs to be filed. Definitely the best trip of the year for me on many fronts. Simply being on a new continent was amazing, getting to explore it from many angles with some local knowledge was even better, and checking out a new type of race and competition environment in general was the icing on the cake for this kid.
Things started off with meeting (for the first time) Jamie Simon of Red Bull US at the gate in the Atlanta airport for the long flight to Johannesburg. I began by thanking her profusely for thinking of inviting me on this trip as the Mountain Biker for the four person relay team Red Bull US was fielding for the event (the rest of the athletes were: Tim Deboom, Mountain Run, Othar Lawrence, Paragliding and Adam Koch, Kite Surfing). I think I actually spent more time thanking her for setting up the first leg of our trip, to Livingstone, Zambia to kayak the Zambezi river for five days and check out some sub-saharan culture. Soon enough we were on the first eight hour leg of our flight before a fuel/crew change stopover in Isle de Sal in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Dakar. After a bit of a bumpy landing we learned that the Airbus we were aboard has blown it’s hydraulics and wouldn’t be going anywhere, as the Airbus store on the tiny island was closed for the night… We retired to the tiny, airport bar where we found some fellow travelers with cards, volunteered to buy them drinks if they’d play cards with us and found a table in the open air courtyard for a few (hours of) games of rummy. After a goodly while busses arrived, we got swimwear out of our luggage and were delivered to a hotel (more like bungalows on th! e beach) for the night with instructions to “check in” on the status of the flight, meaning a day long delay was probable. Fortunately we woke the next afternoon on the beach, went for a swim and cruised around checking out a desert island paradise that we would otherwise never have discovered. Our only regret was that we didn’t awake early enough to take advantage of the surfboard rentals that my run down the beach discovered. Maybe next time…
After some serious airport struggling we arrived in Livingstone a day late (and a dollar short for me, turns out ATMs aren’t exactly on every corner in Zambia, or anywhere for that matter…) but excited to be there. One of Jamie’s old friends and a Red Bull kayaking athlete, Steve Fisher and his girlfriend Desere Pickers were already at our backbackers lodge, Fawlty Towers, unloading boats and gear from their epic drive up from their home country of South Africa. We helped unload and soon were on our way to the gorge rim above Rapid #7 for sundowners and discussing the coming days. Watching the sun set and the moon rise above the second biggest rapid on the river was an amazing way to start off our trip and made the travel struggling disappear altogether. We then went out to celebrate Jamie’s birthday with an authentic African barbecue buffet style dinner. Turn! s out cow tail is pretty tasty when done right.
The next day was day one on the extremely large Zambezi river. Steve basically grew up paddling here, so we figured we were in good hands and, after some basic instruction, followed him into the maw of each and every rapid, from #1-13. Huge haystacking waves, immense holes ! and general chaos abounded in the larger rapids, with the smaller ones giving us a chance to keep our eyes open and get a feel for the volume of water (which was actually relatively low at 25,000 cubic feet per second) on hand. I made it to number eight without incident, then was given instructions to paddle as hard as I could then “tuck and duck” (make yourself as small as possible) through the massive hole. Turns out I was a bit far right and not tucked or ducked enough, resulting in getting stopped by the hole and tossed back upstream like the human in a small kayak I was. Upon reentering the water my borrowed paddle promptly broke in half and both pieces left my hands. This put me in the precarious position of rolling using my hands (large hole followed by large waves, didn’t happen) or exiting my! kayak and going for a little swim. Turns out warm water, and big waves make for a fairly entertaining swim and Steve assured me that there were no crocs or hippos in this particular pool (if I were in another pool I might want to swim harder). We gathered my gear and Steve kept to his decade old code of taking the broken paddle of a newbie and running the rest of the river with it while the unfortunate soul used his intact stick. After a short portage around the immense rapid we arrived at one of the great surf waves of the world, the infamous 12B. Steve confessed that this was a “trashy” level and proceeded to make it look easy, encouraging Jamie and I to try it out. I was skeptical but was happy to observe Jamie (the ’95 freestyle kayaking world champion) f! ire it up and promptly flip, a couple times, lose her paddle and swim for it… I took this as fair warning and we moved downstream through the huge waves of #13 to our takeout, where our porters were eagerly awaiting to carry our boats the couple hundred meters up the gorge wall to the truck. It cost $1 per boat for them to get carried up and it is respected custom to hire porters and support the struggling local economy (85% unemployment after the textile industry shut down in Livingstone). I was a feeling a bit lazy about not carrying my boat until about halfway up the black walled gorge in triple digit heat. Instead I rode my bike the 20k back to the lodge everyday. We ran the river three times in four days and gradually got more comfortable with the size and w! eight of the water, I eventually even saddled up and ran number nine, properly… The time on the river was amazing, but it turned out to be only one small aspect of an amazing time.
We did all kinds of other random stuff, going shopping in the open air markets for foodstuffs and curios (souveniers) was particularly interesting. The locals have a way of putting something in your hand and making you ! buy it, even if it’s a ceramic soap dish. There were three particularly entertaining evening activities, two were sort of typical tourist stuff with a twist, the other was quite unique. Our second night started with a visit to our porter, Makuma’s village for a visit with his extended family. We spent a couple hours in the thatched courtyard watching the locals sing and dance as the day faded into a beautiful sunset. From there we went straight to the full moon gorge swing party down at the river. Basically you had dinner (or not for the queasy), were tied into a rope suspended across the 150 meter deep gorge, freefell 55 meters and swung out across the gorge bathed in moonlight. Then you had to hike out in said moonlight. Pretty cool sensation and view. The next evening we paddled from upriver, straight through hippo territory, to the lip of Victoria falls, getting a view of one of the seven natural wonders of the world few experience. As the sun went down we were swimming in the Angel’s Armchair, a pool perched one meter from the lip of the 350 foot cataract. On our last evening we did a drive in Steve’s pickup through the local game preserve where we saw pretty much every animal I never thought I’d come across (except lions), Giraffes, Elephants, Warthogs, Water Bucks, Baboons and all kinds of other random foreign creatures were everywhere. From the game drive we went straight to a sundown cruise on the upper river with a large crew of local kayakers and random passerby! s. Sampling the local liquor, Cane (distilled from sugar cane) while floating past groups of hippos and a massive elephant under another gorgeous sunset was a good cap to our Zambian adventure.
On to Cape Town! After sleeping under a mosquito net in hot, humid Zambia for five days, Cape Town promised a comfy cool bed, all the water I could drink and temperatures in the bearable zone down by the water. It didn’t disappoint. Red Bull put us up in a pretty nice place right on the beach (unfortunately the water was a bit brisk on this side of the cape) that included a large sand sculpture depicting the event when we walked in the front door. Everyone had their own nice room, a bit of a foreign concept for the bike racer in me, but I quickly adjusted. The day before the race I spent riding around town checking out the mountain bike leg of the race and getting my bearings in general, which was difficult considering the opposite path of the sun and ocean in the wrong direction… The co! urse was fairly straightforward from a terrain standpoint, but very unique in many respects. A team briefing by the organizers (synopsis- kiter completes speed course in about an hour, hands off to biker who leaves the beach, does a loop around the flanks of Table Mountain, tags a runner who runs straight up the gut of a gully to the top of Table Mountain, tags a paraglider who flys down to signal hill, packs up his rig, runs 2k to Lions Head, relaunches and lands on the soccer field at La Med, on the beach) we knew what the program was. Unfortunately our rooftop dinner was moved inside due to high winds (the kiters were stoked and the paragliders were bummed), after dinner and a bit team strategy and getting to know each other everyone went their separate directions to prepare for the early morning event start. Some went out on the town, and those still reveling in the fact that they could sle! ep in comfort, like me, off to bed. The morning dawned clear and calm (kiters bummed, paragliders stoked) on race day. After a bunch of decision making and forecasting the organizers opted to cut the Kiting leg and start with the mountain bike leg from the beach. This involved 60 riders running 100 meters to their bikes then continuing up a single lane boardwalk through the dunes. But not before an inspiring demonstration by a Red Bull stunt plane showing his stuff over the beach. The gun went off and we were soon across the dunes and giving ‘er along a golf course, complete with confused golfers as to the state of their calm Saturday morning suddenly gone awry with a bunch of guys on bikes riding over tee boxes with a helicopter filming the whole ordeal from! about 20 feet up… Good times. Sid Taberlay, a random Austrian guy and myself got off the front on a sandy singletrack before the 5k push into Cape Town proper on the pavement. We worked and held off the group until a 180 degree turn which required climbing off the freeway over a fence when the chase group simply cut us off at the pass (so that’s how it’s going to be?). Our lead trio soon reestablished our gap on the dirt and pulled away in the scorching heat. Soon it was just Sid and I, with him getting a slight gap on a “portage” section that I was attempting, unsuccessfully to ride. We played cat and mouse (me the cat doing the chasing) until the ! last descent when I promptly re-remembered why teams have mechanics most of the time as a bolt fell out that made my bike very terrifying to descend on. With 2k of steep slippery fireroad descent separating us from the finish, I put it in survival mode and was glad to come in second, not too far behind Sid, and not dismembered after a horrific crash. I handed off to our runner, Tim Deboom who took off into the midday heat and his task of climbing 1000 meters up the boulder strewn side of the mountain. Turns out the top five from the Mountain Running World Championships were on hand with special shoes and all kinds of skills for that type of terrain. Our boy Tim lost a bit of time. He ended up doing a virtual tag to Othar (the winds on top had gotten too stif! f so the paragliders were only doing the 2k run and lower flight to La Med) in seventh place. OJ passed the struggling Mexican team and made a grand entrance to La Med with a series of loops and a smooth landing for sixth place. Pretty good for a bunch of Gringos who had never met or done one of these events before. The powerhouse favorite Austrian/Italian team took the crown.
A good Red Bull party, albeit one that started at 2pm when the race ended, capped off the race day and set up a fun evening of talking with other competitors and eventually moving downtown for some more local flavor. The next day I went for a morning exploration ride that didn’t find much other than sweet bike paths along the beach. For the afternoon activity the crew pirated one of the event vans for an afternoon wine tasting tour of the Stellenbosch region before going to a nice four course dinner in Cape Town with the Australians. Very nice finish to a very nice trip. Thanks to everyone over at Red Bull who made it happen, those guys put on a great event (that happened to be a catalyst for a great trip in general).
www.redbullcapetownman.com for more event info.
Adam Craig, Team Giant