Where has the time gone!!

Hello to one and all!
It is April 22nd and we are in a town called Maun, Botswana and we have less than three weeks to go before we hit Cape Town. None of us can quite beleive that 'd' day is fast approaching. Have we really cycled 9,000kms to date? Is this trip of a life time almost over? Do we all have to go back to our respective homes and start working and get real jobs? Can our bodies adjust to sleeping in and not wake up at 4.30am-5.00am? Will we be able to cope with a new breakfast routine that does not involve taking down tents, packing a red box and pumping up tires ready for the 160km ride of the day? Will we be able to sit at starbucks in the morning when our bodies are looking for the lunch truck at 9.30am and a coke stop at 1.00pm? Life will be different after May 12 but I tell you what..we have had the time of our lives and would not have missed any of it -including the broken wrist - for the world!!!!!! OK we could have ditched the wrist injury but we are all in high spirits..somewhat jaded as we have hit high temperatures again..it was 41 degrees celcius yesterday but a rest day does wonders for our souls!!

This morning Dave and Alice from South Africa, Jan from Holland and Chris and I took a flight over the Okavango Delta. It was truely amazing to see the delta and all the wild life from the air in a five seater plane. It was an hour flight and we saw elephants, giraffe's, wilderbeest, hipos, bird life just doing their normal day to day thing oblivious to us up in the sky.The delta is in the middle of two fault lines. One fault line is in the south at Maun..the town we are having our rest day in and the other is miles north near the Angola border. The difference between the two fault lines is only 150 meters spread over miles and miles of ancient sands, hundreds of meters deep which buffers the movement of the underlying fault lines. The rainy season in the highlands of Southern Angola - the rain clouds over the Bie Plateau provide the rain and flood waters which journey thousands of miles through the Makgadikgadi Basin and disperses in an annual inpouring upon arrival at the Delta. The water seeps into the massive, shallow floodplain changing the delta and bringing water to the animals. At the moment you can see the flood water moving toward Maun and apparently in August everything will be covered in the immediate area close to Maun and so it will look like a large mass of water with little islands. We flew this morning for about ten minutes before we saw the flooded channels with lily pads and long grass swaying in the breeze and water holes. Prior to this is wide open space and the elephants and giraffes are cruising looking for shade and food.Check it out on the internet, there is nothing like it in the world.I took some video footage but have no idea how it will work out. It was a blast.

OK and so back to the race....Chris won the individual 40km time trial by 16sec over Adrie when we left Livingstone, Vic Falls - Zambia and his team also won the 40km team time trial yesterday, breaking the one hour mark with a great time of 59.47sec. It was supposed to be for fun and their team was the UK team called 'Tea and Scones' made up of Andy from Scotland, Ian from Guernsey, Phil from London and Chris.Their team strategy allowed them to whip the staff team who came in second by almost 2 minutes.Happy days for the UK boys.

My team was more style than cycling. We were called the Absolutely, Positively, Fabulous Team and so we had a great outfit...bras, bikini tops, cycling shorts, mini skirt, neck scarves and team tattoos of who we loved, "I was Prada, Alice was Gucci, Tiffany was Puppies and Sara was '60km from Kimberly..location joke..long story..will have to tell over a glass of champange when I get back story!" We were going for the look of how you could dress for cycling and even practiced our last place 'entrance' as we crossed the finish line with hands on handle bars and one leg extended out the back in a beautiful scale balance--ballerina style. This worked and got a collective laugh from the other riders as it was obvious that we were having a lot of fun. We as a team felt smug in our achievement .....however....much to our amazement our entrance to the finish was totally usurped 5 minutes later by one of the other riders who was dropped by his team and who shall remain nameless. He defintely one upped us by cycling at least a hundred meters and crossing the line minus cycling shorts and wearing them on his head as an aerodynamic accessory!! It was the most hillarious sight and all of us have not laughed so hard in a long time. He took the cake and prize for best effort!!! Of course we all took photos but they will not be published on the TDA site!!! A great time had by all.

So, some of you are probably wondering where I figured in the individual time trial. I didn't do it as I got a food bug and was flat on my back in Livingstone and was forced to stay an extra two days to let 'it pass out of my system'. Bad chicken will do that to you!! I joined the group at the second bush camp in Botswanna. That was an amazing drive as we crossed the Zambia border and instantly were stopped by a group of elephants crossing the road. This happened three times and it was a joy to see them just cruising in front of us. The other day we had a 176km ride and 10km before our camp there were at least 30 elephants just wandering along the sides of the road on both the left and right side. How can you race when that is going on? The front racers didn't see them as they had their heads down and bums up. As for me..I stopped..who cares about race results when you can see elephants just doing there thing. This section is called the Elephant highway and you can see why. We have seen them everyday for the past five days!!

I'm going backwards here but Vic Falls in Zambia is everything and more than what you hear. The noise was insane and so loud. The Zambesi River is in flood and at what they call the high, high level and so the amount of water falling over the edge is umbelievable. We couldn't white water raft as the water volume was so high and there would have been no time to recover between rapids should anyone fall out. We also looked at bungy jumping from Vic Falls bridge but the spray of water was too much and they could not adjust the tension of the elastic cord..a safety issue which one should not ignore!!!! We crossed over to Zimbabwe while we were at the falls and you can see the difference between the two countries. Zambia has benefited from what Mugabe is doing to Zim..all the tourist dollars are pouring into Zambia and no money is going into Zimbabwe..their inflation is currently 2,000% or something ridiculous and it's really sad to see what has happened to a previously properous country.

So we are in Botswanna and now head towards the Kalahari Desert and Namibia and so temperatures are going to get hot again. We have two rest days in Windhoek and celebrate Chris's 40th birthday there. His actual birthday is April 26th but the next morning may be another team trial so there will be no celebration on his part. Crazy thing is ..Chris and Adrie share the same birthdate!!Both are competitive and so birthday celebrations will be delayed.

OK..I'm sweating here and need to find a pool. Sorry for being so long in updating this blog but promise to do another in Windhoek.
Love ya