We’re at T3 now; the Mboyti River Lodge. I look forward to seeing what this area looks like in daylight. When I arrived at around 19h00 Arverne Outdoor were sleeping; according to Heidi they are fine and well. Cyanosis left at 20h40 to begin the 120km cycle.
When Olympus arrived they set immediately to making chicken and cheese wraps, drinking coffee and getting warm. They’re actually looking really good physically and they’re interactive and chirpy.
Last night I received text messages from racers following at home saying, “Olympus are going in the wrong direction!”. I asked Tim Deane what this was about.
“We didn’t know where we were so we went up to the road to find ourselves. Relocation!” he explains, laughing.
This trekking leg took them a total of around 34 hours. They had about 2.5 hours of light in the canyon and did the rest in the dark. The canyon section took them six hours, which is actually good going. Olympus are looking in good shape. They had a slow transition, good food and a 90-minute sleep.
There are no other teams at T3 now (00h05 – Tuesday) and we’re not expecting any others to arrive for many hours.
A nasty night
Teams in the canyon are in for a nasty night. They have hours still to go until daylight and there’s no place down there to sleep. They’ve got bad feet and after spending 10 hours wet and cold…
Speaking to Black Diamond earlier about their feet, we asked them how this trek compared to the one they did at Expedition Africa in the Drakensberg last year.
“Much, much harder,” they replied in unison.
Transition 3, tomorrow (Tuesday), will look like a war zone with feet carnage. I hope I’m wrong; but I don’t think I will be.
Route change – shortened paddle
As expected, the low (and dropping) level of water in the river for the paddle leg is an issue and thus the cycle leg has been adjusted to transition (T4) further downstream. The paddle leg is now around 16km. I don’t think the teams will complain, afterall it’s far better to do 16km instead of the initially planned 67 kilometres carrying and dragging boats. That would be torture.
Course director Stephan Muller is disappointed because a month ago the river was flowing strongly(no rocks showing!). He says that the river is inaccessible and spectacular – he really wanted to show them this treasure.
Photographs of everyone
Logistically we can’t access teams on the hike (teams have been on the hike for well over 24hrs) without getting trapped in an area for too many hours and with teams taking all kinds of routes, a myriad of bad roads to drive and little to no signal to locate them on tracking, it really is not possible for us to find them. We’re not ignoring your teams… we just can’t get to them. Or, the timing is out and they’re coming through at night when we need to travel back to power and internet signal to write and edit and post.
Fear not! If your teams stay in the race we will surely catch them over these next few days. Our movements are very much determined by distance, accessibility and daylight – not by team. If we see ’em, we shoot ’em.
F-f-f-f-Facebook
Please keep an eye on the KineticGear Facebook page during the ‘day’ (our day in South Africa). I do try to post updates and photos to the page from the field, when I have signal. Race HQ are also putting out updates when they receive information from marshals out there.
V-v-v-v-v-video
Here’s Steven Freitag’s daily video from Day 2.
Loving it Lisa, keep it coming 🙂