After leaving T5 this morning with photographer Bruce Viaene, we headed off for CP24 aiming to intercept teams passing through.
We hadn’t been waiting long (for a change!), watching women washing clothing in the river, when Antimatter reached us.
Ugene Nel spoke about the vegetation and vines that they bashed through. They even found themselves crawling to get through.
They’re now at T6.
“How’re you doing?” I ask Ugene.
“Pretty exhausted. Last night, fighting with the vines of Mordor… they broke us down and then made us stronger.”
“Is the section after CP24 straight forward?” I ask.
“No. It isn’t. The section from when we saw you is fine for the first four or five kilometres. Then it becomes very sketchy after the village settlement. Very, very difficult. I changed the route that I originally planned because the road didn’t exist from the village to here and the grass was waist high. I took a bearing and we pretty much travelled in the direction of Mboyti to get here. It’s very challenging in the dark.”
They’re going to sleep now for four hours and then begin the final 230 kilometre cycle to the Port Edward.
The next team to arrive was Castle Lite. Laura de Haast is walking wounded. Watching her face as she jumped across the stream to land on incredibly painful feet… I winced with her. So sore!
I’ve just seen Liam at T6 – walking barefoot and almost like a normal person.
“Ah… walking much better!” I say.
He smiles and replies, “That was really sore and bad when we saw you”.
Adrian Saffy talks about local hospitality.
“Today I was feeling really bad – like I had a fever. I was sweating and shivering. I needed to stop so we found a hut and asked if we could stay there for a while. They put out mats for us to sleep on and when we woke up about an hour later they brought oranges for us to eat.”
Later in the day he ‘broke’ the fever and was back to feeling as well as one can five days into an expedition adventure race.
Speaking about this last part of the hike Adrian echoes Ugene’s comments.
“The navigation… If you’re on the wrong path or the wrong bearing… you’ll sleep out there tonight.”
Castle Lite made up three places on this leg. Like Antimatter they’ll sleep for a few hours and then tackle the final leg.
Adrian’s team mate Costa Dimopoulos was very sore and unstable when we saw him (feet, of course and knee too, I think). Thank goodness for his trekking poles or he would most certainly have fallen into the river – he was stumbling substantially more than a blind-drunk sailor.
PennypinchersAR were right there with Castle Lite. In the few hours after midnight (today) I saw Svelka Sharpe receiving foot care attention at T5. Although her feet are still painful, she’s walking reasonably well. They’ll all be looking forward to resting at T6 and getting on to their bikes and off their feet.
And then the bubbly Team Costa Rica, greeting us with “Pura Vida”. Translated this means ‘pure life’ but it is also a greeting and a wish – wishing the recipient all things good in their life.
As I type they’ve reached T6. Melida Barbee, like many racers, has a bad stomach. Diahorrea is doing its rounds. They’re going to sleep and recover for a few hours too. Their impression of the hike, “Hard. Really hard.”
There is not one team out there that doesn’t have members across the foot-agony spectrum. I can only describe the worst affected racers as being so bad that I get teary when I see them moving. That bad.
We’re hoping that more teams make it through to T6 tonight so that they can rest warm and in comfort. But there will certainly be many more who bed down in the bushes to sleep until sunrise.