We met and packed on Thursday at Richard's. He was wandering around muttering something about the trailer. Elfrieda and Gerhard brought everything in Ammo cases, all 64 of them. They are building and had to bring the entire contents of their house because the builders were stealing them. If you see an oke in a dirty pair of overalls wearing very expensive Harley Davidson motor-cycle boots let Gerhard know.

So we said our fond farewells to the families, tears streaming down their faces, admonishments of "be careful" and "we love you" and, ..... you can tell this is fantasy, right........ And got into the Jeep, whose taillights didn't talk to the trailer's at all. We hit the first roadblock at Ballito. They ripped the taxi in front of us to pieces and let us through. Richard looked tense. The second roadblock was also otherwise engaged and Richard complained of knots in his shoulder and an ulcer that was starting to play up. The third roadblock was 5 kms before the border and this one got us square. Licences were checked and then there was great excitement from the trailer. We could hear the cocking of automatic weapons and a voice asked Gerhard to step out the vehicle and come to his trailer. He neatly side stepped this by telling the weapon it was not his trailer and it should speak to Richard. There was a moment of confusion until we found Richard under the trembling blankets and booted him out into the road before locking the doors again. It took ages and we debated how we would split gear and food with only three team members and what the local jails were like. Richard came back with a rather heavy fine and told us that is was apparently not acceptable to use a crayon to alter 2005 to 2006 on the licence disc. In all the excitement the SAS commando's forgot to check the tail light so we drove away from them with flashing brake lights and a permanently on right indicator, braced for the rattle of small arms fire we were sure to receive. We got away.

This is an AR report I think.

We got to the start and camped next to a giant cannery which went "clank" every 5 seconds. The plan was to drive ourselves mad before we started, then we wouldn't feel the pain.

The wiggly girl from McCain's Chips kept us very entertained. Alec tried to copy her and hurt something.Eish!

The briefing was fun and full of talk about extra large water, extreme ropes, serial killers, kloofs and hills, Yeah, Yeah Darron does go on a bit doesn't he. How about this; only two pre-plotted maps for the entire route - brilliant. Good food, a nice hard field, Richard's snoring, the incessant cannery, ..life was great.

Early start, running along the road, right into the field, lost after 15 minutes and 36 seconds, better than last year where we got lost after 12 minutes and 22 seconds. A short hike through a blackjack and burr patch and them we met the celebrity team. Bruce and David were jaunty, Lisa looked a bit harassed, she whispered to me that they were a bit of a handful. Evan was navigating somewhere ahead, seemed like a good idea.

We swam across a dam and had a short uneventful hike to the river. I wanted to cross it, Richard wanted to climb a hill in the opposite direction. I was navigating. We had words. Elfrieda and Gerhard waited patiently whilst Richard went in the wrong direction. Then we followed him. Then contrary to all logic he found an irrigation channel in the middle of nowhere going to the next checkpoint. I was mad. I had a hissy fit in the road where I explained that when he makes idiot decisions using his intuition and they are right, I hate him and he had better watch his back because I had sharpened the spikes on my hiking pole and would be using them. He wisely walked behind for while and made comments about how well I was doing and that it was just luck on his part. It wasn't luck and that made me even madder. Luckily I have a short memory and don't hold grudges well and Richard's amazing intuition knows when to shut up and so we reached the river section where all minor problems paled into insignificance.

Darron had rabbitted on about the dangers of the rafting and had given us pages of detailed instructions to follow if we were to survive. I quote from memory: " on the third rapid, keep right to the left and then after the second drop head right to the middle before leaving the big rock on the left. Get it right or you will go over a waterfall on the left, right? Scout it on the left before you shoot it- You have now shot the approaches and the next ten pages will deal with actual rapid"

To help us further the guides had put danger tape in the river to mark where not to go. We avoided the tape and shot some huge stuff and then decided to keep to the tape and then randomly chose "to tape or not to tape" Please someone tell me what the tape was about?

We followed Richard for a while. Coming around a corner I saw smoke and thunder in front of us. Where had Richard shot this? Looking right I saw him and Elfrieda dragging their croc up a cliff. Gerhard was trying to paddle backwards, which wasn't helping and I told him to relax as I braced my feet in the middle of his back and we went over the drop. Crocs are very forgiving and when we had surfaced to periscope depth, I realised we were going to make it. This is because my periscope was very short from fright at this stage. After this we "followed the water" and shot everything in sight. Gerhard took some spectacular swims down some big drops, whilst my fear of water kept me in the boat. I am sure at one stage I was sitting on a upside down croc paddling down a rapid. Gerhard took a particularly nasty swim over a mini waterfall and stayed under for a while before popping up. Richard was very pleased because this proved that the proto-type kayaking vests we were using worked. Gerhard wasn't pleased that Richard was more pleased about the vest than about his survival, but you can get the vests on www.spindrift.co.za and they work very well.

We came across Sterling Lite sort of hanging in reeds and aimlessly swimming in the river and Hano said it was lucky he was a cat because he had used up many of his lives. I think he had mad cow disease at this stage, because he was the soggiest cat I have ever seen.

Not long after that the paddle ended. XL Darron had said it would be and XL it was. He personally met us at the water and looked relieved when teams started coming in intact.

We went for a ride. The first bit was easy on a district road. Up and down. Then up, then very up. Gerhard wasn't well after his big swims and we slowed down a bit. Richard decided to get rid of his stomach contents to save weight. He was preparing for this important ritual by standing with glazed eyes on the edge of the road his bolus rising and sinking in his throat. A Nissan Xtrail stopped next to him and the enthusiastic driver, oblivious of the warning signs, started praising him for his performance. Richard responded by vomiting all over the road. He remembers the window being wound up and a shower of stones as the vehicle skidded and snaked away. Richard would like to apologise to whoever it was.

The second part of the ride involved a long hike up a steep hill and a long hike down a steep hill. Richard rode down the hill nearly as fast as I could run beside him. Near the bottom he got off to walk and promptly slipped and fell with his bike on top of him. I thought it was very fair of him to let the bike ride him for a bit.

We reached the next Checkpoint and Mike Hogg gave me some beer. Thanks Mike, I needed it. Gerhard speaks Afrikaans and very good English. At the checkpoint he was speaking Stranglish. This is an interesting language where the one eye looks at the other one whilst low gargling noises come from the mouth and nose. It is combined with shaking knees and small square-dance steps and I kept thinking how cool Gerhard would have looked in his Harley-Davidson boots. Damn those builders!

Richard, Elfrieda and I left Gerhard in his sleeping bag and headed into a lovely hike along a good road. We fell over a team sleeping next to the river and then scrambled along the side of a mountain before, going back to the river. We boulder hopped until the boulders ran out and then had to cross the raging torrent. Richard went first. With brave, strong strokes he clawed his way across the mighty current. Elfrieda didn't want to go. I assisted her with my sharpened hiking pole and her pleading cries were muffled by the water as she fell into the torrent. Half way across she found that she could stand and we both looked accusingly at Richard. We had slept from 11pm to 3am at the checkpoint and we caught our dear friends from Shingle Track and Olypus (who had left at 12h00 and spent the night scrabbling in the bushes)just before 10am at the river. We took great pleasure telling them what a lovely sleep we had had and how refreshed we were and how much fun it must be for them to go so slowly and play with the sleep monster. They got up and left us. We walked along a "major trail" next to the river. It needed mowing and boulder clearing. In places it needed a trail.

Eventually we arrived at the next transition two hours behind our dear friends who had taken a shorter, better route.

From here we were meant to find an unmarked jeep track which lead straight down into the river again and then meant to struggle through the bushes for another three hours. Richard suggested that this was a silly idea and that we should just take the major roads in the area that seemed to be going in the right direction and sort of circle the point until we reached it. So we headed off very fast in the wrong direction, occasionally turning left when we could. We reached the checkpoint after an hour to meet other bedraggled teams who had been hours ahead of us, struggling away from the evil river.

We caught up with our friends again and together carried our bikes up a mountain. At this stage we were deep in the heart of Texas, because the stars were the brightest I have ever seen. I was wisely following one of them wondering what Myrrh was. I mentioned this to Alec from Olympus, and he quickly went into a huddle with his team. I heard Vicky say; "forget about myrrh and the stars, it's just plain stupid to follow George anywhere". Thanks Vicky. I won't forget. We rode on into the second night and into hell. I read the contours backwards and by the time we had climbed to 1200m the school checkpoint at 800m was a twinkle across the valley. Elfireda's lights died, Richard took his own lights apart to see how they worked and then they were also dead. I lent Elfrieda my light and tried to navigate in the dark. It didn't work. I demanded my light back and we resumed our successful strategy of riding in a circular direction downhill. Amazingly this worked and we reached the school. I flopped down in the grass next to the checkpoint wondering at how heavy the dew was only to smell it and realised I was lying in the puddle some previous Racer had stored in his bladder for hours. So we moved on.

We found a yard with a trailer in it and crawled under it for an hour. I got some water from a drain, then we pushed our bikes up the biggest hill ever. Bob Dylan sang "The darkest hour is right before the dawn". It is true. It was a long dark bike leg.

With the sun emerging on the third day, in the freezing morning air, we got ready to embark on the Kloofing/ropework leg. Philip our second from Surf to Rock had befriended some very nice girls, and they had much nicer food than us. Seeing that their team was behind us, we ate all their food. Well done Philip, you are an excellent second. I had given him my camera to take pictures of Team Bearing Man and was surprised to find when I got home that 90% of the photo's were of the girls next door. They obviously made a big impression and if they want photos of themselves they should contact philip@vcx.co.za. Please hurry, I had to get a bigger hard drive to store them all.

The kloofing was awesome. The ropes big and exposed. I hate heights. I hate ropes, I hate rocks, I hate slippery rocks. I have a coping strategy which uses Vodka, Lemon Twist and trees in my backyard to train for rope work. It paid off and I survived the climb up the trees and onto the highest Tyrolean traverse I have ever seen.

The short ride to the finish was made slightly longer whilst Richard brought the passport back from the bottom of a very steep hill after riding straight past a checkpoint, but this gave me chance to lie on the ground and reflect on the serial killer who had murdered 45 victims in this area. Elfrieda had quickly followed Richard down the hill saying the quiet woods made her nervous.

Thank you Darron and Swazi trails and McCain for a great race. Bearing Man were tested but not beaten. We look forward to seeing you next year. «