380km
I did not even hear the rain last night but judging from the puddles outside this morning it was a good downpour. But the good news is that the sky looks light and there are even a few times the sun breaks through before we depart. The stay at the Island Vibe Back Packers was great. It’s right on the beach and the staff is super friendly, we will definitely be back.
As we ride down the main street in Jeffery’s Bay the GP Ice decides to pop out of the mount. Not sure how that happened but it did. Luckily we were going slowly and it was still early so the only car behind us managed to avoid running over it. I feared the worse when I heard the lady telling me that the GPS signal has been lost. Made a U-turn, picked it up, put the battery cover back on, switched it on and it just started navigating from the point where it lost its grip on reality. Totally second hand but at least still working.
We made sure to leave our mark as we exited. Seems like we are not the only ones.
This would be the last time we will see any shadow for the day.
I decided too late to put on the rain suit. By this time my pant was already wet from the road spray.
We ride over Van Stadens pass, one of only a few still open, with a great view of a bridge on the main road.
The weather is on and off when we stop in Alexandria so that Izabel can put on her rain suite not knowing that this would be the second of lasts for the day, the first being the last bit of sunshine earlier and now being dry for the last time.
From here things went south quickly. It rained intermittently and it went from a light drizzle to a downpour with howling winds in a matter of minutes continually until we reach our overnight stop. The wind took care of any dry clothes under the rain suite by blowing it up and into any little crevice, it could find.
Totally drenched we arrived at the B&B and the reception we got was sort of ‘you want to come inside with that wet ass?’ It wasn’t said but you could see it. We had an upstairs room with a balcony and a sea view, not much of a bonus in this weather. We lugged all our wet crap up the stairs leaving a water trail behind us. I did try to dry out as much as possible before we took it inside but you can only do so much. I’ll probably have to use a nom de plume for my next booking.
We use barrel bags for our luggage and these are splashproof and cannot be submerged if you want your stuff to remain dry. It rained so hard that the water penetrated under the top flap that folds over the top and fasten with Velcro.
Sooo we had some damp stuff in our bags as well.
One very valuable lesson we’ve learned, we learn many but apply few, on previous trips is to assume that you will not have food available at your destination and for this reason, we saved food from the previous evening to take with (if we remember). With the rain still pissing down on our arrival we are not about to go out to find something to eat so we are very glad that we saved some of last night’s pizza, I also have half a bottle of wine. So tonight we go Italian.
And some useless information, today we rode past the place where we spent our honeymoon 32 years ago, Fish River Sun. In the blur of rain, wind, and confusion I totally missed the entrance so we missed an opportunity to take a Déjà vu pic.
And then one important Note to Izabel: Always keep your cell phone out of the rain if it is not waterproof.
Seems like we have a casualty, will see tomorrow when it had some time to dry out.
Tomorrow we ride to our Xmas stop in Port St Johns.
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