Kalahari Safari

Every year, our estate agency invites my wife and me to plonk a wad of our hard-stolen folding stuff on the table for tickets to their annual convention, to rub shoulders with other agents and lie how well we’re doing.

Every year I default to the implicit option of staying home. Cheaper to watch television.

But with seventy looming on the horizon, I'm renegotiating my sell-by date with The Man Upstairs. I remind Him I still have an eye for His opulent creation.

Seems my divine schmoozing works. I hear a delightful sound; the knock of opportunity. 

After all, Cape Town (convention) may be 1 600 km from Johannesburg (home) by the shortest route… but short routes are for sissies.

Box wine and Led Zep midwife a heaven-sent excuse to take the l-o-n-g way to Cape Town, through the Kalahari Desert.  

It would be rude to refuse.

Hour after hour, hundred-kilometres after hundred-kilometres, through the desert, in summer temperatures bordering on thermonuclear, passing towns with names like Delareyville, Kuruman, Elephant Corner, Puff Adder, Springbok (you should hear them in Afrikaans!).  

If you rode west far enough, you'd reach a mountain range and experience something bizarre. In the space of ten minutes you'd go from broiling heat to teeth-chattering cold. The West Coast, you see, is washed by an icy current coming up from the South Pole. Ride down the mountain pass and the cold blast hits like ice artillery. 

That's if you go right up to the coast. Another option is to turn southward, and ride down through the desolate, seemingly-endless Northern Cape. Out here you can ride at full speed and feel as if you're standing still. 

The desert route eventually runs into the lovely Little Karoo (Outback; say "Karoo" using the vowel sounds for "balloon"). While my perennial-favourite Great Karoo is arid, her little sister, the hilly Little Karoo, is wine and fruit farm country.

The Little Karoo will drop down onto the coast where, rounding the Cape, I will ride into beautiful Cape Town, meet my beautiful wife, feed my unbeautiful face, and pretend to be very interested in the convention.

Then, we shall rent a holiday flat for a week.

Thereafter, she catches her return flight, while I choose a route for the ride home.

Thus, the convention morphs from an expensive bore to an expensive opportunity.

The more I think about it, the more unterrible it sounds.

Be still, my beating right wrist.

Stay tuned, It happens in March.


Regards
Stan L
South Africa

Hi Stan,
Make it an annual event. I'm sure you could wrangle it.
Keep us posted.