BINOCULAR HILL

For a cool weekend getaway, take five riders, a choice of scenic route options, and a pub. The destination is Verkykerskop (approximately, “FAIR cake kirrs kop”), which means Binocular Hill, no doubt harking back to the 1899-1902 Anglo Boer War.
 
What exactly is Binocular Hill? Technically, it’s a town. It has, or rather had, a police station and a post office. The “town” now consists of a farmhouse redeveloped into guest accommodation and, um, that’s it. 
 
Let’s roll. It’s Friday morning. I arrive just in time for the 9 am departure time. This laid-back crew tells me to sit down for a cuppa, not something I ever pass up. 


WE are TOUGH.

Before long, engines start and the five riders make their way onto the gridlocked traffic on the ring road that runs the perimeter of Johannesburg. More about that gridlock shortly.
 
We peel away from the Joburg orbit, head south and settle into a cruising pace as the traffic thins. The five riders are:
·         BRUCE – KTM 1290 Adventure;
·         CLIVE – Triumph 900 Scrambler (900 cc TWIN cylinder dual purpose);
·         LEN – Triumph 900 Tiger;
·         TALL PAUL – BMW 1250 GSA,
·         Itsy Bitsy Little ME – Bandit 1250 S.
 
We ride south along the R59 for a spell, exit the freeway and enter the quaint village of Henley on Klip. (Henley on the Stony River.) Rolling through the main road of the village, we turn right, being south, onto the road exiting the village and running  through farmland. On our left, fields of mealies (corn) bloom dark green. On our right, cattle graze in the pasture, oblivious to the ghastly fate that awaits them.
 
Henley on Klip recedes in the mirrors. We pick up the pace. 

And then we get a snapshot of everything that is wrong with South Africa.
 
The road surface deteriorates and potholes appear. Up ahead, the cooling towers of a power station come into view. The power generation monopoly is a state-(mis)run monopoly called Eskom (Electricity Supply Commission). Eskom was, from its inception in 1923, consistently among the best of the world's power utilities. And then, today's ruling party got its hands on Eskom. The ruling party, of course, wasn't about to refrain from fixing what isn’t bust. Ineptitude, warped ideology and weapons-grade corruption reduced Eskom to a wreck. South Africa now endures hour after hour of daily rolling blackouts, euphemistically called load shedding, as Eskom’s units collapse and grind to a halt. Hence the gridlock we were caught in upon departing Johannesburg.
 
Then, the potholed road. It is a result of trucks carrying loads of coal, under corruption-riddled contracts, to the unmaintained power stations. Why is the coal borne by road, not by rail? Why, because the “government” has ruined the entirely functional railway system they were handed on a plate, and then went on to line its pockets with coal contracts that are, shall we say, nebulous. No coal, no spare part, no repair crew moves without a greasing of palms. 

South Africa burns. Nero fiddles.
 
The composite of South Africa’s demise recedes in our mirrors as we cruise to the Vaal (“Varl”) Dam. On the bridge alongside the dam wall we stop for a photo op. La Nina, or “The Child” (feminine), has brought massive summer rainfall over the northern parts of the country for the last few seasons. When the pressure system changes, La Nina becomes El Nino, “The Child” (masculine), and we endure hot, dry summers. We prefer the rain. The Vaal is brimful of La Nina’s gifts. Twelve sluice gates have been opened at once. The area downstream is flooded. Seeing, hearing and feeling the waters blasting forth is humbling.



Lock your women away. Seeing I couldn't upload footage of the waters bursting forth, you get upgraded to champagne class and get to ogle 
(L-R): Paul, Clive, Bruce, Stan L, Len. 

We set off for the village of Oranje (“Orrunya”; Orange) on the dam’s banks. The Vaal River is the border between two erstwhile republics, the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, both later consolidated into first the Union, then the Republic, of South Africa. The Orange name harks back to the Dutch influence on South Africa, the guttural Afrikaans language itself being the daughter language of Dutch. A town called Vredefort (“frearda fort”; something to do with peace) serves as a lunch stop, before setting off toward Harrismith.  
 
When it comes to road maintenance, we bikers are hard to please. We bitch when the road is neglected, and we bitch when we encounter road works. 

The road signs warn the road is under construction. The southbound traffic must pause for some minutes while the northbound occupies the single remaining operational lane, then the direction of flow is reversed and it’s our turn to go. So far so good, except that the under-construction section is gravel. 
 
A portly female in road gang attire rotates the STOP sign to GO. Engines start. I let the clutch out, the Bandit rumbles onto the gravel, and I judiciously apply power. The surface is part dirt and part granite pebbles, the latter acting as ball bearings. That this is less than beneficial to my bike’s paintwork is the lesser of my problems. More immediate is the way the Bandit slithers and skates on this loose stuff. I keep trying, not always successfully, to untense myself and power her through the slippery sections. Every few seconds the Bandit skips frighteningly sideways, before resuming her forward motion. After a good few episodes I manage to convince myself a third of a ton of metal and meat creates a lot of forward momentum; while the odd sideways step is inevitable on this loose surface she’ll always resettle into a forward motion. I begin getting it together and easing her through the difficult stuff, reminding myself the crazy dance will pass and forward momentum will dominate. I don’t quite manage to subdue my jerk impulse when she does crab, but I’m transitioning from “fish out of water” to “handle it.”
 
It's a good thing I do, because there will be plenty more. I can’t criticize them for fixing the roads, but couldn’t they give me a call and arrange which weekends would suit me best…?
 
Section after section of gravel comes up. I do revive the knack of allowing momentum to dominate crabbing, and manage to more or less follow the road direction. As long as there’s no deep sand I’ll manage. (From pen pusher to Rambo in one easy lesson; just another Bandit benefit.) In my BMW GS days, deep sand was my nemesis. It felled me on the GS, and if I hit any here, it will fell me on the Bandit. Thankfully, there’s none. After the umpteenth section of road works, Bandit and rider emerge onto the tarmac. On the gravel I would shoot the adventure bike boys with their 19- or 21- inch front rims and their cleated tyres envious glances, but now we’re once again cruising luxuriously on terra firma, the Suzuki back in its element.
 
The grassland begins undulating as the distant Maluti Mountains come into view. It may not be the apple-of-my-eye Karoo, but it’s a lovely sight. All around us, a ten-kilometre disc of undulating grassland separates us from the distinctively-shaped peaks that form the Malutis. 
 
We arrive at a bit of grassland with two and a half buildings on it. Good thing the boys either know the place or are equipped with helmet sets; left to my own devices, I’d have shot past without even noticing it. In fact, this is our destination.
 
Once we stop, the boys bemoan how it’s grown (grown…?). There’s a chapel, a couple of houses repurposed as guest rooms, and a restaurant-&-pub. The chapel is for weddings. The old police station, post office and shop have been repurposed as the pub and restaurant. We make ourselves at home and, this being a free market economy, enact an implicit agreement in terms of which we relieve them of as much hooch as they can pour, and they relieve us of as much money as we can scrape together (ignore malicious rumours I sold someone’s navigation device.)  
 
Load shedding hits. When there’s no power there’s no water, because the pump stops working. The rooms are in the dark, and the taps dry. The Republic of South Africa…
 
In the darkness we make our way back to our rooms. A pond is alive with frogs croaking the night away. A Free State sky presents a brilliant Milky Way light show. I make acquaintance with a frog that is determined to share fist Len’s, then my, diggings. One morning I find it in my boot.
 
I collapse onto the luxurious double bed and allow Day 1 to slip into history. Nobody fell, nobody suffered any misfortune, and nobody failed to get appropriately tanked up.  Good start, I muse. Then my consciousness slips off into the dark country night.

Next: The Outride.


Regards
Stan L
South Africa

Nice one Stan , keep it coming ( that's choice coming from me, sure I haven't finished Jindabyne yet )