Phuthu Stay Phut, Don't go!

We finished the Dusi in one piece and we’re proud to say that the goodship HMS Phuthu survived too. Dusi was a novelty again after having had a break for 3 years. Our 4 training sessions definitely paid off and we seemed to peak at just the right time!

The start was pretty civilized.

Mission rapid – scraped through. I’m laughing here at Gina (our machine seconder!) who is shouting “GO HUNNNNNNNi” at the top of her lungs whilst perched on a rock in the river.

The guy holding the paddle asked us why we had Indian Elephants on our boat. How on earth did he know they were Indian Elephants? I was distraught – there I was all along thinking these were born and bred African ellies. But then I found out that this dude was a game ranger and figured he’s probably the only one who can see the difference on a little profile picture anyway. That’s what I’m telling myself at least.

All you need to know about this picture is that the middle guy is single. This pic makes him look a bit gay but that would be misleading..

Up close. Single ladies I repeat single.

Gauging Weir….

Sjoe – made it! The guys on the far right of the pic didn’t though…sorry for you!

Day 2 on the dam was long and we had to portage over the dam wall because of a hyacinth block.

But lucky we had snacks to keep us going…

…and this boat’s wave to sit on

Dillan and Lyndal – Did someone say we whipped you by 4 minutes? hee hee!

End of day 2 – the sleeeeepy look.

Start of day 3 – Negotiated Tops Needle without serious lung seizure. Falling out here is not fun and the water is cold. Been there, got the t-shirt. Actually all I got was a lot of water down my throat and bruises on my butt.

The finish at Blue Lagoon tra-la-la-la-la!

The plan for next year? K3! Now that looks like fun!

Until next time..

My man and I are doing the Dusi Canoe Marathon tomorrow – our first one in 3 years. We’ve done a grand total of 4 training sessions so we’re in tip top condition for the 120km event.

Needless to say it should be an interesting one for the heart, lungs, triceps and biceps.

But the real cool thing is that we’ve got a bright orange boat decorated with colourful Phuthu stickers. So even if we don’t look too hot, at least our boat will.

The technique is to use soapy water to position them well and then wipe off any bubbles with a dry towel.

The Phuthu gals helped me stick em on. Thanks dudettes

This must be my favourite sticker…..

…After this one…

This one is kinda cute too…

Orange and green..Laaaik it?

Have a look at the two pics hanging on the wall in the background. That’s my man in his wild day. He’s calmed down a milli-fraction since then. Now you can understand why he always wants to go down the difficult rapids which almost cause me to have a coronary.

Wish us luck! Please. Need it.

The only tragic part of our Orange River trip was that we actually – for a short but significant time – considered not even going.  Yup, I hate to admit it but it’s true. A 24-hour road trip scared us to smithereens. The fact that we would pass through Pofadder, (arse-end-of-the-earth-town that’s the butt of many a joke..) on our way to Onseepkans, scared us even more.

But then we got terribly philosophical and decided to bite the bullet. I LOVE getting philosophical. The plan was to embrace Pofadder in all its roughness, load up the Kurt Darren CD’s (not!), consume a chocolate bar of at least 100g at every pit stop and take lots of photos….

And that’s what we did.

At first, the scenery was very N3-ish – long straights, toll gates and more long straights.  The only thing of remote interest was that of my amoebic looking feet. What a cute little family of amoeba, I thought – daddy, mommy, granny, gramps, aunty, uncle and the four squirts.

But then, thank goodness, the landscape changed and we spotted this friendly guy who had been cycling around South Africa for the past year, stopping at schools to give talks about crime awareness. You just gotta love people like this..

Just past Pofadder (I spared you the photos of that town,  it’s my pleasure) we stopped for this shot. That’s a quiver tree on the right. Quiver trees are sexy. Don’t ask me what makes it a sexy tree,  it just is.

We finally arrived at Wild Paradise – home to Gravity River Adventures in Onseepkans. We slept under the stars that night and just knew that we were in for a fun-filled 4 days.

A lot of the time we just spent floating on the river, admiring the rock formations, flora and fauna.

Our camp for the night.

J-j-j-j-ealous? Not that I would ever want to make you feel j-j-j-ealous.

Afternoons were spent walking up the koppie….

or sitting in the water…..

or lying in the water…..

or playing in the water…..

or washing in the water….Timotei anyone?

We also spent a lot of time eating….

…And eating some more. At least it was healthy food.

Except for the 2 packets of Bar One’s we brought along with us. And the Liquorice Allsorts, Cheesenacks………and…Uhm I’ll just stop there.

The evenings were never short of magical moonlight..

This pic was actually taken at night with a long exposure which gives it that surreal look. Don’t ya just love it?

Mornings were just as beautiful as the evenings..

The third day brought lots of action. We had to abseil the boats down into the gorge. The word gorge always makes my heart beat a little faster for some reason.

Everyone negotiated Big Bunny rapid successfully. He was fluffy and friendly just like a big bunny ought to be!

Well hello there sex-ayyyh! Clipping up?

And then we floated some more. This is Jess, our hippy, flower child guide who lives in a teepee, sleeps on a yoga mat and wait for it, drives a Beetle with daisies on it. She shaves and doesn’t offer free love though, which makes her a clean, wise hippy chic. On New Years eve we had a full Q&A session called “101 Questions you’d love to ask a hippie”. The answers were interesting but you’ll have to go on the trip yourself to get all the real sugar and pulp!

Our other flower child guide, Caitlin, is a fire dancer – an incredibly talented one I might add. My goodness, we were mesmerized like moths to a flame. We all had a bash at waving these firy weapons but landed up singeing chest, facial or leg hair in the process and came to the conclusion that things like this are best  left to trained fire dancers.

We decided it was far safer to do a light painting instead  – with a torch. This photo was the result of about 250 000 takes. That means I had to write 2010 about 250 000 times. But don’t you just loooove it??

Happy new year everybody. I hope it’s  full of adventure and intrigue!

Yesterday we spent just over 5 hours mountain biking in the pristine Karkloof Valley – an hour’s drive from home.  Surrounded by animals, blue skies and endless greenery, I felt strong urges to start busting out “Old McDonald had a Farm….”.

But I didn’t. I should have. Next time.

The scenes that greeted us might have made a forgetful person lament: “aaah we should’ve brought the camera”. But not us, no – thanks to my well-prepared, Phuthu-Punter of a husband, we had a spiffy Canon with a 72mm lens on board…Hee! Disclaimer: So we do have pictures but I must warn that they serve only a slither of the real beauty that was rendered before us.

At one point in the ride, whilst snacking ferociously on Jelly Babies, I found myself taking in a panoramic view and wondering if anyone could ever get tired of marvelling at such postcard scenery. Surely not…

I think I was eating Jelly babies at this point…

Jeremy’s favourite photo – us girls clambering over slippery rocks in slippery shoes. We had to cross this river twice as all the bridges had been swept away. Don’t you just love my surfing pose?

Jeremy, our personal tour guide, kindly informed us that a man was washed over these falls…that was the only sad part of the ride, thank goodness.

See the blue skies and green grass!

More green grass and blue skies! Mmmm!

Och..hello sexayhhh..nice shirt!!

This is Superjerm’s account of what happened at the canoe race we did on Sunday…..with some of my comments in blue!

In preparation for our dusi mission next year, Lou and I decided we had better get some river practice done. Sunday was an easy race on the Umkomaas which is a powerful and poetically dangerous river although the section we were doing was pretty easy…or so we thought…..

So it started off well, we lined up a driver, arrived on time, remembered all our kit – too well in fact!

So we managed to sneak up to B batch because of our “connections” instead of E batch where we belonged due to our lack of grading – we hadn’t done a river race in 3 years or so.

Our batch got called and we headed down to the river, clambering down a steep rocky boulder bank we stopped at the waters edge where I promptly slipped on the mud and landed flat on my ass, “damn., forgot how slippery that bloody river mud is!” Quick check to see no one saw and hopped up and tried to step back onto the bank but by now by foot was caught in my splash cover.

Lou was howling with laughter at my ungraceful behaviour! I got up and gave her a glare and promptly slipped on the mud again and landed back onto my already throbbing ass! That escalated Lou’s laughing fit and by that time I started to see a slight glimmer of humour in the situation! It was freakin hysterical, I’m sorry!

So the gun went and we were off – a little wobbly through the first few rapids trying to avoid the all other boats around us and to get to the largest rapid of the day in one piece. “We better get past these clowns and into the rapid first” I whisper to Lou.

We pass them easily and have a nice clean line ahead of us down the rapid, we just need to negotiate a tiny rock filter to line up and bounce down the big wavy rapid. Then the unimaginable happens, we clip an underwater rock on the side of the boat and next thing we know we’re in the drink! oh and my shoulder popped out of it’s joint which was lovely.

“I don’t believe it, I muttered to my self!” So now it’s salvage time. It’s a proverbial yard sale with paddles, boats, hats, bits of polystyrene and various of our possessions about to be sucked down the rapid!

The water is flowing too fast to get to the side so we brace for the bumpy swim down the rapid. I push the boat away, shout at Lou to get into the cocktail position (will explain that another day) and brace ourselves for a rock bashing! Cocktail position – like you are floating in the pool with a cocktail in one hand, the main point being that your feet are up to avoid them getting trapped in rocks!

I’m swallowing water by the mouthful which isn’t great because I’m already quite full from having swallowed my pride.  After our thorough wash and rinse cycle, we drag our sorry and bruised carcasses onto the river bank whilst some kind soul salvages our boat.

On inspection we see our boat has sustained some serious damage but being as cocky as we were, we didn’t pack any repair tape! Epic fail! Lou also lost her paddle which meant she did a balancing trick all the way to the finish, all the while holding the seams of the boat together whilst I paddled! A great way to see the scenery! I should lose my paddle more often!

We managed to float, swim, walk to the finish but we managed to stay in good humour and whilst scrambling over the slippery rocks and fighting through the reeds it dawned on me and I had to chuckle……..

After 17 odd Dusis people would ask me why I didn’t do anymore to which I would answer, ” I just got bored of it really, I had the most fun when I was a beginner, every rapid you survived was a major excitement, I wish I could forget everything I had learned over the years and start off as a beginner again!”

I had to laugh because doing that race was like being a beginner all over again!

Be  careful what you wish for!

Superjerm has done a million dusi’s. That’s how we met actually. Little 18-year old me was so eager to paddle down rivers and balance in a boat that my very dedicated mom drove me to Blue Lagoon 3 days a week, come rain or shine.

My future husband obviously saw me there all the time and one afternoon before a dice, asked me to do the DUSI with him. In my head it was like:

Oh my goodness, JEREMY SANDERS, wants to do the DUSI with ME! With me? Yes, with….me! Holy Moly. Holy Cow! With….me! YEEEEEEHAAAA!

Being 18 at the time, I desperately tried not to sound over-excited and gave a very civilised, neutral response: “cool, let me think about it and I’ll get back to you”.

HaHa…ego!

We’ve done a lot of dusi’s together since then (the exact number eludes me right now, 5? 6?) and then in 2005 I managed to do it on my own. Obviously I wasn’t thinking straight at the time which I know happens quite a lot but Superjerm was there to escort me down the river, making sure I didn’t swallow too much water or die of fright.

And now after a 3 year break, we’re ready to hit it again, ecoli and all.

So on Saturday, we halued out our canoes, dusted them off and went for a paddle around Shongweni dam.

I wasn’t joking when I said it was time to dust off them boats.

Oooh my what big muscles you have Superjerm…

Two laps around the dam was just about enough time to make my butt numb.

We had to endure this terrible, awful, miserable sunset. No one said it was easy living in Africa.

Answer to yesterday’s brain game:

See-through blouse

I understand you underake to undermine my undertaking