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the village of Greyton , through chattering teeth , I told Big Mike to find the first coffee shop he could and stop . I needed a huge cup of hot chocolate . He did not need any convincing . The bike showed us that the temperature was just 4 degrees Celsius , but with the wind chill , it felt to be below zero .
We spent over an hour at the Oak and Vigne coffee shop , defrosting and waiting for the sun to eventually get high enough to break the mist . It would later turn into a spectacularly beautiful day with hardly a puff of cloud from horizon to horizon . Our winter days are short at this latitude and with the late start , we decided to tweak our route a little . Rather than ride the long way around the mountains that lay in our path , we would go right over them . Only problem , we were not sure if there was a way of making this happen . The next few hours of riding would become the most fun part of the entire trip . It ’ s funny how you sometimes find the best memories where you were not even looking .
Just outside the village , we swung off the tar once more and headed along a little jeep track that cut between two farms . Mountains towered up in front of us and soon , we were climbing . At first , the road was just a rough and rugged switchback that sliced its way up the mountain . Soon it became steep and rocky , with loose gravel , boulders , and patches of soft sand . We were at times forced to reduce speed to a crawl . Realising that we were on some sort of four-by-four trail , we pushed on . The bike was simply powering over whatever came in its path and even with two big blokes on its back , the ride was still amazingly comfortable .
My still semi frozen hands were aching from holding on tightly by the time we reached the pinnacle . I was grateful for the short stop to look down the valley and grab the obligatory photo . The sun was also high in the sky by this point and provided you chose a good place to stand that offered a little wind shelter , you could stay warm . We enjoyed that mountain top for a long time , not thinking about the possibility that a gate or dead end would stand in our way while dropping down to the other side . We just felt like we were the only people on the planet . I had expected to feel this way while crossing Africa ten years earlier but had been surprised back then at how hard it really is to ever be alone . Most of the time , you stop for ten minutes and even if you are in the middle of nowhere , someone soon pops their head out from behind a tree , rock or comes strolling in . Mike and I took some time to talk about the route ahead and time we expected to take going down , while Mike tried to check the maps on his phone with limited coverage .
Going down was vastly different . We did eventually find an obstacle in our path but managed to ride through the huge dam-up of water , after a little recognisance walk to check the
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