The 94.7 cycle race

This seems to be an annual entry! Although this year's race was very different to last year's one.

Instead of Carl aiming to break the elusive 3 hr mark, he took one for the team and raced as a group with my brothers, Roland and Bruce, and... wait for it...., my septuagenarian father!!!

Yes, at the ripe old age of 74, my father did this gruelling race for the first time. Carl managed to get dad a start time with the Deloitte group, so the four men started at the same time and did the whole race together. It was a looong way (97.4kms, to be precise), in the blazing heat, but they did it - and did it well. In 4hrs 34 mins. Which is mighty impressive indeed! Carl and Roland put their hands on dad's back and helped him up some of the hills, and the three of them became this mean hill-riding machine. In fact, they even left a colleague of Carl's behind who's done Iron Man (who hasn't trained for a while, but who's counting?)! At the end of the race, the 4 guys enjoyed the Deloitte hospitality tent before heading home to clean up and crash!

Megs and Ali were meant to ride a leg of the race on an 8-seater tandem. We invited Austin and Liam (Bruce's boys ) and Jeremy and Jonno (Dion, Carl's first cousin's boys) to make up the 6 kids, and an experienced adult rider was at the front and back. This was all done in aid of CHOC, a charity which raises funds for Childhood cancer. We named our team CHOC-lets, and I fabric painted team T-shirts. However, the back wheel of the bike collapsed at the start of the race, and sadly the tandem ride didn't even get going. At least it collapsed in a safe spot, and not when it was barrelling down one of the hectic hills in the race! I'll save the shirts for next year!

In fact, one of the amazing things about this race is how many people did the race to raise money for charities - CHOC, Reach for a Dream, Breast Cancer (a man rode the race in a very racey pink bra!); and a host of others I can't even remember. I have heard that CHOC raised R3.1 million rand from the race! Now that's impressive!

In the late afternoon, all race participants and their families (from our family that is, not the 26 000 riders who took part!) came over to our place for a most pleasant celebratory dinner.

Madikwe River Lodge

We have recently enjoyed a luxury weekend at Madikwe River Lodge. Madikwe is a Private Game Reseve in the North West Province, on the border of Botwsana. It covers 75 000 hectares, is malaria free, and is home to the Big 5. All which make it very attractive, except for the fact that the only accommodation is in Private Lodges, most of which one would have to sell one's body to be able to stay even one night there. Lucky for me, I didn't have to because, through a series of fortunate events, we were lucky enough to stay at a massively discounted rate (no prostitution required!!).

The lodge was ever so comfortable, the food ever so plentiful and the game viewing was amazing. Each day we were woken at 5am (groan!) to go on a game drive in their open game viewing vehicles (and went again in the evenings). We easily saw 4 of the Big 5 (excluding leopard), but on top of that had 2 amazing sightings of Wild Dogs (very endangered), and all sorts of other interesting things - a spring hare, a martial Eagle, a leapoard tortoise (so we did actually see leopard after all!), and amazing birds. I think in this case, picture will speak louder than words, but what you won't see in the pictures is the HEAT!!!! 38 deg on Friday and Sunday, and 42 deg on Saturday. Luckily the rooms had aircon, but we didn't spend much time there. The lodge also had a lovely rock pool which the kids loved, and even I spent the time in and out of it, just to cool off.

On our way out on Sunday, we decided to take the longer route out of the reserve, and on our way we had the most thrilling time of the whole weekend. We got to a water hole and Carl swore that the animals we looking edgy. I was less than convinced, but checked things out with my fabulous bionoculars, and there I saw a lioness under a tree, just next to the water hole. Which did explain why the Zebra, Giraffe and Wildebeest were on on edge and not coming down to the water (36 deg, did I mention that???). The lion moved to a spot just over a ridge so we couldn't see her, but we (and the animals) knew she was there. Eventually, they couldn't stay away from the water anymore and they started coming down. Within no time, the lioness made an almighty charge for the Zebra, but didn't catch anything. We pulled the car forward, once things had settled and we realised that there were actually 4 lionesses!! We moved back out because we were bothering them, and sat still (in the blazing heat) and watched the lionesses make two more attacks, but each time coming up empty. It was just the most exciting and tense thing to see! We were rather sad that they didn't manange to catch one, but the thrill of the chase was quite something. Interestingly, had we been on an official game drive, there is no way we would have been able to just sit for an hour and a half and watch. So, lucky us! By then, the kids were BEGGING to go, and it was pretty unlikely that the lionesses would've actually caught somthing until the day had cooled off (did you gather it was boiling??).

What a thrilling end to a marvellous weekend!!