I’m back in Germany !The 9 hours in Heathrow had however not been enough for BA to transfer all my luggage. According to their computer system it did however make its way to Heathrow, which is further then expected 
With a bit of luck I shall get my bike later today.
The morning didn’t start too good since I still had to do my packaging, including the bike. Not having brought proper tools I was unable to remove the pedals. Only after driving around some time with Joachim we found a mechanic with proper tools and got them off. After that packaging was done very fast. At first I did a rather conservative packing though and ended up with two bags apart from the bike. After getting access to a scale I could reshuffel things and go closer to the weight limits. This way I ended up with a 30kg bike bag, a 25kg bag and my backpack as carry on luggage. Measuring the weight of the bags I did also measure my weight first, witch got me quite a shock. I lost 7kg or 10% of my weight ! No wonder I felt a bit unstable from time to time.
Checking in the luggage at the airport was easier then ever. There was no x-ray of my check in luggage and my bike bag was not weighted at all. I just had to lift it on that luggage transportation band. Unbelievable, I could have dumped anything on it.
Unfortunately the plain to Heathrow had been fully booked and the girl next to me was … lets say slightly on the heavy side of life, unlike me, so my space was getting a bit limited. Sleep was hard to catch on the flight and a steward gave me a painful waikup call stepping on my foot.
Approaching London I got some rain, in the cabin. Yes, it started to dribble down on me from the ceiling. I guess it was just some water from the air condition, still a bit strange.
In Heathrow I had to transfer to the new terminal 5. A 18 min bus ride. Going through a tunnel a piece of luggage was lying in the middle of the road. I guess the chance to see my bike ever again (undamaged) is quite low.
The terminal itself looks a bit over designed. In all other airports you get small boxes at the security check that are mainly moved around by hand. Not so in terminal 5. It is a conveyor band controlled by some computers. After the scanner you are not allowed to simply stop the cart and take your stuff. You need to wait until the computer found a spot to stop it for your. This requires a set of cameras and sensors, plus more people then on normal checks.
Having traveled for 9 weeks in Africa you learn at least two things. First appreciate what you got and second that you don’t need a lot.
Living in the western world things like a hot clean shower are nothing special but after once you stayed on basic camp sites or even in bush camps for a longer time you are really happy to be able to shower again with out having to worry to get fungus and learn to give more value to those things. But then you also notice that you won’t die immediatly if your hands are dirty, you got no clean cloth to wear or if all your cloth are a bit damp. Life goes on easily if you are just able to accept those things. If you got some “luxuary problems” though and whine all the time you will have a hard time until you realise that that you need to cope with what you got unless you want to give up.
Thanks to BA and the new terminal 5 in Heathrow I will have a 9 hours stop over again on my flight home next Friday. So I decided to return a day earlier and thus have at least two full days back home before it’s back to work.
Yesterday we completed the final stage of the TdA 2008 ! It was a cold day and involved quite some standing around so we had been all freezing.
For some people reaching Cape Town was coming home and most felt like having accomplished something huge. But for some reason I’m more or less missing that feeling and I’m rather glad that the trip is over even though I had lots of fun. I guess it’s because of not connecting much with Cape Town so it feels like biking from one town in Africa to another. But who knows maybe this changes in the next days. And if not there is still a lot to see in this world and many roads are waiting to be biked on … But first I need some damn good office sleep.
It is much colder in south africa then I expected. So I already catched up a cold. Having to ride your bike for a good 6 hours that is not so good. Still I meight it into camp. Some support of a fellow rider maight the last 45km a bit easier. The wind changed again. On the one side it got us better weather now but on the other side it is more head wind now. Oh well, only three more days to go ! Three more nights in my tent and I got EFC and only two more times to set it up 
The first 30km out of Windhoek had been hilly and very scenery. After that the land flattened out once again and things got a bit boring with long days on the bike as we are on the final stretch to Capetown.
On the 4th day we went of the main road and onto a dirt road. After just a few km the scenery changed completely and was almost breath taking. There had been no big climbs but lots of small and very steep once. Along with some sand pits the ride was quite hard but heaps of fun after being on tar roads for so long.
We spend a night in a desert camp (so it was not on the day out of Windhoek as I thought earlier). The difference to a bush camp was not very visible though and we even had a small lake/pond next to us. It was a beautiful evening with a great sunset.
During the night some heavy wind started to blow, which stayed part of the rides for the next days. On the next day (there was a 30km time trial that I skipped to save energy) the wind turned into a thunderstorm or multiple. There was not that much rain but going down the road with head wind and some lightning around me in the desert was strange.
In the evening we went to fish river canyon, apparently the second largest in the world, and had dinner just at the look out point. As it couldn’t get much nicer we took the hardest day next. 120km on dirt followed by 50km on tar up to a camp site at the border to South Africa. The distance is only an indication on hard mean that day was. It started of with a though climb (same I enjoyed rolling down just the day before), not long but steep. The next 60km, up to lunch, had been some of the best so far, awesome scenery and fast with some short climbs.
The day was advertised as almost all down. Unfortunately we had a heavy head wind with that so I had to paddle hard to get down the hill and not blown back up. So far it was only a crosswind though but once we reached the road we turned straight into it. So I was pushing hard but was riding on the road with just 15km/h ! Having been on the bike for many hours already and estimating another 3 hours like this did not look like fun. Fortunately I accelerated a bit later on when the road went down to the orange river. Still it took more then 8 hours from camp to camp. So I’m really happy that I don’t have to ride today.
Tomorrow we’ll cross the last border. climb all the way up again and tackle the final 6 days of this trip !
Getting into Windhoek feels like getting into a whole different world. The “superspar” got about everything you can imagine. There are all the German products (for double the price) and in the bakery they do even seem to speak German. Many products, streets and shops got German names, heaps of white people are everywhere as are all sorts of new cars.
The next days should get us back to what we had before. Tomorrow we got a bush camp and an offroad section in the second half of next week.
Thanks to google I could finally overcome the reboot loop of death! So as the trip nears its end most of my equipment is starting to work again.
My tent (Wechsel, Path Finder) does so far work just fine for me and is giving me a save shelter all the time. I do not even need to use the picks and still it stayed dry in the rain we had and did not fly away in the wind. Part of the later might be due to its size or rather the lack of it. It is so tiny and low that many people make jokes about it. Like if I would set it up in high grass I would not find it again. The inside is actually not that small and longer then some bigger tents. So it’s quite comfortable to sleep in. I can place most of my stuff below the outer tent, just not my red box, which is not easy to carry anyway. Traveling with a big backpack it should also be a tight fit. If the tent would be just 10% larger it would be almost perfect. That would even allow to sit upright comfortable. On the plus side one can role it up quite small and thus it takes little space in the red box leaving some extra space for chocolate bars!
I only need to set my tent up eleven more times till Capetown. If all goes well I finish with EFC