Mad Bike Trips part two Clarens to Zastron South Africa

The initial insanity sets in firmly by about days three to six on a solo long distance bike trip. Up until then things are normal, anxious, anticipatory and normal. After that it's living in faeryland. So when I left Clarens the first time, it was off the bike with this odd fellow I met who drove me around the Eastern Free state and took me for lunch in the refrigerator of a supermarket. Kept insisting to the manager that we were all right and didn't need anything as the two of us sat and ate our chicken salads from the deli counter in a space he had had cleared for us in the busy shop's fridge. We soon parted ways however and I had to take a bus back to Clarens. Ended up riding from Botshabelo to Hobhouse through some rolling countryside. I always wonder about each little turning and driveway and my mood is normally bright while I ride, but the few days with a new friend (Andy) had taken it out of me. It was a relief to be back on the road with the familiar hum and roll of my tyres, the scratch and crush of sand and gravel along the fringes of a typically worn South African backroad. Took a break in the day during some light rain and an unpleasant wind. Found a small gate open in the fencing lining the road just after cresting one of those rises that challenges you and then re-challenges you as you realise its extent is greater than you at first thought and then near the top you have to have a small debate with yourself about continuity and there you go. Over the top. Only this time the wind was still a bastard so I made my way up the little cold path between saplings and scrub to a homestead. Sort of a waystation for hikers or something. Funny empty places creeped me out a little so I didn't stay long. I was less than keen to ride at this point. A bad day after too many days resting. When I got to the crossroads with 'Tweespruit' (Two Streams) on my left and a sign saying fifty kms to Hobhouse in 2009, I was a homeless guy with a bike and I was feeling dispirited and when a truck lifted me fifty kms to Hobhouse, I was overjoyed. At least I would now be placed back on my original road, the R26 and I promised myself I would go back and cover the distance I missed. In 2013 I did exactly that, twice. Sailing by on a better bicycle, having learned not to carry too much gear, in April 2013 I felt like a demi god rushing through the hills from Clarens, keeping my speed up and only resting occasionally to photograph scenery. In Hobhouse, back in 2009, I was still in for another weird week of life on the road without money in South Africa.
I'll tell you what happened there in a moment but take a look at some of these shots from the road to Hobhouse.

Oh ja, just outside Clarens there was this thing called 'Surrender Hill' which took on new meaning. NO SURRENDER!

Anyhow, back in 2009 I climbed out of the truck where the R26 goes past Hobhouse and seeing a little brown sign with picture of a caravan on it I thought I might find a cheap or free place to camp the night. Not this time. In town, on the only hundred metres of tar in the whole place, I met a long skinny man with grungy hair and a metal T on, with his girlfriend, a purple haired woman. They told me to forget the campground it was derelict (it is, I have been there since) and drove me and bike out to their farm outside the tiny village of Hobhouse (named for an English lady who was said to be kind to Afrikaners when other English people weren't being kind. At all.) They drove fast, in a four wheel drive Nissan Sani and they played through a speaker that occupied most of the back of the truck, Pink Floyd's 'the Wall' at full volume most of the way. After about three kilometres of jouncing along the dirt in the direction of the Lesotho border which I knew we were very close to, they drew up at a closed gate where a black man was waiting. He stood next to an enormous hand painted sign saying 'Fuck Off' and 'Nirvana Farm'. The man opened the gate, closed it behind us and then we waited for him to climb in. I learned he was the local veterinarian as the Sani cruised along smoother dirt past wild horses at pasture on the right and a beautiful sweep of land interspersed with rounded dams that fit the landscape like lakes would.
The tree lined drive turned and gave way to a large area dotted with old buildings. Big barn and old farmhouse hewn out of dark stone blocks. Dogs were present, but kept in cages lining the exterior of the house. Large, average garden sized enclosures that ensured the entire house was always surrounded on all sides by canines.
I have no photos of this place, only of later 2013 trips through Hobhouse when I met a local family and paid for a night's stay. These folks, I remember only the man's name (sorry) invited me into a large parlour with a bare cement floor. The interior of the house was almost exclusively black and the motorcycles on display pedestals added to the otherworldly feeling I got as I put my pack and bike down. I was shown their sun room, which contained a Grand piano and more motorcycling memorabilia like helmets and saddles and handlebars. We had tea and Mark made an enormous joint. I mean really huge, with a sheet of newspaper. As long as his forearm at least. He gave me a tour of the farm while he and I puffed on this gargantuan stogey. Showed me their pet seventeen year old Brahman bull, gave orders (still puffing) to a group of Afrikaans woodcutters sawing planks out of felled trees and generally did the business of a small farm. Later, when I was shown to my room I was asked never to go further down the long, high, dark passage than my own room. They lived at the other end of the passage and wanted it kept private. The room they showed me came straight from a vampire story. Peeling ancient wallpaper, slumping ceiling, ancient decor and dusty curtains. But I felt tired and waited only a short time before giving in to sleep. After all, I had done it now, I was here. I could hardly get everyone up and tell them I didn't trust them and had decided to leave. Even if I had the money for a hotel or some such, there was no way anyone was still awake in Hobhouse. It really is a properly tiny little village.
When I awoke, the household served the most delicious porridge, mielie meal we call it in South Africa, and afterwards I went outside with Snowy and Mark. Snowy was an older gent who it turned out had also been picked up at the side of the road by this couple. He had been there for six months and made a really impressive vegetable garden. The sky was a deep and delightful blue, the lakes looked so inviting and Mark suggested, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, that I stay a little longer. Maybe I could find something to do on the farm here. We even discussed making some A frame cottages or some such backpackery investment sort of idea.
Let me cut this short or we'll never get to Zastron in 2009 or 2013.
These people kept me there a week. The woman went away, and then phoned back one evening to say that we all had to leave the farm. Every one of us. It had something to do with a dispute with the veterinarian and his wife. Some cigarettes missing. Something like that. Mark then fessed up to me that every mornng in the breakfast cereal he had been dropping a few valiums into the mix.
We were drugged! We were drugged labour on the farm!
He showed me their secret bedroom, which was a trove of pills, everywhere you looked there were jars and jars of different tablets and he handed me a handful of equanil and valium, suggesting I 'wean myself off'.
You might be thinking that I am making this up but these are real people. When I went back in 2013 I heard than Mark had been killed falling from a fire escape in a block of flats he lived in with his crazy purple haired wife. The locals thought she probably did it.
In 2013 all I got in Hobhouse was comfrey for a sore knee. By the way, I quit smoking in April 2013 and by December 2013 was riding twice my previous distances. Even doing 165 km one day through the Karoo. But that comes later.

Hobhouse to Zastron is not a challenging ride. You pass through another couple of one horse sort of towns, like Wepener, where there is at least a river to sit next to for a bit.
In 2009 I was in poor shape, on valium and only made it to Zastron after the sun went down. It's a small mountain town with a myth about an Afrikaner farmer who took on God and punched a hole in the mountain. The first time I arrived there I knew no one and must have been guided by some mysterious force in my dilapidated state since the first person I asked was a fellow in a white 'bakkie' (that's South African for truck, the small kind kids take to football games in America) and that guy directed me to the top of a small hill above the town's dams where he instructed his youth camp to make one wooden 'rondawel' (South African for round hut) available to me for the night, free of charge.
SO basically I rode into town, exhausted and as it happened that day rained (really rained) on, and immediately was given a cabin for the night. I think they call that serendipity, but I called it home for the night.
Shots of Zastron from the hills aove the town. In 2013 I tried to find the same place again and I'm not certain if it was the same place or not, but I met Simeon and Siela, a couple running 'Brokskloof' with a cute little stone cottage to live in. They showed me the natural Spring, in use since the original inhabitants of South Africa, the San lived here in forgotten history.