Sunday, February 15: Cold overnight due to clear skies, and clear and sunny during the day, with some clouds in the distance
Sue and Simon’s
Just after 6:00 I felt awake enough that no more sleep seemed possible but with a little relaxation I managed to fall into a lucid dream until just after 8:00.
Simon was the maitre de petit déjèuner and I had some muesli with milk, coffee and a couple of scrambled eggs with toasted ciabatta which Simon had baked himself. It was really worth eating, though I haven’t been up to much in the last couple of days. Then I had to make the mother of all lists for today, the mother of all technical days.
Pea turned up early morning and in between chatting with Simon and Sue and their driving off to various tasks, Pea and I negotiated the shopping list: Breakfast, lunch, and finally dinner. The plan for town was to have a look around first (managed to buy a gas can for the larger cooker from the petrol station but nothing much else seemed to be open in the way of camping equipment stores); then get someone from Yeti to give us a run down on how the journey will begin; and then the shopping.
No one at Yeti, but they could be called and pretty soon one of the women was there to inform us that there would be a briefing at 4:30, have us fill in a couple of forms and sign them, and point out the indemnity clause. Pea managed to negotiate the price of what camping equipment she needed down to around $20 and everything was in the green zone. We could save another $6 by paying in cash, and that appears always to make sense when there is a surcharge on credit card transactions (and also when not).
Then the supermarket. We eventually found everything on our list except for condensed/powdered milk, and the bill came to $83, which is as near as dammit her share of the hut prices. Managed to get everything except for the eggs into the backpacks and took off up the road on our cycles.
Back to my checklist, items started being ticked off. Washing had to be done, in the meantime Sue and Simon had returned and left again. Just before 4:15 I went down to meet Pea at the Powderhorn, which was our meeting point. As we rode down the hill me following her, I looked upon her red (dyed) hair and was reminded of all those hours of sitting behind Conny with her very dark (with some grey) hair, but that Conny’s had always been tied up. The import of this observation would haunt us later.
On leaving, Pea decided that she couldn’t find her helmet. No helmet in sight @ Yeti, no helmet at the bank. We rode up the hill, past a house with a police car parked outside (a policeman actually lives there), were passed by Sue and Simon waving to us (but I was preoccupied by something else) and then it occurred to me that she couldn’t have been wearing a helmet to begin with. Hence the observation of the hair. Ha!
Back up here, Simon had hung my stuff up to dry, and they went off to dinner while I tried solving the last problems on the list. By way of light entertainment, I demonstrated to Pea how to sleep on a flat, hard surface without snoring (sleeping not demonstrated). I dropped the groceries off at Pea’s digs, and managed to survive on Simon’s bread and butter for the most part of the day. Then to the cameras: Apparently the SX110 and SX120 needed different initiating sequences for the intervalometer, and once I had downloaded a manual and worked out where the continuous shooting and custom timer options were located I could correct the code, test it, and prepare I hope more than sufficient cards for the week.
Blog post had to be completed and scheduled, and with that everything started winding down. A glass of wine from Simon, while they watched a telenovela with plenty of explanations from Sue, then went to bed at what I thought was surprisingly early.
The river – awa – tomorrow.
