Day 16

Last day. Finally caught the double Deckers and got 5hours of sleep. Woke up, everyone seemed extremely tense about Stetteynskloof,lot of stuff lying around that people left. Went up first part of trail,looked like hiking trail, seemed quite easy. Stopped before river to take bikes apart,rest of group didn't. Went right a bit early and spend some time creating new routes for the rest to follow:-). Found the airplane wing from the Shackleton crash and the rest of the plane shortly afterwards. Mixed feelings,exited to find it,but seeing the crash site and thinking about what happened to the crew, can't even imagine.

Shortly afterwards forgot about it all as moving forward become the only goal. Photo was at the easiest crossing (no jokes), the rest i really didn't even think about taking out my camera. Went for some serious bundu-ing through hakea,reeds, bramble bushes and all kinds of impassable underbrush. Luckily i packed my bushbreaker, Marnitz. Absolutely amazing what he went through, things i wouldn't even look at twice he just went through and created a nice road for me. Took about an hour to do 50m. Even with the bike strapped to my back it seemed to get caught on just about everything. Eventually made it through and up to top of climb,got David there waiting for us. Spectacular mountains all around. Heard that there was a path cut open at the bottom,but that's just part of the fun. Found quite a lot of leopard tracks on way down,and two cameras (made some interesting photos for cape nature).

Got to bottom of Du Toits kloof and went up the old pass, probable one of the worst moments in the race, up to the second last day we've been passing through the most amazing areas, scenic ride through South Africa and loved being out there. Now we were riding up a pass with amazing scenery and mountains surrounding us,but with more litter per every 10meters than the whole trip before that.
Lot of different thoughts as we coasted into the final few kilometers, bit of unbelief that its finally finished,wished i could turn around and to it again. Not going to go into too much detail,but it has definitely been a life changing experience and learned a lot about myself.
Will go through photo's a bit later and start uploading and edit posts a bit.