Upington

October 9, 2025

We had gone out to dinner with my son and his family last night so we got to bed later than we had hoped for. The four o'clock alarm to make it possible to catch our seven o'clock flight felt as if it had gone off seconds after I had fallen asleep.

The boxes waiting in the dark for our lift to the airport.

Our first flight took us to Johannesburg where we had a short layover until boarding a little Embraer 135 that would take us to Upington along with less than fifteen other passengers.

Upington lies on the Garieb or Orange River which starts in the highlands of Lesotho, the small landlocked kingdom in the sky. The river provides irrigation water to fruit and wine farms but once away from the river the green is replaced by gravel plains and red dunes.

The bicycles being unloaded from the little Embraer 135 at the tiny Upington airport.

Reassembling the bikes took less than an hour and we started cycling off to Upington, the outskirts of which were less than five kilometers away.

Leigh has a go at the Upington Shuffle. The reference to the Green Kalahari is due to the proximity of the Garieb.

After about a kilometer I noticed that the dry bag with our sleeping mats and camping chairs wasn't on the back of Leigh's bicycle. We raced back to the airport praying that we would get there before a controlled explosion was used to defuse the offending piece of "unattended luggage". Thankfully we got there before that stage but not before the security lady on duty was halfway through the administration process that would precede such an event. This meant that lots of verification was needed from Leigh to reverse the process. According to Leigh the security lady was "somewhat pissed off".

Once in Upington we headed off to look for a gas cannister for our stove (fiund one at the retail outlet of an agricultural co-op, the local camping store being out of stock) and then off to our digs for the night, a little apartment within walking distance of the Kalahari Mall, a surprisingly large mall given the size of Upington. By this stage the temperature had reached the wrong side of normal body temperature so we waited until later in the afternoon to walk to the mall to get our grocery shopping done.

This is the temperature when we set off to the mall.

We have a very short day planned for tomorrow, just a few kilometers down river to a resort that has camping and, more importantly, a swimming pool.

Today's ride: 9 km (6 miles)
Total: 9 km (6 miles)

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