The next day we reached the summit of Königstein.
The panorama was full-on. Our heads were turning around to digest the views over the genuine African savanna, the light brownish color of a lion’s back. A cool breeze was blowing on top, we felt victory! Slowly the thoughts of our bikes crept back into our mind. And what good first surprise: The first elevation drop from the summit to the first plane could be called rideable. Well, it was a hard fight to navigate through the bush in the fairly steep terrain, with a rumble of granite constantly slurring the tires direction. Nonetheless, it no doubt felt like biking.
The traverse through grass and a deep sand surface had the odd thorns sticking out.
Punctures are the smaller kind of worries on such a trip, I guess. Then we entered a gorge and found a remarkable ride on a solid granite riverbed. Further down the rock transformed into a labyrinth of giant boulders. In the greed for more photos, Hannes, the photographer, and I stayed behind. We started to hurry back to fight the beckoning twilight and at one stage, we realized, we had lost our path. When Colin had been leading the way, it was easy to follow. Now, every little stone on a rock could be taken as clue for the path. So we got ourselves in our first real little trouble, which we got out of ourselves too. It involved abandoning my bike behind an arbitrary rock in a labyrinth rock garden and scrambling through rough terrain towards the bearing, where we were expecting the camp ground. We made the camp in the very last light of the day.
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