Day 379 | Near Old Kalpowar: a day of two halves
54 km | zzOz total: 10,560 km
What do you do about snakes? asks one of the tin cocooned 4WDers, looking at my safety boots and leggings, ie, Keen sandals and shorts.
Oh, I thought they were tree roots, I reply. Anyway, I’m from NZ, we don’t have any.
I know I’ve passed hundreds probably more closely than I care to think about but the reality is that there’s so much bashing and vibration as my caravan makes it’s passage through the long grass, they’ve long slithered to safety. I have seen a couple of snakes since I left Cooktown, both whip snakes, poisonous enough but very, err, whiplike, ie, thin, even at 800 mm I can’t see them getting their fangs into my tough lower limbs.
One was at Endeavour Falls, just hanging around the side of the path, the German Fraulien obviously wasn’t looking for them as she hustled up the path just in front of me. The second was just out sunning itself on the road the next day, unconcerned until I was almost on it. I’ve seen more whip snakes than the rest combined, might be because they tend to lift their head and look around, then unable to sense the vibration.
A day of two halves, 13 km until lunchtime, in 4 hours, more of the same sandpit as yesterday with the final 300 m requiring portage of the panniers up a steep hill, then just wrestling, manhandling, the bike and trailer.
Then at 2 30 I burst out onto the best road surface I’ve encountered, ever, a thin layer of fine gravel on a fully compacted clay base, newly graded, just perfect and I zoomed almost 30 km in a couple of hours before I had enough.
Tomorrow I’ll burst back out to join the more usual Cape trippers with their 4WDs and off road campers and maybe I’ll be able to complain about their talkative tendencies rather than the last 2 days where I’ve had 3 sentences with fellow travellers since I left Desi’s.