Malelane to Durban - Long ride!

This is the story of the second half of our Christmas holiday ride from Durban to Malelane and back.

All ready to roll

We packed the shining Milwaukee Harley like this on the trip from Durban.
The ride back from Daddy's family in Nelspruit on Boxing Day was a short pleasant 60km's, made more enjoyable by the pleasant feeling of sharing time with family that has not been seen for a long time.

Maybe if I ignore it it will go away.

With a long ride back to Durban ahead of us the next day, we decided to have lunch at one of the restaurants near the Malelane entrance to the Kruger National Park. One was still cleaning up from Christmas Day, another was fully booked, so we found ourselves at the very nice restaurant called Hamiltons. The meal was really unexpectedly nice, in pleasant surroundings, and some unusual residents waling around freely. While chicken was on the menu, we were surprised to see them walking around our table and then jumping up onto one of the other tables and chairs. It must be a regular occurence as the waiters ignored them and carried on with their duties in a very relaxed and friendly manner. Fortunately, the monitor lizard in the garden stayed well away from the dining tables.

The rest  of the afternoon was lazed away around the bungalow, looking at the buck, hippo's and birds in front of us.

Mommy, me n Palmira.

Rio Vista Lodge only starts serving breakfast at 7 a.m. unless you specifically make different arrangements if you want to leave earlier. Not wanting to make a fuss, we decided to pack, have breakfast, go say goodbye to the family, and be on the road by about 7.45 This would get us home about 5.00 p.m. No such luck! Breakfast was late, and then we bumped into Palmira, the owner of Rio Vista and a good friend of Granny Maria when handing the keys in. With the pleasantries over we went to have a long farewell with Granny Maria.

Entrance to Rio Vista Lodge

We eventually got riding at about 9.00 a.m. and rode into overcast threatening weather. By the time we got to the mountain pass near Barberton we had to stop to put on raincoats because of the fine drizzle coming down in misty conditions. This just got steadily worse until we pulled in to fill up with petrol at Cradle Of Life tourist resort near Badplaas. The temptation of a soothing hot cup of coffee drew us in to the restaurant before we got back on the road.

The rest of this bad days ride tomorrow.