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They’ve made it! |
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Mega-marathon runners Braam Malherbe and David Grier have triumphed over pain, injury, huge storms, massive flooding and dangerous river crossings to ‘run a smile’ around the entire coastline of South Africa, enjoying a heroes’ welcome in the Mozambican resort of Ponta do Ouro.
Establishing a world first, and proving that ‘nothing is impossible,’ the two Toyota-supported extreme athletes completed their 100-day, 3 278km endurance epic by running, hiking, swimming and paddling the equivalent of a marathon a day, six days a week.
Cheered on by excited well-wishers, they led their four Toyota support vehicles through the Farazela border post flying South African and Mozambican flags; and ended the Cipla Spar Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge with a celebratory dip in the warm Indian Ocean where they hope to swim with dolphins tomorrow.
“I’m exhilarated and feel proud to be a South African and extremely grateful to my Maker,” Braam, a 51-year-old motivational speaker who works in youth development, said. “I’m so grateful that I was granted the opportunity to walk my talk, especially with children, proving that ‘nothing is impossible!’”
“I feel like I’ve caught my dream after chasing it so long, and now I’m going to really experience it and live it,” David, a 48-year-old celebrity chef and restaurant owner insisted. “But the achievement isn’t about what my friend Braam and I have achieved personally, but that with the backing of an amazing team and sponsors like Toyota, Cipla and Spar we have been able to make a difference.
“The fund-raising charity run will benefit Operation Smile South Africa, changing the lives of so many children forever by funding corrective surgery for youngsters with facial disfigurements.
”When we arrived at the hospital in Mt Frere recently where a number of operations were performed, I was touched by the realisation that Toyota’s commitment ran deep, with the volunteer surgeons and medical professionals transported in Toyota Quantum buses – and that in addition to our four 4x4 support vehicles.”
  
 
 
The Capetonian athletes were named South African adventurers of the year after the world first of running the Great Wall of China in 2006, following up with the Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge which began in the Namibian diamond mining enclave of Oranjemund on July 1.
But both had paid a high price and had to undergo major knee operations after the China run, with surgeons insisting that their running days were over.
Within the first week of the Coastal Challenge Braam was struck by injury, tearing a muscle in his hip. “I never allowed doubt to creep in by asking those ‘what if’ questions and realised that the pain was manageable, although I did have to walk for a few days, limiting us to around 35km a day. But the walking allowed me to heal and in the last few weeks I’ve felt stronger and stronger, getting into a 45km-a-day routine.”
After swimming with the dolphins at Ponta do Ouro, Braam plans to take a slow drive home with his girlfriend, son Benjamin, and friends visiting from overseas. “I want to explore the coastline some more and return to highlights we rushed past.”
Meanwhile David is flying home to his family. “There came a time in the past week when I felt an urgent need to finish and be with my family. My daughter Jade will be four in December and my wife Liz has made such sacrifices, looking after the family and running the business.”
The 100-day adventure also posed huge challenges for the support team with crew member and 4x4 expedition guide Geoff Dalglish insisting: “My fellow adventurers were awesome in their good-natured enthusiasm, and the trio of Toyota Fortuners and Hilux double cab often played an heroic role. They lived up to all expectations under often difficult conditions, never faltering although we did suffer a number of punctures. My Fortuner D-4D ran long and hard while scouting routes, covering more than 15 000km without missing a beat.”
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iSimangaliso Wetland Park |
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Which is the most amazing part of South Africa?
This is a question I’m often asked and a candidate for my personal favourite corner of the globe has to be iSimangaliso Wetland Park, the new name for what was formerly the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park. We’re entering it today which fills me with joy. I’ve adventured here often in 4x4s over the years and had some amazing wildlife experiences in the many game reserves in the area.
Here are some of the good reasons to visit:
• Only in iSimangaliso and nowhere else on Earth could you hope to meet the oldest land mammal (the rhinoceros) and the largest terrestrial mammal (the elephant); the biggest marine mammal (the whale) and share an ecosystem with the world’s oldest fish (the coelacanth).
• If you’re lucky in one day you could see the Big Five and go on a night turtle drive to see these amazing creatures coming ashore to lay their eggs.
• It was South Africa’s first world heritage site and the St Lucia park was Africa’s first protection area with a conservation history stretching back more than a century.
• The coastline is the last significant breeding ground in South Africa for both the giant leatherback and loggerhead turtles.
• Lake St Lucia is Africa’s largest estuary and contains the continent’s greatest congregation of crocodiles and hippos.
• The 25 000-year-old coastal dunes are among the tallest vegetated dunes in the world.
• Lake Sibaya is the largest natural freshwater lake in the sub-continent.
• The sustainable fish traps of the Kosi Bay lakes date back 700 years and have been handed down from generation to generation.
• At St Lucia Mouth you meet sharks and crocodiles and wouldn’t want to swim there.
• Pristine beaches are a major attraction with the one near Rocktail Bay Lodge being named one of the 10 best in the world by an American outdoor magazine.
• The area boasts the world’s greatest concentration of black rhino.
So you can see why I love the place. I’ve had my best snorkelling experience here, swimming among ragged tooth sharks and turtles, as well as enjoying beach hikes where I was the only human in sight. It’s a piece of heaven.
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FINDING PEACE IN THE WILDERNESS |
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Dawn on the Wild Coast and moments of peace before another busy day begins.
Africa’s wild places could hold the key to humankind’s tortured quest for inner peace and joy.
The pressure of running a marathon a day, six days a week, is relentless, not only for athletes David and Braam, but for all the Miles for Smiles support team. But some of us, at least, are discovering, or rediscovering, the soothing balm of the wilderness.
I’ve long been aware that I am often only truly at peace in the wilds, and find it easiest to switch off my overheated brain when I’m far from the madding crowd, communing with Nature, rather than being busy, busy, busy while trying to meet too many self-imposed deadlines.
It is essential to find time to slow down and be quiet, even if only for a few minutes. And if we look, there are so many places to do this.
Of course, the idea of wilderness therapy isn’t exactly new. Poets, philosophers and naturalists increasingly recognise the role of the wilderness in maintaining a balance in our lives.
It is to wild Africa - the cradle of humankind - that we can return to at least briefly escape the pressures and stresses of modern life, and re-establish a connection with the land and ourselves.
As Ian Player, founder of the Wilderness Leadership School, observes in his book Zululand Wilderness: “On frequent visits to Europe, the United States, and the Far East, I have noticed that among people there is a weariness caused by travel without purpose.
“Instead of pilgrimages there are escapes. Africa can reintroduce this pilgrimage and give a new dimension to travel linked to our new age of exploration, not only of outer space but also of the inner dimension of humanness.”
He maintains that in our national parks and game reserves the ancient spirit “older than the spirit of man” still survives.
“What we have in these places,” he says, “is the most precious of worldly gifts, a sense of the spiritual connection between human beings and the land. If we protect and nurture this wilderness it could be our greatest contribution to the modern world and, sensitively managed, it could provide enormous benefits to us because it is a renewable natural resource.”
Wilderness therapy ... when you stop your 4x4 and switch off the real magic begins
I am happiest at home in Cape Town when I’m climbing that iconic flat-topped mountain, sometimes following a path named after former Prime Minister, General Jan Christiaan Smuts.
He put his love of the mountain so eloquently when he said: “When we reach the mountain summits, we leave behind us all the things that weigh heavily on our body and our spirit. We leave behind all sense of weakness and depression; we feel a new freedom, a great exhilaration, an exaltation of the body no less than of the spirit.”
Noel de Villiers, founder of the non-profit Open Africa organisation, which is dedicated to unleashing the spirit of Africa with the creation of a network of tourism routes between Cape Town and Cairo, talks of ”the yearning of people everywhere to reconnect with the Earth and with their roots.”
And Africa, with its abundant natural resources but shortage of cash, is in a unique position today to offer what so many wealthy people in advanced countries desire – that reconnection with nature.
“In the African bush, far away from the surroundings you are accustomed to, you feel as though you have come home,” says Noel. “Some say it is because your spirit recognises the birthplace of its origin. Others say it is because of the silence, because of the overwhelming presence of the Creator. But nobody really knows.”
Many centuries ago the Latins described this mystique as mal D’Afrika, or the malady of Africa, with the French today referring to it as mal d’Afrique.
Former US President Theodore Roosevelt once said: “There are no words that can tell of the hidden spirit of the wilderness; that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.”
And Chief Seattle, a Native American, put it so eloquently in a speech back in 1854: “If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.”
Whatever your explanation or understanding, the important thing is to get out there and experience Africa’s wild places yourself. But be warned: it will change you forever.
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Cover Up! |
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 Our Miles for Smiles Double Cab Hilux is sporting a smart new Beekman Super Canopy. Geoff Dalglish reports
The first fortnight of the Cipla Spar Miles for Smiles Coastal Challenge included storms and massive flooding on the Cape West Coast, which brought home to the team just how vulnerable your equipment and belongings can be without proper protection on an extended expedition.
On arrival in Cape Town we called in on Beekman, one of the pioneers in the canopy business with the family-run operation having produced more than 150 000 canopies since 1972 and emerged as one of the most respected names in the industry.
I’d already enjoyed faultless service from a Beekman Super Canopy fitted to a Hilux Legend 35 which had adventured throughout Southern Africa, including trips to Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Kgalagadi and the Namib Desert - so it was the obvious choice for the team’s new-generation Double Cab. Well, several thousand kilometres and nearly three months later, we can report that the product has lived up to all expectations. It is tough, stylish and enjoys a reputation for durability.
Originally started as a business run from a garage by Adriaan Beekman, the Beekman company is now an approved supplier to Toyota, General Motors, Isuzu and Nissan, boasting a national network of agents, depots and dealers to ensure availability of a range of quality products and full after-sales service.
Contact: Tel (021) 948 3701, email
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
or visit www.beekman.co.za
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Paradise lost! |
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 There’s an African proverb that says: ‘Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children.’
And surveying the breathtakingly beautiful landscapes of the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast I’m reminded again and again of our responsibility to a sustainable future.This is a paradise with remote beaches butting up against rolling green hills and jagged cliffs, and mostly there is not a soul in sight, your footprints the only ones in the sand.
But all is not well in paradise with avaricious mining companies again focussing their beady eyes on this coastline while attempting to con impoverished locals into believing they’ll bring a bright, long-term future. Their track record says otherwise.The reality is that they are smash and grab operators with all the ethics and social responsibility of your average opportunistic burglar, caring little for the wasteland they create in places of former beauty.
Chatting to hotelier Conrad Winterbach at Wavecrest Resort Hotel I meet a kindred soul who is passionate about the environment and alarmed by plans to dramatically degrade it. He echoes the sentiments of the proverb I quote: “We are the custodians on behalf of future generations,” he insists. “For this reason, no group, individual or currently incumbent political party has the right to enrich itself, or its generation, at the expense of the planet and those who will occupy it in the future.”
The resort itself is a gem situated on the pristine mangrove-lined Nxaxo estuary, surrounded by magnificent dune forests and endless expanses of beach. But there has already been uncontrolled chopping of mangroves in the estuary and young hardwoods in the forests and untold harm has already been done by ill-considered actions, or a lack of action by the authorities.
He argues eloquently against mining as an even greater evil, scoffing at suggestions that the mining companies will rehabilitate the land they ravage. We all know that is at best PR-speak and at worst a wicked lie. You cannot recreate a pristine mangrove forest and estuary. Not in a thousand years! Instead he campaigns for a carefully orchestrated tourism model that will create opportunities for locals, with the potential to develop games parks and nature reserves in the uninhabited coastal zone.
Spin-offs would include the further development of horse and hiking trails; whale and dolphin watching and deep sea safaris. Fertile soil, a moderate climate, reliable rainfall and an abundance of rivers, streams and springs also make this coast a potentially rich farming area, instead of being laid to waste by over-grazing.
It is time for all us to look deeply inwards, examining our consciences and finding ways to ‘tread lightly’ upon Planet Earth, the endangered home we share with a multitude of other species. We need more Conrad Winterbachs to stand up and be counted.
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