Alldays and the Guinea Fowl Hunt
Guns, speed and kiling stuff
08.07.2009
17 °C
A strange twist of fate has led us to a little town called Alldays.
We ended up here because Polly has been unwell for almost a week from a dodgy KFC so we've been taking it easy.. having short cycling days or rest days.. since in the last 6 days we've only covered about 160km.
This is proper 'frontier Afrikaner country'. The land is flat, dry and scrubby with cattle herds, impala, warthogs, blessbock, orix, jackals and lots of guinea fowl.
On the road to Alldays Polly was feeling rough and we were having a rest in the long grass. A very friendly man, wearing snazzy pink specks, stopped to see if we were OK. We told him we were fine but needed a place to stay in Alldays.. You should stay in Cosa-Nostra its my place! 'Great' We thought and promptly forgot the name.
An hour later we arrived in Alldays.. a dusty little town with a couple of nice little cafes.. we asked the guy in the cafe if he knew of anywhere that would allow us to pitch our tent.. he called his nephew.. who said we could pitch it for free at his place.. we happily headed off to the nice nephew's place and when we got there the receptionist (who we found in the bar) said that the boss called and we must stay in one of the rooms for free!
It was a nice little place.. Straw roofed buildings set in lush tropical gardens with a nice swimming pool. The only slightly disconcerting thing were the dozens of skulls, antlers, pelvises and a giraffe neck hanging from one of the trees! But we figured it was a hunting lodge and that's how you decorate hunting lodges.
Later that evening we met the boss (Derk) – sure enough the same guy who had come across us on the road.. Pol was still not well so went to bed while I joined the hunters in the bar.. Derk was such a nice guy – very generous and always ordering new drinks when mine was half full. He tried to convince me that he was nothing special.. just grew up here and built this lodge.. however I knew there was something more.. and at about midnight it all came out – he organised safaris for rich people, had introduced Dodi to Lady Di, Elton John was a good friend and Pavarotti and
koffi Annan had sat on my bar stool! And tomorrow I was to go on a safari hunt too!
The next day I headed off with Kok (Dirk's tracker) Dirk's 270 rifle and 2 bullets (that's all we could find!).
So a few hours later and no shots fired Dirk turned up –
“Tuesday night is Guinea fowl night and you must come too!”
“So how do you shoot the guinea fowl?” I asked.
“We drive around in the bakkie and start world war III!”
“Are there many guinea fowl?”
“you'll see more than 1000!”
So the beers, semi automatic shotgun, 200 bullets, the rifle, the tracker – Kok and the mates – Pete and Bours, were loaded in the bakkie and off we went.
I've never seen anything like it..Alcohol, testosterone, speed, a semi automatic shotgun and killing stuff was an extremely potent combination. We would take turns with the shotgun, standing up front – burning across the fields at breakneck speeds in the hunt of flocks of Guinea fowl. When one was spotted we would go even faster and when in range the shooting would start as the panicked birds scattered in all directions.
And then we saw 'the pig'... resting the rifle on pete's shoulder - I could just make it out through the bushes.. KABOOM – wow that rifle was powerful and the pig bolted.. so did Kok brandishing a kitchen knife. 2 minutes later Kok emerged from the scrub carrying the warthog that was almost as big as him... and pete exclaimed - “you shot a f**** pig, you shot a f**** pig!”
Kok struggling back with 'the pig'
Kok, Bours, Pete and Dirk.
So now we're a few days behind schedule, pol's on the mend and we're gonna have to do some hitch hiking to make up time and we are loving it!!
Posted by robandpol 12:29 PM Archived in Bicycle | South Africa Comments (3)
