This woman was waiting for a taxi on the other side of the Kei River on the Wild Coast, having travelled across on the Pont for a R2 fee. She is Sangoma in training, apparently second level according to my friend Ncami from work at SustainEd. Ncami says the first level requires red soil to be painted on the face, and when you progress to second level you must paint it white. She was very patient with me snapping away, and nodded with stern approval at the pictures on my camera screen after they were taken. I always feel very shy to ask people if I can take pictures of them, and actually it was a friendly dude who asked her for me. We met through my complete cowardice, as he packed up laughing when he noticed me trying to sneak up on some enormous Nguni cows lying on the muddy river plain nearby. The laughing part came from me galloping away as soon as they moved a muscle…their horns were massive! He yelled at me to be brave and charge them if they ran at me…

Girls are funny creatures hey, we really are. I don’t want to say that girls who climb are any weirder than the others, but…that would be complete denial. Actually, my theory is that it’s more girls who are into individual sports as opposed to team sports. We really hate hockey. As Rachelle said, “People say I’m so tough because I rock climb, but put me in a goalie net and I’m running the other way as fast as my co-ords can carry me…”

Girls are weird and they grow on trees

There is an appeal in the individuality that is allowed by doing your own thing. Be it on a rock, a bicycle, in a canoe; alternative sports just attract people who are kinda…well I could say interesting, but what I really mean is they’re not even marching to the beat of a different drum; they’re using the drum as a bowling ball to smash down a pin set made of quart bottles. Those kind of people.

I spent a few extra days after the Roc Rally climbing with three effing strong women. Rachelle De Charmoy, Candice Bagley and Illona Pelser; all hailing from KZN. Each one has a distinct personality, and each one climbs super differently too. But at the end of the day, we relate on the level that we are female.

Waterval Boven is a great place to pretend nothing else exists

It only took about one hour out of male company for the conversation to swing towards relationship dramas, periods, alcohol, sore fingers, taping techniques, plans for climbing trips, sex, drugs, some rock ‘n roll (but more Indie rock and metal), and many serious discussions about favourite climbing tights and crop tops. A boy’s worst nightmare; but completely normal for us. Climbing in bikini tops, telling jokes, poking fun at who has the biggest back muscles, burping, and occasionally farting…if Faye had been around there would have been more of that…but it was truly cool, something we should do more often. And we climbed some too.

* To check out an open FB album of most of our pics click here

Candice Bagley

Candice Bagley is the youngest of the lot, and is one of those 21 year olds who just takes charge. Running on energy from some other plane, she absorbs psyche from just about anyone. Confident, competitive and currently not supposed to be climbing on her damaged finger; she will always be the first to run up and hug you hello, offer you a sip of whatever she’s drinking, or take her super warm gloves off her own hands for you to use. Candy worked on African Rain (26) before her finger gave up on her, and During the Roc Rally managed to onsight a 23 in the dark.

Candice Hyper Excitable Radical Bagley

Rachelle De Charmoy

Rachelle De Charmoy used to be a sport climber, and then she went to Rocklands and changed her mind! This little lithe muscley thing is ridiculously strong, and it has to be said, can drink more beer than your average 45 year old male with a tache who was born with braai tongs in his hand. I dare anyone to try and out drink Miss De Charmoy. I know I lost. Check out more on Rachelle here.

Rachelle De Beer Drinker Supreme Charmoy

Illona Pelser

Illona Pelser is known to many as the Ninja, and describes herself as Afrinese (a mixture of her Chinese mum and Afrikaans dad). She is a ‘sport climber in a boulderer’s body’, something we can attest to as she worked on Raptophilia (32). It was pretty darn flabbergasting to see her doing every move on this brutish route, and makes one’s blood tingle with the possibility of a female whacking that grade on the head. Seeing her power up there makes me think it’s not too far off.

Illona Ninja Pelser

Garden Service Fail

Take 11 minutes out of your day to reassess what scary really means. Jeezlaaik.

There is a movie out there, that is probably not going to make it to any mainstream cinema in South Africa. It is called The Trip, and it is quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen all year. But not really for it’s overall genius, mostly for these short kind of three to five minute sections of absurdity with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves. They are both really good impressionists, and just regular off-the-wall eccentric poms who exist in the UK acting realm. Knock the socks off Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

This scene is my absolute best though, I can’t watch it while eating my breakfast cereal anymore because I inhaled Special K in such a way it got jammed in a vital air flow vent (nostril?). Panic attacks about suffocation before 8am are not good for you.

Enjoy!

Joey Kinder @ Umgeni, smiling for a change

Joey is a sponsored climber who has an edge of ultra-positivity that is infectious. The dude’s face is just naturally smile orientated I guess, and I think the only way I can explain the Joey factor is that even when he’s just fallen off a redpoint on a hard route and is yelling cuss words from a different realm of gangster, he still sounds like he’s having fun. I certainly don’t look that cheerful after three weeks of non-stop travel in a new country doing slideshow after slideshow; meeting a gazillion people; trying dozens of climbs everyone keeps telling me to do – and being told I’m likely to be mugged a umpteen times a day. Well, you know, if I put myself in Joey and Colette’s shoes.

Colette McInerney looking up on belay duty

Colette is Joey’s patient co-pilot of world navigation, and the woman is strong, strong, strong. Not only did she have the coolest pair of Five Ten skate style access shoes I’ve ever perved (my mom saw a t-shirt that said ‘shoe whore’ on it the other day and suggested strongly that I should buy it…), but she really does have her own edge going. I would highly recommend reading her blog, particularly this one on arriving in JHB. It’s pretty rarely that I come across someone from overseas who picks up on our history so quickly and accurately, and retains what they’re learning enough to write about it.

I watched Joey’s slideshow in Durban (after a mammoth day of rushing from work in Howick to a mountain bike ride, then zapping through Hilton to grab Faye by the ponytail on the way down the N3), and I have to say it was well worth it. Joey went to art school, and he sure as shit isn’t some inarticulate bong smoking painter. No ways. His photography naturally developed in to videography, the results of which are evident in his slideshow – which is more a succession of kick-ass short video-clips from all over the world featuring pretty much the best contemporary climbers. I kind of wish I could watch them all over again actually. But he eloquently links things together and speaks really well, so it’s not just his rad vids that are worth watching.

On Friday I went climbing with a bunch of Umgeni locals and Team America, and it was rad to spend a few hours with the Colette and Joey, as well as Pierre Joubert whose been driving them around the past couple of weeks. Colette redpointed Agnes the Skinhead (26), Joey flashed it and said it was probably the best route he’s climbed in South Africa so far (kind of in passing though, so don’t quote him on that!), and Pierre redpointed Exactly Cheesehead Exactly (25), and John Wessels and I redpointed Happy Hormone (25).

Roger is busy working Faye’s route Serotonin Explosion – and he’s pretty damn convinced it’s not 29. At all. I’d love to see some people sending both Mango Tango and Serotonin Explosion just to confirm how hard these routes actually are, not that grades matter, but it does change how you look at something: ‘Yeah maybe one day I could do it…’ to ‘When hell freezes over…’

I believe Colette flashed Exactly Cheesehead Exactly earlier in the week, and Joey also redpointed Smackdown (28). Click here to read Joey’s account of camping in the bush and impressions of KZN in general.

Anyway it was LANK kiff to meet them, and I hope they have a ton of fun down in Rocklands for five weeks with no obligations. I did however tell ‘em to visit Die Muisbosskerm on a rest day, I hope they get there.

You have to love Mumford and Sons. Well actually you don’t, but if this song doesn’t make Monday kiff I don’t know what will. I think I fell a little bit in love with Marcus Mumford right now. Tristan, my brother, says it’s perfectly fine to have a man-crush on Marcus Mumford so I guess that’s okay then?

In other news, yesterday I went on a bike ride that I thought would be 35km – 40km max. When someone said “We’re half way now” and we were only on 32km I nearly fell off my bicycle. Oh wait, that’s right, I did fall off my bicycle but only about 10km later – and it was straight over the handle bars and into a bramble bush. Thank every deity ever that I had Sarah Drew looking after me because I was ready to give up at 51km…truly truly. She fed me anti-muscle cramp stuff and made me drink the river water (that I was refusing to drink because of all the may fly larvae and algae I could see wriggling in it) and got me to the car in one piece.

Crisis, I don’t think I’ve ever been so satisfied with lying in the dirt on the side of the road before. It felt like a frikking feather bed.

My mom and my godmother both had the ‘what happens one day when you want to get married; what will it look like with a wedding dress’ talk…and I had to look them slow and steady in the eye and say with meaning “I care far more about having this beautiful tattoo everyday for the rest of my life than how AWESOME it will look on my wedding day” – and then they rolled their eyes at exactly the same time, and I rolled mine back, and after I stopped feeling like I was 8 years old I said “Perhaps we should worry about finding a man to get married to first?” after which they said (like some prophetic angels from a Greek tragedy) “WELL THAT TATTOO WON’T HELP!” which is when I started laughing. And then they laughed too. In a kind of exasperated way.

Prophetic Greek Tragedy inducing tattoo...

My friend Doug gave my a flash stick full of music one day to sift through. On the flash stick were five albums by the Gaslight Anthem. I started to laugh, because about 3 weeks earlier I had sent my mate Jon a link to the Death Cab for Cutie song ‘You are a tourist’ which I was raving on about (I still like it, so screw you Jon). Anyway, Jon clicked on the link and I waited around on chat to hear what he would say about it…

Jon: “Ha ha, I clicked on the link and I was like hey this is actually pretty good, shit I’ll have to tell Kath it’s damn good actually – and then I realised I still had the new Gaslight Anthem playing on itunes and that’s what I was hearing; so sorry your song sucks and Gaslight Anthem is awesome. You should really listen to them more than Death Cab for Cutie you loser”…

So Jon is right in one respect – yes Gaslight Anthem are fabulous, beyond fabulous even – but I still love Death Can for Cutie too. So here is You are a Tourist to enjoy too. And Jon, I’ve heard respect and tolerance are wonderful characteristics for people to embrace, dickface. Love you.