The Bends

…continuing from the adventures of yesterday’s post.

No, not the 1995 Radiohead album (although now I’ve thought about it, I’m going to have to have a listen to that), nor the divers’ nightmare of decompression sickness (which I’m still not going to try, despite mentioning it).
No. More specifically this bit of the R61 in the Eastern Cape.

Just south of the last infamous Lusikisiki speedbump is this Superspar billboard:

R61 - Google Maps - Google Chrome 2015-07-14 094852 AM.bmpYes, that’s a screenshot from Google maps. And yes, I should have stopped and taken a photo myself, but I was traumatised from 4 hours of Eastern Cape driving and I needed to get to a beer.

The sign says:

Only 133 bends to go

presumably until you reach their store (we never did).

133 bends? You might think they’re joking, but then you hit this ±20km section of unstraightitude (and that’s a bend every ±150m):

Lusikisiki - Google Maps - Google Chrome 2015-07-14 090736 AM.bmpTwixt the rolling hills of the southern Transkei, it ducks in and out of numerous valleys before heading down to the mighty Mzimbuvu River. And yes, it is ever so bendy. You might think that it looks rather fun, but given the situation I was in when heading down here (several hours in and needing that beer), it was actually rather tiresome.
It was also filled with potholes, damaged armco, broken glass and loose gravel.
Which was nice.

Thankfully, I wasn’t driving my car.

Quite what Superspar think they are doing by quantifying and glorifying this horrendous stretch of (partial) tarmac – let alone linking their brand to it – is quite beyond me. As I mentioned earlier, despite going through the 133 motions as instructed, we never did find their store. Given the mood I was in after all that driving, that was probably good news for their continued trading.