Adventure of a lifetime strengthens father and son bond

A Vryheid man and his father embarked on an adventure of a lifetime.
Through an incredible test of physical stamina, mental endurance and emotional fortitude, their 1200km journey to self-discovery created a bond between them like nothing else could.
The road wasn’t easy…
40km into his 1200km cycling trip from Vryheid to Port Alfred, Hannes Viljoen realised that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
While he considered himself reasonably fit, the last time he had been on a bicycle was in 1999. He didn’t know how he could ever have believed that he would manage to cycle 1200km over 2 weeks with absolutely no training.
“At the 40km mark, I had just reached the summit of another hill and I was knackered. I was sore in a dimension that I cannot explain. I had reached a point where I was so exhausted, I was walking my bicycle, and even still, I was convinced that I could not take another step.

I phoned my wife and told her that I needed her to pick me up the next day,” said Hannes.
Just after Hannes ended the phone call with his wife, his 64-year-old father, Carel, caught up and cycled past him, a 30km trailer (one that he built himself) in tow, saying, “Come, come, come.”
When Carel first told Hannes that he intended to cycle from Vryheid to Port Alfred, Hannes dismissed the idea as crazy.
“I realised he was serious when I saw him start preparations. He went to Vryheid Steel Construction and started building a trailer to carry his tent and supplies. He began plotting the route on “Google Maps”, and he was talking about how he was going to feed himself during the trip,” Hannes recalls.
“I thought he was crazy at first, but when I saw how serious he was, I thought that if my 64-year-old dad can do it, then I can do it too. I bought a mountain bike and two panniers on the Saturday and stayed up till 2am that morning collecting everything I thought I needed. The next day, we started cycling.”
When Hannes finally reached the camp-site where he and his father would spend the first night, he headed to the ablution block, worrying about how he was going to tell his father that he wouldn’t be able to go any further.
“My a** was so sore, I literally could not sit, my phone was dead so I had no way of communicating with my wife and I was so tired, but stepping out of the ablution block after a hot shower, I knew I wasn’t going to give up.”
As Hannes and Carel persevered on their adventure, something amazing started to happen.
“As my dad and I pushed ourselves to new limits, we were so exhausted, we really had to dig deep to keep going, but we learned, as the days went, that we would feel better.

The pain, and the exhaustion, was only temporary.

Going through this with my dad brought us so much closer together.

This was the highest point in my relationship with my dad and it was a priceless experience. In that solitude, when it was just me on my bike on the road, my dad not far ahead or behind, I could reflect on who I am and who I want to be. I learnt a lot about myself and it was incredible.”
“My dad said that he had a new respect for people, after this trip. He believed, because of increasing crime rates that people preferred to keep to themselves, and barely even greeted each other anymore. However, on this trip we saw that when people see that you are as vulnerable as you can be, they change.

They see that it is still possible to be vulnerable in South Africa and they open up their hearts and their homes to complete strangers.”

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