Chapter 24: Settling in.

I still haven’t resolved the fast internet connection issue. You are reading those lines cause I write it on my laptop, save it to memory stick and spend an arm and a leg publishing the post at the local internet café. Since they only run on 56K modems, you can forget any pictures or videos for a while. I would have to sell a kidney to afford it.

For those who don’t know, Rockland is located 15-30 minutes drive from Clanwilliam, approximately 2 hours north of Cape Town. The town is very small, 5000 peoples at best. With a main street spanning 200 meters, one can only hope to find the bare minimum. At least, they have a small coffee shop. I reside very comfortably in a guest house a few block from the ‘strip’.

The climbing here is amazing. It resemble Joe’s valley: Short steep bouldering. This is the land of the one move wonder. Very finger intensive, kind of like bouldering at the Vsion in Canmore. Boulders are everywhere you look. 99.9% of it is crap except for a few isolated areas. If you can find those, you get amazed by the colors, shapes, textures, angles and caves.

75% of the lines are not registered in any guidebooks or topos. If they are, lines usually have no name and are rated all over the map. But they are so good. The beauty of it all will bring the obsessive compulsive personality out of any boulderer. Your desire to climb it is so strong that you go out there almost every day. Not even the 30 degree temperature can tame the need. So far, I’ve been here for 9 days and I only took 3 days off. Everything hurt, especially my core. All I can say is if you are planning a road trip around here, make sure you pack extra abs muscles and a second set of crimp strength.

Yap, it’s been hot, very hot. 30 to 35 degrees every day since I got here. Go figure, according to various weather website, we should be bouldering at a very condition perfect 10 to 15 degrees. It is suppose to rain tonight. Time for another cup of tea before heading out. We’ll try to squeeze one last session before the storm.