Like a rock monitor, our guide Adrian Saffy scampers across to a ledge, lies flat on his stomach and drinks from a puddle of water bubbling out of the ground. He jumps up smiling and invites us to do the same.
“Once you've drunk from the Sizi Spring, you'll want to keep coming back. This is the fountain of everlasting youth!”
The wild animals think so, too. Fresh balls of elephant dung are scattered all around the spring… We're taking a breather in the most south-western corner of Zimbabwe, about 7 km north of the Limpopo River, which we waded through earlier this morning with our bicycles on our shoulders.
As the riders in our group kneel down to sip the magic potion and fill their water bottles, I drink in the landscape around me. Baobabs, nyala berries, ironwoods, fever trees and wild figs stand guard around the spring which, according to legend, has never dried up. Was this the permanent water source for the Mapungbuwe Kingdom that flourished here a thousand years ago? Many people believe so.
The impala that bolted when they heard us approaching are now looking down at us from a nearby outcrop. What an adventure. And the Tour de Tuli has only just begun!
Meeting up at the confluence
You've probably heard of the Tuli Block. It's a big conservation region on the easternmost border of Botswana. If the map of Botswana looks like a face to you (it does to me), then Tuli is the nose. On this four-day ride, you pedal from Mapungubwe National Park in South Africa, through Zimbabwe and Botswana, and back: 300
