Photograph: Urs and Barbara on their three-month SA safari

The owner of the shop and garage complex at Mondplaas also sold homemade meat pies. While I was eating one, waiting for the call from SAFM, two travelling cyclists, their bikes laden with panniers, swung off the road and into the garage complex.

Urs and Barbara, from Switzerland, were touring South Africa for three months having once done the same in Mexico and neighbouring countries. They got the idea that this was the way to travel from their son, Jonas, who pedalled all the way down the Americas from Alaska to the southernmost town in Argentina.

Their strategy was to start early in the morning and cycle for five hours, then break for the day and cycle another two hours in the afternoon and evening coolness.

This way they covered fifty to eighty kilometres a day.

My back wheel had begun to wobble uncomfortably. Urs took a look at it and pointed out that two of my spokes had broken.

I realised I would have to visit a cycle repair shop in Jeffrey’s Bay.

The radio station called and I was able to tell them about the difference between Gauteng and North West drivers, and Eastern Cape drivers’ attitudes towards cyclists.

“To drivers with GP and NW numbers, a blast of the hooter means ‘Get out the way, get off the road’; to drivers with EC number plates it means ‘Hello’.”

I also spoke on air about meeting Urs and Barbara.

COMMENT: What do you think of people who are grandparents who cycle in different countries around the world?

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I proceeded uneventfully to Jeffrey’s Bay on a wobbly rear wheel.

I had a mental picture of the place as a small surfer-and-hippy hangout, an image that was shattered when the place came into view. Townhouse complex after townhouse complex covered what must fairly recently have been bush, or farm, country. Branches of the largest of South Africa’s supermarket chains and banks lined Da Gama Street, the main drag.

I followed it all the way to a robot where I followed instructions to turn right to reach Jeffrey’s Bay Backpackers where Esme welcomed me and pointed my in the direction of the local cycle repair shop that would be the first port of call on my “to do list” the following day.

As Jay Bay came to life I eagerly awaited opening time to hand in my injured bicycle.

“You haven’t got two broken spokes,” the owner declared. “There are six!”

Mellow Yellow felt far healthier when I once again hit the streets of Jay Bay. Around the corner from the backpackers, I met an interesting cyclist of sorts.

COMMENT: Have you ever made up a picture of a place in your mind and then found it to look completely different when you see it?