Thursday, August 23, 2012

don't believe the hype - rocklands sucks!!!


you have to pay to go climbing, it can rain for days, holds breake all the time and ruin your project, climbing is sharp like hell and you will look out for gloves the first day you arrive (if you have not the skin of an olifant), everything looks super cool, but the climbing can be really tweaky, painful, morpho and  just not nearly as good as its looking, it can be so windy and cold you think you arrived at the southpol instead of africa, it's crowded like your home-town climbing gym on a tuesday evening in february and you have to queue up for a classic problem more then once, people scream around not just while climbing (what I do sometimes as well, and I feel (sometimes) sorry for that) but also just while "chilling" at the rocks... boulderers shit in front of boulders - WTF???!!



despite what everybody tells you: "de kelder has NOT the best burgers ever" (we had to wait 2!!!hrs and they were cold), everyday chips and beer makes you FAT, everywhere you can see some teens with earplugs, running around with sponsorship-stickers on their trousers (I felt lucky I have a "sponsor" myself since a year, otherwise I would have felt like a total exotic.... but at least, with close to 35 and a lovely girlfriend on my side,  I do not have to pretend to be outsch so cool, for 24/7 ;), people checking and updating facebook and XX.nu real-time on rock  - out in the nowhere in africa...,  daily (hourly) never ending chitchat about who has done what in how many tries in which sector today and having competition not just on rock (the quicky "2min", "flash", "soft", "that felt EASY  (-I am SO strong-) dude!") but also while chilling (I know an even better joke, I can drink more beer...), after a one hour hike from "out in the nowhere" to "even further away out in the nowhere" you can stumble over a laptop and a little surround system spraying music all over the little (once) peaceful area - for everybody... at least for free. and try this: while watching an immaculate sunset on a rocky plateau, the total tranquility, you can hear a single bee flying over the place, watching over the endless and fast african landscape  - and some guys have to take out their I-phone to make some music for all the audience....WTF???!!!

is this just me getting old, or/and as a 14year old kid said to me last year in magic wood when I told him to shut his f*cking Iphone-speaker-sound down (or to put some headphones on); "that I have no idea of "the" boulder-culture?!" 

nevertheless, after three weeks we extended our trip for two more weeks... so obviously there must be some things down there which are weighing up.... ;)