Monkey Punk!

Ooo Aaaa...that's Boo! Ladies & Gents. I forgot how good they were on stage after seeing them live at UTC. Good to see Ampie and Chris together again, Riaan their new drummer is better fit with them on stage than he was on his own. Never the less Monkey Punk we did and jammed to UTC was unforgettable.

As the start of this journey the excitement started the Tuesday afternoon when Eddie drove in with our noble steed. A small smile spread across my face and I realise "Tomorrow this time you are going to be gatvol for the inside of it". We let it sit for the evening and I tried to sleep that night. I woke up too early on an off day (06:30 am), started cleaning my humble little flat, deliver the ordered Moon Arc shirts to those comrades who couldn't make the trip of the year. At the rendezvous time of 1 pm I started to worry that my partner in crime (PIC) Minette are running late and Eddie had found a problem on our noble steed.

I can't believe the amount of equipment, clothes and alcohol was standing outside to be packed in...and that was just me. Our noble steed turned not to be so noble and it's replace, Die wit os (the white ox) was soon standing in the stable getting loaded. After making a few turns in town we were finally on our way...an hour after we decided on originally. As we made into the sun set we settle our dinner of Wacky Wednesday and drove around Joburg and later that evening I started to wonder if Bloemfontein was just a myth.

Since we only saw the name on the boards but it felt it never came closer I decided to take a cat nap on the back seat as Eddie drove. Eventually in Bloemies we stopped for our first of many highway coffees, saw a vintage Caltex bunny picture and saw Bloem city lights.

As we hit the Karoo as the sun rose over the mountains and plains. What a sight! I will never forget to the sun rise of that morning. The Karoo is just something you have to see before you die. Totally different to that of the Lowveld, Highveld and Wetlands. On Route 62 we drove through some fantastic places and sights, Swartberg being one of them. We had another a few hours to go and eventually saw our first board for Swellendam; in the car you could swear it is Christmas!  After a stop in Swellendam for some fuel, Poncho's coffee tequila (ew), beer and "other needs" we got to the dirt road for UTC. The only problem is we heard it was 25 km out and not just a mere 2.5 km as on the map. Never the less we are the A Team we stopped and got to a pound that looked like fun...yea you sank away in the mud more than there was water and smelt like a sheep for the rest of the trip. Then we realised there was a turn off we passed and had turn around almost 10 km into farm land. We found the turn off and few down the road we spotted the main man, Mister Anthony Bumstead busy putting up the UTC banners. As we open the car door to greet him en asks his helpers "Where did you think these guys came from now?" and all 3 said "Nelspruit". Yip it was just empty zamalegs and cold drink cans roll out on the dirt road. After meet and greet we passed a cement dam and couldn't resist the invite, what fun it was jumping in with all your clothes that you slept, sweat and drove in for the last day and half.

Arriving at the actual UTC were mixed emotions, our good friends the Black Cat Bones were already busy setting up camp (more like their own little suburb) nice seeing them again. Getting our spots close to Anna Mart tent we set up in less than an hour. We finally made it to the bar for our very first and well deserved Titanic! Anyone who has been at UTC last year and this year will tell that is a drink on steroids. I had about two for the night and knew it was trouble; Minette on the other hand had to learn the hard way...the next morning. After catching up with all our band friends, took a walk down to the famous Breederivier and getting into the Southern Gypsy Queens, they rocked! I wish it wasn't so difficult to get Cape Town bands to Nelsparta since they were awesome party starter. Next on was Piet Botha with Akkedis, now Akkedis is one of the coolest blues bands I've met. The Dennis brothers are known for their naughtiness and we love them for it. You couldn't miss our boss man fabulous Cape Town plains hat...it had a career of it's own during the course of the festival.

After one more dop I silently sneaked off to my tent to catch up on some sleep, in a few hours the sun will be up again