After you check in at the Biking Reception of the Shai Hills Reserve (and exhaust our covid-19 check-in protocols), you’ll first receive (in this particular order) a helmet, a mountain bike and a safety briefing. 500 biking metres later, a half-hour tour of the Museum of Natural & Cultural History at Shai will introduce you to the relics and artifacts that uniquely identify the Shai Hills Reserve as the last remaining coastal savanna ecosystem. Next on the 4-hour biking itinerary is the ride to the Zebra pen to visit with a dozen Zebra and three ostriches – Benedict, Benedicta and Benediction. After the introductions are over, the adventure through the rugged trails of the park will begin, and the first 2-kilometre uphill ride is what reminds all bikers that this was no holiday to begin with. The huffing and puffing ends quickly though when another kilometre going downhill takes the bite out of the challenge a little bit. Afterwards, it’s 7 kilometres of nearly flat but hard terrain to Mogo Rock’s 10-metre overhang abseil, our idea of a cooling break from all that prior hard riding (by hard we mean terra firma and not necessary your fast pumping legs ;-)). By the end of the abseil you would have accomplished 10-kilometres of riding in the park, and seen the Antelope, Baboons, Monkeys and Birds there are to see. Depending on weather conditions, we’ll either return the way we rode (another ten kilometres) or complete the loop of the F1 Routeway by going through the Hieowayo side of the park (12 kilometres of really rough terrain). Whichever way we go, the last kilometre is a fun, downhill ride that brings the wind in to ruffle your hair and whip away your sweat till you arrive back at the biking reception. Are you up for this? So are we! See you at the Shai Hills soon!