Expedition Africa is a brutal teacher. Over six days and 500 kilometres through the Drakensberg mountains, I took it on with three teammates – an adventure that tested everything we had.

Yes, it tests your body, but more than that, it tests your mind. You operate on scraps of sleep. Your senses are constantly assaulted. Every decision matters; every mistake costs you.

The race began at 9am on Sunday (March 22) with a trek that rolled straight into a paddle that felt like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Boats vanished into rapids, paddles disappeared and there were bruises, crashes and even broken bones. That wasn’t even the end of day one. From there, another trek, then onto the bikes.

All the while, navigating, always navigating. The terrain changes, the weather shifts and your brain never switches off. By the time we mounted our bikes, we already felt like we had lived three days in one. Then came a detour, a navigational block that added an extra 30km. Thirty, or maybe three hundred, my legs had lost all sense of scale.

At 6am on Monday, we surrendered to exhaustion. We found a patch of grass beside an abandoned sawmill in the Dargle Valley and lay down for a 60-minute nap, wrapped in bivvy bags. Imagine the property owner’s surprise to find four human-shaped bundles outside her land, looking suspiciously like body bags. She offered us coffee, didn’t comment on how we smelled and sent us on our way. We eventually rejoined the old ox-wagon route between Durban and Johannesburg, and the oxen might have moved faster than us.

The Drakensberg reminded us how small we really are. A storm arrived – fast, furious and torrential. It was as if the sky had opened a tap and left it running full blast. Through the lashing rain, we abandoned our bikes and found refuge in a lone biohazard tent set up to curb the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. The man inside said little but allowed us to spread out, make coffee and once again unfold our “body bags” for an hour’s sleep. While we were passed out, he quietly moved our bikes inside, saving them from the storm.

One night, we reached a school camp checkpoint near 8pm. Staff welcomed us with hot drinks and pointed us to an open shooting range where we could rest. Thankfully it was empty, otherwise we might have added four very asleep, non-moving targets to the mix.

Disaster struck later in the week. Two teammates had an accident and were injured. We gathered ourselves and hobbled onward into the early hours. Headlights flickered in our peripheral vision, the police. They escorted us for kilometres and, eventually realising we wouldn’t make the check point, we accepted their offer of a place to sleep.

We can officially say we spent a night in a police station! The amusement of the station commander was obvious, as he climbed over four, bivvy-wrapped racers who could have easily been auditioning for a very bad, low-budget horror movie.

Despite the challenges, what struck me most was the grace of strangers – and the organisers and volunteers. The generosity of spirit, the willingness to help four exhausted, smelly racers chasing checkpoints through the night.

Through all the chaos, the storms, detours and falls, I realised something important: the lessons that matter are not about finishing first (though that remains an incredible achievement). They are about resilience, the respect I have for my teammates, the generosity of others and the privilege of experiencing it all. And perhaps realising that a nap in the late afternoon sun, under a tree with a cool breeze, can be the best sleep you will ever have.

These are simple lessons that seem to have been forgotten. I wonder if some of the awe of this experience comes from returning to the simple things – no distractions, no phones, just four friends on an adventure.

We may not be the best adventure racers… yet. But if there were medals for dramatic falls, lost paddles, naps in unconventional places, keeping our sense of humour and lessons learnt that actually matter, we’d be unstoppable.