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Wonderful stuff! "As we approached Victoria falls" is a superb intro to an update in a ride report, it will take some beating!
This whole section from Capetown north, with the wonderful wildlife and scenery makes me want to have this experience and I suppose this what ride reports should do. Keep it coming as Tanzania is a country I'd like to hear more about. |
Sliding Zanzibar
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The Chinese Dream had seen better days than the one we rode out of Baobab Valley headed for the Tanzanian coast. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7Within a few hours of riding Mike dropped his chain another couple of times and it looked as droopy as could be. We stopped at every motorbike shop we saw, but couldn’t find a chain the right gauge and length for Mike’s bike. It was only 300 miles to Dar Es Salaam, so the Chinese Dream was just going to have to suck it up. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1010901.JPG The ride into Dar Es Salaam was death defying. I’d forgotten what it was to ride a motorbike into a crowded, seething, cook pot of an African capital city. I was quickly reminded with the first few near misses by trucks and buses careening along. There seems to be a direct relationship between the degree of flamboyancy of the bus paint job and the risk tolerance of the driver. I hate having really sparkly busses behind me. The road was utterly filled with huge trucks and buses and hardly anything else. For hundreds of miles the asphalt had deep depression tracks that look like a really heavy truck drove on it before the road was finished. The deep tracks and adjacent ridges make it really difficult to move laterally in a lane adding to the peril on a motorbike. It feels dangerous for me on the 650, so I can imagine how it feels for Mike on the 250 with a dodgy chain. As we neared Dar Es Salaam and traffic slowed, we passed trucks on the road shoulder, the adjacent roadside market, or anywhere else that would allow us to get out onto open highway and avoid being a semi-truck sandwich. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1020224.jpg Dar Es Salaam means ‘Place of Peace’ in Arabic, but we found the congested city to be nothing of the sort. Mike, Jamie and I all tucked into a single dingy room in a hotel nearby the ferry port and locked our bikes away in a steel gated area outside. As we wandered the heart of the city, some charm became apparent with Indian street kitchens and restaurants preparing and serving delicious dishes right on the sidewalk. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1020105.JPG The next morning we found the ferry to Zanzibar Island and rolled our bikes into the cargo hold amidst the chaos of large wheeled luggage movers thundering up and out of the ship to the rowdy shouts and cart riding antics of the porters hustling about. We sped across the channel that separates Zanzibar from the mainland on a course that had us slicing through the ocean swells at an oblique angle and giving the boat a good roll from time to time. At the port of Stone Town we quickly found ourselves in a maze of narrow alleyways with no indication of the way out. Before long, we were putting along through a crowded marketplace and feeling as though we’d ridden into a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1020104.JPG Zanzibar’s Stone Town has a gritty neighborhoody feel to it in a way that makes a stranger comfortable wandering around. A tangled network of narrow streets and alleyways connect small stores, bazaars, mosques, workshops, restaurants and squares. Windows are so close to one another on opposite sides of the streets that you could borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor without coming downstairs. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1020127.jpg Stone Town was historically a center of spice trade and slave trade during the 19th century and became a British protectorate in 1890. Diverse elements from Arab, Persian, Indian, European, and African cultures are apparent in the architecture of the city and led to a designation as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2000. The main construction material is coral, which is very friable, and most of the buildings are in deteriorating condition. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1020144.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1020107.JPG There are more than 200 carved wooden doors constructed and ornamented in Indian or Islamic styles. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1020154.jpg Kids ran by us chasing after one another and laughing. They ran like they know every blind alley and turn and in this labyrinth that we quickly found ourselves lost within. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/V5...g=w579-h435-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/yY...w=w580-h435-no Jamie and I walked around and soaked it all up. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1020098.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Ei...I=w580-h435-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1020085.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1020175.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1020159.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/TH...M=w580-h435-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Wg...M=w579-h435-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1020163.JPG A busy marketplace pulsed with the business of the day. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1020196.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1020210.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ef...4=w592-h435-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1020178.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1020214.JPG We stopped at one busy square full of men of all ages milling about. Some of the old fellas have been coming to the same square, drinking coffee and playing dominoes for decades. These old guys had a distinguished air to them and you could sense a hierarchy of sorts amongst them. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hV...Q=w579-h435-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/OJ...4=w497-h435-no It was one of those places that it feels like you have no right to intrude upon and feel a bit of a voyeur. We were grateful for the brief welcome that we was extended to us gawking tourists. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/GR...8=w579-h435-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Fw...w=w579-h435-no |
Sliding Zanzibar II
After stopping at a few motorbike shops to no avail Mike finally got a new chain in the nick of time. He was barely able to convince the old one to stay on the chain ring for more than 20 minutes at a stretch by the time we limped into the bike shop. While the shop didn’t have a chain that was long enough, they were able to cut some extra links into one that they had on hand.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/qz...I=w580-h435-no From Stone Town, we made for the far side of the island which is exposed to open swell from the Indian Ocean. We were far north enough that the swell shadow created by Madagascar should no longer be a problem as it is for much of the Mozambique coastline. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1010939.JPG We found the east side of Zanzibar the exclusive domain of kite surfers rather than the wave riding type. A barrier coral reef a couple kilometers from shore created a perfect, shallow zone of beautiful turquoise water with very little swell energy to deal with. On the horizon, we could see the whitewater where waves were crashing, unloading their full power long before they reached the shoreline. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-s...o/P1010945.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1010950.JPG Jamie and I spent our nights in a sand floor bungalow with walls of woven dried palm leaves and a thatched roof. The white sand was so fine that it created this wonderfully soft, milky slurry as tiny waves stirred the water at the shoreline. When I scooped up handfuls of sand I it was so sticky due to the fine clay-size particles that I could press it into a ball in my fist. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1010956.JPG Jamie and I explored up and down the beach on the bike and wandered the tidal zone at low tide looking for treasures in the endless rippled sandy flat as local folks went about their low tide business. Zanzibar is a very friendly place to visit and a far cry from the hectic nature of Dar Es Salaam on the mainland. The phrase Hakuna Matata (no worries) is always quick on the lips of locals as they deal with the European tourists that swarm about the island. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1020051.JPG There is something incredibly free feeling about flying along a strange beach on a motorbike. It feels like the little machine thumping along beneath you could take you anywhere you might have want to wander. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/y-...k=w822-h193-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1010999.JPG The whole setting was idyllic and very relaxing but I was consumed with the thought of searching for waves out on the reefs that teased us with each look to the horizon with billows of whitewater. The local kite surf shop had a couple of surfboards kicking around that we could use and the guys who worked there tried to describe how to find a break out on the reef about 45 minutes away by boat. Unfortunately, all of the kite surf guys were busy teaching lessons every day, so Mike and I were on our own to find a boat and the way to the surf spot. I talked to half a dozen fishermen over the course of two days and got a mix of misunderstanding, empty promises, and hakuna matatas. I finally employed the services of our host at the Bungalows, Simba (I swear I'm not just making up names and words from the Lion King). Simba found us a guy who could run us out the reef for a reasonable fee the following afternoon. I was stoked – after days of looking we now had boards to ride and a way to the surf. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/By...M=w579-h435-no The guys with the boat were an hour late after having to deal with getting some water in the petrol and they hardly spoke a word of English. No problem, I thought, I’ve got Simba who speaks perfect English and he can explain them what we want to do and where we want to go. After a lengthy back and forth on the sand, I was confident that we were all on the same page and off we went. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1020041.JPG It didn’t take long after setting off to find out that we were not even reading the same book. They ran us straight out eastward to the reef, stopped the boat and looked at Mike and I to do something. The directions that we’d communicated to the surf spot were to motor about 45 minutes south along the reef towards a narrow pass, where two big blocks of coral sit atop the main reef. Sitting in the boat, Mike and I looked out at a chaotic mess of waves breaking every which way on the shallow reef, and then we stared back and the guys and put our hands up. During the next hour, we pointed, and drew pictures in the air with our fingers, and called Simba on their cell phone to try to communicate where we wanted to go. They finally seemed to get the picture with smiling nods of understanding. Then one of them pointed to the gas can to indicate that there wasn’t enough fuel to make it where we wanted to go. Fantastic. We were feeling defeated as the new plan seemed to be to simply head back to shore and we knew that ther wouldn't have enough time to find gas and go back out again. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1020018.JPG After much discussion between our two boatmen, we made a turn south. They’d decided to chance it on the gas we had. Mike and I scanned the horizon hard and from time to time we’d imagine that we saw a peeling wave. You start playing a game with yourself of ‘maybe that’s it’ as one surf mirage after another rolls by. Others had surfed here, so we weren’t exactly in uncharted territory, but to us every chunk of reef was new. We were just following a few clues and it felt like the stuff of real surf exploration. When two square-looking dark shapes appeared far off in the distance, our hopes grew that we were in the right vicinity. We were sitting so low in the little boat, it was really difficult to identify which way to paddle. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1020024.JPG Mike and I jumped out of the boat and paddled toward the reef, having very little idea what we were headed for. There was no clear channel on the inside and we battled our way through whitewater. It’s always a bit unnerving jumping out of a boat miles from shore and paddling into the unknown. The primary danger was that we could be sucked onto a shallow part of the reef before we knew it to find head-high waves breaking on us in knee-deep water. What we found beyond the reef was about as good as a mediocre 5-foot day at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. The wave had plenty of power an you could find a section or two to do a couple turns, but it really didn’t feel like we were in the right place. It just didn’t seem like a surf spot that anyone would venture 15 kilometers in a boat to ride. In fact, we wondered whether we were the first people ever to surf this piece of reef entirely. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1010917.JPG We came back to the boat and pointed the guys to the other side of the two big blocks of coral. After motoring about half a kilometer north, a fairly defined shoulder of a wave peeling to the right came into view with something of a channel running alongside it. We watched a few waves, and while our vantage point was still poor, I became convinced that this was the wave we had been seeking. Somehow we’d missed it on our first pass by headed south. Mike and I jumped out of the boat and paddled out to have a closer look. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1020017.JPG The paddle out was easier than the last attempt with a channel of deep water to use. The wave peaked up near the two exposed coral blocks and peeled for about 50 yards before closing out on a shallower part of the reef. There was lots of junky short-period windswell mixed in with some longer period lines that showed the real potential of this slice of reef. On the lined up ones, you could run down the line and do a couple of good cutbacks along the way. Mike and I surfed until the sun was on its way down then made our way back to the boat, happy to find the guys on the boat pretty close to where we’d left them. We’d nearly failed, and this was as much effort as I’ve ever put into getting a halfway decent surf session. We never actually ascertained whether or not we were surfing the break that had been described by the kite surfers, but that didn’t really matter. Half the fun was just finding some waves to ride in a strange place. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/i9...BrPw=w580-h435 Mike had to be off on a flight from Dar in two days, which meant catching the ferry back to the mainland the following afternoon. We arrived in Stone Town on the other side of the island 2 hours before the last ferry of the day was to leave port. We rolled up to a guest house, chatted to a guy who happened to be sitting outside about having a bike to sell and within 20 minutes there were half a dozen dudes there arguing about the who was going to buy it. Within an hour, the bike was sold, papers signed, and money changed hands, and Mike was off to the ferry. Gosh I love Africa. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Z0...0=w579-h435-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1020076.JPG Mike had flown to Cape Town the day after he finished teaching school, bought a cheap Chinese-manufactured 250cc dirt bike, bungeed his backpack to the seat, and rode the thing to death across 8 countries in southern Africa. Everyone who knew anything about bikes swore that he’d never make out of South Africa on such a cheap ride, yet there we stood on the island of Zanzibar, 6 thousand miles and two and a half months later. He even rode the original knobby tires the entire way. I don’t know anyone else who would have made it happen. The guy has a high adventure threshold. It’s a long way back to Europe and I’m going to miss seeing his headlight in the rear-view mirror. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1010890.JPG |
Here's the thing: women are extraordinary creatures. In every picture since the beginning you are readily identifiable, whether disguised as Mad Max or the Great White Hunter on Safari, as a Beach Bum or Bike Mechanic. Add a woman into the mix and in every frame she looks completely different. Its like you're suddenly riding, no longer alone but with 17 of them, some blonde, some not, some in dresses some in riding gear, now disguised as Jackie Onassis then as a t-shirted student, and presto! you're with some woman tourist in a hammock.
I have no desire to return to Africa on my bike but this tale is filling long summer nights at work quite nicely. Thank you for the effort. It is well worth while. |
The North Shore of Mozambique
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Jamie and I had decided to slow our traveling pace down a bit, so much so that we were now headed backwards. We’d come north through Botswana, Zambia, and Malawi rather than along the coast of Mozambique. In addition to wanting to see some the places along our alternative route, the middle latitudes of Mozambique have recently erupted into fighting that could make travel inconvenient as militant groups have been active along the roads. The hearsay that we received was that groups aren’t targeting foreigners, only military convoys of the central government. The problem is that the Mozambique government is requiring travel for some stretches within these convoys for tourists, so you get to be part of the target. You might be better off riding down the road with an American flag streaming behind your bike waving fists full of greenbacks in the air. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3k...M=w622-h467-no Jamie and I planned to enter Mozambique from Tanzania and stay far north of any of fighting. After what seemed like an hour in congested streets, we finally broke from the traffic and headed south from Dar. Free again! We sailed along the highway for hours passing small villages and waving at kids until we found a section of road construction that we were diverted around. We ran into long stretches of fine, deep sand. Blast - our nemesis! We flailed around for 10 miles or so and I was getting exhausted in the heat, wrestling to keep the bike upright with all of our weight behind it. Jamie even had to get off to walk one super deep section. The shame! https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/rr...P9sc=w708-h531 We stopped for a break and considered the situation. We didn’t have very good information about this stretch of the journey and for all we knew, the deep sand could continue for hundreds of miles. In that case, we just weren’t going to be able to pull it off very easily. We decided to carry on for another 20 miles or so and if nothing changed, we would discuss our options again. To our delight, the sand ended and the road returned. I breathed a sigh of relief and rolled on the gas whizzing by the landscape studded with thorny trees scratching at the clouds above. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yL...A=w707-h531-no We had fast food for lunch. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1060475.JPG We spent the night at a place called Kilwa Mosoko and motored towards the Mozambique border and the river we would need to cross to get there. We arrived too late for the ferry, which could only run at high tide so we had to stay another night just near the border. Living on a motorbike is no excuse for being disorganized. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/yd...Q=w613-h531-no The next morning we made our way towards the tiny immigration and customs offices. About 10 miles from the boarder the road turned to very rough ride with big protruding rocks and lots of sharp edged holes that were hard to see. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-F...A=w708-h531-no We were getting rattled to bits, but all we cared was that it wasn’t deep sand. We arrived at the river and spent a few hours staring at the water level waiting for it to rise high enough to allow the ferry to cross. As the tide rose, the riverbank began to come alive with activity: mini-bus drivers vying for position to get on the ferry, taxi drivers fighting over passengers arriving from the other side, and kids push poling small boats around. We watched two grown men have a wrestling match over the rights to a single passenger. The poor passenger didn’t seem to know what on earth to do, and no one else seemed to take any notice as this was just business as usual. Jamie kept a smile through the madness of it all. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9s...Y=w708-h531-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1060453.JPG They weren’t kidding about the water level – on the hour long crossing, we could hear the bottom scraping the sandbars below. There was barely enough water in that river to float the ferry and the driver had to pick his line very carefully to avoid getting stuck somewhere. Meanwhile Jamie and I did some ferry surfing. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1060454.jpg It was dark by the time we got across the river and we found a family at the border village with some very basic rooms where we could pass the night. There was nothing but a candle for light, but they had cooked rice and fried some fish for dinner and had plenty for the weary travelers. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Mw...4=w708-h531-no We rode some more rutted track on the other side of the border headed south. After four days journey, we finally arrived at the beachside town of Pemba and found our camp spot for the week. Unfortunately our camp spot also turned out to be the party spot and we endured some all-night dance music sessions in our tent. Very bad dance music; the same overplayed mixes that you’ve heard a million times. It literally sounded like our tent was right in the middle of the party even though the party was on the beach across the road from us. When the first rays of dawn began to shine through I thought, awesome, they’ve made it to dawn, now its time for everyone to go home and we can get a couple hours of sleep. But the dawn didn’t send anyone home. In fact the music continued at the same quaking volume until 11 that morning. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/KN...w=w707-h531-no Aside from the nightlife that we just weren’t up for, we found Pemba a beautiful place with pretty beaches and fishing villages. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sB...E=w707-h531-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_G...4=w707-h531-no I even found some waves. If only I were 3 inches tall, I’d be out there. Suffice it to say, we found no waves to ride on north shore of Mozambique, which is just as you’d expect, given that Madagascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles all sitting pretty much right in the way of anything that would be coming from the Indian ocean. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/1L...g=w771-h531-no Despite some beautiful beach scenes, Pemba just wasn’t our place. Drainages from the fishing villages were overflowing with trash that spilled out onto the beaches and most of the accommodation and restaurants were out of our price range. Some expats found Pemba a long time ago and made it their place and we’d crashed the party. After a few days we decided to start the return journey north. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/rY...8=w708-h531-no We rode a long day to get to the last town before the Tanzanian border, called Palma. It was already dark and I was nearly out of gas when we arrived. I had stopped in a village to buy just enough fuel in plastic bottles to get us to Palma, but unfortunately the single station was out of petrol, and Palma had no affordable accommodation for us. We were exhausted and hungry and were running low on options. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1060464.JPG We rode the length of the town a couple of times before we returned to the petrol station. This time, we met the manager of the station, a very nice Indian man named Vijay. We chatted for a bit and asked if he thought it would be safe to bush camp just outside of the town. He invited us to camp right there on the lawn of his gas station where he had a security guard all night. He also let us know that he keeps some petrol in reserve and that we were welcome to some of it. And just like that, after a friendly conversation both of our problems were solved. We set up our tent and got to making some pasta for dinner while Vijay went about cooking some chapatti and dhal in his little cookhouse that he had set up on the same lawn. He had only been in this little town for a year from India running the station for his uncle and still felt very much an outsider there. We set up a table of milk crates on the lawn and shared our meals together and talked all about the charms and frustrations of living in Africa. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zk...M=w707-h531-no Arriving at the river the next morning, we learned that the tide was too low for the ferry to run and would not come high enough for three days hence. We couldn’t have screwed the timing up any better than this. There was a bridge over the river about 100 miles away, but by all accounts the road was deep sand much of the way and I didn’t think that Jamie and I would still be smiling at the end of such a trip. But we certainly don’t want stay here for 3 days waiting! Options were looking slim until an alternative presented itself: one of the boatmen could motor us across in one of the small boats. His craft looked seaworthy enough, but the trick would be getting the bike in and out of the boat. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Ms...o=w708-h531-no There was a steep sand bank down to the water level and it took four of us to hoist Dyna Rae over the rail and into the boat. It was precarious, and she could very well have ended the morning upside-down in the river on the traverse from the bank, but slow and steady, we managed it. Our captain motored us safely across the river and the crew helped us hoist the bike up and out to solid ground once again. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/iz...k=w708-h531-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1060508.JPG On the opposite bank, we met a Dutch couple driving a Toyota 4-Runner who also wanted to get across the river. The solution that the local crew came up with was to build a raft using beams to tie three of their boats together. They were mid-way through the construction when we arrived and so far the craft didn't look terribly confidence inspiring. The Dutch couple looked on, mildly concerned with the plan to keep their vehicle off the bottom of the river. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/k_...E=w708-h531-no The ride back across southern Tanzania towards Dar was just as long as it was on the way south. We rode 350 miles, which made for a very a long day since we’re constantly slowing way down for villages along the way. The deep sand section was easier this time around, since we knew that the end wasn’t far ahead. We spied some perfect pointbreak setups in southern Tanzania that would never be. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1060512.JPG Back in Dar, Jamie and I took care of logistics for the next leg of the journey to come. We found the Kenya High Commission and managed to get an East Africa tourist visa the same day. A single visa that covers 3 countries and took 3 hours to get, unbelievable! https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/o4...A=w707-h531-no We also paid a visit to the American embassy to have pages added to our passports as they were filling up quickly with colorful visas. My passport was blank at the onset of this trip and now was completely full up. I’d managed to procure a second passport from the embassy in Freetown and space in that one ran out with the Mozambique visa and border crossing stamps. Thanks to the friendly folks at the US embassy in Dar, I now had two extra-thick passports ready to roll. There’s something truly satisfying about getting through a couple weeks on the road and meeting the little challenges that the journey brings. Compared to the day to day back home, out here we have such basic problems to solve: find some petrol, find some food, find a place to sleep. The magic of the journey is that in the course of their resolution, we’re often led to unexpected places and find things that we had no notion to look for in the first place. The next stop for us has loomed large in my imagination since forever. Jamie and I spent some time online researching climbs and costs in the mountains and made ready to ride north, dreaming of the snows of Kilimanjaro. |
as always... brilliant report and fantastic pics.. you really should publish a book of your travels. Safe riding..
Bones :mchappy: |
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Epic!! Thank you for letting us into your journey!! bier:clap:
I currently commute on a 200cc Chinese Enduro, and, since I live on the US/Mexico border, have contemplated riding to Ensenada or San Felipe, but was worried about how/if the bike would hold up for a few hundred miles in a foreign country. Your friend Mike showed me I have nothing to worry about (I already took care of the chain) :thumbup1: |
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The Highs and Lows of Kilimanjaro
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I’ve underestimated the difficulty of wilderness situations before and suffered for it, but even with that experience to draw from I still can’t seem to stifle my overconfidence in how far, high, and long I can go when I get moving. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7On the third day of our climb, at 6 AM after 5 hours of going straight up, most of my swagger had been swaggered out. In fact, I lost it about 1000 feet down trying to scramble across a rock face in the dark. The kicker is that we weren’t even climbing Kilimanjaro; rather, it is Killi’s little brother, Mt. Meru that was providing this early morning wind sucking exercises. For all of the effort of the ascent, we would hardly have any bragging fodder. Who the hell ever heard of Mt. Meru anyway? https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1020361.JPG If you’ve ever been backpacking in the wilderness of the American West, the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania may not be what you expect if you don’t do your homework very well. I don’t do my homework very well. It’s kind of like a Disneyland ride version of mountaineering: it’s expensive, it’s as safe as something inherently dangerous can be made to be, tremendous efforts are taken to maximize your comfort, and there are lots of people there. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1020353.JPG Jamie and I shopped around in the town of Moshi for a way up the tallest mountain on the African continent and the best price that we could come up with, not taking advantage of any of the cooks or porters was far beyond our budget on a long trip like this one. We’d been prepared that this was a possibility but hoped that by actually showing up we could find a cheaper alternative. Elimination of Kilimanjaro as an option brought our enthusiasm to a low point. We we went to the neighboring park to find out about climbing Mt. Meru, which in terms of sheer altitude pales in comparison to Kilimanjaro. Fortunately, the price to climb it is similarly diminutive, about one-quarter the cost of the Kili climb, which would cover our park fees and the cost of the required ranger. We’d heard great experiences about he climb, so we were stoked again and ready to head into the mountains. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1060593.JPG Mt Meru is about 15,000 feet high. As a point of reference, that’s roughly 500 feet taller than Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada, however the ascent is about 10 thousand feet in total rather than the 6 thousand required to climb Whitney from Whitney Portal. I’ve done lots of backpacking at similar altitudes in the Sierra Nevada, so I wasn’t daunted by the distance or altitude gain for this trip. And we certainly wouldn’t be making use of the multiple porters that organizers were nearly insistent that we needed to have to ensure a successful climb. We would carry and cook our own food, just like we always do back home. Call it backpacker pride. There are huts along the climb, so we didn’t even need to carry a tent or sleep mats, just sleeping bags, clothing and food. Piece of cake! Needless to say, after long distance trips into true wilderness back home, a sizable chip was developing on my shoulder about this whole experience. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1060520.JPG My shoulder chip grew when we showed up on the first day and found that amongst 10 people headed up, Jamie and I were the only ones not using porters. One German couple had 5 porters. My pack was no larger than anyone else’s and was full of our cooking gear and food for two people. I couldn’t imagine what in the world everyone thought they might need up there. I found out later that one guy was carrying his 15’’ MacBook Pro in his pack. Just about everyone was wearing massive Everest-capable hiking boots. I was wearing my Keen sandals and someone asked if the porters were carrying my boots. I thought I would look funny wearing motorcycle boots with shorts, so I would do the climb in sandals. They’re comfy. And oh so stylish. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1060524.JPG We met our ranger at the park gate, a mountain savvy fellow called Oswald, and off our merry band of hikers went, meandering though lush forests and meadows at the foot of the ridge that we would ascend during the following two days. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1060531.JPG Oswald toted his rifle along to keep any wilderness critters such as buffalo and elephants at bay, which roamed freely about the park. While not normally a danger, if taken unawares at an inopportune moment or position, one of these creatures could become aggressive. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1060610.JPG As we walked, I became increasingly annoyed at our maddeningly slow pace set by Oswald at the front of the pack that kept us in one tight bunch. I hate having someone right on my heels and staring at the back of someone’s head while walking in the wilderness. Additionally, I find it difficult and even more tiring to hike at a rate that isn’t my natural pace, even if it is slower. Eventually, Jamie and I got a head of the pack and felt as though I’d just burst out of traffic congestion in Dar Es Salaam. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1060529.JPG After walking ahead of the pack for half of the second day, we saw something on the trail that gave us pause. The leg of a buffalo lie severed from its owner with blood drippings that looked like they were nearly still wet, but no sign of the rest of the buffalo. Frequently, you could observe buffalo trails with fresh tracks on both sides of the trail, so it was obvious that they were quite active on these lower slopes of the mountain. When Oswald arrived he studied the leg and surmised that the hyenas had been at the poor buffalo the night before and dragged the rest of him off into the bush. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1060535.JPG As we all stared dumbly at the buffalo leg, Oswald shared that two months a tourist had been gored badly by a lone buffalo before a ranger was able to get a shot off at him. Imagining Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa depiction of the danger of coming upon a buffalo in the bush, I swallowed my hiking ego and rejoined the pack, walking right behind the guy with the gun. Further along the trail we found some scraps of bushbuck pelt. By careful examination of a sandy part of the trail, Oswald made out a fresh leopard print and figured that he was the predator that brought the bushbuck to its end. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1060578.JPG Porters passed us with massive loads balanced on their heads: wicker baskets or a tarps wrapped with rope that were full of food, cooking gas cylinders, and the full size packs of the other hikers. They raced ahead of the tourist, wearing jeans and sandals and carrying three times the weight of any of us. Jamie and I enjoyed a lunch of cheese, canned tuna, plantain chips, and apples and by evening we were more than ready for a double helping of pesto pasta to replenish calories and salt burned during the day’s climb. The huts had bunk beds and made for pure sleeping luxury while on the trail, which made it all the more difficult to rise at 1 AM to begin our push to the summit. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1060607.JPG We spent hours in the dark climbing and either scrambling along rock faces that seemed to drop off into an abyss of darkness, or walking up a slope of scree that had you sliding half a step back down for every step up. My hands were very cold and I tried to keep them in my pockets when I didn’t need them for scrambling or holding an additional light for Jamie. I was wearing two pairs of socks, so my toes were cold, but still ok. By 6 AM, some light began to glow from the opposite side of the face we were climbing in the direction of Kilimanjaro. The sun was on the way up, and I couldn’t tell from the glow how long we had before it would crest the horizon. I was feeling strong still, but Jamie was nearly spent. She was breathing very hard trying to get enough oxygen to her muscles for every step up. Less than 100 feet from the summit, we even talked about stopping the ascent, but every time we stopped, after a short rest, she went a bit further, until we finally emerged to find Kilimanjaro poking its head from beneath its blanket of clouds as the first rays of morning sun turned the sky to fire. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1060544.JPG We stared at the scene in front of us and finally laughed. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1060541.JPG After savoring the sight for a while and having a rest it was time to begin the climb down. There was a storm forecast for the afternoon and we had 10,000 feet to descend before the sun reached the opposite horizon. The scrambling sections that we’d sweated on the way up now required due caution, but were no cause for concern as they’d been in the black of night, and the scree sections were a joy to bound down, sliding with every step and letting gravity do some of the work. When we reached the hut that we’d slept in the night before, we had a rest and made some soup and oatmeal to replenish some of the calories that the intervening 9 hours had transformed into altitude and elation. The soup was absolutely terrible, with clumpy bits of the powder that wouldn’t unclump to mix properly, but we drank every drop and thought it was fantastic. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1060573.JPG By the time we were nearly to the bottom it was 5:30 PM and our thighs were on fire. Our legs would shake whenever we stopped moving. We’d been hiking for 16 hours on 4 hours of sleep with little more than an hour’s rest. I think this was the largest vertical decent that I’ve ever done in a single go. The flat meadow at the bottom was a joy to walk through. It’s hard to describe the wonderful flatness of that meadow. A perfectly level surface in equilibrium with gravity, with hardly any effort required from your leg muscles to keep you from toppling forward. A lone giraffe watched us and sauntered along a nearby watering hole. A family of baboons went about their evening business with the dominant male playing sentinel near the trail where we walked while the young ones tumbled about, wrestling one another and making quick runs out to get a closer look at us. Each time they would run out a bit further, testing their courage. Jamie and I got on the bike and rode back to Arusha, ready to sleep for a week. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1060576.JPG In Tanzania, things happen riding in traffic about every 5 minutes that back home would warrant an exasperated tale upon arrival at your destination. Here though, a friendly nudge here and there in the fray of it all is quite alright and doesn’t indicate any aggression. Intersections are a comedy of chaos with street signs utterly ignored and everyone seeing just how far they can push before they are physical stopped from forward motion. No one gets upset, this just how it works. You get in the habit of using other cars as blockers when making a turn on a busy road, shielding you from other motorists that know you’re there but just don’t care. So it was upon our return to Arusha, but given my fatigue from the summit and decent of Mount Meru that day, it was all that I could do to keep the bike upright in the traffic maelstrom. After a day of rest, we left the busy streets of Arusha behind us and rode westward across the windswept plains towards the N’gorogoro Crater, which was said to have the highest density of wildlife of any park in Tanzania. Even though Jamie had a harder time getting up the mountain than I did, I was now sore as could be and hobbling around while Jamie seemed perfectly fine. She giggled watching the comical spectacle of me gingerly hoisting myself on and off of the bike. The plains were full of Masai tending to their cattle, the warrior tribe known for their adherence to a traditional nomadic lifestyle. Their bright red and cobalt blue blanket garb punctuated the grassy landscape. Not from from N’gorogoro, one particular Masai tribe are said to be the last living functional hunter-gatherers. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1020372.JPG At N’gorongoro Crater we found a continuation of the sky-high costs we’d found at Kilimanjaro. To enter the crater would cost ten times as much as the other safaris that we’d been on elsewhere, so we rode away without seeing a single furry critter. These places were just catering to a different audience than moto hobos. Riding away from the crater we fought a strong headwind that buffeted us around like crazy. I knew that our gas mileage was going to be suffering, and didn’t know if we would make it back to Arusha on what we had in the tank. Just as I was thinking that it was stupid to have set off without gassing up something moved at the edge of my peripheral vision, something big. I turned my head to the left to find that it was not one big thing that I saw moving but lots of big things. A massive herd of wildebeest was bolting for the road, making these direction changes that just looked fantastically fast for such big animals. The movements looked erratic, but somehow they all stuck together like a flock of birds in flight. They bounded lithely over the road then zigged and zagged their way into the distance as we stood by the by to bike and smiled. The wind shook our helmets sitting on the mirrors and whipped Jamie’s hair around. It wasn’t the canned safari with piles of lions and cheetahs dancing with rhinos that we imagined at the N’gorongoro Crater, but we found it pretty spectacular all the same. |
It is interesting that you find these costs on a continent that is supposed to be (at least in stereotype) among the poorest of places. I know that obviously the laws of economics are at play, with enough people with cash paying these extravagant prices to see the 'good stuff' of Africa, but it seems kind of weird at the same time.
I remember reading someone's travel blog here on HU several years ago they encountered the same kind of thing while motorcycle traveling in Africa. I don't remember the country in particular, but it had many resorts catering to Hollywood types, or wannabe Hollywood types costing several hundred $'s a day. It might have been the same country that Angelina Jolie was adopting her kids from which does not come to mind, but most likely factored in someone's business plan :clap: |
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Suitcase Surfers of Kenya
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Jamie and I saddled up and rode west from the N’gorongoro crater, headed for the coast and hoping to find a wave to ride somewhere in Kenya. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 We rode through the quintessential African landscape of the Serengeti: red earth underlay the grassy yellow Savannah dotted with the umbrella-like Acacia trees providing shade for weary travelers, human and animal alike. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1020385.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1020382.JPG Where we stopped for the night we found our usual friendly neighbors ready to join us for an evening beverage. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1020400.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1060616.JPG The ugliest surfboard in Africa We arrived at the coast and found a remote beach-side camp spot. We even had a living room and an oil-burning lamp this time around courtesy of the completely empty lodge. In fact, just about everywhere we stopped was completely empty as the headline-making security issues of the last few years have kept the tourists away from Kenya. Most businesses are barely hanging on, and the and local village folk who staff the resorts and lodges are all on reduced hours or no longer have jobs. We walked along the shoreline of a lonely beach as fishing boats drifted listlessly in the wind and as the local soccer game progressed on the low tide hard packed sand in the distance. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1020418.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1020408.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1020421.JPG Where we were camped most of the swell energy was blocked by offshore reefs, so we motored northward to find some little waves breaking on a beach near a town called Malindi Bay. We found a cheap little guesthouse to crash in with big airy rooms, high ceilings, and balconies overlooking the main street. They even let me put my park my bike inside the restaurant overnight to make sure it was safe. Mailindi Bay is filled with Italian expats and tourists, which seems a bit of an oddity since I’ve hardly met Italians anywhere in Africa. Apparently tour groups have been coming to the place since the 80’s, growing in numbers every year until the recent terrorist attacks. Lots of Italian expats makes for fantastic food and we enjoyed many a good meal in the beach-side restaurants. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1020405.JPG I wandered around on the beach and asked a couple of young guys if they had every seen anyone riding the waves. I met Akhmed, who was about 17 years old by the look of him and of mixed African-European parentage, with dark curls, mocha coloring and wearing day-glo Ray-Bay knock–off sunglasses. He knew a guy with a surfboard that I could borrow and so I jumped on the back of the Indian-made 125cc bike with Akhmed and his friend and off we sped 3-up, through tiny streets and alleyways and to find a surfboard. He was going so fast that he nearly brought an unsuspecting old woman doing her washing along with us for the ride. When we found the one guy in town who had a surfboard, he proudly produced 7 ft single fin board that was painted over with yellow acrylic paint on top of the fiberglass. The thing was so heavy it had surely been broken in half and stuck back together, probably more than once. Near the nose of the board there was painted a skull and the text ‘Liquid Shredder’. It was the ugliest surfboard I have ever seen, but if Kelly Slater can ride a wave on a door and a coffee table, I should surely be able to find some trim on this beast. I was ready to shred. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1020435.JPG The three of us rode off again, me in the third position on the bike holding my Shredder. Akhmed didn’t reduce the speed much to account for the added bulk of the board and some of the Shredder’s yellow paint was left on the corner of a building. There was no wax on the board and the best I could do was find some candles and drip the wax on the deck as they burned. The waves were so small and messy it didn’t matter much what I was riding anyway. I scratched into a few waves and pumped down the line before hitting the lip a it closed out. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1060672.JPG Jamie came out and shredded a few waves too. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1060631.JPG After awhile, some kids turned up down the beach carrying either half of a suitcase which turned out to be their innovative wave riding craft. I can’t imagine a better example of the spirit of surfing than two little kids in Kenya riding waves on a suitcase. You can find surf stoke in plenty of unlikely places when you spend a bit of time looking. I love it. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1060679.JPG A Jungle Rendezvous Jamie and I spent a week in Malindi Bay enjoying great pizza and dodging rainstorms that flooded the streets. With all of the rain, we were happy to be holed up in our little guesthouse rather than in the tent. We’d been enjoying the reprieve from big cities, but it was finally time to head to head to Nairobi to apply for visas to the countries ahead. Our route took us on some dirt tracks to avoid passing through Mombasa where the rain had created some red mud pits. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1060690.JPG Jamie got off of the bike a couple times as I powered through puddles of unknown depth. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1060687.JPG By the end of the muddy sections Dyna Rae had gotten a proper mud bath. She doesn’t mind though, it improves her complexion. I would have traded a few more miles of muddy roads to avoid some of the Mombasa highway, which was fully packed with trucks running containers from the port at Mombasa to Nairobi. There were hardly any passenger cars at all, and certainly no other motorbikes. The trucks were incredibly slow moving, even on flat ground, which normally wouldn’t be such a problem since we can just whiz past on the bike. The trouble was that the line of trucks seemed nearly continuous in both directions of the two-lane road. When we did manage to bust ahead of a line of trucks into a section of diesel dust free air, we were constantly in danger from oncoming trucks passing one another. They could see us coming but they didn’t care, and we were run off of the road into at least a dozen times before the journey was finished with varying degrees of danger. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1060691.JPG The overlander sanctuary known as Jungle Junction in Nairobi was a welcome sight for our road weary eyes. As soon as we saw the stacks of motorbikes and 4x4’s dotting the compound we knew we were in the right place. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1020470.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1020511.JPG We even found Dyna Rae’s big brother – the 750cc DR Big, rarely spotted in the wild. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1020469.JPG Jungle Junction has been in Nairobi since 2003 and it has become a bit of an overlanding institution. It was a great place to meet with other travelers to discuss all things overlanding: obtaining visas, border crossings, road conditions, water crossings. Speaking to folks who have come south from Europe yields invaluable information about the difficult border crossing between Sudan and Egypt and how to get across the Mediterranean from Egypt to Turkey. Ferry runs have been sporadic over the last couple of years and it seems like the operators and status changes from month to month. We heard a nightmarish tale of getting stuck in a shipping yard for a week from a British couple in a Toyota land cruiser. My hope is that getting across some water is easier with a bike than with a truck, as it usually is. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1060769.JPG Chris, the German proprietor of Jungle Junction, runs a mechanics shop right out of the place, so it was to perfect time to get to some well overdue moto work done. The Junction has a real workshopy vibe, with everyone fiddling with bikes strewn about the place. Even the reception desk lives in a converted garage space. We set up our tent in the front yard and I tore into the bike. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1020473.JPG Once again I found the valve clearances not to have budged a micron since their last inspection 8 thousand miles ago. I changed the oil and spark plugs then set about fixing some other niggling bits. The rubber of my grips had begun to disintegrate into a sticky mess, so I found some replacements; too bad they say Husqvarna on them instead of Suzuki. Sorry girl. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1060766.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1020517.JPG Over time and under a heavy load, my side stand had slowly bent so that the bike was often was often leaning way over on its side. I got the side stand off and the in-house mechanic Samuel set to work cutting my stand in half to insert a 1.5 inch piece of steel that would lengthen it. After multiple checks on the lean angle of the, Samuel welded the stand back together and Dyna Rae was standing tall and proud again. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1060761.JPG The rain and humidity of the west coast journey had taken its toll on Dyna Rae, with rust and bolts that just didn’t want to move anymore. I’d known about them for some time now and have just put off dealing with them for fear of twisting off a bolt head as I’d done when my surf rack bolts had seized up. I bathed them in WD-40, gave plenty of whacks with a hammer to try to scare them out, but still managed to twist off a couple of bolt heads. At least this was the best place to do it, right next to a full mechanics shop. Samuel helped extract the broken bolts, we cut some new bolts from spares around the shop, and soon enough Dyna Rae was feeling and tight and toned. I even got my newly air conditioned boots resoled with some used tires. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1020510.JPG The visa game After roaming around southern Africa the last four months, where everyone seemed happy to allow us in for a visit, we’d become rather complacent about our research. We simply assumed that we’d be able to obtain visas for countries north of Kenya while in Nairobi, but found little hospitality at the local embassies. Ethiopia sent us packing immediately. Ethiopia: Why didn’t you obtain a visa in your home country? Me: I haven’t been there for a year. You must have some provision for folks traveling overland as we are. Ethiopia: You can obtain a visa on arrival at the airport in Addis Abeba Me: But we’re riding a motorcycle Ethiopia: You can obtain a visa on arrival at the airport in Addis Abeba From their response to our request, you might think that we were the first people ever to arrive in the country not on an airplane. Before they would issue a visa some guy called Isbaruk, who is the head of the entire Ethiopian Immigration department in Addis Ababa, had to tell them it was OK. They had no phone number or email address for this character. They couldn’t even tell us his last name. But Isbaruk has to say its OK, or no visa. Strike 1. Sudan wasn't very keen on giving us a visa either. They told us that we needed a letter from the American Embassy explaining what we are doing in Sudan before they would issue a visa. The weren’t very keen on remodeling either. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/IMG_0414.JPG All American embassies now have a policy that require an appointment, which may take weeks to schedule. Unfortunately the Nairobi online appointment system wasn’t functioning, so we had nothing to do but show up at the embassy and try to explain our situation. After being told by several people that they could offer us no help, we finally got in front of the vice consul, Daniel, who was incredibly helpful. He certified affidavits about what we were doing in both Ethiopia and Sudan and even sent a message to his colleague in Addis asking them to contact the ministry of foreign affairs there. We rode back over to the Sudan embassy, hopeful of our prospects, but on our return, the story had changed. They would need to get approval from Khartoum before they could issue a visa. The dialogue went something like this: Us: How long will that take? Sudan: I have no idea Us: You must be able to give me some idea. A week? A month? Sudan: Sorry, no idea As far as I can gather, the chilly reception probably has to do with the United States’ involvement in the recent war and the creation of the new nation state, South Sudan. In any case, that felt like strike two in the visa game. Given the uncertainty of obtaining our Sudanese visa in Nairobi, we set to researching where else we might get it. It seemed that if we had an Egyptian visa in our passport, the Sudanese embassy in Ethiopia may be inclined to issue us a transit visa. That is of course assuming of course that we can even get into Ethiopia. We motored across town and submitted our application and documents at the Egyptian embassy thinking that this should be a piece of cake. American tourists go to Egypt all the time! Later that evening, we received an email explaining that since we weren’t Kenyan residents, we couldn’t apply for a visa in Nairobi, and that we could obtain a visa on arrival at the airport in Cairo. It seems that most embassy folks in Nairobi think that we are on a flying type of motorbike. This was nearly strike three, but we persisted and explained our trip to the consul the following Monday, trying to make it sound as fascinating as possible. He was very friendly and finally relented to issue us a visa. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1020513.jpg We were glad to be on a bike for all of the running around on the terribly congested streets of Nairobi. There was often plenty of dirt road shoulder or walkway available to plod right past the gridlocked traffic. One day after we’d had some rain, we were riding the dirt path alongside the road, when we hit a mud bog, my tires spun, and we dumped the bike. It was the first spill with Jamie and I both on the bike, and thankfully neither bike nor riders were damaged. I picked the bike up and we continued down the same path. The cars beside us never even moved during the whole episode. While we were waiting for something to happen in visa world, we went to check out the Nairobi National Park, which sits barely outside of the city boundaries. It’s truly a surreal scene to behold the zebra, giraffe, buffalo, wildebeest, ostriches, and rhino milling about the savannah with a cityscape in the background. This park must be unique in the world, having such animals living so close to a large city. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1060741.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1060744.JPG After two weeks we still had no response from our compadre Daniel in the American Embassy even after repeated emails. We’d been to the Ethiopian embassy 4 times, but hope for obtaining a visa locally was running out. Unfortunately, that was the good news. Sudan flat out rejected our visa application, with no reason given. We were desperate to make some progress on the Ethiopia front, since South Sudan is the only other route option traveling north. South Sudan sounds a bit lawless and in danger of going the way of Somalia and becoming the next failed state in Africa, so it is not exactly an ideal travel destination at the moment. We made contact with the Ethiopian embassy in Washington D.C. and yesterday we chose the less-than-ideal option of sending our passports there via DHL in the hopes that they will issue us a visa. And so now we wait in Nairobi, without passports and hoping that nothing goes awry with our precious documents whizzing halfway around the world to someone who cares a lot less about them than we do. We've got two massive countries in front of us who just don't seem to want to meet us. The road ahead is unclear and this trip is starting to feel rather adventurous again. |
Out of Nairobi
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Hey folks - Jamie has taken up the notebook and put together our latest update - enjoy! http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 After making contact with the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC and receiving the green light to send our passports there for visas, we thought we were home free. We heard that DHL provided a visa service “all the time” for other overlanders. We thought that we would simply tell DHL when the passports were ready to be picked up and they would pick up the passports. A few days after the passports arrived in Washington D.C. we called to make sure everything was in order and the Ethiopian Embassy informed us that the passports would be ready to be picked up on Thursday. Great! On Thursday we went to DHL and told them that the passports were ready to be picked up. That was when we had the first clue that this final leg of the process was not going to be as easy as we had hoped. DHL wanted reference numbers that would have to be obtained from the Ethiopian Embassy. We wanted the passports to start their journey back as soon as possible and we knew that getting a reference number meant another phone call. The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington does not make it a regular practice to pick up a ringing phone nor do they respond to their emails so we considered ourselves lucky to get that Thursday pick-up communication. After two nights up till midnight trying to call the embassy, we informed the DHL staff here in Kenya that we couldn’t get those numbers and that in our experience, they wouldn’t be able to contact the embassy staff, but we needed the passports picked up. Each day that passed we told DHL to pick up the passports, but they wouldn’t do it without calling the embassy first. Since the Ethiopian embassy never pick up the phone, our passports were never picked up and the Ethiopian embassy sent them off to my Mom’s house in California, where we’d had the visa payment sent from since we couldn’t courier cash and no bank here in Nairobi would give us a cashiers check and none of the Western Unions offices would provide a money order. Now we had to get DHL Kenya to contact the DHL in Sacramento to let my Mom ship our passports back to us in Nairobi. We got that handled but then had the worry that since the passports were no longer arriving from an embassy, they may be held up in customs. Officially grounded in Kenya while our passports were globetrotting without us, we were forced to slow down and check out Nairobi and the surrounding areas a bit. The first must do was to have dinner with one of my school friends, Sarah. Sarah prepared a delicious dinner and she and her husband Imran provided us Kenya travel tips. On Sarah and Imran’s advice, we headed to Lake Naivasha and Hell’s Gate National Park. Lake Navaisha is one of the Rift Valley lakes and to get to it we, um Dyna Rae, first had to climb to the top of the massive valley escarpment. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1060771.JPG Near the top of our climb Dyna Rae became asthmatic and the weather turned cold and rainy. We stopped in a pine forest to add a couple layers and let Dyna have a rest. When Dyna Rae started playing hide and seek we knew it was time to go. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1020529.JPG Once we started the descent, the weather cleared and Dyna was herself again. We made our way to Fisherman’s Camp and were struck by the feel of the camp. Until now, most other campers we’ve met were travelers, but this camp was full of Kenyan families and even a youth group. We were surrounded by loads of friendly Kenyans who didn’t see us as oddities or walking cash machines. The place was full of animals. There were vervet monkeys who acted like street kids – mostly tumbling through the trees and with each other but always on the lookout for some unattended food morsels. Any food an arms length away was vulnerable to these critters. Then there were Black-and-white colobus monkeys, Egyptian geese, hippopotamuses, and most noticeably the huge storks. We first noticed these giant storks in Nairobi and were amazed that such big birds were so abundant in a big city. Then we arrived at Fisherman’s Camp and these birds were everywhere. Where the vervets would steal our food, the storks would take anything they could carry in their beaks including a plastic baggy containing Gary’s spork. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1020532.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/JZ...Y=w712-h507-no Hell’s Gate National Park was one of the main attractions of this little adventure. We were allowed to ride bicycles right into the park without a guide. Nearly every other National Park won’t even allow a motorbike. We hired some bikes at Fisherman’s Camp rode 5k to the park and another 6k in the park surrounded by warthogs, zebra, and buffalo. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1060776.JPG Once deep into the park, we dismounted our bikes and had a wander around the sinuous Lower Gorge Canyon. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...o/P1060781.JPG When you are promised hot springs sometimes it is just a hot spring. There was no soaking here. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1060793.JPG And we finished off with a bike ride home. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1060801.JPG Back in Nairobi, and still waiting for our passports so we managed to fill the time with cuddly wildlife. Baby elephants!! The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, located just a couple miles from our Nairobi home, takes in orphaned baby elephants and raises them to the age of three. At three years the elephants are weaned and moved to another facility in a national park to be reintroduced to the wild. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1020670.JPG The youngest baby elephants are fed milk on demand day or night. The older elephants receive milk approximately every 3 hours. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1020650.JPG Young Rothschild Giraffes!! The Giraffe Center, just around the corner from our place in Nairobi, was started in 1979 to help pull the Rothschild Giraffes from the brink of extinction. Here we were allowed to feed the giraffes food pellets. The giraffes would allow us to pet them or even kiss them as long as we had food pellets. We made momentary fickle friendships. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1020721.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1020691.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1020695.JPG Local, wild warthogs decided to join the party. I hear a giraffe center is a great place to raise your young. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1020752.JPG Finally, since reminders of the Danish Author Karen Blixen have been everywhere since we entered Kenya from the Karen Blixen Café in Malindi Bay to the Karen District we have been staying in since we arrived in Nairobi, we watched the film “Out of Africa” and then paid a visit to Karen Blixen’s historic home where her famous novel was set. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1020846.JPG Our stay in Nairobi has been better than we had hoped but the fancy malls, fancy coffee shops, light-speed internet, and daily hot showers are starting to wear on us. We are ready to hit the road and meet our next challenges. |
Awesome! Ive never managed to combine my two biggest interests but it was as simpel as a board rack.
Great eye for photography too so looking forward to your updates. Instagram? Youtube account? |
Quote:
simple, right! I was always a surfer and really got into riding pretty late. glad you're digging it! On the website in my signature the Vimeo and Instagram are linked on the home page in the upper right hand corner |
Motosurf Gear Review 2014
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wW...GfMU=w739-h549
Plenty of dudes have an unhealthy preoccupation with gear of one kind or another and I'm no different. Shiny new things provide fleeting distraction from bits of day-to-day suffering, and preparation for a long journey provides an excellent excuse to fill your garage with stuff.http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Not long after I’d bought the DR650, I’d learned it inside and out, and spent a chunk of change bolting on this and that, in addition to tools, spare parts, camping gear, riding gear, surf gear, etc. Acquisition of all this stuff provides some concrete evidence to yourself that you’re actually going to huck into the abyss and ride off on your bike for who knows how long. The gear accumulation, tinkering, and over-preparation can become a hobby in itself, so much so that its possible to loose sight of the true objective: creating an independent means to experience new landscapes and peoples. You’re building an adventure sled, no more, no less; and any bit of tinkering that doesn’t directly contribute to the utility for that purpose is unnecessary. But it's still fun. With so many unknowns ahead, it’s easy to dwell endlessly on which bit of kit is worth some of the precious space in your saddlebags. In reality, very few of these decisions matter much one way or the other. Nevertheless, at the height of my gear obsession before leaving home, one thing that helped me was reading what other folks had to say about their tried and tested gear. Now a year into my own journey I thought that I’d relay my experiences to date, but first, a tour of our adventure sled. How to move into your motorbike with your girlfriend Jamie and I regularly meet single travelers with more stuff than we have between the two of us. They are usually on big heavy bikes (e.g. BMW GS, Africa Twin) with massive metal boxes attached to the side and a huge duffel bag lashed to the back rack. This sort of setup has a number of disadvantages. The metal boxes sitting on a robust rack tend to add a fair bit of width, which inhibits movement through city traffic, or through narrow doorways. Some of these bikes we encounter weigh hundreds of pounds more than ours, making muscling them around in rocks, mud and sand much more difficult, not to mention hoisting them into a boat here and there. Rough offroad tracks can put a beating on the bike frame and I’ve met a number of travelers who have cracked their rear sub-frames. In addition, the energy used for packing, unpacking, and keeping track of extra stuff can outweigh the value of having it. A lighter bike more sparsely loaded has all the advantages in these regards. Jamie and I have very little that we don’t use and I wouldn’t want to load the bike any heavier than it already is. In the images below you can see the bike all loaded up. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/4T...KQ0g=w755-h549 Our right saddlebag holds all of the camping gear and a 10 liter dry bag sits on top of the pannier which holds all of our warmer layers. We generally have about 2 days worth of food on board along with cooking essentials such as salt, olive oil, and chili sauce in the blue 15 liter dry bag. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-z...22.29%2BPM.png Our personal gear rides in the pelican case (model 1550) bolted to the back rack and a 20 liter Kriega dry bag on top of the case. All of the tools stay bolted to the bike an aluminum toolbox that rides just behind the left side cover. The left saddlebag is filled mostly with bike parts and maintenance stuff. We usually carry 2-3 liters of water, but can strap more on if needed. It’s a tight fit and we are pretty minimal, but we like it this way and I honestly can’t think of anything that I am truly suffering without. Now into the details for the gear nuts… The Bike Once deciding that a moto is the way to travel overland for you, the obvious question is of course, which bike? Countless book chapters and discussion forum threads abound on this very topic, which can be rather helpful if you start out knowing zero about motorbikes, like me. Was shacking up with a Suzuki DR650 the right decision? Put it this way, I may name my first-born daughter Dyna Rae in honor of my faithful girl. She’s getting a bit long in the tooth now at 45K miles, bears the scars of a hard journey, and she has something to groan about from time to time, but I think she looks good with a bit of African patina on her. The only troubles that she’s ever given me are things for which I could hardly lay the blame at her tires. A bit of carburetor drama from bad gas, some spark plugs carboned up from too-rich running, a missing bolt here and there rattled loose on rough tracks, and some desert dust getting into the ignition switch are all I’ve had to resolve on the road. To my thinking, a relatively light 650-class bike is the perfect machine for this type of trip. It’s nimble enough that riding really rough stuff, tight single track, and loose sand is manageable, and you still have enough power on the highway. Even having had moments on the west coast of Africa where I would have loved a lighter bike, I wouldn’t trade the power of the 650, as it’s very often a huge asset getting around massive trucks and buses that clog lots of Africa’s highways. The DR is usually small and light enough for a few guys to lift into a boat, get through a narrow doorway, or to muscle up a set of stairs into a hotel lobby, and these types of situations occur with some regularity when traveling in Africa. Modifications A DR650 doesn’t come ready for overland adventuring straight out of the box. This can be a very good thing since it provides a novice mechanic like myself an opportunity to get to know the bike while doing all of the modifications. Cockpit https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1020594.JPG The windscreen by Screens for Bikes in Australia is a pretty good compromise for maintaining a dirt friendly cockpit while still providing a good degree of wind protection. However, I do find a tendency to smack my helmet on the top of the screen when standing up in the dirt. Some spacers that push the screen to stand more vertical may be a good solution although my first attempt resulted in turbulent air hitting me in the head. The hand guards by Cycra are have survived plenty of impacts. The hardware that they come with corrodes easily and I ended up having a couple of bolts with the heads snapped off, but otherwise, they’re great. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1020599.JPG I started out with a USB plug wired to the spare lead behind the headlight, which lasted until South Africa before it fried itself. Good timing, really, since SA is the only place on this entire trip that I could get a replacement, and the navigation app on the Iphone eats the battery pretty quickly. The new one bought in Pretoria came with a fused harness that I wired straight to the battery and I find it’s nice to have power with the bike off. It also has two USB outlets and better weather protection than my previous one. I started with the RAM Mount X-holder, but the rubber feet that hold the device eventually disintegrated and I replaced it with the RAM Mount Personal Device holder – this one seems more robust and easier in and out. The seat foam and cover from Seat Concepts is excellent and also very good value compared to some of the other options. With the stock seat I never would have been able to do some of the long days in the saddle. I busted the cover stitching dragging my boot on the edge when mounting the bike and had it repaired in Togo, which has be solid ever since. Carrying https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Y9...s=w731-h549-no The minimal side racks from Ebay have worked perfectly as has the rear rack from Moto-Billet, which works great for bolting down a Pelican Case. My first case was the Pelican 1450, which had both latches broken by the time it was finished. When Jamie arrived, she brought us a Pelican 1550, which holds double the volume of the 1450. The extra locking space is very nice to have. While Dyna looks a bit less like a sexy dirt bike with all that junk in her trunk, I think that for an overland trip, a bigger case is worthwhile. I use a Klean Canteen to carry stove fuel that wedges neatly between the Pelican case and the turn signal and secured with a hose clamp. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1020591.jpg My aluminum toolbox from MTE Engineering (via DRriders.com) has been a great solution, but not without a few problems. The lock broke somewhere in Sierra Leone, which was also the latching mechanism. I created a temporary solution with a welder in Freetown, but when that failed the bumpy, muddy road entering Ghana I lost my entire tool roll. After picking up tools one by one from street vendors to reassemble a tool kit I managed to loose all my tools for a second time in Togo. I ended up JB welding a new latch to the box and it has been solid ever since. Either the box or the frame mounts have bent inward and allowed it to smash up the chain guard, so in Nairobi I made up some 1-inch hard rubber spacers to push the box out, away from the bike. The tool tube hose-clamped to the side rack works well enough, but the screw cap tends to jump threads when opening and closing it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1020624.JPG The saddlebags from Ortlieb are tough as nails. I’ve abused the hell out of them on this trip and others and they are still kicking. On this trip, I repeatedly shoved one of them between my surf rack and the bike and had a few crashes that sent them flying about the bike. They are completely waterproof as long as you roll them shut properly. The Ortliebs have been around forever and are simpler and cheaper than most of the newer, ‘adventure’ marketed panniers more recently available. The plastic inserts keep the bags stiff and make them more user friendly day to day. The straps that go across the seat are very low profile, with no huge buckle or thick strap for you or your passenger to sit on. These bags don’t have lots of straps going all over the place, which seem totally unnecessary to me. A simple carabiner attached to the rear rack can be hooked to the haul loop of whichever bag is heavier to make sure that they ride evenly. A few things could improve the design (please take note Ortlieb) . Firstly, make them narrower – 7 inches wide rather than 8 helps keep everything closer to handlebar width, which is invaluable when navigating through traffic in busy city streets. Second, make bags square-shaped rather than tapered towards the bottom to make us some of the volume lost on the width. Finally and most importantly, the collar of the bags should be taller to allow a greater variable volume. This is a simpler solution than attaching a drybag to the top as we've done. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1020609.JPG The best compact dry bags that I’ve found are the Outdoor Research Durable Dry Bag. They have webbing loops sewn to the side that makes attaching them easy, they pack small when not in use. Jamie’s Kriega 20 liter bag is great design that makes secure attachment to the bike a snap. Inside the saddlebags and pelican case we use these ‘Mud Boxes’ made by Eagle Creek, which I’ve found very durable and convenient for organization. Suspension The stiffer straight-rate front springs in the fork along with a stiffer spring and Race Tech gold valve installed on the shock improved the off-road capability of DR650 considerably. Two-up, we could really do with a stiffer spring than the 7.5 kg/m one that we’re currently running on the shock. Fuel and Engine https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1020521.JPG The 5.3 gallon tank from Acerbis has performed without issue and provides a safe range of about 240 (2 up) to 275 (alone) miles. If you can believe it, I've never once carried gas outside of this tank on the entire trip. That’s not to say that there were always petrol stations or that I could have planned better, but I have always been able to find someone in a village somewhere with some petrol that they were happy to part with. If the newer 6.6 Acerbis tank was available when I built the bike, I probably would have gone for that one instead. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1020600.JPG The bash guard and case armor from Procycle has offered peace of mind when dropping the bike whether on on a rocky uphill track in the Congo or the streets of Nairobi. The Hyabusa exaust along with the mid pipe and mounting bracket from Keintech have held up beautifully. Drivetrain https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2w...8=w694-h549-no The last 525 DID x-ring chain lasted 20K miles without a problem and I’m hoping (counting on) similar mileage from the current one. The steel rear and front sprockets also lasted 20K miles and still had plenty of life left when I replaced them in Pretoria, though the 15 tooth front sprocket had been alternated with a 14 tooth one for at least 5K miles. Tires https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v_...s=w412-h549-no On this trip I’ve ridden the Michelin Anakee (rear), Mitas E07 (front and rear), Continental TKC 80 (front and rear), Haidenau K60 (rear), Kenda Big Block (front), and the Kenda 270 (rear). The best combo that I’ve found has been a high mileage 70/30 rear with a more knobby front to help stop from washing out on loose stuff. Carrying tires sucks and this combo can usually get you from one tire stop to the next. The Anakee seemed fine – mostly ridden on tarmac, useless in the sand of the Sahara, changed it out in Dakar, which turned out to be a bit too soon. The Mitas E07 rear wore quicker than I’d expected from previous reports after 5K miles away from Dakar. I never liked the way the front felt in the dirt. I had the opportunity to change for a pair of TKC’s that another rider had shipped to Accra and wasn’t going to collect, so I ditched the E07 with life still left. The TKC’s were great in the mud of the Congo – they clear packed up knobs well with just a bit of speed and allow you to regain some traction. I was looking at the steel belting by the time I’d made 6K miles to Cape Town. I rode the Haidenau rear (140 width) for 7K miles from Pretoria to Nairobi and it looked like it could go another 7K miles. It would have been great except for the fact that it had a delamination or something that caused a lump in the tire and vibrated something awful. From others’ reports it sounds like the 130 width (stock DR650 size) doesn’t get the same mileage as the 140 width tire, and I wouldn’t want to deal with wedging the 140 back onto the rim after a puncture repair, so I don’t think I’ll try it again. In Nairobi I installed a Kenda Big Block front and Kenda 270 rear and this should make it all the way back to Europe. The Big Block front is about the same pattern as a TKC 80 and the rear Kenda doesn’t vibrate, so I love it. Tools and Spares https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1020613.JPG You can build a smaller and lighter tool kit, but it’s always a compromise for convenience. Having tools that you like using really makes maintenance and repairs much more fun. I’ve got wide mouth crescent wrench rather than the 7’’ Knipex pliers that I started with and everything else is about the same. I replaced the Wolfman tool roll with the Kriega tool roll which seems a bit nicer. I have yet to use the Motion Pro chain tool, but good to have just in case. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9B...8=w731-h549-no Most of one saddlebag is taken up with spares and maintenance stuff. I’d say that all that I’ve brought along is worth having on a long trip if you don't want to end up having parts shipped from far away. In the blue case on the left are carburetor rebuild parts, spare brake pads, bulbs, fork seals, shock seal, front sprocket, wheel and headstock bearings, fuel filter, fuel line, gaskets, spare bolts, etc.. The stuff sack in the middle holds standard thickness tubes (heavy duty ones are installed), and the zip sack on the left holds spare straps, carabineers, tow strap, zip ties etc. I’ve hardly used any of the spares that I’ve brought, but I’ve been happy to have a few things when I needed them. The extra straps were very handy when my board rack broke in Cameroon and I used the tow strap on the fateful evening in Nigeria that landed me in the police compound. Riding https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1020608.JPG The Revit Turbine jacket was a great choice for Africa- it flows a decent amount of air and the Dynax mesh is very robust. Just don’t throw it in the dryer like I did or the glued bits are likely to start letting go. The AFX dual sport helmet has performed admirably for a $100 helmet. It’s great value, but noticeably heavier and lesser quality finish than other options, all of which have price tag 2-3 times larger. I hardly ever use the Smith Intake goggles and opt for cheap sunglasses bought here and there instead. The Alpinestars Scout boots are good value and pretty waterproof, but they are plastic rather than metal where the buckles connect to the leather. One of mine broke and I had to JB weld it back together. The soles are stitched on so they are fairly easily resoled when the time comes. At about $100 more, I’d probably go for the Gaerne Balance instead. I started out with some Joe Rocket Atomic Pants - they were only about $100 and had zip-off mesh panels, so they seemed to fit the bill, but in the end they were just too damn hot when stuffing around at borders and the like. Since Dakar I’ve just worn a pair of Carhartt work pants, and when those wore through I bought some jeans in Cape Town. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KV...Y=w706-h549-no My Aerostitch Roper gloves are now the nastiest looking bit of kit I have. If the creature Gollum wore gloves, they would look like these. They are crusty, slimy, and the snap closures have ripped out, mostly due to weathering multiple rainstorms and my poor treatment of them. I still kind of like them though. Bike Security https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1020615.JPG The bike is the least likely thing to get stolen on a trip like this. Europe and South Africa hold the highest risk of bike theft. In Africa you can usually park it somewhere secure or identify someone to look after it for you. Most places in Africa are exclusively the domain of 125cc bikes, and a big 650 is so foreign and conspicuous that very few folks would have a mind to try to make off with it. Owners and staff of guest houses are often sensitive to your concern for your bike and will have you bring it straight into a foray or a restaurant. Half the time I’ve been camping and sleeping right next to it anyway. A big security chain is definitely not worth the space and weight to carry. I have a PacSafe cable lock that I’ve used one time to secure the saddlebags, and I always put a disk lock on if security feels uncertain. Camping https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Nv...k=w731-h549-no The zipper of my original REI Quarterdome 2 tent packed up in Sierra Leone and I suffered many a night for it. It was my own fault for trying to ride across Africa with a well-used $60 dollar tent bought on Ebay. The REI stuff is generally great value, especially when you can get it on sale. A tight fitting 2-person tent is definitely worth carrying rather than a 1-person coffin-sized tent. Jamie arrived with a REI Quarterdome 3 tent that fits us and gear perfectly and only cost about $200. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Jv...A=w874-h549-no I carry a Trangia mini alcohol burner that fits inside its own pot/pan. It’s compact, simple, requires no maintenance, doesn’t turn your pot black, and I don’t have to get gasoline on my hands when I’m about to cook dinner. You can find denatured alcohol or ‘mineral spirits’ nearly anywhere and in a pinch you can even just burn rubbing alcohol from any pharmacy. The downside is it doesn’t burn as hot as a multi-fuel stove, so its not as good for really cooking and you don’t have a huge supply of fuel always on hand from your gas tank. We don’t cook every day, as many places it’s just cheaper and simpler to eat the street food, so I still like the alcohol burner above the multi-fuel option. Zebra-light makes awesome bright headlamps and Ka-bar makes great knives that hold an edge for a long time. While we often buy bottles of water, we also use the Sawyer filter all the time to filter drinking water. A length of nylon cord has lots of uses from a clothesline to creating tie-downs on the bike. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/nC...Q=w731-h549-no My first Exped air mat was plenty comfortable, but blew its baffles in Angola and my board bag became my bed. Jamie arrived with a replacement mat made by Big Agnes and an Exped mat for herself. The Exped mat is a bit thinner and way quicker to inflate, but I’m not completely sold on the reliability of the flat valves that they use compared to the screw valves more commonly used by other manufacturers. Most of Africa is pretty warm unless you're in the mountains and there is no need for an insulated sleep mat. The air that fills these ones is plenty of warmth and they pack to less than half the size of those lined with synthetic or down insulation. Jamie uses my Montbell Down Hugger #3 (30F bag), which I found too warm on most of the journey down the west coast of Africa. The down has lost some it’s loft that I attribute the constant humidity across west Africa. I now use the Montbell Thermal Sheet (50F) that Jamie brought with her. While I had a couple of cold nights in Botswana, I’ve been just fine since then, but I do tend to sleep warm. The Montbell down products are some of the best stuff available – light, compact, durable, and decent value. I’ve only ever owned two sleeping bags in 20 years, both are Montbell and both have seen many miles. Surfing Board https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Yz...M=w982-h497-no Bringing a surfboard on an extended overland trip is always a compromise between what you’d like to have in the water and what you are willing to drag around. Most surfers aren’t willing to tote a full quiver of 4-5 boards that would cover virtually any wave-riding situation imaginable. Instead, we pick 1 or 2 that will cover most conditions pretty well. I resolved to only bring a single board along for the ride. I needed something that would be fun to ride in big waves and small, flat faced and tubing waves alike, and also convenient to carry on the bike. Those criteria called for a board with more volume than a traditional high performance shortboard, but with that extra foam distributed over it’s with, rather than its length. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9o...A=w982-h510-no We’re spoiled for choices for surfboard creation in a place like Santa Cruz, with numerous legends of the craft quietly conducting their foam mowing alchemy in dusty shops all about town. One of these master craftsmen is Ward Coffee, who has been shaping boards in Santa Cruz for more than 30 years. I skateboarded down to his shop to chat about a new board, and as always, he performed the translation of what I said that I needed into design specifications for my surfcraft. We came up with a 5’ll’’ quad fin, with a gentle entry rocker and the volume that I would ride in a board a step up in size from my standard shortboard. I brought along two sets of fins with different profiles and surface areas, which helped stretch the board’s versatility. The board turned out to be a blast to ride, a very good compromise for most conditions I encountered, it stayed in one piece, and gave me some rides that I’ll replay in my memory for a long time to come. The shaper's job is to build a craft that helps you have fun sliding on waves, and the good ones, like Ward, sit down and listen to what you’re after, look at what you’re riding, and make it their mission to find your magic shape in a block of foam. I for one am very grateful to have them in our community. Check out www.wardcoffeeshapes.com to see some of the diverse array of surfcraft that he puts into the water. Surf Gear https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zw...M=w713-h549-no I carried an Oneil Psycho 3/2 mm fullsuit which was just right for the trip, but I was cold in Namibia and around Cape Town. The rest of the time I just wore boardshorts and had a neoprene top for chilly mornings. The Excel Drylock boots were the perfect choice of footwear since they have a tight gusset at the top of the boot that allows you to use them with a wetsuit or as reef boots with boardshorts without them filling up with water. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Pw...g=w732-h549-no My surf rack was a modified from Carver Racks in Hawaii. I used an extra mounting plate to splay the arms wider and hold the board closer to the ends. I really like the simple design of the rack and only having it mounted to the rear rack, which keeps it out of the way of my feet. The combination with soft saddlebags situates a bag between the board and the bike, cushioning the blow when the bike is dropped. It's is a good design, but the aluminum rack simply isn’t strong enough for a long overland journey – I broke it 4 times and I ended up fabricating replacement pieces from steel along the way. The steel is much heavier than the aluminum, but at least it can be welded nearly anywhere. Aluminum may work if thicker walled tubing was used and the welds to the mounting plate were reinforced, as I had done in Morocco. Clothing You don’t really need anything for a year that you don’t need for a week. 3 t-shirts, 3 socks, 3 underwear, 1 pair shorts, light insulating jacket, rain jacket, and rain pants will do it. Anything 100% polyester dries quicker but stinks like hell pretty quickly. I like 50/50 cotton polyester/cotton t-shirts, and Smartwool socks are the business. Come to think of it, a dog ate one pair of socks in Botswana, so it seems you really only need two pairs. Just pretend you’re a member of the Fellowship of the Ring scampering across the rocky hilltops of Gondor. I’m pretty sure Legolas didn’t pack many extra t-shirts. Electronics https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/x_...A=w731-h549-no Every word written and photo processed is done with my MacBook Air 11’’. Before I left on this trip I tried out a netbook that cost about 1/3 the price of the MacBook, but found it utterly frustrating to use mostly due to very slow processor and a small, poor quality keyboard. I’d never had a Mac before this and found the adjustment only mildly painful and the solid state drive with no moving parts should weather life on the bike alright. After two years of use I now find that the battery drains pretty quickly. The other downside of the tiny Air model is limited storage – only 128 gb, so video clips have to live on a 1 TB external drive. The Kindle is well worth the cost for the space saving convenience of being able to carry scores of books on the tiny device, though it is just another thing to charge up. An Iphone 4 in a weatherproof/shockproof case running the MapsWithMe app is the only navigation tool I’ve used on this trip and it works great. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/10...Y=w748-h549-no My trusty Panasonic TS-3 waterproof/shockproof camera has been a good camera to keep always in the pocket and use go-pro style. My higher quality camera – the Panasonic GF-3 w/14 mm lens died in Botswana, but the timing was good, since Jamie had brought along the newest model Panasonic GX-7 with a 20mm lens. The GX-7 has the highest quality image sensor used in a micro 4/3 format camera and the manual controls have been helpful for working on basic photography skills. We currently have the 20mm and 14mm pancake lenses (28mm and 40mm full frame equivalents) and while a massive zoom lens would be nice, we’ve yet to give us the precious cargo space for one. That's about all the gear talk I can fit in this space folks. I hope that you've found it helpful in some way, and please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question about any of the bits and bobs that inhabit our saddlebags. |
Excellent reports as always, even when you haven't gone anywhere! I have never ridden for any significant distance, but I am definitely with you on the minimalist approach. Here on Horizons and Advrider, there seem to be quite a few different approaches for motorcycle travel, but taking less 'stuff' than more 'stuff' seems to be just plain, old, good common sense. Seeing some of the roads you posted, I couldn't imagine a fully loaded massive adventure bike realistically making it through.
Heck, as an owner of a cheap Chinese enduro, I was most impressed by your friend Mike on the underdog bike getting 6k miles out of his Chinese bike--obviously not carrying a ton of extra 'stuff' factored in. If the doubters are to be believed, his bike should have fallen apart within a few hundred miles of Cape Town! He 'should' have been on nothing 'less' than a BMW or KTM loaded down with a ton 'o crap! |
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Wild West, White Horses
hey dudes - wild west African motosurf adventures in the current issue of the Aussie surf mag White Horses: White Horses | Issue Ten Available Now. These guys really put out a beautiful publication and I'm honored to be amongst the contributors this month. Thanks to Matt for connecting me with the White Horses crew (afewsketchymoments on ADVrider)
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Skirting the Serengeti and Seeking the Source of the Nile
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We left Nairobi with a plan to circle Lake Victoria, which meant crossing into Tanzania for a third time since we entered east Africa. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7We blazed southwest along the edge of the Serengeti towards the town of M'wanza. At one stage Jamie tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to our left and I turned to see the grassy plain dotted with Acacia trees filled to the horizon with zebra and wildebeest. This was our the view of the Serengeti Plain spreading to our south as we rode along. The wildebeest and zebra paid us no mind as we gazed across the scene in the subdued light of the late afternoon. It was one those unexpected, enchanted-feeling moments that happen from time to time on the road that leaves you beaming a stupid grin inside of your helmet and removes any doubt that there's any place else in the world you’d rather be than right where you are. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Xc...0=w733-h550-no We camped along the shores of Lake Victoria by night and picnicked on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by day. The road turned to rich red earth and short showers came and went as we rode, but we didn’t mind, they felt good, like the landscape was alive and we were part of it. The comfort and familiarity that we enjoyed temporarily in Nairobi was gone, we were out in it again. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1020855.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1060830.JPG At the campsite in M’wanza we met the proprietor of the local yacht club who coincidentally had provided some assistance to two Aussie guys on bikes who we’d met before leaving Nairobi. One of the Aussie guys had cartwheeled his BMW GS1200 avoiding a kid that darted unexpectedly into the road. The rider walked away virtually unscathed from the crash and the kid was untouched, but the bike was in awful shape when it arrived in Nairobi. As the helpful yacht club owner tells it, he helped keep the Aussie guy out of courtrooms and jail after the incident. It was a stark reminder to us that all of this joyful adventure comes at the cost of some risk and that we should keep our wits about us if we want it to carry on. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/K-...o=w687-h515-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Jp...o=w686-h515-no As we neared Burundi, the hills erupted into granitic domes and fortress-like piles of boulders, which made for some excellent picnic spots. We didn’t have visas for Burundi and weren’t sure whether or not they would let us in, but they welcomed us warmly and we found all of the people we met incredibly friendly. We encountered a corridor of people walking along the roadside so thick that I virtually had to ride right in the middle of the road most of the time. The roadside crowd persisted for almost all of our route through Burundi. Thankfully, there was very little traffic, since I had become so used to riding on the left side of the road in southern Africa. I couldn’t seem to remember to stay on the right hand side as they do in Burundi and Rwanda. People aren’t so used to tourists in Burundi as they are in Kenya and Tanzania. When we stopped at a bakery for some breakfast one morning a massive crowd gathered, curious about the strange white visitors on the big motorbike. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/e-...s=w725-h515-no We rode a perfect tarmac road with no traffic to the border with Rwanda leaning in and out of sweeping turns that seemed never to end. Cultivated fields and a silty brown river flanked the road as it climbed and dropped from one hill to another. All along, we met the waves of kids and their cries of ‘Muzungu!’ (Swahili for white man). My speed crept up as I was having fun railing through one turn after another, and on one right-hand sweeper I felt the rear tire just barely start to break traction under throttle. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/QU...0=w687-h515-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Z4...Q=w687-h515-no It wasn’t until we reached the Rwandan border that Jamie realized that she’d left her Kindle at the guest house we’d stayed at the previous night in Burundi. I got mad at her about it since it meant 3 hours more riding to backtrack to the town of N’goza to retrieve it. Riding the twisty road through a beautiful landscape filled with friendly people managed to dissolve any upset feelings pretty quickly. Along the way we passed very few motorbikes, but lots and lots of people on bicycles, either racing at high speed down the hills or arduously pushing up a slope. Often, the bicycles were loaded heavily with bananas and after passing some of these folks for the third time heading back to the border, I began to feel as though it was wrong not offer help. Here is this guy sweating and pushing a bike up a hill and we go zipping by on this powerful motorbike over and 0ver again, feeling just fine about it because we’re insulated by a cultural separation. If I wasn’t such a lazy selfish bastard, I would have tried harder to span that cultural void between us, stop and pile a load of bananas onto the bike. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1060844.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/UC...s=w686-h515-no Most of the valleys and hillslopes are cultivated. As it turns out, 85% of the land area of Rwanda is either used for some type of cultivation or fallow. The rest is mostly occupied by Eucalyptus groves that were planted mostly for harvest as firewood. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Oz...A=w686-h515-no Everywhere in Rwanda, we’re reminded of the tragedy the world allowed to happen here not so long ago. The genocide of 1994 claimed more than 1 million lives within only a few months time and touched nearly everyone in the country in one way or another. Peoples' stories of that time are wrenching to hear. Monuments like the one in the photo above can be found throughout the country, even in the remote countryside. It seems as though nowhere was safe from the carnage brought by those who slaughtered grown men and schoolgirls alike based on an ethnic categorization scheme that was formalized by Europeans during colonial times. Many of the monuments prominently bear the simple proclamation that seems to embody Rwandans' attitude about what happened in 1994: ‘Never again’. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1020868.JPG We headed west towards Lake Kivu, from where we hoped to explore the headwaters of the longest River on the planet. In Sudan, the Nile splits into the Blue Nile and the White Nile, the latter being the longer of the two branches. The source of the White Nile was one of the most hotly debated geographical enigmas of the 19th century, leading a sequence of expeditions and explorers claiming that they had identified the ultimate source of the mighty river. In 1858, with very little evidence available, the English explorer John Hanning Speke proclaimed Lake Victoria, jointly ‘discovered’ by himself and Richard Burton a year prior, to be the source of the mighty river. One expedition followed another over decades of exploration that attempted to provide compelling evidence of continuity of waterbodies stretching from upstream away from Lake Victoria through Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia, to find the ultimate headwaters of the Nile. By the year 1874 and the death of the famed Scottish explorer Dr. David Livingstone, the riddle still remained unsolved, when Henry Stanley embarked on a three year expedition that finally confirmed relationships of potential sources identified by previous explorers and the Rukarara river as the most distant headwater of the worlds longest river. In 2006, a crew of three New Zealanders made a bid to ascend the entire longitudinal distance of the Nile all the way to its most remote source by boat. After months of hardship and surviving an assault by Ugandan rebels when a good friend of the expedition was killed and the others injured, they finally reached the most remote tributary deep in the Nyungwe forest of Rwanda on the slopes of Mount Bigugu which turned out to be 107 kilometers longer than the previously identified most remote source. They provided the coordinates at the termination of their journey, and having been trained as a hydrologist, I could hardly resist the opportunity to go find it, so off we went. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1020908.JPG Immediately upon leaving Lake Kivu the road turned to mud. As we climbed higher above the lake, the track degraded to a rocky mess. We nearly took it down a time or two when Dyna Rae’s rear wheel spun for traction on a few loose uphill sections or I took the wrong line through a nasty rutted section, but for the most part, we slowly tractored our way up the hillsides. After 10 miles of this, we stopped and considered whether this little expedition was really worth the trouble as dark clouds gathered overhead. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/4P...A=w686-h515-no The pattern in the days leading up to this one were for the storms to start dumping rain in the afternoon, but the dark clouds gathering overhead told us that the rain may come early this day. If it did, the track would quickly become much more difficult to ride. We decided that if the Kiwi explorers survived rebel attacks, the least we could do was to carry on in the face of some rain. Thirty miles of rough track led us to the Gustavou tea plantation and their vast fields of tea plants. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/2H...I=w700-h515-no The location specified by the Kiwi 'Ascend the Nile' expedition wasn’t far off, but the sky had finally started to let go the rain. We were too deep in now to stop, so we carried on and identified the location reached by the expedition. It was just over the hills in a Eucalyptus grove in the distance, but the tea fields barred our way from following in their footsteps to reach it. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1020895.JPG We found the small tributary on the map closest to the coordinates marked by the expedition, traced it downstream and headed to where we could access the stream. We stood along the hydrologic divide between the Congo and Nile river basins, the two largest drainages on the African continent. By our reckoning, just 2 kilometers upstream of the flow that you see below is the most remote headwater of the Nile River. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ee...0=w686-h515-no |
Once again--amazing photography! And explanations to go with them...Who would have thought that the mighty Nile is but a few drops?
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Video! Surfing the Wild West..
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Mzungus in the Mist
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Before we left Kigali, Jamie and I spied a large, bright green snake slithering about just beneath a highway overpass while walking to the market. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7On the way back we found the snake dead and learned that it was a Green Mamba, with a bite that is poisonous enough to kill several adults. It felt like a uniquely African urban hazard. We rode from Kigali, crossed Rwanda’s border with Uganda, and continued to the town of Kabale, located near the shore of Lake Bunyoni. Our mission here was to inquire about the mountain gorilla tracking excursions into Bwindi Impenetrable Forest located just to the north of Kabale. We learned that within a week the official start of the rainy season would be upon us and the tracking permits would be half price, so we had some time to hang around in this dusty little town. All it takes is a few days in a place like this and we know our way around town, we have our favorite restaurant, regular grocery shop, and morning bakery, and of course have some new friends in the workers of the guest house. In fact, in our experience Uganda could certainly rival Malawi for the title of the ‘warm heart of Africa’. People are happy to see foreigners visiting and we’re greeted with smiles from strangers around every turn. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1020915.JPG Our favorite $2.50 local fare buffet was located directly across from the power-ballad mini market. Perhaps simply because the owner had a massive set of speakers at his disposal and access to electricity 5 hours a day, he would provide an afternoon soundtrack for block with hits from Celine Dion, Phil Collins, and Journey. We had a few emotive lunchtime lip-synching sessions. As always, there was a dance party happening somewhere in town most nights that didn’t stop until dawn. In Africa, where there is electricity, there is a usually an all-night dance party on the weekend. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1020913.JPG Though it was now raining every day, we still managed to get out to Lake Bunyoni for a few days of camping while we waited for our gorilla tracking permit date to arrive. We took one of the dugout canoes to paddle to an island in the middle of the lake, which ended up being more difficult that I first imagined. The problem was keeping the canoe going in a straight line. If we drifted even slightly to one direction we would soon find ourselves spinning a full 360 degrees around, doing what the locals called the ‘Mzungu corkscrew’ (Mzungu being the Swahili word for white folk). The local guys seemed to have no trouble keeping a constant heading and usually laughed at us spinning around in circles. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1060897.JPG I too laughed eventually, but in the moment I was anything but amused at my wonky paddling struggles. We made our way out to an island in the middle of the lake, had lunch and took a swim. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1060883.JPG Lake Bunyoni traces such a craggy shoreline and the roads are so poor that canoes are the preferred mode of transport for people, goods, and even delivering the local kids to and from school. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1020930.JPG After a week in Kabale and Lake Bunyoni, we finally rode off into the mountains ready to spy some gorillas. We rode to regular calls of ‘Mzungu!’ from local village kids along the way, and sometimes the air of wide-eyed wonder in the way that they said it had us laughing. All the way up the twisting mountain roads, towering hillslopes were absolutely covered with cultivated fields from top to bottom. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1030042.JPG Imagine the effort to walk to and from your field carrying tools or a harvest if it happened to be on the opposite end of one of these hills from your village. People are working hard for the food that they grow here. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1060987.JPG Our campsite in the mountains was little more than a clearing in the jungle pressed right up against the wall of dense vegetation that was teeming with life. A dizzying diversity of birds, snakes, lizards, insects, and of course gorillas and chimpanzees all inhabited this forest. At night this jungle produced a symphonic wall of sound that lulled us to sleep in our tent. It felt like an auditory analog to the impenetrable barrier of vegetation that formed the forest margin, reminding us that beyond that threshold, humans are merely visitors. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1020952.JPG To us foreigners it’s an exotic and wild place, but the villagers here live their whole lives right up against it. Their fields and huts run right up to where the jungle and we were told that they’ve even had the gorillas wander right down into our camp. We got up early the morning that we were to head into the jungle to meet our guide and have a bit of gorilla etiquette training. He said not to look them directly in the eyes, and if they become aggressive to make gorilla noises and pretend to be eating leaves. If one of them begins to charge us, we should slowly back away, but definitely do not run. Easy for the guy with the gun to say. Sounds reasonable, 700 pound gorilla closing fast, just stay cool, continue grunting ‘ooo…ooo….ooo’ and munching my palm leaf. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1030005.JPG Newly armed with expert knowledge on staying friendly with our fellow primates, we began the walk into the jungle. The trail quickly turned to an extremely steep, muddy slope with barely a passage through the vegetation. Our way seemed to be more a gorilla trail than a human trail. Trackers had set out ahead of us early in the morning to help us find a specific family of gorillas called the Nshongi group. The trackers begin at the last place that the gorillas slept the night before (since they move sleeping locations every night) and track them to wherever their morning hangout might be. Up we climbed stumbling over roots and slipping backward in the mud with our guide’s machete slashing left and right every few steps to clear the way ahead. After an hour and a half of climbing, we met up with the trackers on a hilltop clearing who told us that they had found the gorillas just behind the next rise. We dropped our packs and walking sticks at the clearing and crept slowly towards the group. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1020995.JPG Our first view was of the silverback male about 50 meters away, and deep in a stand of vegetation pulling leaves from a low branch of a nearby tree. He paid us no mind as we circled around to get closer, but without even a look in our direction he moved off from us. We crept along again circling wide again to his new spot, and again he lumbered off slowly, giving us only a view of his formidable looking backside. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1020988.JPG We persisted in our slow motion pursuit of the brooding silverback towards a clearing in the vegetation and he finally let us draw a bit nearer. As we did, we turned around to find two females and a youngster coming upon us from the rear, also approaching the male. On sighting us, they showed no alarm and calmly diverted their path around us continuing towards the male. As the female walked slowly in the vicinity of the male, he reached out a thickly muscled arm and pulled her around the front of him. As it happened, the gorillas were in the mood for love. While the gorilla morning delight proceeded before us, we realized that they were probably less bothered about our presence than we’d thought. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1020967.JPG Their coupling was brief and when finished we moved a bit closer and finally came face to face with the silverback male. He moved slowly and he always seemed to have a pensive air about him with each movement. It was his eyes. They seemed a mixture of peace, thoughtfulness, and mild puzzlement. Like an old man about a craft he knows well and at the same time lost in wistful thoughts of younger days. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1020987.JPG His two year-old was a different story altogether. He bounded about the clearing with hardly a moment’s stillness, jumping to grab a low branch and swinging and twisting wildly. He charged at us, with as much fearsomeness as he could muster, quickly thumping his little chest with his hands in mid-run. It would have seemed much more fearsome it he hadn’t stumbled over a root and fallen onto his face during the chest thumping. He didn’t see us as any kind of threat and he wanted to play. Our guide had to shoo him away with a branch so as not to have us make physical contact with the little fella. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1030010.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1030021.JPG In total, we spent an hour with the furry primates that passed by in a flash. I spent most of the time squatting in the bushes about 6 meters from the silverback staring in wonder at this enormous, powerful creature that had such an air of peace about him. This was all Jamie’s idea and looking over to see the excited smile on her face as she peered through the foliage felt grand. In the afternoon we descended back to our camp, slipping down slick spots on the muddy trail to land on our backsides and describing this or that moment of the encounter. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1020977.JPG Only about 880 of these mountain gorillas remain in the world, all of which live in the rainforests of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo. Parks like Bwindi, which was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1994, are the only way their habitat has been preserved and are essential to the continued survival of the mountain gorillas. Some 30 gorilla groups roam Bwindi Forest, 10 of which have been habituated to humans by the rangers and trackers. so that they . This process of habituation takes 2 years and results in the gorillas viewing humans as a neutral species that mean them no harm. Constrained by the rains, we took two days in transit from our mountain camp to Kampala. The day we left, a long menacing black cloud loomed in front of us by 10:30 AM and within 15 minutes it descended on us with fury. We only had a few minutes to seek out some shelter and found a wooden shack at the perfect time to weather the worst of it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1030054.JPG Despite the storm, it only took the local village kids a few minutes to find the Mzungus huddled in the shack. After some wary staring from the opposite side of the road with Jamie smiling back, they decided on bartering as the mode of interaction. The first brave soul ran halfway across the street and threw two potatoes in the grass in front of us. The next one came all the way over to us and handed two more to us. In exchange we produced a few coins, which turned on the potato tap. We ran out of coins we gave up a carton of milk, a bracelet, and a pen. Somehow the message that we don’t want any more potatoes didn’t seem to be coming across. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1030056.JPG By the time we were out of things to give and the kids finally gave up, we had a stupid amount of potatoes to carry away. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1030049.JPG As we dropped altitude, Dyna Rae ran a bit smoother and the rainstorms didn’t last quite as long. The only important reason we had for coming into Kampala was to visit the Sudan embassy and try once again to procure a visa. After a couple hours wait, still all geared up, we were allowed to meet with the very friendly ambassador who gave us the same story we’d received in Nairobi: visa approval for US citizens must come from Khartoum, which could take a month. Since we’d already been denied a visa in Nairobi per this process, we decided it best to move on and wait until Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where this ambassador said we should be able to obtain a transit visa. Strike two. We get one more swing at this in Addis before we’ll need to get creative. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1060992.JPG Approaching the seething capital of Kampala turned out to be another mad riding affair. Big surprise, I know. I should really be used to it by now, but I still get pissed when getting run off the road by an oncoming truck. Which happens at least 30 times in a day in Uganda. Just three days before our arrival in Kampala, we got some very sad news about an Australian couple on a BMW1200 GS that had a crash along the same route we were riding. Like Jamie and I, Dean and Tanya were in their 30’s, and had tossed in their jobs to travel the world two-up on a bike. A four-wheel drive truck overtaking another vehicle ran into them head-on, killing them both. They had big dreams and plans to tour the world on their bike. Their website is titled “Once Life is all You Get” and a quote above one of their photos reads: “The most dangerous risk of all: the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.’’ It’s difficult to reconcile people’s general warmth and regard for one another here with the madness found on out on the road. No true adventure comes with a guarantee of safety, but we like to think that we’ve got our eyes wide open to the risks. We kept calm and carried on. We stayed on the outskirts of Kampala for a couple nights before fled the chaotic city eastward to the banks of the Nile. We stayed at a camp just where the mighty River drains from Lake Victoria. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1070150.JPG We hired some paddleboards from the camp and began our explorations upriver. The current wasn’t swift, but it was some effort to resist it washing us downriver. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1070154.JPG We explored little islands in the middle of the river and I found a rope swing for an aerial assault on the Nile. In my underwear. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1070158.JPG The next morning we loaded up after a morning rain shower to ride eastward back to Nairobi. We’ve been riding for a month now circling Lake Victoria, visiting three new countries and crossing the equator twice. It’s been an action packed few weeks and we’re now headed back to the city that’s become more familiar to us than anywhere else on the road. We plan to regroup there and do some bike maintenance before beginning the long journey into north Africa, keeping our eyes wide open. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1030038.JPG |
Wow, the gorilla encounter looked like right out of Nat Geo!! Of course, your humor comes in at the right time "...Sounds reasonable, 700 pound gorilla closing fast, just stay cool, continue grunting ‘ooo…ooo….ooo’ and munching my palm leaf."
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Hunting the Wolves of Bale
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The Ethiopian wolf is the rarest canid in the world, with less than 500 individuals left, most of which live in the country's southern Bale Mountains. We hoped to glimpse this uncommon beast in its home environment but before we got there, Ethiopia had some trials lined up for us.http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 It was an hour before we broke free of the city traffic as driving north out of Nairobi headed towards Mount Kenya. Our friends and fellow moto-overlanders Ash and Deb, were staying with some expat friends near the town of Nanyuki and invited us to stop over for the night, so we made our way down the slippy-slidey muddy track to their cabin. On the way out the next morning, they gave us a tip of where we were likely to catch sight of some rhinos right by the roadside and sure enough we spied a group of 4 of them after just 5 kilometers of riding. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...o/P1070176.JPG In the north of Kenya, the rivers began to shrink and then finally dried up completely. Herds of camels appeared around every turn and for a time it felt as though we’d already entered an Egyptian desert scene. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1030102.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ob...o=w720-h541-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1030107.JPG The desert-scape was a welcome change of scenery after months of riding through lush jungles and camping in the rain, but made for less than ideal picnic spots. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/P2...o=w720-h541-no As abruptly as the landscape had dried up, moisture and green hills returned and the landscape erupted before us with vertical red walls towering overhead. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1030141.JPG When Jamie starts photo-bombing pictures I know that I’ve probably taken enough photos of the same rock. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1030122.JPG As we zipped along on the freshly laid tarmac, a fellow traveler appeared to remind us how quickly we’re able to cover ground on our motorbike. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/tA...Q=w681-h541-no This was desolate country and other than our slow-footed friend, we rarely passed anyone. Other vehicles were usually military or road construction trucks. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1030181.JPG We drove out on a random sand track headed into the hills to find an eco-camp of sorts that we’d learned about from Ash and Deb. When we stopped the bike to look around the camp, I found that the bike didn’t want to start and found gas coming out of the carburetor overflow. When I opened the carb drain screw, gas drained out far longer that it should have indicating that nearly the entire carb was filled up with gas rather than just the float bowl. It was clear that I needed to work on the bike, and I have tendency to break things when I try to fix things, so we headed out of the hills and back to the last highway outpost for the night. The float bowl on the carb is just like the tank on a toilet, as it fills, it pushes a float upward that is attached to a lever and a valve to shut off flow when it reaches the correct height. Since the carb was over-filling with gas, it goes to reason that either the float was getting hung up, or the valve wasn’t sealing properly when the gas reached the correct height. I removed the float bowl and checked the o-rings and float needle. This little guy is what blocks off the flow of gas in the carburetor. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/P1030137.JPG The float needle looked fine, so I replaced both o-rings on the float, put everything back together, and hoped for the best. The new o-rings seemed to do the trick and I’ve had no more carb drowning incidents since. Back on the road, we knew that the perfect tarmac couldn’t last forever and when it finally disappeared the road turned to alternating sections mud bog and rough rocky stretches that slowed our pace to a crawl. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nb...U=w721-h541-no The last miles to the Ethiopian border shook us to the bone. Jamie’s knees were about spent from trying to maintain her position and getting launched in the air when I hit a big bump at speed. I could feel the punishment that poor Dyna Rae was taking beneath us, and I winced at every hard impact as though I were taking it straight to the chest. After being checked for signs of Ebola virus yet again by a medic at the immigration post I went into the customs office. Our research indicated that a temporary import permit should be no problem at the border, so I wasn’t worried about the fact that the Carnet for the bike had expired 4 days ago. However, upon the absolute insistence from the customs folks that the bike could not enter without a Carnet, I produced the document from my folder hoping that they didn’t notice the expiration date. Every new staff person that the Carnet was handed had me sweating a bit more. All that need happen was one pair of eyes to notice the expiration date, printed in bold red letters on the cover and on every page of the document, and the jig was up. Amazingly, they handed the document back with a stamp and a smile. I smiled back and let out a sigh of relief that we could get on our way. Unfortunately, they used up the last page in the Carnet, so I wouldn’t be able to test my luck again in Sudan or Egypt, which also require a Carnet. I walked out of the customs office to find Jamie holding the bike in an awkward position, as she had had to move it to make way for an exiting truck and now had it standing precariously upright. I looked down to see the rear tire sadly squished flat to the ground. She was a beast to move fully loaded with a flat tire as we grunted it up to flat ground. Then it started raining. It became clear that we would be spending the night on the Ethiopian border. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/cF...E=w720-h541-no The next morning I got to work on the bike and found that the hole had resulted from a fold in the tube that must have pinched during one of the hard hits we took the previous day. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/RS...8=w664-h541-no After finishing a artfully crafted patch job on the heavy-duty tube, I found that the valve stem had delaminated and was leaking. This slow leak must have been what allowed the tube to deflate enough to cause a fold. After a failed attempt to repair the valve, I installed the spare standard-thickness rear tube I had been carrying since Cape Town. Perfect timing - we’d just left Nairobi, the one place where I could probably find a 17’’ heavy duty tube between here and Europe. I suppose I should really be counting my blessings though, since this is the first puncture I’ve had on the entire trip and it didn’t happen in the middle of a cooking desert. I re-greased the wheel bearings for good measure (still original at 48K miles!), and we were on the road into Ethiopia. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/hn...A=w720-h541-no Since I’d spent ages fixing the bike that morning, and the road turned out to be a radical mess of asphalt craters, we didn’t make it very far into Ethiopia. There seemed to be more pothole surface than actual asphalt surface, so that even on a motorbike moving at less than 20 mph, I couldn’t avoid them all. The rim bending, flat making minefield of square edged holes led us to a guesthouse in a tiny little town called Mega where we immediately gathered a colossal crowd of curious kids. In fact, all throughout the ride, we’re met with constant calls of ‘You! You! You!’ , which seems to have replaced ‘Mzungu!’ as the standard white folk alert to the village. We are in the middle of the dry season for Ethiopia, but you wouldn’t know it from the soaking ride that we endured the next day. We were lucky at the onset of the first downpour, happening upon a church overhang in a very friendly village just as the heavens opened up in earnest. The church was constructed of hay bales and mud and most of the little village crowded under the overhang with us. No one spoke any English so we pretty much just smiled at one another, the kids touched the armor in our jackets, and everyone seemed happy to wait out the storm with us. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/kh...c=w721-h541-no We weren’t so lucky for the next downpour and before long I was soaked to the skin and shivering in my jeans while Jamie fared a bit better in her moto pants. The road got even worse and my visor kept fogging so I had to keep it up and could hardly see the tangles of treacherous potholes before were bounding straight into them. The destroyed asphalt sections alternated with stretches of mud with dubious traction. I was getting incredibly frustrated at my inability to see what was ahead and feeling that a fall was imminent. I swore loudly in my helmet as the driving rain stung my cheeks like needles and Jamie tried to hang on behind me. It just went on and on like that as darkness began to fall and there was just nowhere to shelter so we had nothing to do by keep going. I turned to focused silence as my shoulders cramped and stiffened until they felt like the craggy, gnarled branches of an old oak tree. We came upon a truck that had slid sideways off the road, completely blocking passage as another truck tried to pull it out the ditch. As darkness fell we managed to snake our way through the muddy carnage of the trucks into a small town where Jamie spied a place that we could finally stop. We’d found a guesthouse where we could shelter for the night. The place was absolutely infested with cockroaches that weren’t the least bit shy, but we didn’t care – it was a roof with dry space beneath it. The next day we ascended into the highlands to find vast plains where villagers cultivated vast fields of wheat and tended livestock. I never would have imagined a scene like the golden undulating hills of wheat existed in a place like Ethiopia. Riding was slow as the road had few motor vehicles but was absolutely filled with horses, donkeys, goats, cows, and people. There were hardly any bicycles or motorbikes. We were in donkey country where the most common way for moving people and goods is a cart with wooden wheels drawn by these shaggy, sullen-eyed braying beasts. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/4o...U=w771-h550-no As the day wore on we rode higher and the landscape became more dramatic around us. We found a simple guesthouse for the night in the town of Goba and prepared to continue our ascent onto the Senetti Plateau in the morning in the hopes of glimpsing a wolf or two prowling the high country. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pI...k=w733-h550-no The morning gloom was thick as we mounted the bike for a ride into the clouds. As we powered through a few mud bogs in the road I was glad that I’d changed to a 14 tooth front sprocket shortly after entering Ethiopia, gearing the bike lower than the stock 15 tooth front sprocket. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ci...8=w624-h550-no As we climbed, we were flanked by sheer escarpments of pink-orange rock to either side of the vast plateau that makes up the largest area above 4 thousand meters on the entire African continent. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/c1...k=w733-h550-no We motored on through the gloom, with the air temperature dropping as we ascended. We stopped to stalk through the low vegetation of the boulder-strewn plateau keeping a keen eye out for any signs of a wolf and spied a number of endemic raptors perched on boulders. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/fw...Y=w732-h550-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1030219.JPG Being a long way from any surf, and not having any discipline whatsoever, I don’t do any exercise to speak of. Instead, I like to strike athletic high altitude photography poses. This is the most strenuous physical thing I’ve done in two months. Seriously. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jL...E=w642-h550-no We turned off the main road to ascend the highest part of the plateau up a rocky rutted track and finally climbed to a height of 4,400 meters (that’s 14,500 ft). Of course when I say climbed, I mean we sat on our butts while I moved my hands around a little bit. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ym...g=w732-h550-no This the highest I’d ever ridden the bike and wondered whether or not she would make it without choking badly in the thin air. Somewhat to my surprise, she thumped right along without issue all the way to the top. The decent was a bit gnarly, so Jamie decided to take control. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/P1070292.JPG By the time we moved on to our most likely location for spotting wolves, the weather turned ugly. A thick cloud enveloped the plateau and the temperature continued to drop. Then it started to rain. We’re in the middle of the dry season in Ethiopia and it dumps rain every day. I must remember to write a letter to the ministry of tourism to complain. Before long were soaked through. For the cloud we were now inside of, a wolf would have had to come up and lick our faces to spot one. We still had an hour and a half to ride before we would descend the plateau, so we threw in the towel on the wolves and turned around. Before we got down Jamie and I were both shivering. I had to stop three times to warm my hands on the engine as they became frozen into ineffectual claws on the handlebars. My visor kept fogging up and the road was strewn with rills and holes, so I kept my it up, freezing my face all the way down. In the southern highlands of Ethiopia we’ve found incredibly friendly people, trucks that don't run us off the road, a sea of donkeys, a bit of bike trouble, an absence of super special wolves, and more rain that we’d bargained for. Despite a few challenges, Ethiopia has already charmed us. |
Thank you for sharing your journey!
It alway nice to see an update here :thumbup1: Surfy |
Hi
Will you come to Spain in the future? |
hey Victor - I'll not pass thru Spain on the way back..sorry to miss meeting a fellow HU rider!
|
Riders of the Lost Ark
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jn...g=w677-h461-no
As expected, arrival in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa was a chaotic affair. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7But at least it is a gentle chaos, with everyone launching into intersections, creating an auto-quagmire, but then slowly and carefully nudging forward or finally giving way when inches away from the fender panel of a larger vehicle. Fixing Sudan Our primary objective in Addis was to obtain a transit visa for Sudan, as we’d already been denied in both Nairobi and Kampala due to our citizenship in the good old US of A. The embassy in Addis was our final hope for a visa. Our hopes deflated when upon arrival at the overlander-frequented Wim’s Holland House, a Dutchman told us that the last two Americans seeking a visa to Sudan were summarily thrown out of the embassy. While we managed not be restrained by the ambassador’s goons, we were denied all the same, informed that they required an approval from the foreign ministry in Khartoum to give us a transit visa. We contacted tour agents and hotels in Khartoum who seemed to be willing to apply for an approval on our behalf, which may have been helpful, but it would take two weeks cost us $300 on top of the $200 each it was going to cost to apply for the Sudanese visa. In Nairobi we had been denied approval from Khartoum after a two-week wait, so we weren’t anxious to go down a similar path here. We visited the embassy 4 more times in the next three days, each time waiting patiently for hours and respectfully requesting an audience with the Consul to present our case, but were turned away each time. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/7A...Y=w594-h446-no Things were looking grim. We started making inquiries on getting a boat from Djibouti up the Red Sea. The waters were said to be thick with Somali pirates, but our options were narrowing, as there is no land route for us around Sudan. Then we got in touch with a ‘fixer’ and tour operator in Khartoum called Midhat Mahir, who told us that he knew the Consul well and that he could vouch for us. Unfortunately we never managed to get past first line of defense to get this information to the Consul. On the fifth day at the embassy I enlisted the help of a Sudanese guy waiting with us who helped convince the embassy front-window staffer that our plight was worth interrupting the Consul for a moment. Within minutes of sending the staffer back with Midhat’s card, he returned and agreed to process a transit visa for us. It was amazing. A minute before a transit visa was simply not possible, even armed with a sworn affidavit from the United States Consul in Nairobi, a letter of invitation from a hotel in Khartoum, and a valid Egyptian visa already in our passports. And an instant later it was no problem. I suppose that’s what a fixer does; he fixes stuff. I couldn’t believe that after a week in Addis, half a dozen trips to the embassy, and copious hours on the internet researching options, we finally had our ticket north. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1070331.JPG Exceptional Ethiopia Ethiopia has it’s own language (Amharic) with its own alphabet, its own calendar, and its own time keeping system, all of which are unique in the world. It all can seem a bit mad to travelers; the time is 6 hours ahead of what the rest of the world would suppose, and the date is about 7 years behind the current Gregorian calendar year. It’s 2007 again. I feel younger already. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1070324.JPG Perhaps the most defining characteristic of riding a motorbike in Ethiopia is the omnipresence of animals and people occupying most of the road. Riding a motorized vehicle, we felt an interloper more often than not, interrupting the endless drive of goats, sheep, steer, camels, and donkeys. Usually, I ride nearly in the center of the road to avoid the throngs along the side and one time I was nearly clotheslined by a gang of camels walking abreast who were roped together. The animals are always going somewhere. I was under the impression that they mostly keep their faces in the grass eating all day, but these animals seem to keep very busy schedules. It’s hard to be in Ethiopia for a month and not want to own a Donkey. Camels not so much. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1070320.JPG For all of its idiosyncrasies, Ethiopia is a great place for independent travelers, with incredibly affordable accommodation and tasty food. In the town of Wereta, we found the cheapest hotel yet - deluxe accommodation at the Hotel Obama goes for just 14 Birr or $0.70 USD. We decided to splurge at a hotel up the road for a whopping 60 Birr ($3 USD), but unfortunately found later that night that the hotel was also the local brothel and dudes were in the mood for love. Christian rock On the way north, we hit a long stretch with plenty of petrol stations, but no petrol. There isn’t much traffic on the road here and most of the vehicles are big trucks and buses that burn diesel. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Oa...A=w594-h446-no We ran on the reserve tank for only a few miles before finding fuel, but that was enough to suck whatever gunk in from the last petrol I’d gotten out of dodgy barrel in a village into the carb and clog the inlet filter. Dyna was bogging under any more than a quarter throttle as we limped into a guest house for the night where I could clean her out. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1030286.JPG The dramatic landscape of Ethiopia seems to stretch on and on, with steep valleys and mesas undulating to the horizon. Swiftly flowing rivers are strewn with cobbles and boulders, with hardly a grain of sand or silt to be seen, indicating a channel most accustomed to powerful high flows. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wx...8=w594-h446-no We made our way along 40 miles of gravel road to the town of Lalibela to find the churches that we’d heard so much about. It’s one of those places that everyone says you must go. After so much time on the road, I don’t readily take such recommendations to heart, but we blown away by what we found there. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WL...0=w792-h342-no Walking out onto the volcanic rock that flanks the town, we found the massive, ornately decorated structures hewn straight from the rock. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1030293.jpg It was incredible to think that all of the space that we walked through, both adjacent to and inside the buildings was once occupied by solid rock. It’s hard to imagine having the notion to start carving these things out from a plain mound of basaltic rock on a hill. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Py...M=w502-h446-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/EO...o=w594-h446-no The churches were constructed during the 12th century during the reign of King Lalibela (or at least partly so). One historical legend holds that king Lalibella wanted to create another Jerusalem so that pilgrims wouldn’t need to make long dangerous journey to the holy city. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6Y...Q=w431-h446-no We wound our way through the networks of subsurface tunnels connect more the 15 buildings in the area. These aren’t just relics, but functional churches, still regularly occupied by priests and worshipers of the village and a destination for thousands of pilgrims for centuries. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1030329.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1030325.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1030321.JPG The churches of Lalibela were truly awe inspiring and it's no wonder that this place was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. Gondar not Gondor On the way out of Lalibela, we met with more of the fantastic landscape of the region, reminiscent of the canyon lands of the American southwest. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/BN...8=w594-h446-no When we stopped to admire the view, Jamie quickly made some friends eager to practice their few words of English and invariable ask for a pen. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/er...8=w674-h446-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1070385.JPG Similar in name to a certain city of Middle Earth, Gondar also has fantastic castles of old, but seems to be ruled by tourist guides rather than horse lords. The Ethiopian Emperor Falicidades made Gondar his seat of power in 1636, constructing magnificent palaces, beautiful gardens, and grand churches. We wandered through the ruins back into the 17th century and tried to imagine what life would have been like for those dwelling within the castle walls. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1030453.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1030414.JPG It was a fantastical place and we seemed to have it all to ourselves as we tried to find stairways up to the tallest towers of the different castles. It was fun. Jamie gave a smirk of approval. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/SE...k=w594-h446-no Some of the castles were built centuries apart from one another and were in various states of ruin or preservation. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/K5...s=w594-h446-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jQ...4=w594-h446-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1030416.JPG Holiday activities We had big plans to hunt down the legendary Ark of the Covenant that supposedly lies just to the north of Lalibela in the town of Aksum. What better way to spend the holidays than laying eyes on a physical piece of biblical history, right? The Old Testament says that the Ark of the Covenant was built by Moses on Mt Sinai and contains the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them. The Ark lived in King Solomon’s Great Temple, which was sacked in 587 BC, when the Ark disappears from mention in the Old Testament. Ethiopian tradition holds that it was brought to Ethiopia sometime in the 1st millennia AC by Menelic, son of Solomon and Sheba and now sits in the inner sanctuary (the holiest of hollies) Aksum’s St. Mary of Zion Church. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/pt...o=w594-h446-no Unfortunately the holiest of hollies turned out to be too holy for us. We learned that they keepers of the Ark don’t even let foreigners in to the parking lot of the church ever since some tourist tried to rush the gates in their zeal to set eyes on the relic. Sorry to disappoint, but these riders can’t weigh in on the authenticity of the ark in question, let alone its ability to melt the faces off of would be raiders. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Hy...E=w335-h446-no |
Riders of the Lost Ark 2
Forging ahead
We retreated to Dutch owned enclave called Tim and Kim’s Place on the shore of Lake Tana (the source of the Blue fork of the Nile) at the end of a long dirt track. Jamie did some washing and I did a bit of work on the bike to prepare for our launch into the Sudan. Dyna Rae got some new shoes for the back brake, her cables lubed, and a few seized bolts liberated with lots of patience and persuasion on my part. If ever I spend so much time on a motorbike in the rain again I will surely be more generous with the WD-40 to preemptively combat corrosion. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/S7...I=w595-h446-no We already had our Sudan visa in hand, but the problem was securing passage for the bike since my Carnet de Passages is now expired and also out of pages. We’d managed getting into Ethiopia on the expired Carnet (probably because the Ethiopian calendar says it’s 2007), but greater proximity to Europe means more stringent customs regulations. By all accounts the Sudan bureaucracy has the immovability of an ill-tempered camel. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/LE...M=w507-h446-no I used a scanned copy of one of the last blank Carnet pages to create some new ones that I edited to read Nov 2015 as the expiration date and obscured the date on the front cover. I carefully folded the printed pages along the lines of where the perforations of the genuine document would be and Jamie meticulously unbound the Carnet to insert the new pages. After all of our careful work we had a forgery that was laughably easy to detect. With southbound overlanders invariably reporting a Carnet was required to enter Sudan with their vehicle, our options were few, so we figured it’s was a shot. |
Travelers who wig out about forging documents to get the job done make me crazy. I've showed up at the DMV where they needed my wife's signature. "Hold on a minute" I said and went out to her "...in the car." A minute later I was back with her signature...on the dotted line.
Your story so far should be required reading on how to cross borders. Good luck. |
Sudan on the Sly
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1030723.JPG
After two days at Lake Tana, fuel finally arrived in Gonder at one of the half-dozen petrol stations that we stopped at. There are plenty of petrol stations in Ethiopia, but not much petrol. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7We descended from the high plateaus of Ethiopia into the desert flats of Sudan and felt the cool air on our faces turn to a hot dry blast. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1030517.JPG Coming from Ethiopia, we couldn’t help but ask one another: “Where did all the donkeys go? “ and “Why aren’t there people jumping in front of me on the road?” Sudan is mostly desert and a sharp contrast from the continual roadside village in the highlands of Ethiopia. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ve...k=w554-h456-no Persistence At the Ethiopian immigration office my passport wouldn’t scan using their special little passport scanny machine. The first guy checked all of the connections of the machine, turned it on and off 4 times, and then tried three different computers in the office to no avail. When he lost interest, the next guy went through he same process. A woman appeared next and repeated the same process again. Each time, the person who’d previously attempted to scan my passport and failed never said anything to the new person trying to do it even though they were sitting right next to each other. After about an hour of this routine, my passport finally returned back to the original guy who after a few more tries finally seemed to resign himself to typing in the 6 fields of data manually. It took 5 minutes. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/cx...c=w608-h456-no The moment of truth came at the Sudanese customs office, when our forged Carnet document was to be put to the test. The customs guy was mellow and I kept him chatting the whole time. I figured the less time he spends staring at our document, the better. I heard that lovely click of a stamp placed on the Carnet and we were sent on our way with a smile. It felt like sneaking into a movie theater when I was twelve. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Th...o=w644-h456-no We blazed into Sudan, bush camping the first night near a watering hole and were woken to a herd of cattle being led to the water after dark. Lulled to sleep by the cattle moo’s, we woke to break our fast on apples with peanut butter and oranges. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_H...4=w630-h456-no Once in Khartoum, we needed to register our passports with the immigration office, which sounds like a simple thing to do, but a very grumpy lady made it pretty difficult. After waiting for an hour to simply hand our passports, application, and photocopies of our visas to her, she handed them back indicating that she would like the pages unfolded and inserted to the passport rather than folded in half. She went on to help some of the other throng of people with their arms jutting in front of me while I unfolded the pages. When she decided to collect ours again 20 minutes later, she scrawled something in Arabic on them and handed them back. I had no idea what had just happened. We were at the Khartoum Airport foreign passport registration office, but of the half dozen people behind the counter, not one spoke a word of English (which is a national language of Sudan). I went off to another office and found a girl who spoke English to help us out. Apparently this lady was saying that we needed to have a Sudanese national complete this registration for us. We were at a loss since we didn’t actually know anyone in Sudan. It seemed utterly ridiculous since this registration was required of all foreigners and would cost us $45 each to boot. After half an hour of discussion someone else decided to process the registration and we were finally on our way. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1070418.JPG Our next task in the labyrinth of Sudanese bureaucracy was to obtain a permit to travel beyond Khartoum and to take photos while in Sudan. This turned out to be much easier than the previous task once we found the correct office. Nonetheless, we’d had our fill of Sudanese red tape and were happy to get on the road back into the desert. Tomb Raiders We headed north the Pyramids of Meroe – the site of a royal burial ground that dates back to the 8th century BC. There was no one else there and we couldn’t help but feel as though we’d discovered something amazing as we made fresh tracks on the dunes surrounding the tombs. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ib...JUDE=w607-h456 We appreciated the privacy. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v8...4=w608-h456-no The unfortunate destruction of the pyramids was apparently primarily the work of a single insatiable Italian treasure hunter who took the tops off of most of them looking for gold. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1030603.JPG Inside of the tombs were carved pictures illustrating the lives of people who lived and died in this desert thousands of years ago. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/P1030591.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ax...0=w607-h456-no Jamie dismounted and Dyna made a major effort to power up the sand to find a fantastic campsite perched on top of the dunes in view of the pyramids as the sun touched down. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w...o/P1030660.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1030689.JPG As the sun poked above the surrounding hill a golden glow was cast across the scene of one of the most astounding campsites we’ve had the entire trip. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1030687.JPG The only person that showed up the whole time was a man who trotted up on his donkey. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1030720.JPG We got underway the next morning and came upon more of the tombs built in similar style to those in Meroe that we’d never even known about. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1030747.JPG Dinner Guests By our second night bush camping, things were looking a bit ugly on several fronts. We didn’t have enough gas to make it to the border town of Wadi Halfa, we’d just put the last cash we had in the tank, and to cap it all off, the front tire had seen better days. Eight thousand miles and lots of donkey-cart-induced hard braking had taken their toll on the Kenda Big Block tire, which now showed patches well below the wear indicators. At every stop I neurotically checked the low spots for signs of steel belting wearing through and wondered how far we would make it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1030765.JPG None of our problems were going to be fixed in the middle of the desert, so we just made dinner and watched the first stars start to beam through the fading light of the dusk. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Wf...KisJlk=s456-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1030768.JPG Just after sunset, as I was cooking dinner a Land Cruiser turned from the highway and make a b-line straight for us, bouncing along the desert plain, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. We were camped about a kilometer from the highway on a flat, hard packed flat and as the vehicle closed the distance fast, I could see that it contained three men. They skidded to a stop just next to our camp and the three men all got out quickly. A little part of me couldn’t help but think that this was it; this was when the dreaded bandit scenario would go down and they would take everything we had or maybe even kidnap us for a ransom. I fingered the knife sheathed in my boot. The 3 inches of steel would be meager defense if our visitors turned out to be unfriendly, and I really have no idea what I would have done with it. We greeted them with big smiles, “As-Salaam-Alaikum!” When they returned our smiles, I was relieved and felt ridiculous at the apprehension that I’d held just moments ago. In a few words of broken English, we gathered that they just wanted to make sure that we were ok, and that we should be careful of the herds of camels that roamed through the area. They loaded up and drove away from the highway, out onto the desert plain in the direction of what looked to me to be absolutely nowhere. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1030784.JPG We found the friendly disposition of our desert visitors to be quite the norm in Sudan. In fact, Sudanese seem to always be looking out for travelers and Sudan is one of the safest countries in all Africa. We diverted course into the town of Dongola in the hopes of finding some cash and petrol. With the US trade embargo on Sudan, ATM cards can be cancelled if they’re used here, so we were reliant on changing our US dollars. Unfortunately it was Friday and all the banks were closed. But as it happens with regularity in Africa, when we need help, it appears. The first random guy sitting on a motorbike in the street who shouted over to us brought me to a some guy who had an electronics shop who could change some US dollars. All cashed up and gassed up, we were back on the road with the modern replacement of the historic desert camel caravans. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1070419.JPG Towards the north of Sudan it really begins to feel as though you’re riding to the ends of the earth. In Ethiopia, there were people everywhere and it was nearly impossible to bush camp, or even for Jamie to find a place to pee. In Sudan, we had our pick of stark desert campsites. The moon was only a crescent and rising late, so we always had a thick blanket of stars overhead. River of Life https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ZE...w=w607-h456-no Just when you begin to fancy yourself a truly intrepid adventurer in the heart of an unforgiving land, some grizzled guy shows up on a bicycle to remind you that you’re not. This heroic Japanese dude had ridden from Alaska to the bottom of South America, and he is now on route from Cairo to Cape Town. What a legend. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1070454.JPG For the people, vegetation, and animals here, the Nile is life. A narrow verdant corridor winds its way through the desert, flanked on either side by the desert waste. There are oases here and there, but for the most part, survival has for millennia been utterly dependent this single river that is the only water source. Away from the river corridor the landscape kind of resembles Mars. Jamie went for a spacewalk. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1030788.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-s...o/P1070449.JPG We’d visited the source of the headwaters of the White Nile in Rwanda, the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and seen their confluence in Khartoum. If all goes as planned, we’ll follow these waters as they twist their way north through the Egyptian desert. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1070445.JPG Making it in and out Sudan on a dodgy Carnet was a pretty good trick, but it will be another matter to do so in Egypt, where they have some of the tightest import regulations and exhaustive customs formalities anywhere in Africa. No one has dealt with more of these documents than the Egyptian customs folks and I worried that they would put a premature end to our document deception. We rode on towards the Egyptian border feeling bold and hoping that fortune would indeed favor us. |
Wow, all that headache for a visa, and it ended up taking a guy named 'Madhat' just a few moments, LOL. Can't wait to read what it takes to get into Egypt, and what adventures Egypt holds for you.
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Temples, Tombs and Subterfuge
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Upon arrival in Wadi Halfa, we sought out a fixer named Mazar Mahir who had helped some of the other travelers we’d met along the way. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7By pure chance we ran into him at the open-air restaurant we stopped at for dinner. We pitched our tent in his yard and he got the paperwork organized for crossing the border the next day and even fed us breakfast the next morning. If all that Mazar did for us wasn’t enough already he even managed to find a half used front tire for the bike left by another traveler. This totally saved our bacon, since the front tire was already starting to show steel belting and there was nowhere in sight that we might find a new one. Thanks Mazar! https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-I...0qII=w549-h412 Getting out of Sudan was harder than getting in and we were glad to have Mazar at our side during the two hour-long process. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/3J...c=w440-h412-no I’d intentionally left Egypt off of the Carnet, since they required a deposit of 800% of the vehicle's value. Not that it mattered anyway, since the document was already expired. So off we marched into the quagmire of Egyptian customs holding a document with Egypt clearly crossed off on the back cover, expired by more than two months, and containing a bunch of new pages that we’d obviously altered, printed, and inserted ourselves. This seemed like a terrible idea. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/PD...k=w663-h412-no Getting through Egyptian customs mostly involved walking back and forth between offices having people fill out the same information on different forms and put their super special stamp on it. It started simply enough, with the man holding the exit stamp examining the Carnet. He shuffled me off to another office to fill out another form and then to an office that contained a guy with no forms and no stamps who seemed to simply look after a box of money sitting on a table. They told me it would cost t $75 USD to stamp the Carnet. I still don’t know whether or not I got the standard western tourist routing or received special treatment because they noticed the discrepancies on the Carnet. This was only the beginning of a process that eventually produced a dossier of a dozen forms each filled out by a different guy in a different office. Each of these form filler-outers had a big boss who required some baksheesh for final approval. I sweated every single one as the Carnet sat there on their desk, just waiting for our forgery to be discovered. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1030550.JPG We finally got to the biggest of the big bosses, a large, slope-browed fellow who seemed to have his game face on. He sent me back to the first office that I’d visited four hours prior to get another stamp on one of the bits of paper in the dossier. By the time I returned it was time for lunch. After an hour, the big boss of the big bosses returned from lunch and quickly noticed that my California bike registration was expired. I thought it only a matter of moments before he examined the Carnet closely enough to notice that it too was expired. When he pushed the Carnet aside, I willfully resisted the urge to snatch it from the desk. The seconds that ticked by felt like minutes as he scowled at the other documents. He finally looked up, smiled and boomed a hearty ‘Welcome to Egypt” and sent me off to collect two car sized license plates that we’re supposed to carry around with us now. I would have accepted a car-sized spare tire to carry around if it would get us away from that border. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1030896.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hT...A=w617-h412-no We spent two days riding along the banks of the Nile and the canals the radiated away from its life-giving waters, turning barren land into cultivated fields flanked by villages. Wild camping was no longer a very good option as alongside the Nile there was rarely a break in the villages, so we rode long days to reach Luxor where we would catch our first views of the remnants of Egypt’s ancient civilizations. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1030828.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1030820.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1030822.JPG We rode to the Nile's west bank of and up into the Valley of the Kings where all the tombs of famous pharaohs like Ramses III and Tutankhamen can be found. During the Middle Kingdom of the Egyptian empire, royalty had become wary of conspicuous above ground tombs like the great pyramids of Giza. To thwart would-be raiders and conquerors from making off with all of the pharaoh's treasures bound for the afterlife with them, they constructed their tombs well hidden below the mountain in the Valley of the Kings. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/uA...8=w711-h412-no Wandering the ruined temples of Luxor is nothing less than spellbinding, with everything constructed on a colossal scale. As we walked through the relic of Karnack, I marveled at the fact that everything we stepped through was built by people’s hands, thousands of years ago. Imagine an adventurer coming from some small village far away to set eyes on this place at the height of it’s glory. They would have heard stories of the place from others, but I can’t imagine that words could convey what they would have found here. It sets the mind to wonder what will be left when our time is finished. Will a future civilization wander the ruins of Manhattan wondering what life was like for people strolling across Times Square? https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/P1070476.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/eI...o=w549-h412-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1070496.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/BH...I=w575-h412-no Egypt generally appears to be not far removed from a police state, with frequent checkpoints outfitted as bunkers with healthy garrisons of personnel, armored vehicles and heavy artillery. You get the feeling everywhere that they are prepared for some massive civil unrest to kick off at any moment. In fact, we weren’t able to get far from Luxor without a full police escort. Annoyed, I asked, ‘Why do we need an escort?’ From the scowling police trooper came the curt reply ‘Danger for you’. To us the prospect that there was some particular danger to us as tourists seemed a bit silly but we weren’t given much of a choice as the police truck carrying two guys with assault weapons in the back became a fixture in my rear-view mirror. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Mj...8=w541-h412-no We lost them a couple of times, which was a welcome reprieve so that we could stop for something to eat, take a photo or just have a piss without an audience. But each time we would pick up a new tail at the next checkpoint. Their demeanor and the way that they passed us off from one group of police to the next at each checkpoint began to feel like we were espionage agents being covertly delivered to a safe house. Whenever they deemed to drive in front of us, the guys in the back of the truck were making this expression with their hands that I normally associate with Italians talking animatedly about food, with the palm upturned, fingers squished together, and the hand bouncing up and down while staring our direction with a pinched look. People were doing this to us in all different contexts so we had absolutely no idea what they meant. We figured it either meant slow down, speed up, or they'd just had some really good felafel for lunch. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/tN...Q=w521-h412-no In their zeal to protect us from other Egyptians (that so far had only wanted to buy us lunch, have tea, and take photos with us), the police created a real danger for us. When we were delayed at checkpoints waiting for the pass-off to the next group of police heading into the town of Asyut, the sun went down and forced us to ride for hours after dark. About half of drivers in Egypt prefer not to use their headlights, and some of those are motorbikes riding the wrong way along the shoulder of the road. People are constantly having near misses and we saw two motorbike accidents on the roadside. Islamist extremists notwithstanding, this was probably the most dangerous thing that we could choose to do in Egypt. The cloak and dagger routine didn’t end when we found a place to stay in Asyut. We managed to lose them coming into town, but before long we peeked out the window to see the police truck sitting in front of the guesthouse. They even insisted on following us to dinner and a restaurant half a block away, within sight of the guesthouse. The next morning there they were, ready to resume the spy game routine all the way to Cairo. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/P1070544.JPG Our campsite in Cairo was a dusty compound attended by a huge, lovable Rottweiler called Magic who spent his nights trying to bulldoze his way inside our tent. Cairo is a city 20 million strong and we didn’t relish the prospect of making our way into the heart of the city to visit the museum, so we camped outside the city and took the train in. Temperatures plummeted when the sun went down and we spent our nights shrinking to the bottom of our sleeping bags trying to keep out the cold. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8V...U=w664-h412-no Traffic in Cairo generally does not stop, but only slows down, and the only way to cross five lanes of traffic is to simply walk out in front of cars hoping for the best. It seems to defy reason, but you constantly see people walking straight into the street paying no attention whatsoever, talking on their phone, wholly dependent on the drivers hurtling towards them not running them down. We called them blockers. After standing by on the curb waiting for breaks in traffic that just didn’t come, we got a sense of the rhythm in Cairo, and like the locals, we stepped out into traffic leaving our fate to Allah. With the aid of some good blockers we were walking… like Egyptians. Sorry. Had to be said. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3m...c=w564-h412-no At tourist attractions like the Pyramids of Giza, we were often asked by Egyptian tourists if they could take photos with us. There weren't many western tourists around, but still it was fairly baffling for us. Jamie and I are now surely plastered on random Facebook pages across Egypt. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1030841.JPG As we rode north from Cairo out onto the Sinai Peninsula, the landscape became increasingly desolate and militarized. We rode through a tunnel that went beneath the Suez Canal, and tried to take a road across the north end of the Sinai, but were turned back at a heavily armed military post. Instead, we had to ride all the way to the southern tip of the Sinai and come back up the other side. The scene became distinctly more biblical feeling. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nF...o=w798-h412-no We finally arrived at our destination of Dahab, a windsurf and diving mecca of sorts, and found a place out of the wind to park it for a few days. We found some masks and snorkels and rode up and down the Red Sea coast looking for interesting bits of reef to explore with the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the water as a backdrop. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/l4...o=w732-h412-no |
great trip report, you got any more pictures of Dahab? I spent a summer there in '98. Dahab and Terrabin great fun snorkled everyday morning and evening for over a month. :scooter:
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Just got back to Dahab -more pics coming....this is an easy place to stuck around, eh?:thumbup1:
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Holty Waters
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Having been landlocked since leaving the Kenyan coast, we set off for the Middle East in the hopes of some waves to ride in the Mediterranean Sea and found ourselves tripping over one archeological marvel after another along the way. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Tramping the Hidden City Within an hour of getting on the bus headed North from Dahab in Egypt, we passed a great spot for a photo, I had to take a piss, and the guy behind me was jamming his knees into the seat. I was missing our free and easy style of motorbike travel something fierce. Given that Egypt is our best bet for finding a boat to Turkey, the difficulty we had entering Egypt with the bike the first time, and the fact that she is traveling on falsified documents, we decided not to push our luck trying to get the bike in a second time. We’d love to continue riding north straight through the Middle East, but the situation in Syria would make that a less than festive affair. So for the next couple of weeks we were backpackers, relegated to public transport. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Y6...o=w804-h536-no We left the windswept Sinai Peninsula and crossed to Jordan where the temperature dropped as we gained altitude until we finally were driving through snowdrifts. We’d ventured into these mountains eager to reach the hidden city of Petra. The next day we woke to a white world covered in six inches of fresh snow and all the roads closed. It was clear that we weren’t going anywhere soon as we huddled around the kerosene burning stove in the central room of the guest house, which was the only heat source in the place. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/i5...s=w804-h536-no The next day the weather broke and after sliding our way down some icy streets, we began the trek towards the entrance of the slot canyon leading to the ancient city of Petra, which fortunately sits just below the snow line. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/YL...Y=w715-h536-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1030929.JPG Pink layers of sedimentary rock flowed on either side of the passage (the Siq) leading our way down a canyon, which for me was fantastic enough in itself to make the journey. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1030965.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1030951.jpg While I’d seen pictures of the of the rock carved buildings of Petra and remembered the scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that featured the city, I was still unprepared for the view peeking through the end of the canyon. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O2...Y=w417-h536-no The ancient treasury building stood before us glowing pink in the mid-day sun, its 2000-year-old craftsmanship perfectly preserved by the overhanging rock. I keep using this word lately, but I just don’t know a better one to describe the feeling – it was spellbinding. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/O5...YTI6Jk=s536-no The Treasury was just the beginning of the city, and as we wandered forward the canyon opened up and lots more ancient buildings could be seen ahead. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/eT...4=w694-h536-no We were allowed free run of the place and found ways to climb up to any of the buildings perched above the canyon floor that we pleased. Most of the other buildings in the city were less well preserved than the Treasury as none of the others featured the same protective overhang that would have shielded them from weathering. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1040012.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...o/P1040025.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/I0...JejpC4=s536-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/lO...4=w714-h536-no We hiked up the canyons radiating out from the valley floor get a view of the city and its surroundings. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1a...Q=w714-h536-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/DI...4=w439-h536-no Petra was constructed in somewhere around 312 BCE as the capital city of the Nabataeans and was a center of their caravan trade. With towering rocks above a narrow passageway and a perennial stream, the city could be protected as well as a fortress. The site was unknown to the western world up until 1812, when the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt publicized its existence. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/F9...Q=w754-h536-no After a day of our own investigations, we left this wonder of the world to the next round of explorers. Trotting back up the canyon in the afternoon, when the late morning rosy glow of the treasury had faded to dull beige, it was hard not to start singing the Indiana Jones theme music on the way out. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/N9...w=w714-h536-no |
Holy Waters 2
Accidental Pilgrims
After spending so much time in Africa, arrival in the state of Israel induces a mild culture shock. Everything is well organized, roads are perfect, and there are dudes in full spandex pedaling $4K road bikes around. We got a change of pace from not understanding Arabic to not understanding Hebrew. We thought that Egypt was tight on security, but Israel is on another level with soldiers everywhere, who carry their weapons even when in transit. Jamie made it through the border OK, but they were less sure about me, with lots of questions about where I'd been and what I was doing there. They kept us at the border for nearly three hours while they checked me out. Israel was also a shock to our budget as everything was much more expensive than we'd become accustomed to. We told ourselves that it was well worth the trouble since as we may never be in this neighborhood of the world again. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/f5...A=w720-h536-no Jerusalem is a global focal point of history, culture, religion, and politics. In this city, these elements converge in a concentrated stew of people, traditions, and buildings, all of which portray some facet of the the stories born here. The layering of cultures and their artifacts continues to the present day with views of the Tower of King David alongside modern high-rise buildings and modern technology spilling over stones put into place millennia ago. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1040135.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1040164.jpg Muslims, Jews, and Christians all live side by side here, each with deep historical and spiritual connections to the city and its holy sites. The Temple Mount is the supposed site of the creation of Adam from the dust of the earth, Abraham’s binding of Isaac, the First and Second Jewish Temples, storage of the Ark of the Covenant, and Muhammad’s ascent to heaven. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/IMG_0550.JPG Before destruction of the First Temple, The Ark of the Covenant containing the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments was stowed in its inner sanctum, the Holiest of Holies, where only the High Priest was allowed. Since no one knows exactly where the Holiest of Holies was located, many Jews don’t visit the Temple Mount for fear of inadvertently treading upon it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1040153.jpg The history of Jerusalem is a dizzying who’s who tour of ancient civilizations that began at the first settlement of Gibbon Spring around 3500 BCE. It’s taken me a while to keep it all straight, but went something like this: King Solomon built the first temple forty years after King David had conquered the city in 1800 BCE and everything was groovy until Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians showed up in 560 BCE to tear down the temple and sent the Jews into exile. After the Persians took the city from the Babylonians, the Jews returned and built the second temple in 516 BCE and a couple centuries later Alexander the Great rolled in to take charge. When the Romans finally arrived in 70 CE, they destroyed the Second Temple built by King Herod, then came the Byzantines in 324 CE, followed by the Muslims in 638 CE, and finally the Crusaders in 1099 CE (insert Monty Python Joke here). Saladin took Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, followed by the Mameluks of Egypt, until the Ottomans absorbed it into their empire in 1517, and everything was cool for 400 years until the British conquered the city in 1917. With the rise of the Zionist Movement, the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, and then the six-day war of 1967, the region has remained a hotbed of conflict throughout the 20th century with Jerusalem and its sacred sites at the center of it all. If you’ll look at a map you can see that the disputed Palestinian Territory of the West Bank virtually encircles Jerusalem. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1040159.jpg Religious pilgrims of one sort or another, many of whom had traveled far to visit their sacred places, surrounded us wherever we roamed. To me, the structures we wandered through were the subject of histories and stories that just never seemed like real places. I suppose that its just a normal side effect of being on the road for a long time to feel like everywhere you’re headed is just another new place to find some food and somewhere to sleep. But Jerusalem made us pilgrims of our own sort as we wandered around trying to connect this real place and people living their lives to events that transpired millennia ago and generated one of the most important human mythologies. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ks...Q=w714-h536-no The lower portion of Western Wall of the temple was the only structure left standing after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE and always holds crowd of people praying. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/sp...w=w875-h536-no We visited the hall of the Last Supper. But it was lunchtime. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1040163.jpg I lit a candle at the Church of Dormition, resting place of the Virgin Mary, pinch hitting for my Mom, who was raised Catholic. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1040169.JPG We walked the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus walked carrying his own cross. The path leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where Jesus is believed to have been tried, crucified, buried, and resurrected. Christians offer prayers and rub handkerchiefs on the Stone of Unction, where Jesus’s body is said to have been anointed before burial. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1040131.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1040116.JPG There’s all kinds of cool stuff in there – the Prison of Christ where Franciscan Friars allege that Jesus was held, the Rock of the Cavalry that bears a hole that is said to have been where Jesus’s cross was raised, and tombs of the Crusaders. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1040120.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1040122.JPG We usually had no idea what anything was and gravitated to anything that a crowd was staring at and put on our own solemn stare hoping to be within earshot of a tour guide. Are a few explanatory placards too much to ask for the uninitiated? Now I can hear you thinking, “Ancient ruins, historical sites, and churches are nice and all but I can see all this stuff in National Geographic with better photos than yours. What about the surf?! Where da waves bro? “ A Mediterranean Baptism We’d been landlocked since Kenya and I’d never surfed in the Mediterranean Sea, so we were pretty keen to find a wave. We enlisted the help of our friendly neighborhood Couch Surfer, Guy, as our host who gave us a spot to crash in his ocean-view apartment and a crash course in Israeli culture and nightlife. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1040235.JPG We found some boards to ride and spied some little waves that looked like just enough to keep the surf journey stoke alive. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1040189.JPG Swell is generated over relatively short fetch in the Med compared to the open ocean, so the waves tend to be of the short-period gutless variety. I’ve had more exciting surf sessions, but we weren’t complaining. Jamie hasn’t been surfing very long and the small waves were just about her size. For me, it felt fantastic just to be in the ocean riding waves again after months of riding through jungles, mountains, and deserts. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1040195.JPG When we’d had our fill of Mediterranean peelers, we headed for calmer and denser waters at the Dead Sea. Filling a depression along the Israel-Jordan border created by tectonic rifting, the shore of the Dead Sea boasts the lowest surface elevation on the planet at more than 425m below sea level. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1040238.JPG Pretty sure I’m going to be in trouble for posting that one. Since it became disconnected from the Mediterranean Sea about two million years ago, its inflows have historically been balanced by surface evaporation, causing salt and mineral concentrations to rise, so that it's now almost 9 times more salty than the ocean. It stings like crazy if you get even a drop in your eye, and it counter intuitively leaves an oily-slick feel on your skin when you emerge from the water. With most of the Jordan River (its main input) now being diverted for agriculture, the Dead Sea is drying up and its surface drops about 1.2 m every year and makes it even more briny. The super high salt and mineral content of the water makes it very dense and you float to the surface like styrofoam, which is pretty fun. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1040251.JPG Having left our camping gear in Egypt with the bike, our budget could only stand so much tourism in Israel, so we hopped back on the bus and retreated to the Red Sea of Egypt. As it turned out, the waves we rode were just icing on the cake of our vagabonding trip through to the Middle East, which included more history and culture that we could wrap our heads around in two weeks. When we returned to Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula, I was relieved to find our beloved motorbike safe and sound right where we’d left her and ready to go for a ride. Unfortunately, we’ve now just about run out of Africa to ride. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mj...0=w582-h536-no |
I haven't been here for a while, but it gives me time to catch up...such a change for you from Africa to Israel, I imagine!? Where are you off to next? Are you heading northward back to Europe (maybe I missed it if you already mentioned it, so sorry for sounding ignorant and asking a question you already answered!)?
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Gorillas in the Mud
Hey folks,
We've had some downtime on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, so Jamie put together a little film of our time in the Ugandan jungle with our fellow primates. Meet the Nshongi Group | bugsonmyboard https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-E...rillasThum.png |
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hey yuma - absolutely an abrubt change. We're now looking for a boat to get across the Mediterranean to Turkey and we'll ride onward towards Europe after that. Still a bit cold hope we don't freeze in the mountains of Turkey :( |
So, you started out with a surfboard in Africa. Now you will be two up in Europe with no surfboard anywhere. I guess I should start to feel cheated by the title of this thread.
However, if you keep the pictures and the narrative going you, and your retinue of assorted women might be forgiven. Which is to say how is Turkey? |
Oi Vey!
Hey ms. Concha ... you really should READ the report before coming out of your shell! Unbelievable! :ban: keepcalm |
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We're on a Boat
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/P1040544.JPG
Perched at the edge of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula we’d run out of Africa to ride. With Syria off-limits, if we wanted to keep our wheels rolling, we would have to find a way across the Mediterranean. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Downtime https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1040414.JPG The problem was that shipping companies seemed to change operators every couple of months and most information was out of date. So, we had some down time in Dahab figuring it out and enjoyed every day that we didn’t have to wake up and ride somewhere else. We rode the beaches fringed with aqua blue waters, https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1040527.JPG snorkeled to our heart’s content, https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1070644.JPG attended the local camel races, https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1040320.JPG and provided Dyna Rae with some much needed TLC. She got some shiny new spark plugs, an oil change, and a valve adjustment. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1070638.JPG Top dead center baby. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1070635.JPG Prophetic Highs We finally got motivated to get off our lazy hummus munching arses, tear ourselves away from our regular falafel stand, and go check out Mount Sinai. This was the peak where Moses stayed for forty days and forty nights before he descended with some stone tablets and laid down the law. "And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tablets of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God. “ Exodus 24:12-13With the rules so etched out by none other than “the finger of God”, there were no more excuses for coveting your neighbor’s hot wife in yoga pants or bearing false witness about borrowing his lawn mower. A short time later the confessional was invented. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1040599.JPG Instead of a welcome home party, Moses returned to find his people worshiping a golden calf. Not so much an animal lover, Moses broke the tablets in anger and had to write up some new ones that were placed into the Arc of the Covenant which later disappeared from the Holiest of Holies at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the destruction of the First Jewish Temple, and was perhaps spirited away to Ethiopia where they won’t let tourists on motorbikes see them. This trip is really coming together. We had a heck of a time getting to the holy mount when the big boss at the first police checkpoint insisted that our Egyptian documents for the bike were expired and we would have to pay a fine. We were delayed for an hour sorting it out with him before we were allowed to get underway. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/P1040547.JPG As usual, we had underestimated the task before us. It was a 2,600 foot ascent to the top of Mt. Sinai, which we decided to begin at 2 in the afternoon...wearing motorcycle boots. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1040569.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1040595.JPG As it turns out, in addition to jungle gorilla tracking, dual-sport boots are also pretty functional footwear for biblical mountain climbing. Having neglected to bring my warm jacket, I also wore my moto jacket to the top. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1040604.JPG As we made the summit and gazed across the incredibly rugged landscape that held such massive historical and religious significance my mind mostly dwelt on what terrible shape I was in after sitting on a motorcycle for 3 months. While I moaned about my poorly functioning body, Jamie basked in the late afternoon glow pondering prophetic thoughts. Or maybe she was just knackered too. And wishes I would stop taking photos of her. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1040617.JPG Our young Bedouin guide had to get us moving from the summit so that we didn’t get caught out there in the dark. Most of the folks in this desert are Bedouins, descended from their nomadic ancestors that date to biblical times. While most have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, they still retain many elements of the traditional Bedouin culture and traditions. We descended as quickly as we could with the peaks that towered above our paths catching the last golden rays of sun. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1040626.JPG It was just about dark when we got to the bottom with the temperature dropping rapidly. We’d planned to ride back to Dahab that night, but the cold and prospect of being held up by the police after dark had us hunting for some sort of accommodation nearby. We found a Bedouin run place, with beds for only $4 each and a fellow who could whip us up some vegetable soup for supper. All that we missed were our toothbrushes. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1040631.JPG After another week of our leisurely lifestyle in Dahab it was finally time to get underway. Our original plan had been to take a boat from Port Said in Egypt to Iskenderun in Turkey, but the operator had since changed the story saying that they couldn’t take us as passengers. This meant that we would have to be in Port Said to load the bike, take a bus to Cairo, fly to Istanbul, then to Adana, and take a bus to Iskenderun. This all would have to happen in the 24-hour period that the ship would take to get there, which would cut it very close. With loading delays common in Port Said, it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to book flights ahead of time, unless we wanted to risk missing a flight to load the bike. Reunion and Farewell https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1040643.JPG The new plan was to get a cargo freighter from Haifa in Israel to Greece that would take us as passengers (since none go to Turkey), then take another boat from there to Turkey. This would have us riding back to Haifa, where we’d already been, but this was now our best option, so we mounted up and rode north along the Red Sea. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1040658.JPG I much preferred Israel by motorbike than on the bus as we did it our first time around. Actually, I think that I prefer anywhere by motorbike. I love being able to stop when strange things appear at the roadside. Not sure what’s going on here. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1040701.jpg We headed to Mitspe Ramon and stayed at a Bedouin camp situate at the bottom of a massive crater and cooked up supper. BBQ pro-tip - the secret perfectly grilled broccoli is appropriate eyewear. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1040690.JPG The next morning we wandered the desert and took in the silence and solitude. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/XK...g=w889-h500-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/5H...U=w890-h500-no Life finds a way in the Negev desert. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1040686.JPG We headed out to the coast just north of Gaza to rejoin a couple of friends that I’ve been crossing paths with for more than a year across Africa. I first met the Belgians Steven and Sita in Dakar, Senegal, driving their towering Mercedes truck dubbed ‘Izzy’, across Africa. Since then we’ve met again and again in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Angola, and the last time I saw them was in South Africa. We caught up with them just north of Gaza to swap travel tales. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1040718.JPG In Dakar, we’d camped in a restaurant parking lot together for weeks and I would take shelter in their truck on chilly evenings. Since then I’ve been up on Izzy’s overlander wall of fame with other friends we met along the way. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1040716.JPG The Belgians reported surfers running this way and that in the days before we arrived, but when we got there all that was to be found on these beaches north of Gaza were some tiny little peelers. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-g...o/P1040713.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Hn...Q=w666-h500-no While camping in Mitspe Ramon, we’d met Sharon and her dog Simba, who invited us to come stay at their place in Tel-Aviv. Tel-Aviv is the cosmopolitan city of Israel and we missed it the first time around, so we were happy to have the opportunity to check it out. We wandered the old town of Jaffa and the beaches of Tel Aviv and Sharon brought us to a place with some awesome hummus. Simba mostly barked at us ineffectually. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/P1070650.JPG From Tel Aviv, we headed to Haifa to board a cargo ship bound for Lavrio, Greece. For three days we endured rough seas in the Mediterranean and were happy when our world finally stopped moving beneath our feet. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/B4...k=w667-h500-no After nearly a year and a half on the African continent, 35 countries and 36,000 miles, it finally vanished in the rear-view mirror. While in the midst of it all, I found my fair share of frustration about scary highways, oppressive heat, dense city traffic, bungling bureaucracy, and corrupt officials. But in between all of that were uncountable memorable moments on the road and in the water and some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. I suppose that Africa is a package deal and you just have to take it all as it comes. I miss the madness already. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/K5...M=w749-h500-no |
good company
hey folks - West African motosurfing shenanigans in the latest issue of Overland magazine along with co-contributor none other than the godfather himself, Austin Vince. I'm not worthy!
http://overlandmag.com/shop/overland-magazine-issue-10/ https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/7s...k=w400-h507-no |
head swelling
The local weekly paper back home in Santa Cruz - the 'Good Times' rang up for an interview for this weeks issue - In case you happen to go on a ride and find yourself at a coffee shop in SC this week ... http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/icon10.gif
She got a few things wrong, but ya know, its Santa Cruz - we've got disc golf to play and drum circles to attend. Surf Safari | Santa Cruz Good Times https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-n...44.38%2BPM.png |
Hi Gary, just had a read of your latest posts. Looks and sounds great. We met you in Senegal at Zebrabar (we were on the strange tandem bicycle). Seems like an age ago. Safe travels.
Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2 |
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Erm...I am a man (though my man card is revoked as I enjoy riding a vintage Vespa in my home Key West) and my wife of twenty years is a woman who grew up in Palo Alto and also lived in Santa Cruz. Neither of us surfed. I answer 911 calls for a living in Key West overnight and I greatly enjoy the pictures and humor of this story. A dry sense of humor in between 911 calls is a pleasure. Thanks for suggesting I be banned; i have never had the honor previously on any forum. cheers Michael.:mchappy: Back to regular- surfboard free- programming. |
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Ganarol--thanks for your link to your guys' 'gorilla's in the mist' video clip. Great video, and I like the bit where you guys were riding before the apes which showed just how chaotic the roads over there can be (and I bet that wasn't anywhere near some of the chaos you rode through...)! :helpsmilie:
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Oh dear threads like this do little to persaude me to stop travelling and get one of them "real jobs". Amazing stuff!!
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All the moto riders reading this if you think yourself a hardcore adventurer you should meet these two - England to the Gambia on a tandem bicycle! :mchappy: |
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Appreciate the support from the Mdog anyhow for when the real troll appears :2guns: |
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Last I checked you've been with your girlfriend almost the entire trip ... and most of the time she with a head scarf on! (save one stunning bikini shot!) So "Assorted women"? :innocent: WTF? Never saw any. Anyway, as usual this report JUST GETS BETTER with every installment. Congrats on the recent write ups! You mentioned Austin Vince! Great guy and true ADV pioneer. I've met him! But from the sounds of it you've spent FAR MORE time in Africa than Austin ever did ... and i'd wager you know it better as well. As you know Austin's trips are fairly FAST and furious. I prefer the surf a little, ride a little style you've done. Much more time connecting to locals, hanging out. I loved it when you've met locals surfing along your route ... and didn't you give your board to one? That is very cool! I did the same ... but in El Salvador in 1973. I was living and surfing there (La Libertad) and a very new Surf Scene was just cropping up. Just a few passing Gringos at that time. Almost none of the locals had boards. Well, my board hit me in the head in a particularly Kook-ish wipe out ... and broke right in half. The 13 year old kid I gave the pieces to made a nice board out of it. A few years later ... dozens of locals surfing there ... a whole scene had appeared. :D |
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It's hard to imagine the trip without Jamie at all now! If you can believe it, the bike even feels weird to ride without her on the back.. I missed AV when he came to do a talk in the SF Bay Area a few years back, but watched Mondo Enduro enough times that I feel as tho I've met him. I was in La Libertad in 1998 and there was a fair crew of locals and traveling surfers there. Unfortunately the vibe between the locals and travelers wasn't so jolly 25 years later... |
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We rolled off the ship in Athens with rain stinging our faces, which set us immediately wondering why in the world we’d landed ourselves in Europe in February. We ran around Athens looking for anything ancient looking that we were supposed to be gawking at and stood around gawking at it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1040722.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1040743.JPG At the Acropolis we pondered the ideas of the ancient philosophers and at the temple of Zeus we paid homage to the god of sky and thunder. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1040758.JPG It was all pretty cool. Via the Roman empire, Greek culture became the seminal culture that provided the foundation for modern Western Culture. The ancient Greek philosophers focused on the role of reason and inquiry, and a clear line of influence can be traced from ideas espoused by characters like Plato and Socrates to the modern science. And the western literary tradition has its roots in epic poems like The Odyssey and The Illiad. Great civilizations aside, it was also nice and sunny out, making for a great stroll around the relics they left behind. Greeks are mad for their motorbikes, and they rule the road in Athens. Everyone seems to ride aggressively and some do so with utter abandon of all caution. I felt like a grandmother driving a Honda c90 through a China shop in comparison to the riders around me. African cities are more chaotic by a fair distance, but the chaos moves a quite a bit slower. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4M...Fa0I=w413-h550 We were in big bike country again and multi-cylinder BMWs, KTMs, Yamahas, Suzukis, and Hondas, were everywhere weaving in and out of traffic lanes at high speed. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kO...kxu4=w733-h550 I was keen to look around on the other side of Greece along the coast of the Ionian Sea for a wave to ride. The only problem was that I was again without a wetsuit or surfboard. If you can believe it, there is a surf shop in Athens. I got in touch with the guys at the shop called ‘Surf Salad’, told them about my journey, and they invited me over to the shop for the afternoon. They filled me in on the where and when of surf conditions in Greece, gave me a wetsuit to borrow, and provided a contact info for friends out on the coast who could loan me a board. Waves come and go quickly in the Mediterranean, but these guys have it dialed and are on top of every wave in Greece when it works. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...A=w732-h550-no With a wetsuit strapped to the pannier bag, we rode west ascending into the mountains and it wasn’t long before we were right up at the snow line near Tripoli. When the rain started to fall and soaked us through, the wind quickly stripped the heat from our bodies leaving us shivering until we descended to lower altitude on the other side of Greece hours later. All in all it was a brutal 5-hour ride to the village of Finikounda, and we were happy to find a warm tavern there with a fire going to dry ourselves out a bit. After an hour or so, we were the only ones there and the staff peppered us with questions about where we’d been and where we were going. Just like nearly everyone we met in Greece, these folks had some connection to the United States usually via friends or family living there. They were wonderful people and happy to let us explode all of our wet gear out around the fire. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1070658.JPG Via Couchsurfer, we’d gotten in touch with a British couple called Alf and Rose who lived in a tiny village just up from the coast and invited us to come stay for a few nights. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1040902.JPG Alf and Rose are wanderers like us and we had a blast swapping travel stories with them over a few pints. For five years Alf and Rose roamed the continent in a Caravan and more recently had done an extended tour in Lada Niva with a roof tent. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DM...c=w789-h550-no The Lada Niva is a fantastic little Russian-made 4x4 that hasn’t changed much in its design for decades – kind of like the Suzuki DR650. Loaded up in the Lada with Alf and Rose, we bounced down a bumpy track to attend the Greek festival that was going on in the village of Methoni that had something to do with Lent and primarily seemed to involve a stage production of a story about someone accidentally marrying their mother-in-law and lots of people dressed up like pirates. Something like that anyway. There was free soup and wine and everyone was in a festive mood and throwing confetti around. We climbed around Methoni Castle scanning the coastline for surf. I think that the last time that I checked the surf from a castle battlement was in Scotland and I never imagined that I would be doing the same thing in Greece many years later. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1070673.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Cx...o=w733-h550-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1070705.JPG The next day the sun busted through the clouds so we set off on the bike to explore further up the coast. The beachbreak waves we saw were more powerful looking that I’d thought we’d find, given the short fetch of storms in the Med, and the pointbreaks were as clean as you could hope for. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1040793.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1040896.JPG We finally followed a track out to the coast where I spied a head high wave dumping onto a sandbar with a few shoulders to ride. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/J5...4=w880-h495-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2...41.02%2BAM.png https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/gC...0=w731-h550-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-c...09.47%2BAM.png https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-V...10.05%2BAM.png https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1040845.JPG The water was warm by Northern California standards, but I’d gone soft after so long in Africa, and my borrowed suit had a few holes in it. I launched myself into steep faced waves and managed to hold a few seconds of trim on my wonderfully simple surf craft before being embroiled in whitewater. It was a pretty sad display of wave riding, but it was fun all the same. Sure is easy to duck dive a lunch tray. After a few days out on the coast, we rode back to Athens just barely avoiding the high altitude rain that had made the journey out of Athens so difficult. I’d been wearing the same pair of jeans since I left South Africa. They had been my riding pants, my hiking pants, and my going out pants. They’re my only pair of pants. Lately, they’d developed some unwelcome ventilation in the crotch that the cold weather had made me numbingly aware of. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1040784.JPG Likewise, my jacket was coming apart everywhere and the zipper that I’d replaced in Nairobi had broken again. And after losing one of my leather gloves in Khartoum, I’d made do with some cheap work gloves from a Sudanese hardware store all the way across northern Sudan and Egypt. With lots of extra layers on and my bursting jacket pinned together at the front I was starting to feel ridiculous. Jamie assured me that I also looked ridiculous and took a photo to demonstrate. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1070723.jpg Needless to say, some upgrades were in order if I was to make it across Europe on a motorbike. After a look around town, I found some Kevlar denim jeans, a Cordura jacket, and some leather riding gloves all on sale for about half what I would have payed back home. It was good deal all around and but still painful on a moto hobo’s wallet. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1050421.JPG On an excursion away from Athens alone the next day, I started to feel a nasty shimmy from the back wheel. When I pulled over to check it out I found a disconcerting amount of play in the rear wheel that made me suspect a bearing failure. I had been riding about 70 mph on the motorway and didn’t want to risk that speed in case of a total bearing disintegration, which could cause the rear wheel to lock up and really nothing good to happen after that. It took me hours to limp back to Athens on the secondary roads, but it was a beautiful ride. Sometimes I can do with a reminder that slowing down can be a good thing. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1040888.JPG In Athens I took the rear wheel apart and confirmed play in the wheel bearing, though the sprocket carrier bearing still seemed fine. I found a shop in Athens with a large diameter socket to help me pound in the replacement bearings along the outer race without damaging the casing, put it all back together and she was right as rain once again. I’d carried those bearings all the way from London to Cape Town and back up to Athens, and I finally used them 36,000 miles later at a spot where I could walk down the road and purchase the very same ones! https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1050217.JPG With the bike sorted again, and prices out of our budget range in Athens, we were ready to get moving again and booked a ferry that would motor through the night across the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Chios. We were headed back towards Turkey, which we’d bypassed on our ship from Israel but both of us very much wanted to visit. From Chios it would just be a short hop to Turkey aboard a smaller boat. Jamie slept on the floor of the boat crammed into a corner with my new jacket over top of her while I stayed up and listened to the wind whipping across the deck for most of the night. We arrived before dawn feeling like we’d been on an all night bender and had to collapse at the port-side pension to recover. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/xJ...o=w732-h550-no We found the people of Greece incredibly warm and welcoming – usually eager to share bits of their culture and ways with a couple of foreigners who stumbled into their neighborhood. Finding surfers and waves to ride in was an unexpected treat. I could see Turkey across the water from the window of the pension and I couldn’t help wonder if it would fit into the expectation box that we’d created it our imaginations or would be something else entirely. |
still loving this report, great photos:scooter:
Makes my night shift down time so much more enjoyable |
A bike for Mike
Hey you guys remember my buddy Mike who joined me in SA? He's about done teaching school for the year and back on the Moto ADV summer program. http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/clap.gif
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/z7...g=w711-h533-no I can't believe his girlfriend has let him take off for another summer to ride. Noe we have to find him a bike somewhere in Europe - for less than 2K USD. Most decent shape Japanese dualsport 650 or 250/350 will do. Also any he needs to be able to register it somewhere - so if anyone has advice on that front it will be appreciated. Drop me a PM if you have a line on anything! |
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:D:rofl: Pot/Kettle/Black? |
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cheers Chris - enjoyed some of yours too :thumbup1:
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Turkish Delight
As we sped across the narrow channel separating the Greek Island of Chios from Turkey, I thought surf hunting was finished for a while, but I was getting used to being wrong. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1040962.JPG The Mediterranean coast of Turkey reminds me of the Big Sur Coast of Northern California with limestone cliffs shooting up dramatically from the blue waters below. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1050414.JPG We‘ve become horrendously lazy tourists. Our first stop in Turkey was the ancient city of Ephesos and the only reason we were stopping there was because the guy who owned the pension on Chios had told us about it. This was the place we were about to blow by without a glance. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1050026.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1050006.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1050053.JPG Hardly worth the trouble, eh? https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1050041.JPG We just go where someone happens to tell us to. Case in point, when a taxi driver in Ephesos brought us to a carpet shop. Smart idea, right? Let your taxi driver bring you to his friend’s carpet shop instead of where you want to go. We readied ourselves to endure an hour-long hard sell of $3000 Turkish carpet. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1040968.jpg Fortunately, the folks there were incredibly nice - the owner showed us around the place and how the carpets were made. A woman tended to a hundred fluffy little white balls inside a metal tub with water that seemed to be magically spinning. These were the silkworm cocoons being unwound as a single strand and then combined with other strands to make the silk thread that would eventually be used for the carpets. Each carpet is made by a single woman from start to finish, and sometimes they take years to complete the incredibly intricate process of knotting the carpet into various designs. I’d never seen anything like it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1040976.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1040978.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1050082.JPG The next stop on the Turkish moto express was even more rad than Ephesos. It might look like Jamie is walking around bare footed in a glacial pool, but the water she’s standing in is actually quite warm. This is a massive mineral deposit, a travertine, blanketing the surface as minerals, mostly Calcium, precipitate out of the hot spring that flows down the cliffside. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1050198.JPG At the top of the cliff, we found the ruins of the Roman city of Heiropolis. With a defensible position atop a cliff and a hot spring flowing right through town, I couldn’t think of a nicer place to make home in 700 BC. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1050180.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1050187.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sg...o=w873-h491-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1050124.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1050163.JPG At the center of the plateau, we saw one the most surreal sights of the entire journey – a crystal pool of the mineral-rich water with remnants of the glory days of Heiropolis enshrined at the bottom. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1050105.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1050111.JPG We kept up our eastward trajectory along he Turkish coast, winding over craggy headlands, and up and down stream valleys filled with meandering crustal waters. Some days we battled rainstorms, while others were clear as a bell and begging us to get riding. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1050409.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1050230.JPG At every stop along the way, we could hardly go for a walk, without tripping over ancient cities that mostly had relics from Roman and Byzantine times. There was always a theatre of some sort, and when we got tired of waiting for the show to start we put on our own. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1050207.JPG The village of Cirali enchanted us more than anywhere else. With clear streams spilling down the towering white cliffs rich with vegetation, it was about as close to riding into Rivendell as I’ve ever felt. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1050231.JPG As beautiful a place as it is, the tiny village of Cirali has not yet succumbed to the trappings of a Mediterranean tourist destination. From Cirali, we walked along the rugged coastline historically occupied by the ancient civilization of Lycia dating back to 1250 BC. Control of Lycia was bandied about, fought for, annexed, and succeeded by various pre-eminent civilizations through the centuries including the Persians, the Athenians, and the Macedonians and finally the Romans and Byzantines. |
Turkish Delight 2
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Throughout all of this, Lycian port cities often prospered through trade and Lycia enjoyed periods of self-rule and semi-autonomy from the big boss of the era. The early government of Lycia was a federation with Republican principles, which ended up influencing the framers of the constitution in the good old USA. In addition to a good example for running a civilization, the Lycians left us another great legacy: one of the greatest long-distance trekking routes in the world. Along the Lycian way, you can walk for 500 kilometers along the turquoise ocean and from time to time hopping over ruins from the Roman and Byzantine eras. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1050255.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1050431.JPG We walked beneath the shadow of Mt. Olympus, which was confusing since I thought Mt. Olympus was in Greece. Later I found out that there are like 20 Mt. Olympus’s scattered around Turkey and Greece and it seemed rather less impressive. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1050288.JPG The trail climbed over jutting rocky points and dropped down to cobble-strewn beaches that we had mostly to ourselves. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1050282.JPG We rested our tired dogs and Jamie started doing some weird hippi dance on the beach. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Q2...4=w654-h491-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1050272.JPG We rode high above Cirali to find a fissure in the earth that has been on fire for thousands of years, through countless winter storms. The idea is that this place is the inspiration for the monstrous fire-breathing animal of Greek Mythology, the Chimera, first described by Homer in The Illiad. Wisps of flame whipped at the ledges of stone, through a score of fissures climbing up the slope that became ever more luminous as darkness fell. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Hq...WjpOLY=s491-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1050341.JPG After we’d seen our share of wonders from the ancient world I was about ready to ride for the coast to see if there were any waves to ride in Turkey. We didn’t have much swell in Israel, but the waves we’d found in Greece gave me hope that I wouldn’t come up empty-handed surfing in the Mediterranean. We’d been lucky all day riding, with the rain threatening, but never delivering. But as we rode into the coastal town of Alanya, our luck ran out and rain came down in buckets soaking us to the skin. In Africa, getting caught in a rainstorm was no big deal since it was rarely very cold, but we weren’t in Africa any more and we were soon shivering in the wind with nothing to do but keep riding. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1050522.JPG As we rode along the coast the next day, I was disheartened by what I saw – only the most meager waves lapping onto the shore. Before arriving to the coast I’d connected with the Alanya Surf Team (check them out on Facebook) who invited me to come for a surf at their beach. Surfers have only been riding waves for the last 5 years on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey and there are still only about 10 regular surfers. These guys are among the first to ride a board on a wave on this stretch of coast. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/PI...Y=w654-h491-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1050467.JPG Mehmet-Ali (not pictured) was the first surfer here along with Mehmet (top photo). They told me that initially the coast guard kept trying to drag them out of the water during such dangerous ocean conditions. They first had major difficulties just getting some boards here from Europe, but now they are slowly growing their local surf scene. The water isn’t very cold here, even in the winter, when the storms bring the swell, I was only wearing a 2mm short arm suit and was plenty warm enough. There is a pounding beachbreak that will give up the odd barrel here and there, innumerable peeling reefbreaks of varying quality, and a rivermouth wave. The different breaks are all in a small area and face different directions around a small point, so it’s often easy to surf where the wind is offshore. So close to Europe, it could be an ideal place for European tourists to come learn to surf rather than braving the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1050468.JPG I’m always happy to meet a local surf crew, but I honestly wasn’t sure exactly what we were going to ride until a few hours later. Along the same stretch of beach I’d seen on the way into town, the surf had tripled in size in the space of a few hours. It was amazing. I raced over to meet Mehmet and Mehmet Ali at the surf club – a hotel run by Mehmet Ali, with boards and suits piled up on top of tables in the lobby. It felt great to jump in the water and paddle again, but it became immediately clear that I was in shocking condition. It seems that sitting on a motorcycle for months on end does not do wonders for one’s physical fitness. After an hour or so, the sun was on its way down and I looked up to the cliff that we were surfing beneath to realize that there was a huge castle perched on top of it. By then I couldn’t stop smiling. I was surfing in Turkey, under a castle. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Xb...U=w655-h491-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1050531.JPG The next few days the swell stayed up, and every day the guys were on top of it and sent me a message to come surf. I honestly couldn’t believe how good the waves were, by far the best I’d surfed in the Mediterranean. The waves weren’t the weak-feeling short-fetch windswelly stuff that I’d expected – they had similar punch to plenty of your average beachbreaks in California. Yours truly having a delightful day in the water. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_.../Image%2B8.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-D.../Image%2B7.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-j...02938786_n.jpg Mehmet found some trim. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s...Image%2B10.jpg Cagri ducked for cover. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/GV...E=w740-h491-no After surfing one afternoon, I was surprised to find a full camera crew assembled on the beach. Traveling surfers are still a rarity in Turkey, so much so that Mehmet had alerted the local news station to my visit and they showed up on the beach with cameras blazing. With Mehmet translating for me, I told them about the journey, what I was doing in Turkey, and what I thought about the waves in Alanya. It was all pretty funny and I got my moment of fame that night on Turkish television. Never imagined I’d be able to make such a claim. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4.../Image%2B5.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Q.../Image%2B2.jpg Turkey really wasn’t on my radar at all for a place to come surfing, but leaving no stone unturned sometimes brings the spoils. It’s been a blast riding waves with the stoked surfers of Alanya. I got to taste again what I had loved so much about surfing in West Africa: the excitement of a new surf scene and the welcoming nature of surfers pioneering their own territory. Surfing is a great way to connect with people. No matter the cultural divides, love of riding waves binds our global tribe together, and I feel so fortunate to be reminded of that in the most unlikely of places. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/IMG_0628.JPG |
Black Sea Riders
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We’d bided our time in the south of Turkey as rainstorms came and went every other day. If we’d know how high we would have to climb to get through the interior to the Black Sea, and how much we’d suffer for the cold, we may not have left the Mediterranean at all. After a day a final day riding east along the coast we turned north into the mountains. While it was cold, and we had on about every piece of clothing we were carrying, were lucky and avoided rain nearly the entire day. We were headed towards a place called Capadocia where we’d heard about a city built from caves thousands of years old. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/P1070743.JPG We spied the white caps on the mountains in the distance and hoped that we weren’t headed straight into them. To our relief we only skirted along their sides for most of the day. Again and again I thought a descent to lower elevation was just around the corner, but with every small decent came another climb back to the snowline. The warmest gloves I had were some that I’d gotten for $5 on the street in Egypt, and they weren’t quite doing the job. At one stage two fingers on my left hand went completely numb and then ached we slowed down and they thawed out. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Yo...0=w702-h522-no It was nearing sundown and we were almost to our stopping point for the day when we started climbing and kept climbing until we were well above the snowline. Then it started snowing. We’d never ridden in the snow. The novelty wore off quickly as my visor fogged up and the scene ahead disappeared into a gray fog. I pulled over to wipe my visor, which quickly fogged up again. I put my visor up, but the snowflakes colliding into my eyeballs stung something fierce. We were on the motorway twith a barrier along the roadside and no exits, so there was nowhere safe to pull off. The best I could do was to creep along slowly on the shoulder, stopping every kilometer or so to wipe the inside of my visor. Cars and trucks barreled out of the gray haze behind us. It felt like a totally unsafe riding situation and there was nothing to do but keep going and endure. Finally, we began to descend. We only had 10 kilometers left to ride but it was a very slow 10 kilometers. By the time we’d found a place to stay our nerves were completely fried. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/bZ...s=w695-h522-no The fates were kinder to us the next morning, with chilly air but not a cloud in sight. We rode into Capadocia to the astounding sight of an ancient high-rise condominium. We spent the next few days exploring the wonders of this place, where the ancient caves aren’t just a relic from the past, but still used as dwellings by the locals. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1050606.JPG Homes, churches, and monasteries are built from rock pillars strewn throughout the region also known as hoodoo or fairy chimneys . They were formed by deposition of volcanic tuff and lava flows from nearby volcanoes many thousands of years ago. The harder volcanic rock protected softer rock directly below from weathering and erosion. Through crack and fissures in the volcanic rock, some of the material below was eroded and transported away, leaving the isolated pillars that we see today. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-w...o/P1050593.JPG Human settlement in Cappadocia goes back to Kalkolithic age beginning 9,000 years ago and has been occupied by one civilization after another ever since. From the 5th to the 11th centuries, Capadoccia became a refuge for Christians and many of the churches here are still really well preserved. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1050580.JPG It snowed for days in Cappadocia, and when it finally let up, we were happy to drop 3000 ft. of elevation riding towards the Black Sea. We in arrived at the small rocky headland about a hundred kilometers northeast of Istanbul to find a surfer’s enclave on the Black Sea. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ZA...haMI=w730-h523 They’ve been surfing about 8 years on the black sea coast –3 years longer than on the Mediterranean coast. With such a craggy coastline, looking around for surf in the area is slow going as the roads are small and seem to twist along every nook and cranny, and sometimes there isn’t much of a road yet. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1050640.JPG Our host was Toggy who runs the Danube Surf Academy in this sleepy little village on the Black Sea coast. He’s former motorcycle racer turned die-hard surfer and is at the center of the surf community here in Turkey. He shapes his own surfboards, puts on youth surfing and skateboarding training events, and his daughter is a competitive surfer, regularly traveling to Europe for contests. Toggy toured us around to all the spots in the area, but we weren’t quite as lucky as we’d been on the Mediterranean coast. The local’s usual chunk of reef to find a pitching lefthander wasn’t giving up the goods today. Nonetheless, it was fantastic to have a look around another place where surfers were just beginning to discover there own coast and the waves that they have to ride there. Toggy didn't even charge us for staying at the surf house - what mate! https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8...o/P1050635.JPG With Toggy and is daughter headed off to Portugal for a contest, we rode to Istanbul. While the rest of Turkey seemed to be empty of tourists, Istanbul was in full swing and costs were busting our budget. On April 1st, the price of our accommodation doubled and so we retreated to the Black Sea coast while waiting for some visas to process. I’d learned about a beach club near the town of Kilyos owned by a surfer called Hakan. When we stopped in to say hi to Hakan, we found that a rare subtropical cyclone had ripped the place to shreds last fall and they were still picking up the pieces. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Kc...ijJc=w695-h522 The surf was dead flat for the moment anyway, but Hakan said that there was some swell on the horizon the following week. Unfortunately, the swell arrived with the storm right on top of it. With the water either a messy disaster or dead flat, we returned to Istanbul without ever riding a wave in the Black Sea. Can’t win them all. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/N4...of20=w698-h522 Riding over the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, we crossed from East to West, a bridge to Europe and back to the world more familiar for us. |
Thank you, once again, for a wonderful perspective of yet another country--Turkey this time...The crazy thing about your travels is that just one of the countries, taken in isolation, would be the 'trip of a lifetime' for me. Yet, here you are, traveling to country after country after country and showing us how amazing they are! I didn't know how great your thread would be after Africa, but it was, and STILL IS!
I know it won't be as 'exotic' but once you get back to the US, you should do a west coast and/or east coast surf/motorcycle ride. Someone definitely needs to go with you (i.e. Jamie) to film a documentary! :scooter::funmeteryes: |
Stunning Pictures, Report and a beautiful landscape :thumbup1:
Surfy |
It keeps getting better. I really am enjoying the mixture of history, surfing and sartorial elegance. The safety pin is a grossly underrated piece of motorcycle gear, never leave home without several.
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Quote:
Ok :Beach: couldn't resist... I think I thought we were on Advrider or something... |
My wry sense of humor always got me into trouble with humorless people in California. I am a radical leftist by Arizona standards but I was never hip enough, cool enough or radical enough to feel comfortable in Santa Cruz. Life strikes me as a weird mathematical error that slipped through the net cast over most planets by the universe and we should not take ourselves too seriously as a result. Not everyone agrees.:oops2:
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Thanks so much you guys the kind words make the effort worthwhile. Glad that the humor comes across and I don't offend too much.
The adventure has certainly lost some of its grit since leaving Africa. We're now in the Balkans and the camp sites are ridiculously nice. Don't worry, we'll keep it interesting by wild camping where we're not supposed to. :-/ Gary |
rumors
Hey folks - tales of Running Down Rumors at the Bottom of Africa in the current issue of Australia's White Horses!
White Horses | Issue Twelve Available Now https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...43.54%2BPM.png |
Barreling through the Balkans
Turkey had been a fantastic place, but after weeks of riding through snowy mountain passes we were ready to move on. You might say that we were ready to quit cold Turkey.
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/P1050706.JPG We left the towering pillars of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque in the distance, riding for the Bulgarian border. We didn’t quite make it before dark so we motored into the forest and found a spot to make our camp for the night and cook up some dinner. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1050727.JPG Once into Bulgaria, we wound our way out to the Black Sea Coast along twisting mountain roads of poor asphalt with holes and lumpy patches. The scenery was gorgeous, so was the weather, and there was no traffic. We had a fantastic day riding and it felt like motorcycle adventuring is all about. We were headed out to a coastal town called Ahtopol, where I’d been told that there was a pointbreak and some surfers. They had a surf club and even had a national surf competition there. Alas, the Black Sea let us down again without a wave or a surfer to be found. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1070810.JPG We blazed across Bulgaria without stopping for much. It was actually a shame that we didn’t have more time to spend, with accommodation and really good food abundant and very cheap in Bulgaria. But after all the time we spent in Turkey, we had just three weeks to get through the Balkan states and across Europe. Somewhere in the mountains of Bulgaria my fork seals blew out and oozed a lovely oily mess down onto the brake caliper. With no fork oil for dampening, we’d be pogoing our way across the Balkans. In addition, the lower chain roller had just about disintegrated and was making a low growling noise at certain rpm’s, and we had less than a millimeter of rubber on the rear tire. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1050730.JPG Did I mention how nice the weather was? We tried to just enjoy the nice weather and ignore our poor girl falling to pieces beneath us. Just hang on for another thousand miles girl! https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1070823.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1050743.JPG After a brief stop in Sophia, we rode on to Serbia, where spring had most discernibly sprung. Along every country road, farmers were out tilling their fields readying for the growing season. The roads followed the streams closely and it wasn’t hard to find a picnic spot for our usual on-road cuisine. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1050767.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/3u...c=w703-h528-no We continued south to Kosovo and ended up spending the night in the capital of Pristina. The funny thing about entering Kosovo is that since Serbia still doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence, you never actually leave Serbia, but Kosovo stamps you in. It’s the youngest country in Europe and the capital city felt lively. The hostel we stayed at was packed with locals that came out to see a music show that night. The young guys who owned it had high hopes for the success of their place as European backpackers began to discover Kosovo. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/0q...g=w703-h528-no On we rode into Macedonia and Lake Ohrin, a world heritage site for both the beauty of the natural landscape and the town itself. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1050790.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1050775.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1050795.JPG We found quite a few more holes in the road as we crossed into Albania. It’s one of the poorest countries in Europe, but the people were warm and welcoming, and there were plenty of long twisting country roads and nice spots to camp. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1050816.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1050823.JPG The truth about adventure motorcycling with your girlfriend: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1070853.JPG Scattered all over Albania in cities and tiny villages alike there are these concrete bunkers. During times of trouble, they are stocked with weapons and all of the men would be called to arms to defend their homeland. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1070832.JPG Riding into Montenegro, rocky headlands of the Adriatic Sea were covered in beautiful houses and the harbors were crammed full of sailboats and yachts. When we looked up, we’d sometimes see a rocky gray ridge looming above with a castle perched at the top. The castle of Kotor sits above the ledge of an inlet to the Adriatic Sea that drops straight down from the shoreline so abruptly that a massive cruise ship could park right next to the village as though it was a bus pulling to up to a street curb. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1050828.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1070845.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1070843.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1070847.JPG The gorgeous coastal scenery continued as we rode north along the Adriatic into Croatia. There was no shortage of places to camp, which was good, since any other type of accommodation had quickly soared out of our range in this ritzy region. With the grass as our bed, we had the view of a 5 star hotel. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1050872.JPG In the town of Dubrovnik, we found a suspiciously familiar looking Harbor. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1070857.JPG If you’re a fan of the Game of Thrones series (like we are) you might recognize it as King’s Landing. These are the waters of Blackwater Bay, where Aegon the Conqueror first made landfall in Westros and Tyrion Lannister defended the city by destroying Stannis Baratheon's fleet with a barrage of wildfire. It’s also a nice place to go kayaking. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1070861.JPG Here’s the same spot Westerosi style: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...23.14%2BPM.png Of course there is a rich history to city of Dubrovnik that really happened and actual cultural significance to all these buildings but who cares about that. Anyone know the way to the Sept of Baelor? How about the Red Keep? https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/P1070864.JPG Loads of the Kings Landing stuff from the series was filmed in old city of Dubrovnik as well as just up the coast near the city of Split. The Klis Fortress sits on a huge rocky ridge high Split. It was here that Daenerys Targaryen showed up outside the gates of Meereen ready to break some chains. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1050976.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1050988.JPG |
Barreling through the Balkans 2
We rode from the sites of fictional battles to the scenes of real battles in Bosnia and Hersegovina. The city of Sarajevo has been at the center of conflicts in the region throughout the 20th century. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenburg, in Sarajevo was the event that triggered the First World War. It happened just next to the Latin Bridge that crosses the River Milijacka in the heart of the city.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1050949.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1050966.JPG In high school I remember vaguely knowing about the conflict happening in Bosnia, but not having much idea what it was all about. With the breakup of the Republic of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared their independence, plunging them into 3.5 years of war against Serbian and Croatian forces. Sarajevo was under siege from the Serbian forces from 1992-1996. During this time, the only way in or out of the city for people, food, or weapons was a tunnel built beneath the runway of the airport, which was the weakest point in the Serb forces. Think we went and crawled around in the tunnel? You know we did. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1050941.jpg As we drove out to the airport, we stopped at an intersection where the taxi driver pointed the spot where a massive white sheet had been tensioned between two 8 story buildings with ropes to try hide people from snipers in the surrounding hills. Nearly everyone here has stories about that time. It sounded pretty rough. No water access, no power, and little food. Those with the skills made weapons by hand. It’s unimaginable thinking of a city persisting like this for 4 years. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1050939.JPG We stopped at the Sarajevo Brewery to hoist one in tribute to all the brave souls who weathered the siege and fought to defend their home however they could. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1050924.JPG Our next stop was the little town of Mostar, which also played a part in the war when Croat forces invaded and occupied the west bank of the River Neretva that flows through the town. They occupied the huge hill right next to the town and shelled the crap out of the place. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1050905.JPG The beautiful footbridge that is a primary tourist attraction today, and during the war was the path to the front lines of the fighting. This is a fantastic BBC documentary about Mostar during the war and some totally heart wrenching stories. Here's what the bridge looked like during the war, from the BBC: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-E...09.23%2BPM.png Our taxi driver back in Sarajevo wasn’t optimistic about not seeing another war. “Every forty years or so, we have a war. It’s just the nature of the people here,” he said. After getting to know the place and the people here, I hope he’s wrong. We crossed back into Croatia leaving the big problems of the past behind and managed to find some small problems of our own. We were along the coast approaching the Palenica National Park when a screw found its way into the rear tire and quickly deflated the tube leaving us squirming along then breaking the bead off the rim. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1070893.JPG No problem, I’ll just patch her up. But when I examined the tire, I found that it wouldn’t be quite so easy. Though our rubber was wearing thin I’d counted on making it to Munich, but my Kenda 761 had other ideas. The tire tread had separated from the steel belted carcass all around the tire and the side knobs were cracking off. Looking at the tire it seemed idiotic to go riding off onto the high-speed motorways of Europe on this thing hoping for the best. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/P1050993.JPG So here we were in this tiny town with a shredded tire and I had no idea where to get another one. Oh, and there was a storm on the way. Luckily though, fortune sometimes favors the poorly prepared just as well as the bold. The tire had popped off the bead just 300 meters from the cheapest pension in town, so that I could just heave the fully loaded bike over to the parking lot. They had wifi so I got online and found reports of a dude in Zagreb, in the far north of Croatia who had helped some other bikers that had come this way. I was pretty shocked when he sent me an email back immediately and said that he would check first thing in the morning for tires in Zagreb. By 10 AM he had arranged a 17’’ Metzler Tourance to be delivered to a hotel just 1 km away from where we were holed up. Unbelievable. Now that is some global biker solidarity. Doobie, you’re a legend mate. If your headed through the region, check out his bed and breakfast place in Zagreb, Croatia - it's called Labagola. He's also serves as a contact point for motorcycle repairs and logistics throughout the Balkans from Turkey to the Alps, so if you're in a tight spot, drop Doobie a line. (He's FRgich on the HUBB) https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...o/P1050992.JPG And that was it for our quick blast through the Balkan states. There was natural beauty, famous battlegrounds, war, strife, hope, and another round of helpful strangers. Hard to imagine much more that you you can ask of a motorcycle trip. |
Still looks like a great ride! Kind of bittersweet to know it is coming to and end :(; but I know I will re-read many, many of your posts. But, still cannot wait to see what is next. Since one of the destinations I would like to get to on my bucket list is Turkey, would you consider turning around and going back through? :mchappy::thumbup1: :cool4:
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glad you're still digging it Yuma. Bittersweet for me too, for sure. Turkey was surely one of the highlights of the journey. If there is a place to head back to, Turkey is at the top of the list. ..
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Castles, Caves, and River Waves
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With only a few countries in Europe still ahead, completion of the trip felt so close, but with the Alps still ahead and a road weary bike beneath us, the finish line began to recede from grasp. http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1060009.JPG I love riding through places with a weird or striking natural landscape and on this stretch of the journey it was the Karst topography of Slovenia that served up the goods. Karst terrains are formed when limestone goes into solution in water moving beneath the surface, creating subterranean caverns and the like. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1060040.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1060038.JPG The stalactites and stalagmites that we roamed between belonged to the Postojna caves. With a row of lights to guide us we walked through an absolutely gaping cavern 115 meters below the surface. The entire cave system is more than 20 km long and in the cold and damp air I found it hard not to think about the millions of tons of earth perched above our heads. I can see how the dwarves get into this scene. We left the caves, and zipped along on the motorway north. I pressed up over 80 mph a few times passing trucks along the way. And then Dyna Rae stumbled. When I pulled over to assess her condition, she wouldn’t idle. It was as though I’d pushed her too far, taken her steadfastness for granted and she finally spoke up about it. She’d been punished all the way across Africa (twice!), climbing goat trails, rattling down corrugated roads, and sucking diesel dust. She’d done all this with a minimum of fuss and I didn’t even get her some new shoes until the soles peeled right off the ones she was wearing back on the coast of Croatia. And now I wanted her to hurtle down to motorway keeping up with all the Audi A6’s and BMW M series. She wasn’t havin’ it. As the rain started to trickle down, we pulled off the motorway into a beautiful little town called Bled to sort out the problem. I could think of worse places in the world to be stuck camping in the rain. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1060092.JPG Battling the wind and rain on the motorway and then battling Dyna Rae’s issues had worn me down. When we found the campsite, all I could do was hug a tree. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1060087.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1070912.JPG The inlet filter to the carb wasn’t clogged, so the inability to idle pointed clearly to the need to dig into the carb to clear the pilot jet of whatever crap had blown in there when I stirred things up blasting along the motorway. As it turned out, there was plenty of gunk in the bottom of the float bowl. And check out this little mystery nugget I found chilling in the fuel line. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1060053.JPG Unfortunately I’d lost my little screwdriver ages ago and never managed to replace it. Jamie came to the rescue, with the perfect sized set of tweezers to remove a pilot jet. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1070920.JPG The needle has seen better days. I found a severe notch on one side along with erosion of the plastic spacer on the other side. The way the bike runs is very sensitive to very small changes in these tiny little parts, and it’s a good bet that some of Dyna’s rough running of late can be attributed to what you see in the image below. The needle sits in the middle of a slide that moves up and down by the pressure gradient created in the carb when you open the throttle. With the needle and spacer in this state, the needle is probably sitting cocked sideways and messing up fuel delivery. While I have a spare needle, I don’t have a spare one of those little spacers. Oops. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1070924.JPG Taking your bike apart at home is one thing, but on the road is another, especially if you’re a crappy mechanic like I am. When you mess up and break something or strip a bolt, replacement or extraction may not be so easy. I know that I know how to put everything back together, but even so, looking down at my pile of carb in a random sink in Slovenia still inspires just a little bit of anxiety. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1070928.JPG With her bits cleaned up and reassembled, Dyna fired right up and idled like a champ. It was time to climb into the Alps and I was happy to have a running bike again. Austria seriously looked like the Sound of Music film the entire way across. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1070938.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-B...o/P1070944.jpg We rode through more than 20 miles of tunnels crossing the Alps and lucked out, only hitting a few showers along the way. We made for Munich, where I’d heard for years about a standing river wave with a crew of local surfers. I’d met German surfers in places like Dakar that had learned to surf only on this river wave. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-W...o/P1070951.jpg There’s even a local surf shop, where I got a board and suit to use. Only problem was that I no longer had a board rack on the bike. But I had a plan. Sort of. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1070981.JPG We were kind of a scene. I can’t really think of a better way to get pulled over by the police than riding all over downtown Munich like this. We weren’t in Africa any longer where 30 chicken cages loaded onto a 125cc is standard practice, and the Germans are rather fond of their rules. Against all odds, we made it to the Eisbach River wave in central Munich unmolested. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1060436.JPG The locals were ripping it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1060410.JPG It looked so damn easy. Just jump on, stand there, and boogie around the thing. After all, I’m a surfer from California. I’ve spent my life surfing waves in the ocean. How hard could this be? Pretty sure I was going to rule it. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1060384.JPG I may have been slightly overconfident. As I stepped off the ledge onto the board ready to slip down the wave face and felt every drop of the River Eisbach trying to push me up and over the crest and down the river. Before I knew it I was sucked under, rolled around on the rocky bottom and then floating downstream and swimming for the bank. Alright, I thought, had to get that one over with, now I think I’ve got it. My second wipeout was even more comedic than the first. You had to be really precise with your position on the wave to stay down in it and not have it suck the nose of the board under. Looking down at the mesmerizing of white swirls and eddies, it was difficult to judge position on the wave face. With every humbling trip down the Eisbach, I imagined an ironic narrative from the crowd of spectators gathered on the bridge above, “Those German surfers rip. The guy from California sure sucks.” After enough bounces on the riverbed, the local guys gave me some tips that helped immensely. Jamie managed to capture a few glorious seconds that actually made it look like I could actually ride the thing. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1060367.JPG http://www.bugsonmyboard.org/wp-cont...7-1024x769.jpg It was loads of fun when I wasn’t floating downstream cursing. We retired to our campsite and I licked the wounds to ego and flesh. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1060451.JPG awwwwwuuhhh! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1060455.JPG In Dachau, outside of Munich I finally managed to get our fork seals replaced at the local moto shop and the pre-load increased on the rear shock. We’ve had about no oil in the fork since Albania, which makes the bike ride like total garbage. Our girl’s legs now finally feel back in shape. In Dachau, we also got a chance to take in some history with a visit to the Dachau internment camp from the holocaust era. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1070984.JPG The camp was complete with gas champers and crematoriums, a model upon which others were constructed throughout Europe in the Nazi regime's zeal to cleanse society of whomever they deemed unfit to belong. In 1930’s Germany, national socialism consolidated and radicalized a number of political positions – nationalism, imperialism, social Darwinism, and resentment of liberalism. The Nazi movement strove towards a racially pure body, wherein all elements that weakened it or didn’t fit in were eliminated. The Jews were painted as scapegoats for Germany’s economic woes following the First World War and were the focus of racial hatred preached by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As World War II wore on, treatment in the Dachau camp worsened: people starved, were experimented on, and executed on the whim of the brutal SS officers. The words printed on one of the buildings where people were forced to labor day after day reads ‘work brings freedom’ in a mockery of hope for the prisoners. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1080006.JPG You certainly can’t accuse the Germans of forgetting their history. They’ve got it all on display and the stark images and words of Dachau leave a lasting impression. The day we were there, the place was filled with school groups come to learn about this terrible episode in history. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1080029.JPG We rode north out of Munich and stopping at Nuremberg to camp for the night and paid a visit to the castle. The campsite was packed and no one bothered to ask us to pay, so we didn’t. The party didn’t stop for most of the night at the campsite and we didn’t really understand what the occasion was on a Thursday night until the next morning when a girl drove up to us on the bike, rolled her window down and asked, “You guys know which way to the AC/DC show?”. In that moment, The World War II era Germany couldn’t have seemed further away. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1060469.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/P1080051.JPG We’re just about to the end of our road in Europe now and enjoying every mile left. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1060459.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1060475.JPG |
beerloving the journey, it makes night shifts enjoyable:scooter:
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Full Circle
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The journey's end lacked any sort of dramatic flourish that we might have imagined along the way.http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 We simply rolled onto a quiet beach and had a look at the ocean. All the better, to help us remember that the moments in the middle, when things can get uncertain, uncomfortable, dangerous, or exciting, are important to appreciate while you’re in them. We rode north through Germany, once again feeling like a road full-on hazard traveling at mere mortal motorbike speed on the autobahns. We headed for the coast of Belgium, but first stopped in the charming city of Bruges. One of the best preserved cities of the Medieval times in Europe, we had a wander through cobbled streets gawking at cathedrals and the like alongside packs of Chinese and Japanese tourist groups. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1060489.JPG We reunited once again with Steven and Sita for our time in Antwerp and they even scored us an empty apartment that belonged to their friend Wim. We camped out in the living room and were stoked to have a dry place to explode all of our stuff. Thanks Wim! https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/P1060685.JPG I even got the chance to meet up with Tony again, who I’d last seen in Sierra Leone, when he turned his van around and headed back towards Europe after nearly a month together dodging police in Guinea and Sierra Leone. I finally got to meet his Tenere. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N...-no/image.jpeg On the coast I learned that if you’re keen enough for a surf, you can even find a wave to ride in Belgium. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1...o/P1060534.JPG I was pretty keen for a surf. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1080105.JPG Though the waves were lacking. The Belgians have got the surf vibe nailed down, complete with a replica of the very statue that sits at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, one of my home surf breaks. How’s that for coming full circle, eh? https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/P1060519.jpg A year and 8 months ago, the journey began crossing the English Channel to Calais, which sits just south of where we stood on the beach. Since then, it’s been 41,000 miles through 54 countries, riding waves in 24 of them. We got to see wonders of the earth and learned loads about the peoples and pasts of the lands we rode through. Lots of people shared the journey or helped make it happen – so I’ll finish with a few words of thanks. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1060528.JPG This dude showed up on the other side of the planet to ride a motorcycle halfway across Africa. It wasn’t pretty, but he made it happen. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/z7...g=w721-h541-no It was my trip, and then it was our trip. Now it’s hard to imagine being on the road without my girlfriend Jamie. I get to tell this story in my voice, but you don’t see anything that she hasn’t had a hand in creating. She’s literally been behind me at every turn. When I’m loosing the plot, she keeps it together, and in the low moments she finds a way to laugh right through them. I can’t say that I’ve ever met a girl like her. Thank you Jamie for being my partner in this mad adventure. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1010433.JPG They shared their homes, their food, and their waves with us and were friends along the way. Some had very little to give, but shared it anyway. Others appeared out of the darkness to provide help in a jam when the light was fading fast. There are countless friendly faces, not pictured here, mostly local folks who welcomed us with open hearts. If you’ve been following along, you’ve met them too. For me, they’ve been as much a part of the journey as much as the riding, landscapes, and surfing. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6...52.33%2BPM.png Finally, thanks to you folks who came along with us for the ride. Some of you became part of the story when we met out here in the world or you contributed to the project in Sierra Leone. Your words of encouragement have helped spur us forward more than you might guess. As always, enjoy the ride and stay tuned for the next move… |
Long Way for a Wave
New plan. We're taking the long way home. Dig it:
Long Way for a Wave | bugsonmyboard https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-s...29.34%2BPM.png |
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It was a real pleasure to provide assistance to your adventure. I see the trip is going on, a nice new route is on the way, we'll watch out for some new installments :mchappy: Dooby |
Still riding that Metzler Tourance that you got out to me in that little village in Croatia.
For any ADV folks travling through or near the Balkans - make sure to hit up Doobie for biker friendly accommodation and parts for stranded bikers. He's a life saver! |
Long Way for a Wave
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