Traversing the Kwazulu-Natal Coast of South Africa we didn’t know whether or not Mozambique would let us into the country. For the most part, my worries of getting visas and crossing borders have been on hold, as most of southern Africa requires no visas for US citizens or issues them on arrival. Mozambique is an exception and it didn’t even occur to us to try to get one in Cape Town. We received mixed reports of success at obtaining a visa at the border and some folks were positive that we’d be refused flat out. Like lots of things in Africa, conditions can change on a weekly basis and the nearest embassy in Johannesburg was a long way off, so there was nothing to do but ride to the border and give it a try. There was good reason to do so, as there are a couple of classic righthand pointbreaks along the southern Mozambique coast that we were keen to ride. Some years back, a wave was even reported further north up the Mozambique channel dubbed the ‘African Kirra’ referencing its similarity to the famed world-class sand-sucking cylindrical dredger on Australia’s Gold Coast.





We had our story ready at the border of why we weren’t able to obtain a visa beforehand and a few bills ready to slide into the passports to grease the wheels of tourism. The border crossing on our coastal route was a dusty, quiet outpost, as the main road diverges north from the Kwazulu-Natal coast. To our delight, the fellow in uniform hadn’t a question for us at all. We just filled out the visa applications, took our photos, forked over the cash and we had Mozambique visas in our passports. We were stoked and ready for some warm water waves to ride but we weren’t quite ready for the long miles of deep sand ahead.





We were both loaded heavy and didn’t bother to air down our tires and we suffered for it. The tracks just went on and on as we foot dabbed our way down the track. Mike and I both smelled our clutches burning a bit when the track climbed to the top of a dune. The first surf spot wasn’t far, but it was hard work muscling our bikes around the whole time. Mike fared better on his 250 than I did on the 650. A tractor would have been best.





I only dumped the bike once but had plenty of ugly looking moments with the bike wanting nothing more than to go sideways to the course I set dead ahead. Of course I managed to dump it on the side with the surfboard again. Awesome. I heaved the bike upright and waddled on through the sand, legs outstretched like training wheels, without a shred of pride in tact. It was the off-road motorcycling equivalent of riding a one-foot wave on a ten-foot foam board. And falling off. My ego was no longer involved in this endeavor. I was not going to look cool ripping through the sand toward the beach. It was hot, and I was exhausted from wrestling the bike and just wanted to get to the end of the ride.





Like all things, eventually the deep sand did pass. From our camp we found only windswell waves breaking at very the top of the point; barely enough to hit the lip and do a chop hop. Nothing was wrapping around and peeling along the sandbank beautifully as we’d imagined and there was no swell on the horizon. We had incorrectly assumed that the same swells that hit the Durban area would be lighting up these points, but apparently not so. Even though we’d only climbed a little way up the Mozambique coast we were already in cyclone country, where the waves appear as cyclone storms spin their way up the Mozambique Channel. Cyclone season had just come to a close. That’s what I get for not doing my homework. The only consolation for us was there was no longer any reason to struggle through deep sand for more than a hundred kilometers northward as we had initially planned. After three days camping on the point we decided to pack it in. We had been properly skunked.





The local surf shack owner told me about a local 10 year-old local kid named Jackson with no board to ride who desperately needed one. Mike and I were about to turn inland to ride through Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania it felt like a good time to say goodbye to my trusty companion who had ridden at my side through everything Africa dished out. By all accounts the surf in Tanzania and Keyna is marginal so it would certainly do Jackson more good than it would do me in the months to come. We called his mom from the surf shack to let her know that we had a board for him to ride and she assured me that he’d be over the moon. I still plan on finding some waves in Tanzania and Kenya, but I’ll now have to do it on craft begged, borrowed, or created.





I rode off feeling a bit sad, but satisfied that my hard working surfboard would have a good home. I made it 100 meters from our campsite through the sand before the bike killed. It would idle fine, but anything more than about 1/8 throttle and she would sputter out. Why couldn’t this have happened yesterday while we were sitting around at camp all day? I unloaded the bike and started taking things apart. We found the spark plugs the culprit, with one giving no spark and the other giving a very weak spark. Just down the road we found a couple guys tinkering in a shop who confirmed the diagnosis and had a couple of used plugs that we could instal to get Dyna Rae moving again.








We were determined for some redemption in the sand. We left a bit lighter than we’d come and we aired our tires way down to about half of the pressure that they were at on the way to the point. It worked like a charm. We cruised in second gear maintaining speed the whole way along only dabbing a foot down every once in awhile, flowing right along with the little nudges this way and that from the edges of the track. We ruled it. We found some more vegetated tracks on a less direct path to climb up and over the dunes. We actually had fun on the ride out rather than enduring and arduous trial.





We found the tarmac again crossing the border back into South Africa and as we sped along I couldn’t stop feeling naked without my surfboard by my side. It had helped provide purpose to the journey up until now. Seeking waves to ride was a grounding point, a compass to steer from when there was little else to go on. It was the means by which I made connections with folks who lived very different lives from my own. Now it’s gone and I’m just a guy riding around on a motorbike to nowhere in particular. Every once in awhile I would glance down and have a moment of panic seeing it missing as if it had fallen straight off the way it did once in Morocco. My wandering thoughts were interrupted when I smelled and saw smoke streaming from the front of my bike.


Few things can inspire more panic in a rider than the realizing that your motorbike is on fire. Perhaps a grinding metallic cacophony from the engine would do so. But stuff on fire is definitely up there on the panic meter. I got to the side of road as quickly as I could, switched off the ignition and jumped off the bike. Soon enough it was clear that the smoke was coming from my USB charger that I’d spliced into the wiring harness behind the headlight cowl. Somehow there must have been too much voltage getting to the USB charger and it was frying its plastic casing. Luckily I didn’t have my phone that I use for navigation plugged in at the time t or it may have fried that too. As I worked on the bike, Mike and I drew an audience at the roadside.





I soon had the USB charger disconnected, the wires buttoned up, and we were on our way again. Embarrassingly enough, Dyna Rae had two issues in the same day while the Chinese Dream purred right along. Well she wasn’t quite purring. By Mike’s description, at highway speeds the internal machinations of the Chinese Dream sound more like the death wailings of an alley cat. To keep up with me on the 650 he feels like he’s choking the poor thing to death. So far, his solution has been to turn up the music. So far, so good.


Landing back in Pretoria, South Africa, we took to the bike shops to hunt for some spare parts and Dyna Rae got a new drive train. Don’t she look pretty in shiny new sprockets and chain?





The last DID x-ring chain has for 21,000 miles and still seems OK. If this new one can do the same mileage I’ll be a happy camper. Our bikes refreshed, we pointed them north towards Botswana, now headed for parts of the continent that have been in our imagination as the quintessential Africa since forever.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

I saw your article in surfer magazine, huge congratulations! I have been following your trip on HU since you landed in morocco. I always check for updates to you incredible journey. When my roommate called me from the kitchen to look at an article in Surfer, I saw dyna-rea buried in the sad and started cheering. You're ****ing doing it man, you are progression, you are a defining new boundaries for adventure. Following your journey and others from HU has completely changed my life trajectory. I'm living in Santa Cruz living everyday hunting for the next adventure. Moto is rigged up and I'm near pulling the trigger on the next big trip. You made my imagination span to new horizons of what can be done and I hope to catch you on the road sometime. Keep it up!

Hey thanks for the kind words man. Always happy to hear from a fellow motosurfer! honestly, so of the days that I wonder what on earth I'm doing out here and encouragement like yours helps get me through to the next good day. I'll look for your ride post coming up!

Congrats getting ready to pull the trigger - where ya headed?!

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Some of the most unique situations I’ve found myself in while traveling probably never would have happened if I weren’t wandering around on my own. Alone, you get to go where you want when you want on a whim if you like, without any compromise whatsoever. You also end up sharing time with people simply based on meetings of happenstance, and there’s something magical feeling in those moments that come and go. Partly because you never know when they will occur – your social sustenance is continually at the mercy of the universe. All of that said, there is something about experiences shared with the important people in your life that somehow make them seem more real. The experiences, that is, not the people. If you’re not sure important people in your life are real it may be time to go home.


When I left California 10 months ago, I kissed my girlfriend Jamie goodbye and we left things a bit up in the air, as I wasn’t really sure when I was coming back. We had only been dating a few months but we both felt that goodbye kiss came far too soon. We talked about what would happen next, including the possibility that she would join me somewhere in Africa. Jamie is the adventurous type and we packed lots of backpacking trips in the summer before I left, so I knew that she could handle traveling light, sleeping on the ground, and getting dirty.



There was so much uncertainty about what I was launching into that the last thing that I wanted to do was rope her into my hair-brained plans prematurely. Plenty of questions crossed my mind. What if the bike breaks and I can’t fix it? What if I never even make it to Cape Town? What if I get thrown in a Nigerian jail? What if roads are to hard or we just can’t hack it riding two-up on the bike? In the end, we’ve missed each loads and Jamie was too amped about the idea of crossing Africa not to give it a go. So she quit her job, moved out of her place, and flew to South Africa to jump on the back of my bike and ride back to London. This is how Jamie remembers it:


After we had been dating for a few weeks we were talking about travel ambitions and I asked, “If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?” I was thinking maybe we might agree on a place and the wheels would start turning to put a small adventure together sometime in the next few months. Without pause Gary blurted “I would ride my motorcycle across Africa searching for waves to ride. Did that come out too fast?” Over the next few days he shared his idea with me of strapping his surfboard to his motorcycle to chase waves in the remote corners of Africa. Then he spilled that he had already bought a flight to London leaving in 3 months. This wasn’t the first time I was in a conversation like this but it was the first time that I was on the receiving end of the departure news. I could think of no other response other than to be supportive. I could tell from how he talked about it that he had to make this happen or it would haunt him forever. At least that’s how I would feel.

As Jamie and I grew closer, the idea of her joining me somewhere along the journey kept coming up. She’d never been to Africa and is as much as a minimalist vagabond in disguise as I am. And now here we are, together again. Except now we live on a motorbike. It’s hard to believe that it all worked out this way. It’s hard to believe that all our stuff fits on the bike!
Jamie brought with her a new Pelican hard case to bolt to the back of the bike. It’s larger than my old one that has had the latches broken since Senegal. She managed to fit all of her stuff in a 20-liter Kriega bag and a 15-liter bag in the Pelican case. Pretty good for a chick, eh? My girls are all loaded up and Kalahari ready.





From Pretoria, we rode straight north towards Botswana. A huge portion of Botswana is covered by the Kalahari Desert. We ripped though most of it heading for the north of the country where we heard about some great places to check out big critters. Mike was stoked on the Chinese Dream. He was stoked it was still moving forward anyway.





We foraged for food





We uncovered artifacts





We rocked out





In desert-chic style





Before I’d left, the furthest Jamie and I had ridden on the bike was from Santa Cruz to Felton, a total of 9 miles. So we were fully prepared to ride across Africa. Needless to say, riding two up presented some initial challenges. When you’ve gotten to know and love your motorcycle, a new person on the back feels like an unwelcome intrusion to a harmonious relationship. The mobility you previously had in the relationship is gone. Your relationship is no longer so dynamic - nothing happens as fast as it used to. The bike makes unbidden shifts of weight, caused by the interloper. The three of us took some time to adjust, but by the time we had ridden across much of Botswana, Jamie, Dyna and I were a pretty harmonious riding unit.





In the north of Botswana, Mike got the tunes cranking and the good times rolling.






Jamie looked cute under a tree.





I set up our camp in desert as the sun went down and got a kiss for my trouble.





As the sun went down we curled up for a frigid night amongst the sand and thorny things of the Kalahari





We found the way northward and headed for the Okavango Delta. Not surprisingly, when the road turned sandy, Dyna Rae was a handful two-up. By some calculations, the Kalahari Desert has more sand than any desert in the world, which meant that Jamie and I wouldn’t be venturing too far off the main roads, since most of those tracks were deep sand.






At the delta, some local guys guided us through the shallow water on narrow little boats called Mokoros, push-poling our way along. I couldn't help wondering if you could ride a wave on one of those things. The guides had grown up in the delta and knew the place like backs of their hands. In these little craft we could move straight through thick stands of reeds and they always seemed to know just where they were going. The Mokoros were the only way to get around the place, as the water was too shallow and thickly vegetated for motorboats. Some places there were what looked like trails in the water made by the passing Mokoros. The banks of the delta were flanked by elaborate tangles of branches and reeds.









They brought us to banks of the delta only accessible by these lithe craft, where we had a look around for critters. We found some zebra. And a very big thorny tree.




We rode north towards Chobe national park mostly eating a steady diet of gas station fare and developed a persistent habit of Coca-Cola.




We were blown away when we arrived near dark at a bush camp to find elephants milling about right at the watering hole in front of the place. As darkness fell we sat spellbound watching them lumber about and shepherd their young to the water. The young ones sparred with each other, advancing on one another or backing away with their still growing tusks locked together and grinding. They trumpeted here and there and we did our best to guess the social interactions unfolding in front of us. In the morning before the elephants arrived, the baboons and Vervet monkeys ruled the show. That night we went to sleep to the sound of lions roaring in the distance, perhaps signaling a kill to other members of the pride.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

We motored eastward towards Chobe National Park where the elephants were so abundant that they became a road hazard. At one stage, Mike was rode out along a deep sandy track to scout a campsite when a whole herd of them came rumbling across the track. In the deep sand, turning around wouldn’t have been easy, so there he stood on the edge of the elephant storm. Eventually a safari guide in a land cruiser drove up and Mike shouted out to him over trumpeting elephants “What should I do?” The guide responded, “Just go!” Given the size the creatures intermittently emerging from the brush and stomping their way across the road, and the lack of agility of his fully loaded bike in the sand, that somehow didn’t seem like a good idea. Before rolling on the throttle and kicking up a cloud of sand, Mike appealed to the guide, “Can you watch?” He wanted someone to be able to tell his mom about his untimely end in Africa: trampled to death by elephants. Hemingway would approve.







As often as we saw them, their slow motion movements as they loped along never became less enchanting to watch. Driving through Chobe Park was kind of like being in the middle of a scene in the Lion King movie. Elephants, giraffes, warthogs, impala, kudu, buffalo, and hippos all milled about in our field of view as they went about their morning business.








We even spied a pride of lions not far from the roadside, including the male sporting his bushy dark mane. It was all just too rad.






As we bounced along the track through the park we came close enough to giraffes to reach out and touch them. I looked over at Jamie and she had this huge grin on her face. She was so excited I thought she might jump from the truck. This is fun.






The tenor of this trip has shifted with Jamie’s addition and I know that I’ll have to make a few adjustments as a result. Two up, my bike rides like a lame cow in high heels, the panniers are loaded to the gills, getting on and off the bike is a bit of a production, and I don’t get to spend every single moment in obsessive pursuit of finding the next wave to ride. But I like knowing Jamie is back there as we blaze through the Kalahari. There is no guarantee of success on this little venture, but we’re in it together now and that feels good. Of course I realize that riding two-up on a big dirt bike across Africa sounds like a bit of a nutty idea. It gets bugs on my girl. ;-)

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Been enjoying this, even not understanding the surfboard technical terms! The last update reflecting on ths merits of travelling alone and with company was an excellent piece of writing. Loved the wildlife photos too. Travel safe and keep the updates coming.

hey thanks loads Jim - glad you're digging it - I'll keep em coming

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Been following your trip for a while now. Great reading and brill pics

Tried surfing a few weeks ago on hols with my daughter but spent mor time under the water than on top of it! Think I'll stick to surfing this forum... at least I can drink some whilst surfing

As we approached Victoria Falls, we could see a massive white plume of water vapor rising up in the distance that resulted from the explosion of millions of gallons of water hitting the pools at the bottom of the falls all at once. We'd blazed across Zimbabwe and headed quickly for the falls, which are listed as the seventh wonder of natural world for their beauty and sheer immensity. Wondrous they were indeed.





Victoria falls, called in the indigenous tongue Mosi-oa-Tunya (The Smoke that Thunders) is a huge step in the torrent of the Zambeizi River that runs right along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They aren’t the tallest falls in the world, but based on their width, they are classed as the largest. The falls are formed by the plummet of the river into a transverse chasm that formed in a fracture zone of the basalt plateau that underlies the river and adjacent area for hundreds of kilometers in either direction. The Scottish explorer David Livingstone is believed to be the first European to view the falls in 1855.





We crossed the Zambezi river just upstream of the falls exiting from Zimbabwe and entering Zambia and had long miles to ride through Zambia to get to the other side. We’d had our fill of charismatic animals in Botswana and the best national park in Zambia was all the way at the east end of the country. So we rode and we camped.





And rode and camped.





We rode ten hours one day. While I’d done this daily mileage often on my own, with Mike on the small bike and Jamie and I two up, it was about the most we could manage. The team was all tuckered out.





Tempers frayed on the road.





Even the Chinese Dream was letting the days of long miles wear her down. Her chain hopped off of the sprocket, mangling part of the swingarm, but thankfully the chain and everything else was still in tact. Mike couldn’t seem to get the chain to tension properly and we spent some hours at a gas station until we sorted it out. In any case, his chain was as cheap as they come and now had 4000 miles on it. It was stretching as it wore out and he was nearly out of adjustment on the swingarm. We had a 400 mile stretch of Zambia to cross with only very small villages that appeared very infrequently. We spent a day in Lusaka trying to find a chain that would fit Mike’s bike but failed, so there was nothing to do but ride on and hope for the best.






We didn’t make in through the first long, remote stretch through Zambia with the gas in our tanks, but found some gas for sale in bottles in one of the villages. One night as we set up tents, we could hear the hyena’s high shrill laugh in carrying from across the valley. It was such a whimsical, benign-sounding call for such a fearsome beast.





We didn’t make our camp spot near South Luango Park until after dark and we had to ride 30 miles at a snails pace as the road turned to dirt and then became absolutely filled with villagers walking and riding bicycles. In the dark, all of the people on the road were nearly invisible until you were nearly upon them. There were too many bugs to ride with our visors up, but with our vision obscured by dirty visors, the danger of not seeing someone or an animal on the road in the dark was much greater.





We made our camp at a lodge on the bank the Luangwa River as it wound through Crocodile Valley. On the opposite bank, crocodiles and hippos were plain to see baking themselves in the sun and floating just above the surface in the water. The low rumbling calls of the hippos kept us on our toes all night long. Hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa, accounting for more deaths every year than any other animal. At one stage we could swear that they were right outside of our tent munching away on the grass. When we asked the staff at the lodge, they told us that the hippos do sometimes come right up the bank where we were camped to graze. He said to just stay inside our tents. We had no trouble following his advice.





A couple hours before sunset we left in an open air truck for an animal spotting safari that would take us into the night. Just before dark our guide stopped the truck in front of a flat grassy floodplain filled with grazing Impala. Lying flat in a shallow elongate depression there was a Leopard lurking stealthily where he had quietly sidled up near the impala. The impala were milling about less than 20 feet from the big cat. It was near impossible to see him as we held our breaths and peered through binoculars. And then, bang! In a flash, he sprung up and bolted for the adjacent hills. His cover had been blown! Leopards rely on surprise when hunting and having been detected by the impala, he had to flee his hiding place.





As darkness fell, our guide switched on a spotlight and rhythmically scanned the brush for critters. We saw loads of different mongooses, other small furry things and a porcupine. As we bounced towards a sandy wash a thick-necked brown-orange creature with white spots slowly crept right across the front of the truck. Close-up and illuminated by the spotlight, the spotted hyena was more intimidating than in my imagination. Half of this beast was jaws, neck and shoulders, and looked like it was built for tearing throats out and crunching bones. When they are alone, they are primarily scavengers, so there was no danger to us. It’s when they travel in their pack that they are a true danger to man and beast alike. After a brief look at us in the truck he moved silently out of sight into the brush and we remained sitting in the dark with our hearts thumping a bit faster.


From the northeast of Zambia we crossed into Malawi, headed for a beautiful spot on Lake Malawi that we’d heard about called N’kata Bay. Lake Malawi sits at the southern end of the East-African Rift Zone, where continental crust is tearing itself apart as the African tectonic plate is actively diverging into two separate plates. The split started about 25 million years ago and has been chugging away ever since at a rate of about 6-7 mm/yr. The result of all this fantastic tectonic action is some of the most dramatic and diverse geography in all of Africa. In the highlands above the lake, rock domes of granitic and metamorphic rock towered above us and long steep valley stretched below.




As we descended towards the lake baboons covered the roads, fixing us in their unwavering steely gazes and puffing their chests out, daring us to ride closer. We decided that they were in charge and the baboons usually won the staring contests



All of the millions of years of rifting have created a massive depression filled with a gorgeous lake of crystal clue water to jump into and snorkel around. All about the shoreline, local kids did the same thing that we were doing – jumping off of rocks and looking for fish.







The people of Malawi are well known for their incredible friendliness, earning the country the moniker of ‘the warm heart of Africa’. A local guy we met at the place we were camping named Kingston took us in a boat to the beach that fronts his home village where all of the men are fishermen that use canoes dugout from the trees. Kingston said that it takes about 3 days to make one of these boats, but since they don’t have anything to seal the wood, they only last about a year before they are waterlogged and rotting. On Kingston’s beach, the kids immediately came over to see the foreigners. A little girl grabbed Jamie’s hand and a little boy did the same to Mike and I don’t think that either of them let go until we were ready to leave. We shared a lunch of the local dish called sima and a seasoned mix of these tiny little fish that they catch in nets. Sima is a local staple that was cooked up right there on the beach from a root that is kind of like a sweet potato. All of the kids ate together when the same woman served up lunch for them who had shared some with us.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

We traveled north from N’kata bay towards the historic Scottish missionary site at Livingstonia. Around the turn of the 19th century, Scottish missionaries were trying to establish a colony down by the lake, but too many people were dying from Malaria, so they picked up and moved straight up the mountain. The mountains here rise abruptly from the lake and the road up was 10 miles of tight switchbacks with a loose rocky surface. Jamie and I proceeded gingerly up the steep grade in first gear most of the way. Every once in awhile we’d have a moment of excitement when my front wheel would hit a big rock or the rear would spin a bit trying to gain traction rounding one of the switchbacks. What we found at the top made the journey more than worthwhile: an expat haven called The Mushroom Farm hung right on the edge of the cliff providing a stunning view of Lake Malawi and the terrain below.




We got to installing Mike’s new chain that he’d bought in Zambia from an Indian bike shop. He was nearly out of adjustment on the swingarm and had dropped it 4 times on the way up to the Mushroom Farm. We removed the old chain and set about installing the new one, only to find that the chain was about a centimeter too short. So close, but no matter, it just wouldn’t make it. We’d have to steal a couple links from his old chain but we didn’t have a grinder to cut off the flared ends of the pins. It didn’t feel like a very good idea simply reinstalling the old one, but that’s what we did anyway. At least he wouldn’t need the throttle much bouncing back down the rocky slope.





Lake Malawi is enormous. Even at our perch high above the lake, we couldn’t see Tanzania on the other side. Looking down at the perfectly tapered sandy points jutting out into the crystal blue water, I couldn’t help but imagine a nice lefthand wave peeling along it. It just looked like it should be there. All I ever got to see though were a few whitecaps and messy tiny shoaling waves one day when a storm ripped across the lake. I swear that I would have tried to surf whatever there was if I’d had a craft on hand. I’m having surf withdrawals.





Further up the mountain, some local kids showed us a curtain of waterfall to duck behind.





In between hammock lounging sessions that is.



The ride down from the Mushroom Farm was easier than the ride up, except that with Jamie bouncing forward into me on the rough steep slope, I felt like I was doing push-ups on the handlebars nearly the entire way. We rode north along the lake shore towards the Tanzania border greeted by the friendly waves all along.





We had another fairly painless border crossing and rode into the southern highlands of Tanzania where the entire landscape was covered with crops of all kinds. The whole place seemed to be one massive bountiful garden growing everything from cabbages to onions to wheat. We’d climbed so high that we actually got cold again after sweating through our jackets at the border crossing just an hour before. We stopped to put on some layers to guard from the chill wind whipping across the high plateau and rode on towards our first wild camp in Tanzania.





Mike's chain was barely hanging on and would now drop from the chain ring at the slightest perturbation.





We ripped across the highlands all day and finally descended into the Valley of the Baobabs at dusk. We’ve got lots of ground to cover in Tanzania, but I’m hoping that the prize on the other side will be some waves to ride on the island of Zanzibar offshore of the capital city of Dar Es Salaam. We slept with the gnarled, thick trunked Baobabs clawing at the sky above us.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

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.

The Chinese Dream had seen better days than the one we rode out of Baobab Valley headed for the Tanzanian coast. Within 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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.








There are more than 200 carved wooden doors constructed and ornamented in Indian or Islamic styles.





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.








Jamie and I walked around and soaked it all up.












































A busy marketplace pulsed with the business of the day.



















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.








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.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

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.





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.





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.










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.





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.





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.








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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.





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.










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.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

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.

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.





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!


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.



We had fast food for lunch.



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.

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.

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.



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.

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.

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.

Aside from the nightlife that we just weren’t up for, we found Pemba a beautiful place with pretty beaches and fishing villages.


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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!

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.

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two wheeled wave hunting dispatches