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Round Africa with a Surfboard
In 5 days I'm headed across Europe and down the west coast of Africa.
Awhile back I go the idea into my head to strap a surfboard to my motorcycle and ride around looking for waves. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-g...0/P1030291.JPG After a fair bit of fiddling and research, a more solid plan formed to tackle Africa. On September 30th 2013, I fly from California to London to meet my beloved DR650. I'd like to circumnavigate the continent in about a year or so, in search of good waves and good times. Route will be something like this: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f....15%2520AM.png The plan is to take about 8 months riding from London to Cape Town and if all goes well enough, carry on up the east coast, give the surfboard away to some kid in Tanzania, run up Kilimanjaro, cross the Middle east, and back to Europe. Maybe another 6 months for the return. :mchappy: This is me: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-u...0/P1030697.JPG I'm 37, working as an environmental scientist in Santa Cruz, California mostly trying to solve water pollution problems. I've felt overdue for a trip like this for a long time now. During the past few years, I got myself a bike, learned to ride it on the road and in the dirt, bolted tons of crap to it, learned how to fix as much stuff as possible, lurked on the HUBB, watched Mondo Enduro at least 23 times, and set off on a few short motosurf adventures along the California and Baja coasts (see bugsonmyboard.org). https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Z...nmyBoard10.jpg Bike modifications completed, bike shipped, carnet acquired, vaccinations done, stuff sold, job quit, sanity checked, friends shocked, girlfriend kissed goodbye. Ready to move into my motorbike. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x...0/P1040581.JPG Stay tuned for updates... |
Looking forward to your updates :thumbup1:
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Hi There,
of all the mental things I've ever heard of, on a bike, this one takes the biscuit! So am I looking forward to any updates - You bet I am! This should be a laugh, I hope you've shipped out the board with your bike or will you take it as hand luggage? Regards Reggie |
Great stuff! Want to fo0llow this, GOOD LUCK!!! bier
If you cross through Germany (don´t know exactly where I will be but...) give me a PM! bier Cheers |
Thanks guys, I'm stoked. Should be a laugh and a half.
I'll carry the board with me on the flight. Bike just got unloaded from the container in the UK! Hope that all is right with her when I turn up.. |
Dyna Rae all dressed up
http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-content/...01-670x893.jpg
In 4 days I fly to London, collect my motorbike, and point her south towards Africa. During the month before I sent loaded her onto the boat, I fussed neurotically about every mechanical detail, piece of gear, tool, and spare bolt that I might send her off with.<!--more--> At one stage I found myself lying in my driveway at midnight with two piles of bolts in front of me trying to decide which ones to bring and which to leave behind. This did not feel like normal behavior. Nobody puts baby in the corner. Time for a moto makeover. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/IMG_0423.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...030315-001.JPG No matter how much you may plan not to ride in the dark, some times you just get caught doing exactly that. An LID headlight that puts out 1000 lumens should make it a bit safer when it happens. Its amazing how the adjustment of just a few inches of plastic can have on your comfort level. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-t...0/P1030322.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V...2/P1030323.JPG I slid all over the place in the mud in baja leading to less that graceful dismounts. I'd rather not repeat the performance somewhere in the middle of the Congo, but also need tires that can last a good distance rather than wear down quickly like knobbies do. I'm hoping that the Mefo Explorers prove a decent compromise between traction and durability. Fresh drivetrain for a weary girl https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8...o/P1040598.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-g...o/IMG_0428.JPG I've run out of gas enough times to decide that I don't really like pushing my motorcycle for miles on end. A 5.5 gallon Acerbis tank should help reduce the problem. Essential storage for items to keep Dyna running her best. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1030324.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d...0/P1030446.JPG I broke some bits off in Baja that required some welding to reattach. I reinforced had all of the brackets on the frame that hold the exhaust and my toolbox. Along with new heavier straight rate fork springs, Dyna got a fresh shock rebuild with a Race Tech gold valve installed to improve damping performance over the bumps and lumps. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1040569.JPG An extended fuel screw provides easy adjustment of the air fuel mixture in the carburetor at anytime. It comes in very handy when gaining or dumping lots of altitude quickly. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1040583.JPG I built a set of mini jumper cables with 10 gauge wire that live under the seat. Just in case... https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1000086.JPG Tappy valves are happy valves. Keep her tappy, keep her classy. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1050071.JPG Scrub the Wyoming dust out of that carby.. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1040579.JPG She's Serengeti ready https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/IMG_0429.JPG |
What's the umbrella handle thing?
I thought that maybe it's the board mount, but that goes on the left, right? doh http://i41.tinypic.com/rice8k.jpg |
Mefo Explorers are great tyres i got just under 15000miles on a rear tyre:thumbup1:
You could also fit the Super Explorer on the rear Only had one pucture (also had mefo thick tubes on) and that was due to a large nail. However they are sh#t in the rain on tarmac roads so avoid riding when it rains. Also i had the same soft bags as yours (well look the same) fixed in the same place but i found them to high, on the advice of another biker i was told to put them lower down so you feel them near your heel when on the pegs. On my next trip i will move them lower down |
Hi,
How small is your tent, air matras and sleeping bag if it all fits into your luggage bag? How do you carry water and spare petrol for the hot desert parts of your trip? I also carryed a spare tire on my first trip but found out, the Mitasd E07 lasted from Germany all the way down to Southafrica. There they sell Mitas at the KTM stores were i bought another pair to ride home. Not carrying spare tires saves you a lot of weight: http://afrikamotorrad.de/?report=en_transafrika Looking forward to see more fotos of you, Tobi |
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just kidding. I ended up having to ride the bike all the way to the shipping port and that's just the surfboard rack zip tied to the frame. |
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That is pretty good a tire lasting all the way to SA! Planned on changing the currently mounted partially worn tire in Morocco or Senegal, so I don't have to carry it too far. Just wanted to save it from the high speed pavement in Europe. Good to know, I'll definitely get one of those Mitas tires mounted in SA. I have a 4L dromedary bag mounted to the top case and a 2L water bottle holder lashed to that, so hopefully that is enough. I can go about 250 miles on a tank and maybe will need to carry some extra liters in plastic bottles - what was the most you needed Tobi? Hopefully I don't have as much trouble as you did Tobi with the Angola visa, but I have no option other than to get it on the road as they will only issue them in person at the Houston office in the USA and only good for 3 months.. |
Let me know when you're nearing Cape Town what your tyre size is, and I'll order in a Mitas E-07 for you.
We have a bike shop in Kommetjie, so you can surf outer Kom or Witsands while you're waiting. Bonus! Just make sure you bring your wetsuit - the Atlantic is chilly... :freezing: But then the warm waters on the other side of the peninsula are only ten minutes away. :Beach: |
Surf's Up!
Wish you a nice and safe trip, looking forward to read all about your ADV ride around Africa! |
Thanks guys - I feel like I've been preparing for this in the vaccum of my imagination - great to hear some support!
Thanks DirtyPot, that would be great - I'll get in touch! |
Will follow your trip with interest as i'm working towards my own African trip.
Regards Noel. |
A Bumpy Start
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A few eyes turn your way when sprinting at top speed through an airport. The effect is compounded when the terminal track star is wearing giant motorcycle boots and a white power-ranger-esque armored jacket. Such was the scene as I bolted from gate D17 to back to gate A11 in the Dallas airport knowing that my wallet holding all of my bank cards and drivers license had been left on my connecting fight which was about to leave the gate. I slammed into to the counter of gate A11 with beads of sweat running down my temples and was greeted by a thinly mustached attendant who dismissively informed me that the plane had just left for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Fantastic. I turned around and accelerated back up to top speed hoping to get back to D17 in time to catch my flight bound for London. I made it with 6 minutes to spare – just enough time to give my contact information and a heartfelt plea to the airline attendant to have someone in Jackson Hole find my wallet and forward it on to me. I got on the plane bound for London, with no money. If you’ve ever tried to get bank cards replaced in a foreign country you’ll appreciate my concern, as it’s not so easy or quick. I’ve never tried to drive a motorcycle around in a foreign country without a driver’s license, but I imagine that could also create problems. Being the last person to board the plane, I got the front emergency exit seat, with plenty of legroom so that I could worry in comfort all the way across the Atlantic. Massive screw-ups on my part aside, leaving home is hard this time because there’s a lot to leave behind. There is the usual anxiety of quitting a job, giving up a place to live, and all of the familiarity and feeling of security that come with those things. Not knowing exactly where I’m headed or what comes next doesn’t really bother me because that’s part of the point of leaving in the first place. It’s an antidote to the mental atrophy that can be inspired by daily routine. What does give me pause is leaving the people and work that I care about behind. It crept up on me, finding how much I valued the relationships in my life and feeling like I was doing something useful every day that people relied on, not to mention earning enough money to buy anything I could really want or need. I live in a beautiful place and I’ve been really happy. New marriages and new babies seem to spring up every other week amongst my close friends and family. All of this feels like a good phase of life to be moving into, but I’ve never been able to put away some daydreams, and finally the daydreams won out over everything else. I didn’t have this problem when I became a vagabonding surfer 15 years ago. Life was transient, relationships and jobs came and went in fluid fashion, which suited me just fine. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s...hillipenes.jpg Even with life taking on slightly more complexity now at 37 than it did at 22, I’m still a minimalist at heart. All of my possessions still fit into my truck. I was surprised how easily they all fit, given that 6 surfboards occupy most of the space under the camper shell. Furniture evaporated on the lawn next to a sign marked FREE, the same way it came into my life. I’ve lived as though I may need to pick up and go at a moments notice. I think that I’ve just always just liked feeling as though that were the case. As I sit in my comfy seat bound for London, waves of excitement are mixed with the need to keep reminding myself that motoring around the world for a while looking for waves to ride is what I really want to do, even if it feels a bit different now having moved out of the realm of daydream and become my new daily routine, bumps and all. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-c...0/IMG_0004.JPG |
Thank you for letting us travel with you :thumbup1:
Safe travels and a good time! Surfy |
The hard bit is done,will follow your journey with interest.regards Noel
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thanks for the support guys - so far so good...
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Spanish Salvation
When you’re a novice motorcycle mechanic there is this subdued feeling of mild panic that happens when you push the magic button and your bike won’t fire up. When you’re somewhere far from any kind of help, like a lonely shipyard in the southeast of England, with no friends, online moto gurus, or even bike manual available, you can’t help but let the question creep in: what if I can’t get it started? But you put that feeling away because this is just the sort of thing that you’ve been tinkering with your bike for ages to the chagrin of your girlfriend. You know the diagnostic steps, just stop pressing the starter button in desperation, get the tools out and get to it. Once in motion, a calm ensues that comes with working methodically on something familiar with your hands. After checking for fuel flow and vacuum problems I removed the carburetor and started disassembling hoping that the problem was a clogged pilot jet. I didn’t drain the float bowl before I shipped the bike off and when the gas that collects there evaporates, the additives left behind can clog the tiny little holes of the jets. Sure enough, after poking a single copper wire strand through the pilot jet and reassembling, she fired right up and I let out a holler across the docks. I was ready to leave some gloomy days in the UK behind me.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...0/P1000378.JPG Beneath the English Channel I went… https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-o...P1050225_2.JPG Since I’d unintentionally sent my wallet on a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming I was down to my last dime of cash and eagerly awaiting our reunion. The airline folks found my wallet right in my seat and my girlfriend Jamie got on the phone and convinced them to send it FedEx it directly to London for me. She’s an adventure angel. I got a good lesson in London train routes finding the FedEx office, accidentally ended up at Buckingham Palace, but before long I was back in the money. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6...P1050217_2.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...P1050220_2.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...0/P1050222.JPG I spent 3 days burning across France from Calais to Bayonne. My body managed to transform the mild cold that I left with into an acute bronchitis during transit from California and I had been hacking away and barely sleeping ever since. Progress was slow and I pretty much barely left the motorway and avoided talking to anyone when possible. My voice was gone from coughing, my French is terrible, and I felt so awful that I just couldn’t be bothered to do much more that ape critical information or just whisper in English. French people think that a very dirty power-ranger looking guy whispering at them in English is weird. They were all very nice about it though. Campgrounds were just 5 bucks or I just found a nice patch of dirt to myself somewhere. In my fragile state with little appetite I virtually hopped from one McDonald’s to another for fries and free wireless access. I hate to say it, but I am loving it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...2/IMG_0036.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...0/IMG_0021.JPG Crossing into Spain the landscape immediately became lush and hilly and the sun was low casting golden light on the green slopes crossed with fence lines and dotted with sheep. This was the Basque Country and the scene reflected my lightening mood as I rode south climbing one hill after another as the sun seemed to hang low in the sky for hours longer than it should have. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-o...2/IMG_0037.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M...2/IMG_0038.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-K...0239.JPG" In Madrid I met my good friend Cristina who revealed to me the secrets of the historic neighborhood of Lavapies. Navigating the streets of Madrid was a bit of madness, but fortunately you can park a motorbike anywhere on the sidewalk. When I spotted Cristina standing on the side of the road in the middle of a monstrous 4 lane roundabout I simply hopped out of the maelstrom up onto the curb, jumped off, and gave her a hug. Walking in Lavapies, we toured an old tobacco factory that had been turned into a ‘squat’ where the community had built a place for artists to show their work, grow organic vegetables, make their own soap, build bicycles, and all sorts of other creative things. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...2/IMG_0045.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...0/P1050234.JPG From Madrid I motored south and approaching the city of Granada things began to feel distinctly more Mediterranean. I rode past endless hills covered with olive trees to meet my friend Maria who had been my housemate in Santa Cruz while working as a researcher in the Marine Sciences department of UC Santa Cruz. Maria’s house in the country surrounded by orchards was a welcome reprieve from long days on the motorway and busy cities. We ate from her garden, laid in hammocks, and enjoyed the calm of the place. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-9...2/IMG_0044.JPG We spent an afternoon in the city of Granada climbing the ancient streets and enjoying canas and tapas. Granada is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain and you can spend the whole day just moving from one street side café to another. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-N...0/P1050246.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-R...2/P1050248.jpg> https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-J...0/IMG_0051.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w...0/IMG_0047.JPG The next stop is Gibraltar to make the crossing on the ferry to Tangier. I seem to have managed plenty of trouble not even having left Europe yet so I can’t wait to see what Morocco brings. |
Mouthwatering......
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Hi There,
well that was a pretty rapid transit of some of Europe! Let's hope that the rest of the journey allows you to experience more of the journey. Regards Reggie |
Morocco seems to have a way of slowing things down... ;-)
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I hope that you explored the amazing roads around Southern Spain before blasting into Morocco!
:scooter: |
Good waves ¡¡
Hi Garnaro, I think you would like to take a look Legzira beach is about 70 km south Tiznit riding the coast road, spectacular beach and good waves, I'll be following your progress in Morocco.
enjoy¡¡ Cheers Esteban |
surfboard in the mud in Cameroon
Hi,
One would think that no one else would have undertaken a trip like that, but here is what you could be up to when you're crossing Cameroon in the wet season :-) http://www.geehurkmans.com/blogs/surf.jpg Happy trails! Gee |
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Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about anything south of Tiznit, so I'll have a look.. |
something to look forward to. what month was this?
The Land Rover ruled it! Quote:
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The Casablanca Company
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-W...edImage+15.jpg
In Granada, I’d met up with a British rider named Jonathan who accompanied me to Algeciras where we boarded the ferry to cross the strait of Gibraltar for our first steps onto African soil that night. Jonathan is riding the most kitted out overland bike I've ever seen: a brand new KTM 690 Super Enduro with a full fairing, 3 auxiliary tanks, custom made stainless steel crash bars and back rack, bash plate that holds a plastic tank with a spare 2 liters of oil, custom made gps and Go-Pro camera mounts and plenty of other fancy bits. He made most of the custom stuff himself, making it a one-of a kind bike. The thing literally looks like you could run the Dakar Rally on it. And win. The KTM generates 66 horsepower and weighs less than my DR650 which supposedly makes 43 horsepower measured at the crank. The price for all of this performance is the added complexity of a highly tuned engine, fuel pump, fuel injection system, and liquid cooling system, all of which are potential failure points on a long journey. However, with all of those extra horses, he flogs me at any race away from an intersection or up a twisty grade. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-N...edImage+13.jpg Arrival in Tangier took some time, as there were things to do and forms to fill out that no one actually tells you about, but can cause problems and you progress through the arrival and customs proceedures. By the time we started moving, the sun was setting but we were excited to be finally in Africa and keen to make some miles south. Since we knew that we’d need to be in Rabat as early as possible in the morning to get to the Mauritanian embassy to procure our visas, and with no better options in mind, we just kept riding well after night fell. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b...edImage+11.jpg Upon entering Rabat, we were reminded that we’d landed on a different continent where the rules of the road were substantially different or absent entirely. On an uphill curve we were surprised by an explosion of sparks coming down the other side of the roadway as a small motorbike that had lost traction was now careening down the road horizontally with the rider close behind looking like he was doing a backstroke to catch up with the bike. Fair warning. We put our game faces on. The next morning we managed to get our Mauritanian visas without much trouble other than our pathetic attempts to translate the forms which were only in French and Arabic. Navigating the city streets became more natural after a couple of days. Its as if the city traffic is a living organism to which we are foreign bodies. Our job is to find our niche in this system, to learn to flow towards path of least resistance without reacting to dangerous things constantly happening around us. While it takes time to see, there is some kindness in all of this chaos, with people doing lots of things that seem very rude in a very polite way. While motorists' apparent degree of faith in the will of Allah is unnerving for a western rider, it gets easier easier when you realize that while Moroccan drivers don’t seem to mind a close calls all the time, no one wants anyone to get hurt. After all, we were surrounded by all walks of Moroccans deftly navigating the same tumultuous scene on mopeds in sandals with no helmets. The preferred approach for the family of thee on a single moped seemed to be to wedge the kid facing backwards between the two parents with little breathing opportunity for the munchkin leaving little arms and legs protruding from either side of a loving mom and dad moped sandwich. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H...edImage+10.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7...ortedImage.jpg At the Mauritanian embassy we met another British rider, Will, who like Jonathan and I intended to ride the entire west coast down to Cape Town. He was at the opposite end of the performance spectrum from Jonathan, riding a Suzuki 125cc with old canvas army bags as panniers. He was severely underpowered when fully loaded which necessitated staying off any motorways while in Europe. Amongst our company of riders, we represented the range of performance and technology for overland bikes with my DR650 falling in between their two extremes. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/kx...4=w936-h535-no The three of us pitched a camp at the beachfront north of Casablanca for a few days talking about gear and chatting with other overland travelers moving this way and that. The dining room consisted of a stack of our spare tires with my surfboard laid across the top as a table. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-i...tedImage+3.jpg Some of he travelers we met piloted these big Mercedes Unimog trucks that looked like fully self-contained desert battle cruisers. The consensus amongst the Unimog folks seemed to be that I wasn’t taking this crossing the Sahara business seriously enough. They would exclaim, “For God's sake, you’ve got a bloody surfboard attached to your bike!”. I usually just asked where theirs was. Of all things, to be caught in the middle of the Sahara Desert without your surfboard! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z...tedImage+2.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-j...edImage+12.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...0/P1050284.JPG There were some mapped surf spots just near our camp and I set out to have a sniff of what was in the water. Though the blue water and rocky headlands looked inviting, these are early days for the surf season here and there just wasn’t much swell moving through. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...edImage+19.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-g...tedImage+5.jpg Jonathan, having nearly already burned through a rear tire, collected a new set in Casablanca that had been transported down by other travelers in a Land Rover from Europe. With his already overloaded bike and the new set of tires strapped to the top, the load now nearly overpowered his side stand so that he would have to park his bike ever so gingerly whenever we stopped to keep it upright. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Z...0/P1050283.JPG Jonathan and I rode south to Marrakech to collect his Carnet du Passage en Duane (temporary import document for the bike) and meet up with some other riders who had been there for some time already dealing with some debacle in receiving the documents. We stayed in the heart of the walled center portion of the city called the Medina, navigating the labyrinth of narrow streets. We visited the Souk, the local daily marketplace, to take in the sights, sounds, and smells of the place. The Souk is filled with people bustling about their daily business, hawking wares or food, haggling, arguing, or shepherding their families along through it all. In the Medina, you feel the soul and light of the place in the very corridors through which you walk. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...edImage+16.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-p...0/P1000406.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-3...tedImage+9.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-r...tedImage+2.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-u...tedImage+6.jpg |
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Haven't been able to find out which month, but judging from the muddy conditions it's probably July-August. And yes, three hurrays for the Land Rover:thumbup1: Have fun! Gee |
Hopefully I get through before the mud pit gets going..
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Atlas Red
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My newly acquired riding partner, Jonathan, was talking to a stately looking man that had flagged us down on a dusty moonlit mountain road and I was still sitting on my bike and beginning to get annoyed. Since model forecasts showed no substantial swell arriving until the following week, I’d delayed my departure to the coastal city of Safi in favor of a mountain and desert excursion deep into the interior of Morocco. My poor attitude at this juncture didn't make a lot of sense, since it was dark, we were tired, hungry, and hadn’t seen any suitable place to camp or take shelter for hours and this man it seemed may be able to put us up for the night in his guest room. Our journey from Marrakech began with a stop in the foothills at the village of Ouzoud where we found a majestic looking waterfall. Ouzoud was filled with lots of mostly Moroccan tourists striking the same pose and taking the same photo in front of the waterfall. The very existence of a waterfall seems to create a tourist vortex causing a feeling of urgent need to show up and stare at the thing. Since we’re tourists, we went and stared at it. It was very nice. It looked as though there should be magical fairies of some kind flitting about in the mist above the torrent. We took the same photo that everyone else did. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-7...0/P1050298.JPG We rode southward from Ouzoud higher towards the peaks of the Atlas range that loomed hazy in the distance. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert. They were created as the land masses of Europe and Africa collided at the southern end of the Iberian peninsula, pushing peaks up 13 thousand feet into the air. Our path had us traversing a high pass and then descending towards the Sahara desert on the other side to the town of Ouarzazate. I'm very happy that I can now correctly spell and pronounce the name of that town since my first attempts were not very useful. Learning words in Arabic makes me feel like I'm in the novel 'Dune', which I know is really stupid. Not the novel. The novel is fantastic. Red rock faces and soils dominated the landscapes that we rode through. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Fj...s=w750-h474-no As the sun sunk behind the mountain tops and our altitude increased, the air temperature dropped nearly as quickly and the road quality. We dodged massive pot holes, wash-outs, rock falls and wayward sheep as night fell. Truth be told, I have trouble to tell the difference between a wayward sheep and one that knows exactly where it's going. We passed small villages with soccer games happening in the road which they stopped for us to pass and I smacked a couple of high fives to the kids as we rode through goal on the far side of the road. There were a few jeers from some of the kids as we robbed them of a few last moments of game time before it became too dark to play. In every mountain village kids would give us a cheer for as we passed as if we were in the middle of a massive rally race of some kind. I pretended that was true. I think it made me keep waving at adults that had no intention of waving back at me. Their confused expressions as they hesitantly raised their hands out of politeness indicated they must have been thinking "What hell does that guy think, he's some enduro race star that everyone wants to wave to?" <img class="aligncenter" alt="" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/JO2Jn2F2mMHXSxbhzamy1CiZG4PtxedImp06JQ7nmJw=w750-h474-no" /> Jonathan had negotiated a fair price for us with the man who had flagged us down in the street for a night stay and dinner at the guest room in his home. We drank Moroccan tea and his wife made us an excellent vegetable targine for dinner. Their simple home had a warm feeling within its walls. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/IMG_0364.JPG My cause for annoyance at our initial stop proved to be immaterial, as there was a secure place to park our bikes right next to where we slept, provided we were able to ride them up the steep dirt slope, up a few steps and through the narrow doorway. We both managed it, though not without a bit of difficulty. Our sleeping quarters were richly layered with blankets and pillows of vibrant traditional Moroccan design. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/MR...8=w750-h474-no The next morning we awoke to rooster crowing and our host bustling about in the main house who was quick to bring us morning tea and bread with honey as soon as we began to stir. We were very thankful for the hospitality that we'd found in this simple dwelling simply by chance riding along a dark road in the mountains. We had no idea of the day of riding and scenery we were in store for as we motored away that morning. The narrow band of asphalt that traversed the mountain pass seemed to wind back and forth unendingly, with the road narrowing where gravity worked to smooth the man-made gradient back to a more natural, unorganized state. From time to time the asphalt disappeared entirely, reclaimed by soil and rock falling from the upslope side. Though our throttle hands grew heavy on some of the twisty racetrack sections, our progress was slow as we could hardly ride a few kilometers without stopping to admire the landscape or the villages below us. The square mud and hay buildings flanked by cultivated terraces took on the appearance of delicately constructed models of some kind. The red peaks held our gazes spellbound one turn after another. At each village we slowed so as not to disturb local villagers going about their business in the road. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-S...Pano+Atlas.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K...38_2.JPG" https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-d...63-no/pano.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-v...edImage+12.jpg On a slow rocky section, I dumped my bike over and broke one of welds of my surfboard rack. So, I hadn’t actually gone surfing yet, but I had managed to break my surfboard rack. Which I need to carry my surfboard as I ride around in the Atlas Mountains towards the desert. This was starting to feel a little bit ridiculous. It does make a really nice camp table though. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/IMG_0394.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/mJ...g=w547-h441-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/IMG_0401.JPG At least I wasn’t the only one with a sleepy motorcycle.. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/P1000436.JPG We woke our bikes up from their naps and headed for lower ground. |
Ride the Kasbar
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The temperature climbed steadily as we motored downward into the town of Ouarzazate, which serves as a gateway for expeditions to the Sahara desert. Crossing the Atlas Mountains had taken far longer than either Jonathan or I had anticipated and we were now tired from two long days of riding. We checked into a hotel with our two favorite qualities: dirt cheap and indoor bike parking. We drove the bikes in the front door, through the lobby, and tucked them in to sleep right in front of our room, nearly close enough to cuddle. An unnatural degree of attachment to our machines is developing. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-M...0/P1000455.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-k...0/P1000464.JPG The next morning we set off for some desert riding,blasting along on tracks and cross-country over the desert pavement that makes it pretty easy to just point your bike wherever you want to go and roll on the gas. We came across some strange sights in the desert: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x...0/P1000494.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-2...0/P1000492.JPG Morocco has a long history in the film industry with lots of movies and television shows filmed near Ouarzazate including as Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and part of the Game of Thrones television series. We came across several relics of films gone by and sets for others currently in production. Since there was no one around to tell us otherwise, we helped ourselves to a tour aboard our bikes while trying to guess the films and shows that we were riding through. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...ortedImage.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q...0/P1000493.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...0/P1000486.JPG Jonathan was keen to stick around the desert for awhile for some dune riding on the KTM and I had a swell to catch in Safi. So while he tried his best to keep his clutch in tact and axles above ground in the sand, I motored westward over another mountain pass back towards the coast. https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...32364511_n.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-2...tedImage+2.jpg I took the long way out of Ouarzazate along a beautiful twisting single lane asphalt road where I found the fortified city or ‘ksar’ of Aït Benhaddou and the first of the kasbahs: fantastical looking buildings often hewn straight from the red cliff faces that flanked them. The Berber people who historically inhabited this area and still do are responsible for construction of these earthen high walled structures, the oldest of which are believed to date from the 17th century. Ksar Aït Benhaddou (top image) has even been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. While most people now live in the adjacent village, apparently 8 families still live within the walls of the ksar. Historically, almost all cities in this region had a kasbah, as it was a sign of power and wealth for the city and a necessity to survive an attack from the outside. I must have passed a dozen ksars and kasbahs as I rode up the Ounila River valley. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1000496.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1000516.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/P1000502.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-c...0/P1000504.JPG My zen attitude about motoring in Moroccan traffic evaporated climbing the mountain pass headed back to Marrakech. Even with a line of ten cars bumper to bumper ahead of me while climbing the twisty grade, no driver could stand being behind a motorbike and they would just creep up beside me, half in the oncoming lane, and then shove me over to the crumbling shoulder. Ironically enough, I was surely the fastest thing on the road. Eventually I became so frustrated with this behavior that I somewhat dangerously blew by the entire line of cars in one go. It was very satisfying to leave everyone behind that seemed so willing to put my life at risk for no reason whatsoever. I could feel adrenaline flowing and told myself to calm down and not to do that again. If my luck is good and the wave at Safi is all that its cracked up to be, there would be plenty of excitement off the road. |
A Score at Safi
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As a traveling surfer you’re always at the mercy of the ocean’s rhythms for the success of your mission. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif You may have arrived at one of the best surf spots in the world, during peak swell season, have your super casual tube-ride pose down cold and ready for the cover shot, but it’s just not up to you whether you score or get skunked. This is part of what makes riding good waves both at home or in far flung corners of the world so special: they are here one day and gone the next. This was my week to score. When I rode into Safi it was under a blanket of fog, so that I could hardly even orient myself relative to the coast. The city is dominated by a massive sea port and rail line that block access to most of the shoreline. From my talks with people here, I’ve gathered that both the port and rail line are primarily occupied with moving sulfur and phosphorus extracted from mines north of the city. Some of what comes out of the tops of the local processing plant wafts through the city air. This scene was hardly what you’d imagine as an idyllic surf destination of endless summer dreams. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/34...U=w955-h537-no So then, why in the world have I come to a place like this? The same reason that surfers have come for decades - a cranking right hand barrel of a wave dubbed Le Jardin (the Garden) on the north side of the sea port. First ridden in the early 1980’s by surfers who kept it a secret for many years. On its day it has been called one of the world’s best waves by legends of the sport like Tom Carroll and Gary Elkerton. Every winter, top pros and feral surf travelers alike show up hoping score Safi doing its thing. The catch here is that the wave is fickle, requiring at least 10 feet of swell in the water and a low tide to start working and all, and the water is severely polluted by waste material from local processing of phosphates (see paper here). If you can brave the dirty water, and have the fortune to find the right swell and wind direction, the lip of the wave will pitch out to let you start riding through the wave rather than on it. On the right day,the wave can look like this: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q...f_school-2.jpg image source: Safi surf house in Morocco. Surfinn - Surf Holidays, Surf Trips, Learn to Surf. On arrival, there was some serious swell potential on the horizon marching our direction. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-e...1.55.21+AM.png Since I couldn’t even see the ocean, let alone identify where the wave was located, I was just riding around town without much idea where to go. Fortunately, I finally stumbled across the Safi Surf House, where I met my host, Medhi, who filled me in on the local wave conditions and everything else that I needed to know. Since the swell was still too small on my arrival for the main wave at Safi, we surfed a beachbreak 10 km north of the city. I quickly realized that weeks of sitting on a motorcycle stacked on top of the hectic days of preparing to leave California had taken a toll on my paddling fitness. It felt good to be back in the water again after such a hiatus. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-U...P1050360_2.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1050376.JPG The next day the swell cranked up and the wave at Safi started to fire off. Mehdi and I had the main wave at Safi to ourselves, and the days followed on with excellent waves and very little crowd. No barrels yet, but I was more than happy with the head high racing walls. Mehdi knows everyone at the beach and in the water and the familial attitude amongst some of the local surfers and bodyboarders was immediately apparent, with a good vibe pervading our days in and out of the water. I felt privileged to share some waves with this crew of guys at their home. Mehdi is consummate surf host, making sure that I scored waves and looking after anything I could have needed while in Safi. If you ever get the chance to come surf here, Mehdi’s 'Safi Surf House' should be your first stop. Here's my host ripping it during my week of surfing here: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/iW...Q=w694-h544-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-j...no/Image+5.jpg One day after surfing, I went with Medhi to the local hamam for a uniquely Moroccan experience. We entered a square room completely covered in tile from floor to roof and filled with steam and layed down on our backs straight onto the tile. By the time that I was nearly ready to pass out, we exited to another room and layed down on another tile floor on rubber mats maybe 1-2mm thick when a guy wearing some little shorts proceeded to twist me into a pretzel. While on my stomach with my limbs behind me tangled up with those of my tormenter, I imagined it looked something like your favorite WWF matchup, complete with me pounding an open hand on the floor in defeat. My attempts to tap out and grunts for mercy didn’t seem to make much difference in the severity of the pretzeling. I got the idea that he thought my behavior indicated he was doing his job well. When that was finished, he started to scrub me down with what felt like steel wool, followed by another round that felt about like a brillow pad as though he were incrementally removing my grit with finer grades of sandpaper. After such I thorough treatment, I may not need to shower again until Cape Town. A week after my arrival, a good clean swell arrived. Still few barrels to be had, since the low tide just wasn’t low enough, but we enjoyed rippable overhead walls rumbling in all day long. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/P1050365.JPG Yours truly: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-A...no/Image+1.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...no/Image+3.jpg https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...6-no/Image.jpg In the evenings I strolled the markets in the Medina while I ate dinner from street vendors. With so few tourists about it never took long for someone to say hello and offer a cup of tea and some conversation. From these encounters I learned about the history of the city, its main industries, and how people thought of the few European tourists or business people that would come and go. This is really one of the great things about surfing while traveling: it brings you to places like Safi that you wouldn’t ordinarily go without a mission of some kind, which in turn provides a different view of a place than sticking to the more well trodden tourist trail. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/MJ...4=w759-h544-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1000552.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1000541.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1000568.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1000570.JPG Mehdi has been struggling for years now with local politicians as the local representative of the Surfrider Foundation to advocate for reductions of industrial pollution and maintenance of the small degree of tourist infrastructure, but to no avail. The road down to the main wave is in ruins and cannot be driven any longer, not even on a motorbike. It seems that the bottom line is that Safi is an industrial town. The money comes from the phosphate mining, processing, and transport, not the tourists. But the surfers will always come. The giant sleeps:https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/3A...M=w955-h537-no The swell declined and I now had some info on surf spots further south so I got ready to motor on, now frothing for more surf after having a taste of what is on offer at Morocco’s point breaks. |
G'day Garnaro,I have to admit to thinking the same as the unimog guys about your surfboard ,until i read your comment (which made me laugh),i'm very much enjoying your ride report,you have taken some splendid photographs Too .I will follow your journey with interest.Regards Noel:D:D
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Familiar Waters
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The last time I stood staring at the waves spilling over reefs below me was in December of 2001 when we made our camp here for two weeks.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif I had driven to Morocco in a van with an Australian couple, Jon and Raylee, who I’d met on the surf trail in South America a year earlier and traveled with for a spell in Peru and Chile. We were all well-addicted surf explorers back then and before we parted ways in South America, we hatched a plan for a surf trek from England along the Atlantic Coast surfing all of the waves that we could find in France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. After South America they went to Scotland and I left for South Africa before returning to California. Eight months later, they picked me up in France in an old Mercedes Sprinter van with a fresh home paint job of white with a red stripe down the center. Strapped to the roof inside were six surfboards that I had delivered to London from South Africa on my way back to California earlier that year. Everything we did back then was somehow directed to the next destination and finding the next wave. Even standing on the same spot where we enjoyed many a dinner of baguette and Laughing Cow cheese, looking at the same chunk of reeef, it feels like a lifetime ago. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...moroccoVan.jpg After spending last week surfing in Safi I’d ridden to Sidi Kauki – a tiny, sleepy coastal village with an authentic charm and a handful of little cafes, one owned by French expat with a passion for fresh ingredients and superb cuisine that he served up in the most unlikely seeming of locations. There was traffic on the beach. But it was just donkey traffic. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/IMG_0115.JPG There was traffic in the trees too. But it was just goat traffic. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Ez...w=w725-h544-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-R...o/P1000598.JPG Traffic on the road was mostly camel traffic. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1050403.JPG There was a good wave nearby that I made a halfhearted attempt to reach. The poor road eventually gave way to sand dunes and with my bike fully loaded, running road tires at high pressure, I was quickly stuck. After a couple times digging myself out, I decided that the terrain had bested me for the moment and I retreated to hunt another day. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/3G...U=w725-h544-no The wind had not subsided the entire night and continued the next morning, so I packed up my camp and motored south, leaving the sand dunes behind. The road climbed some coastal hills and eventually rejoined the coast where I saw that there was still more swell in the water than I’d expected given the last forecast I'd seen. The first small pointbreak that I came to was completely overpowered by the swell, so I knew to keep heading south where larger points waited that would bend the lines of swell energy to into peeling lines to of fun to ride. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lp...8=w725-h544-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yg...M=w664-h544-no That night I surfed by myself at the reef break just below our campsite from years ago. There were plenty other surfers about, but the wave that I saw breaking just in front of the exposed chunk of reef had been overlooked. I sat waiting for sets that appeared on the horizon 15 minutes apart, trying to judge the correct distance that I should be from the nasty looking pieces of rock. At low tide, the wave sucks up quickly making for an exciting take-off and first 20 meters riding past the exposed rock shelf. The last time I’d surfed here years ago I’d misjudged that distance and ended up planting myself and my board right onto the reef in very ungraceful fashion. But it wasn’t all my fault. It was partly due to the yogurt. In the spirit of the trip, we had procured some recreation enhancers. We kept trying to think of ways to use the hash other than mixing it in a joint with tobacco, which none of us cared to smoke. We eventually settled on melting it into some oil and mixing it with yogurt. So when the mood struck before a surf session as we were pulling our wetsuits on, the query would come: ‘Anybody want to yogurt up?'. And we would yogurt up. The whole thing was phenomenally silly. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/qx...Q=w725-h544-no With all my wits about me, I managed to keep myself off of the reef this time around. Rejoined with my riding mate Jonathan, we made a camp on a hill perched high above the surf. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1000629.JPG Every morning I get up about 7, throw on my board shorts, eat some yogurt (just vanilla flavored) and bananas, load up my board and wetsuit and motor down to check the waves. It's an absolutely fantastic feeling bounce over the dirt tracks on the way out the surf every day, park my bike right on the rocks at the top of a point and jump in the ocean. Some days after surfing for a bit I’ll hop on the bike still in my wetsuit and blast up to another reef or point for some more waves. Following this routine day after day is incredibly energizing. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1050462.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...tedImage+7.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mq...4=w895-h513-no Local guys ride around in these cool little high riding Renaults to the beach. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/CU...A=w700-h544-no While we surf, women from the village collect mussels from the rocks. The fishermen in the village haul out their catch straight in front of the restaurant where they are served. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d...ortedImage.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Uw...k=w725-h544-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...tedImage+2.jpg Life is simple and people are friendly here. While there are many more surfers here than there used to be, and my exuberance about the madness of it all is more subdued than it was a lifetime ago, this is a good place to come back to. |
Mandarin Incoming
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As I hummed along northward on the highway with the sun overhead just like I had many days before, a glance downward and to the left instantly sent a shot of panic through me. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifSince I was going surfing, I had my surfboard attached to my motorcycle. When I looked down, I found no surfboard, only a void and the asphalt rushing past below. I whipped around and sped the other direction fully expecting to either return to the last place I’d checked the surf 2 km back without sight of it, or to see it splintered and strewn across the highway somewhere. I rode fast, thinking that if I were quick enough I could snatch my one and only craft to ride the waves of Africa from such a cruel fate. I got to the turnoff to the dirt track where I’d last checked the waves, still without a sign of my board. Relief washed over me as I came to a stop. All the way at the end of the track, in the middle of the rocky bluff without a soul around was my board lying bottom down, with the arm of my surf rack still fully attached and in place. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1050495.JPG The rear arm of the rack had broken off at the same place it had been repaired in Safi from my fall in the Atlas Mountains. On examination it was clear that the repaired weld used a lot of material but formed a poor bond. Enough bouncing around on the dirt tracks to check the surf and it had finally given in right where it lay. As I sat there looking at the ocean, engine running, my board had simply dropped away without my noticing and off I sped without it. Needless to say, I was very happy to still have a surfboard along on my surf trip. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1050497.JPG We found our standby spot with too low of tide for the sizable swell that had grown overnight and was now pounding the reef. The massive and mysterious ship boiler marooned on the reef was sticking high above the water surface as waves sectioned and closed out around it. Fishermen deftly dodged exploding waves to the north. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1050490.JPG A couple of the local Moroccan surfers told us about a lesser know spot about 10 km to the south and we decided to head that direction. One of them climbed onto the back of my bike wearing only board shorts and sandals and off we went. We found some head high quick-breaking waves that lured us out. When we got out to the surf, we quickly found that the waves were nearly un-makeable with the speed at which they broke down the line. You would get to your feet, stay as high as possible on the wave face for as long as possible racing as fast as you could until a section finally forced you down and outran you. The swell direction was too westerly. According to the local guys, swells arriving from a more northerly direction hit the reef less squarely and produce waves requiring a less frantic pace down the line. While the waves left something to be desired, it had been a fun excursion somewhere new, led by local surfers, which is always a good time. We arrived back at our ship boiler to find the tide had risen along with the swell, creating some big clean looking waves in between massive bombs that steamrolled through the lineup. Only one surfer was in the water – the Spaniard named Axier who I’d befriended at the campsite and been surfing with during the past week. He caught sight of me and waved me out and so out I went. I barely managed to squeak out the keyhole channel between a big rock and the ship boiler before the area was mowed by a set. Axier and I looked for the more manageable ones we both dropped in on a few that quickly blocked our paths down the line with heaving sections of lip. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1050501.JPG After an hour or so I locked into a really good one and rode it just a bit too far. Once out of the lee of the protective headland where we were taking off, the current was relentless and it had me pinned right where I didn’t want to be – stuck on the inside taking closeouts on the head. The problem here was that we only knew one safe exit point – the same place that we’d entered, through that keyhole channel where the rocky headland attenuated a lot of the swell energy. For as far as I could see, the southerly direction that the current pulled me the shoreline was just rocky slabs exploding 10 feet high with whitewater. I lucked out and found the right spot at just the right time to exit safely enough. Upon exiting the water a local girl who had watched my struggle was smiling and giggling with her friends sitting on a concrete wall just up from where I landed. She came down the slope a little way and threw me a mandarin, which landed in the rocks just near me. It was as though she wanted to say hello but was scared to get too close. I retrieved the mandarin, made a motion of thank you which was returned by another giggle. I stood there catching my breath and devouring the best tasting mandarin I’d had in a long time. After that she became bolder and came all the way down to had me a little glass of mint tea. I was incredibly grateful for the small kindness. The local bodyboarder, Ahmed, who had followed us out found the same exit as I did. Axier wasn’t so lucky. He misjudged the current and missed our exit point and after struggling against the current for 30 minutes or so trying to get to it, he gave up and let it carry him down the reef. Ahmed and I scrambled southward trying to scout a good exit spot and finally found one that coincided with a break in the sets. Walking back, we were all pretty happy to be back on the ground. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-A...85642531_n.jpg We walked back to the local resident (the only local resident) Mohammed’s cave at the top of the point. His little abode is built into the cliff right next to the surf pounding on the reef where it looks like nothing would be safe. From his doorway, monstrous waves rumbled by, but posed no danger due to its position in the lee of the small headland. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1050510.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1050485.JPG Mohammed had lived here for 8 years, entertaining the traveling surfers as they came and went from the run-of-the-mill feral wanderers like us to top-level pros. In turn, surfers brought things out to him to make life a little easier on this barren stretch of coastline. He had cooked us all up an octopus targine that we all enjoyed inside the cave. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-R...13569790_n.jpg We packed it up for the day leaving some lonely waves behind. The goats went home too. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1050514.JPG And I retreated to my clifftop camp. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1000642.JPG |
G'day ,i'm glad you found your board,i think we have all lost stuff off our bikes,which we'd rather not have.Very nice coastal photo's.Bye for now regards Noel:D
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hey Noel - I'm going to try hard not to loose it again! Thanks for the well wishes!
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Into the Sahara
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The further south we rode, the greater power the desert seemed to have to undo what had been done to hold it at bay. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif The asphalt crumbled at the edges and lobes of sand crept inward across the road, threatening to consume the black strip that bisected the sea of dunes. The sand blew across the road in a steady stream, invading eyes, nose and mouth. I’d turn my head almost 90 degrees from the vertical to avoid receiving a blast up into my helmet when I saw a particularly solid looking wall of sand hovering above the road surface ahead. We’d ridden hundreds of kilometers through this barren scene since the hills had given way to the dunes. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1000657.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fU...Q=w659-h395-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Rx...g=w527-h395-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1050560.JPG I was glad to have met Thomas, a Polish rider on a Honda XR650R along the roadside two days prior, to avoid traversing such a landscape alone. I was also glad that he was riding in front when we crossed a finger of sand 6 inches deep extending onto the roadway so that I had an additional moment to react. Jamming on the brakes seemed like a bad idea, so I just gassed it and let the front get wiggly for a moment. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1050556.JPG We had run out of daylight and had hardly seen anything for hundreds of kilometers along the coastal plain, including a place to camp that would hide us from the road. High cliffs ubiquitously blocked access to the beach. In the fading dusk light I spotted some dunes out by the coastline that I thought would do the trick. Sure enough, we were able to find a nice rocky, ridable path into the dunes and tuck in behind them. We set up our camp on the soft sand and watched a giant grapefruit moon float into the sky. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1050536.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/oh...U=w263-h395-no All that I had for clues to surf spots in Western Sahara was some chicken scratch on a napkin from a Portuguese surfer I’d met at my last stop. I was pretty sure that he’d misspelled the name of the village he mentioned since I couldn’t find it on any map. On the way south towards Dakhla, I dragged Thomas off of the highway a number of times to look for waves. The general process was to identify a point of land on the GPS sticking out into the ocean facing the right direction to bend long period swells from the northwest and motor out to have a look. Sometimes there was a track and sometimes we made our own. Motoring cross-country. it did cross my mind that Western Sahara is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, owing to the conflict between Mauritania and Morocco for control of the territory. It crossed my mind and then left it, because I simply had to see if some of these points on the map had surf potential. Besides, there were plenty of tracks off the highway and no exploded burnt out vehicles to be seen, and we were still a long way from the border with Mauritania, so I figured the odds were with us. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-8...o/P1000702.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1000692.JPG Since there was no swell in the water yet, all I got to see was the potential for surf, but there seemed to be plenty of it, with a number perfect looking pointbreak setups with perfectly groomed sand bottoms just waiting to come alive when a big storm started spinning in the North Atlantic. The camels thought it looked pretty good too. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1000723.JPG Upon arrival at a campsite near Dakhla, we were immediately befriended by the neighborhood expats and recreational residents - a mix of wandering motorcyclists and windsurfers. Five days of waiting for waves seemed to mush together in a smoky blur of evenings filled with wild boasting from some big fish living in this small pond and a perpetual game of one-upmanship centered on which country had invented the best stuff. England, Germany, Poland, and the USA were represented. They said McDonald's doesn't count. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1000738.JPG We met more overlanders coming north and south. The Belgian couple in this super kitted-out land cruiser had just finished a year long trip all the way around Africa! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1000742.jpg Dakhla sits at the end of a massive 40 km long sand spit peninsula and is separated from the mainland by a shallow channel. Since the peninsula is less than 2 km across and often has a steady wind from the northeast, it makes for an excellent ocean playground with windsurfing in the channel and points for surfing on the other side. After a week of killing brain cells the swell finally arrived and it was time to find what all that potential I’d seen a week prior could churn out. I motored northward to find a point that I could see on the map, but couldn’t see a road to it. The reason, of course, was that there was no road, just some tracks leading off of the highway in vaguely the direction I was after. It seriously looked like riding into desert oblivion. It’s moments like these that I question what in the world I’m doing out here. It just feels like the maddest thing in the world to ride across a mud flat towards a massive dune field in the distance in the middle of the Sahara desert on a motorcycle with a surfboard. Lots of fun of course, until things start to mess up. When I hit the dune field, things started to mess up. The deep loose sand made for difficult riding and I proceeded rather gingerly since I wasn’t wearing my boots and I really didn’t want to fall and break my surf rack again. I seem to have a problem of leaping before I look on two wheels. I just figure, keep your momentum and you’ll roll on through the tough part or sail right over a gap. Sometimes that works and sometimes it just gets you in over your head rather quickly when the terrain only gets worse up ahead. This time happened to be the latter situation. After grunting and sweating my way along in most ungraceful fashion for 500 meters or so, I found some Land Rover tracks that made riding easier and eventually saw a headland and whitewater appear over the dunes – I’d found the surf spot! Within a few hundred meters I got a full view of the shoreline. The waves sucked. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-L...0/P1000760.jpg Riding back out to the road earned me even fewer style points than the ride in, and this time I had a full escort. As I turned around in the sand, seven feral dogs darted from a fishing shack in my direction with canines blazing. I kept my cool and waddled along with this raucous pack nipping at my wheels the whole way. I hoped that these dogs were as docile as the others I’d already met, but nonetheless I now had another reason not to dump the bike. I kept telling myself: this is the adventure part of the surf adventure. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1050567.JPG With one wave hunting fail under my belt for the day I continued north to one of the points I’d scouted on the trip south. Looking down from the cliff I was dumbfounded to see ruler edged perfection wrapping its way around the point. Holy crap. It was time to go surfing. First I had to find a way down to the beach. The only way seemed to be the steep sandy track that the fishermen used to drag boats up off the beach with tractors. Going down was fine, but given my recent sandy trauma I really wasn’t sure that I would be able to make it back up the steep slope, but I also didn’t feel like leaving my bike out of site at the top of the massive cliff. There was nothing to do but go all in, so I slid down the track to the beach. I rode 400-yard long, 5 ft. reeling waves all day by myself. Wave after wave I rode to the beach, hopped out, and walked back up the top of the point for another. On one of these rounds I helped the fishermen carry one of there boats up to the beach, which made me feel a bit less of an oddity that had invaded their world. There was no reason not to try to go big turns because if I fell off, there was usually an identical wave to the one I was riding right behind it that I could easily paddle into. Not sure how me going big on turns looks in real life, maybe a bit like a guy throwing pizza while swinging wildly back and forth on a slack line. But I sure looked good in my imagination. The whole thing just seemed unreal. After 5 hours or so, exhaustion started to set in and I felt as though in a dream floating from one ride to the next. In my euphoric haze, I thought: this was why you come to the middle of the Sahara Desert with your surfboard and fall all over the place in the while being attacked by feral dogs. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1050571.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1050574.JPG As the tide began to come high, and the hard, packed sand was inundated, the thought of escaping the beach on my moto started to weigh on my mind with each wave I rode. What looked like an armada of identical blue fishing boats appeared on the horizon, done for the day they headed for the beach. By the time I was finally able to stop myself from paddling out for just one more wave, the dry part of the beach was completely crammed with fishing boats and the hard packed sand was covered by the tide. As I sat with my board loaded up and the engine running I thought about the fact that the cost of those last few waves was that I now had to ride my steel framed bike through the fantastically corrosive saltwater. I waited for a lull in the sets gunned the throttle, bolting across the soupy wet sand the receding wave uncovered and made it to safe ground in front of the steep sandy trail up the cliff. The only way that I would make it up the slope was fast, so there would be no foot paddling to keep balance. I got the best run at it that I could with the small area of sand left dry, got to second gear, stood on the pegs, leaned back, let the front do what it wanted, and steered my way up the slope from the back wheel. I let out a shout when I edged over the top of the cliff. After all the fun that the ocean had provided, the beach dealt out the final thrill for the day. |
No Man's Land
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The stretch of terrain designated as ‘no man’s land’ began to seem a bit more ominous as shadows grew long in the late afternoon. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif A 5km buffer zone that lies between Western Sahara and Mauritania consists of tracks that criss-cross through nasty sharp patches of rocks and sand pits and is littered with burnt out vehicles. I thought that I’d planned plenty of time to get to and traverse the border, but again I’d underestimated the slowness of progress through the chaos of African borders. Little offices with very grumpy attendants doling out little pieces of paper and no indication of the ordering of which office and which piece of paper needs whichever stamp on it first. This is standard procedure, and while I told myself that I need to get used to it, standing in line after line sweating in motorcycle gear is exhausting. On the upside, I am now quite good at interpreting anything on an immigration form in French. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1000770.jpg Finally riding away from the Mauritanian border feels fantastic – I’m in! A twist of the throttle and I'm free, out into the open desert again. Time to go find some surf. But first, as usual, time to find some sand to fall down in. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-w...o/P1000803.JPG Looking down at the GPS, I saw that I had been in and out of the red border that marks no man’s land all morning as I rode around looking for a wave. Each time I approached a group of buildings or someone in a truck I expected someone to tell me to get the hell out of there, but it never happened. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/or...E=w725-h544-no Then I found a very big boat. While its location was rather unfortunate for the people who were on the boat, it happened to help create a nice little sandbar with a wave whizzing along in its shadow for me. It was an eerie feeling surfing right next to a massive ship in the wrong place as I heard the loud clang of waves smacking into the far side of it reverberating through the hull. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/L_...w=w725-h544-no A better surfer may have found his way out of a few of the little barrels being served up, but I just found myself a face full of sand prior to exiting. Chalk one up for Mauritania. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2r...Q=w725-h544-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/am...emS0=w512-h462 |
The Call of Senegal
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If I laid on my back and turned my foot just so, I could get enough light from the nearby fluorescent lamp to dig the biggest urchin spines out of the ball of my left foot. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifThe restaurant parking lot in Dakar that I’ve called home for the last week isn’t the most glamorous of accommodation, but it is affordable and close to embassies that I’d been running around to trying to procure visas. Despite the mood that this scene might conjure up, I couldn’t have been a happier camper. As I motored south to Senegal, the waves turned from very good to stupid good. I arrived to find a perfect barreling lefthander grinding its way along a reef in front of a giant ornate mosque. I surfed alone until two Spaniards living nearby came out to share some waves with me until dark. The surf continued like this for the next few days and I mostly teetered at the edge of having myself truly stuffed into some tubes on my backhand, right in the pocket of the wave. I got pitched over the falls pretty good on one failed attempt and managed to put a nice elbow sized hole just about dead center in the bottom of my board. Chalk one up for Senegal. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d...0/P1050620.JPG The pelicans thought the surf looked pretty good too. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...0/P1000855.JPG After two and a half months in the desert, I’d had enough and was more than happy for the abrupt change in landscape that happened as I approached the Senegal River, which marked the border with Mauritania. Near the border I caught sight of one of the longest trains in the world - with trains up to 1.6 miles long that traverse the Mauritanian Railway carrying tons of iron ore. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-i...0/P1000810.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-1...0/P1000806.JPG I’d eaten lunch that afternoon sitting on a sand dune, and now suddenly there was lush vegetation before me and I could feel moisture in the air. It felt fantastic and it pulled me southward. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...0/P1000814.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-a...0/P1000822.JPG The shift away from such an arid landscape meant that I now got to fall down in the mud rather than the sand. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to hop off of the perfectly good track that I was riding down onto the tidal plane near the mouth of the Senegal river, which, rather predictably in hindsight, turned out to be a squishy moto-eating mud pit. I hadn’t seen another car for the last 40 km on the track and the tide was coming up. After getting properly bogged, I took what I thought would be the quick option and tried to get unstuck without unloading anything and ended up spinning the bike around barely in control so that it ended up laying d0wn pointing into the river rather than back up towards the track. So much for getting out quickly. I was feeling pretty foolish about creating this situation as I began to unload the bike. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-D...0/P1000818.JPG Fortunately two German guys in a Toyota showed up to find my yard sale strewn out along the bank of the Senegal River. They rolled up their pant legs and came down to give me a shove out of the mud and back up onto the track. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...0/P1000820.JPG Their Toyota was kitted out with big suspension, a winch, and a roof tent, and full pantry. Their dinner cuisine was far better than any of my efforts to date. But they did have a strange sense of fashion. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w...0/P1000833.JPG While the landscape turned green, faces turned from brown to black, women went from fully covered or absent in public gathering places to being visible everywhere in vibrantly colored dresses. Incredibly fit looking men trained on the beach and groups performed regimented soccer drills. It couldn’t have been more apparent that we’d left Arab Africa behind and had entered Black Africa. Our first stop was a camp on a sand river bar south of St. Louis where I made a little friend who liked to wear my hat. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...0/P1000826.JPG There is nothing more fun gathering around big map laid out in the sand to discuss places, plans, and routes. There were all brands of overlanders in the mix - trucks, motos, and bicycles. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/P1000835.JPG Now traveling with the Germans in the Toyota, I motored south to Dakar. We were stopped numerous times by police for fabricated violations trying to get some money out of us. We’d already had our fill of extortion from people in uniforms at the border crossing, and we were in no hurry, so we just stayed friendly, bought mandarins from the ladies at the side of the road, and waited them out until we were simply told to go. The city of Dakar sits at the end of the Cape Vert peninsula, the westernmost point of the African continent. It is the historic finish point of the Paris–Dakar rally, the most prestigious off-road race in the world (now moved to South America due to security concerns). While in Dakar, in addition to roaming about the Cape Vert peninsula looking for waves, my task has been to procure visas for some of the countries that lie ahead. The red tape fun began in earnest. Nearly every country on the west coast of the continent requires a visa of American citizens for transit. Each one takes about 2 days to process and some have substantial documentation requirements such as a hotel booking, letter of invitation, and letter to the consulate describing your travel intentions. Even with everything in order, the fact that a visa may be denied for whatever reason deemed sufficient by the consular officer can become incredibly frustrating. I dug in and made myself comfortable. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-w...9.22.22+AM.png Dyna Rae got some new rubber. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-w...o/P1000872.JPG And between rolls of red tape, I found some ocean magic at the western edge of Africa. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/P1000843.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1000858.JPG |
Great report! Best I've seen in Ride Tales!
Excellent photo work! Seems like you're coping well with your DR650 in the deep sand. Impressive. How is the bike holding up overall? I do OK on mine with Knobbies fitted ... not so good with street tires if really deep sand. (Baja) Fantastic waves, epic beach shots ... and very little tourism. Sounds like Surfer Heaven to me. Ride safe, Ride Far ... Pray For Surf! bier |
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The Mefo explorer front feels absolutely terrible on anything by tarmac - going to try to change to a TKC 80 in Togo or Ghana. Should have left with one mounted, really. Your posts from years gone by actually helped me select and kit out the DR for the trip mollydog.. Bike is doing very well so far approaching 24K - that's 7K miles on this trip and 5K just before shipping it to London on the Oregon BCDR and Northern Continental Devide route + transit back to CA. It's holding up better than the gear, really which seems to keep breaking. Who knew that JB weld was good for fixing moto boots? Even managed to break my pelican case! No problems with the bike other than an occasional annoying knock on a hot restart that I've read about from other owners and would love to diagnose properly. I'm due for oil change and valve check pretty quick now. |
Myth of the Lonely Wanderer
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When people ask me the standard round of questions of where I’ve been and where I’m going and whether I’m alone, I always have a hard time saying yes to the last question. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif There was no one I could convince back home to do this trip, so it is true that I set off alone. While the vision of a solitary man roaming the coastlines of the world with only his trusty surfboard at his side is a romantic one, I’ve never found it to have much basis in reality. Of course there are lonely stretches from time to time, but generally, I don’t seem to spend all that much time alone. Whether it’s meeting other travelers or getting to know the people of the places I visit, company is usually never far away. My recent stay in Western Sahara is a great example of friends that seem to always materialize on the road, where a gang of us spent weeks living at a campground. Two of the most adventurous souls that I’ve run into lately are Kuba and Lindsey. Kuba is a widsurfer from Poland and Lindsey is a yoga teacher from the U.S. They both have spent time other places in Africa, working as they’ve gone. They don’t seem to have an end to the globe trotting in sight as they dream of crossing the Atlantic on a sailboat. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/xn...U=w725-h544-no Bob is the traveling veteran of the crew. For years, he’s ridden is BMW GS1200 from his home of England down the West Coast of Africa as far as The Gambia. He knows more about American politics than I do and holds me to account for most of US foreign activities and entertainment exports. It was only through the daily exchange of croissant, coffee, witty insults and motorcycling stories that we managed a truce. He’s also the most deadly man in camp with a fly swatter. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1000766.jpg Karen’s father is from Morocco and she has come here to embrace her roots by learning the local tribal language of Berber and first and foremost learning to kitesurf. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/J_...k=w725-h544-no When the surf went flat, I got a windsurfing lesson from Kuba. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1050593.JPG When the surf kicked up, we all went surfing. Dyna Rae earned her keep -three surfers, three surfboards, one moto! https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/nU...o=w725-h544-no On the road, overland travelers going the same direction find each other again and again or hear about each other’s progress and pitfalls through the grapevine and provide advice on routes and border crossings. It becomes a support network of sorts. I got invited to Christmas dinner in Dakar by another rider who happened to have seen my blog. Esteban from Spain on the KTM Adventure is having starter trouble in Nouakchott but found a great former Dakar Rally mechanic to help. Jonathan from England got stuck in the desert repairing a puncture. The English couple on a tandem bicycle were run off the road by a truck and wrecked their rear wheel. No one seems to know where the Aussies, Luke and Ben, riding two up on the Royal Enfield have gotten to. The two German guys in a Toyota 4-Runner that helped push me out of the Senegal River are headed to The Gambia to a fellow German who was camped with us in Dakhla get out of an unfortunate landing in jail. It goes on and on like this.. I think that the point is this: if you have even the slightest notion to set off on some journey of your own design, but no one to share the adventure with, there is no need to hesitate. Wherever you might wander, your friends are already there waiting for you. Hopefully they're not in jail when you get there. |
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Glad you were able to benefit from my thread. Lots has changed since then but my DR is still running strong, better than ever :D ... now at 55,000 miles. Most of that old thread shows all the mistakes I made. I've learned lots since and figured out a few things for "on the road". I should go back the correct all the mis-information and incorrect assumptions. Someday. Good on ya for improvising vis a vis JB Weld for boot repairs! :clap: I used epoxy to fix my old dirt bike boots too ... the sole came off! I've broken two Pelicans ... I should say... baggage handlers broke them. Pelican provided new ones free, no questions asked. I use Pelicans for Digital Audio equip. travel on jobs worldwide. Used them since the 1980's ... but never on a bike. Is the knock from the starter motor or the motor itself? Not sure what this could be. I'll think about it ... :eek2: Is battery low? Does it happen starting in gear and in neutral? (I try to start in neutral when possible) Mystery to me, hope others have ideas. Low octane fuel ... or water or Diesel in fuel, can cause knocking ... even at start up, especially hot. Look at spark plugs ... any crud build up on them? If so, then dreaded pre-ignition may be the cause?? :confused1: looking forward to more up dates and great photos! bier |
Sounds like you'll have an amazing trip. Looking forward to reading your updates as they come along. Safe travels!! :)
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Escape from Dakar
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It’s a strange feeling when a foreign capital like Dakar begins to offer the comfort of familiarity.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif I’ve run up and down the Cape Vert peninsula so many times looking for various embassies that I no longer need my GPS anymore to navigate. After two and a half weeks here, I have my regular coffee shop, market, bakery and I know the gas station with the cheapest beers. The fisherman who watches my bike while I surf brings me a fish to eat hot off the grill as soon as I’m out of the water. The girls at the coffee shop laugh at my pronunciation of French words that they try to teach me. I know where to turn off to avoid traffic jams and when I can ride up on the sidewalk to pass cars without encountering a massive drop-off or hole. I’ve developed jedi-like powers for anticipating particularly dangerous moves from a taxi driver. Every day I ride less than 2 miles and every day I see at least two traffic accidents. Today I saw three. If I happen to forget my sunglasses I constantly have little bits of diesel debris flying into my eyes. The little tree-lined corner of a parking lot where my tent sits feels like my little sanctuary from the chaos of the city, even if the tent floor was copiously littered with the corpses of giant ants that I do battle with nightly. I’ve ridden lots waves and I have the visas I need, so its time to wedge myself out of this comfortable corner of the city. I got the bike ready and did some surgery on turn signals that had fallen victim to the Sahara dust. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/pQ...s=w588-h449-no Before I was to leave Dakar, there was another swell on there was another swell to ride. While about the same size as the one that rolled in when I’d arrived, this one had a bit more northerly direction to it, making the right-hand breaking part of the reef the better wave to ride. For two days I surfed through the low tide and finally found the exits from some proper tubes. Getting yourself into and out of small tubes is much easier on your forehand (right breaking waves for me since I surf regular foot) than on your backhand. The first day I surfed with a crowd of locals and a few French grommet rippers, but the second day I had two 3 hour sessions all to myself. At dead low tide, I watched dry rocks exhumed just shoreward of where the lip of the wave landed as I slotted in for a little barrel and I could just about feel my fins dragging on the urchin laden reef below me. In waves like this, the safest alternative is always to stay where the most water is, which is on the wave. The worst thing to do is not to make the wave and have to straighten out or get pitched over with the lip. That lands you right where the least water is. I made a few errors that a in more powerful surf would have had me doing a very ugly and painful reef dance, but on these days was give a pass and always seemed to be allowed to squeak off the reef and back to the channel. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/FN...I=w658-h449-no I left Dakar much heavier than I arrived. Jonah, the young German traveler who had helped push me out of the mud on the way to Dakar had briefly returned to home to Europe and needed a lift down to Banjul in The Gambia after returning to Dakar. In addition to the strapping lad I added to the bike, I also added at least 6o pounds of wonderful German cheese, salami, and sausage that Jonah had packed in to sustain himself and his uncle Chris in style as they motored southward in their Toyota. The bike seemed to give up most of the rear travel as soon as Jonah sat down with his backpack. This was going to be an interesting trip. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Gx...Q=w655-h449-no Dyna Rae turned from a lithe gazelle into a drunken pig. Everything happened in slow motion now – acceleration, braking, and steering all turned to oatmeal. Every hit the bike took from a rock or pothole was exaggerated and felt like an undeserved beating was being served on my poor beloved machine. It put me a in a bit of a bad mood. We weaved back and forth across the tarmac finding the lines through the minefield of square edged craters. Eventually the tarmac had deteriorated to the point that I thought we’d be better off in the dirt, where at least the edges of holes are less square. As if to call my bluff, the tarmac went away and there were were were, two up and loaded in the dirt. I like riding my bike in the dirt. But this was not my bike. This was some uncoordinated, gelatinous grontor donut-devouring version of my bike. To add to the fun, my rear brake had packed up, so I only had the front to use. It wasn’t fast or pretty, but we made into The Gambia and to the ferry port to cross the river to across the river to the capital city of Banjul. We were the last passengers squeezed onto the last ferry of the day, with my rear wheel nearly hanging off the rear of the slowest ferry boat in Africa. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1000908.JPG We arrived in The Gambia to find that our young German friend who I’d first met in Dakhla was finally out of jail after a few weeks of less than ideal accommodation and Jonah's uncle, Chris, camped out at a compound on the beach south of Banjul. Chris had spent weeks trying to help him straighten out the inevitable mess that happens when you cross an international border in a vehicle where lots of joint rolling had happened and very little cleaning had happened. With plenty of stony dipshit detritus laying about the car, getting out of jail had become rather time consuming and expensive. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v5...Y=w599-h449-no The surf was windblown and abysmal looking, so Chris and I laid around on the beach on the beach like indulgent tourists while Jonah rigged up the kite to show us how it was done. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1000923.JPG We camped with some folks Chris had befriended named Freeman and Osman who were starting to build a beach bungalow and restaurant. For now it was just a clearing of the jungle on the beach, but it suited us just fine and I pitched my tent right on the sand. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1000926.JPG To build their place, they make all of the bricks by hand using sand straight from the beach mixed with less that 10% cement. These guys have a dream of what this place could be and are making it happen, literally brick by brick. We were honored to be their first guests. As they had nothing to offer other than space on the sand, rather than charging us to camp the Germans and I bought dinner and beers in return for their welcoming hospitality. Since Freeman’s and Osman’s palm trees were still only about 3 feet high we didn’t have much shade on the beach, so I was feeling pretty crispy after three days and decided to motor south. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1000934.JPG Through the south of The Gambia, even riding on the tarmac road just feels like adventure with the jungle crowding in on either side along with people, animals, and villages strewn out along entire length of the roads. The smells of the jungle are overpowering. The air feels absolutely fantastic. The world was meant to be traversed by motorbike. A simple thing, like taking away the frame to look out of seems to have made all the difference in the seeing of it. Approaching the southern border of Gambia I had my biggest scare yet while on the moto. As I was dreamily floating along through the jungle scene at about 50 mph, while a kid I would guess about 10 years old pedaled his bicycle furiously on the shoulder ahead of me. At the instant before I passed, without even a sidelong glance (which may have given me some warning), he darted left across the road and right into my path. I barely had time to pull the brake an heard the front tire skid for a fraction of a second and he was safely past me. Were we to collide, I would have basically hit him broadside at full speed. He could easily have been killed and I probably would have fared better, but not very well either. I must have missed him by 2 feet. I stay about 45 mph now and try to anticipate even the most nonsensical acts that defy self preservation. Aside from near catastrophes on the road, The Gambia has been a great reprieve since English is generally the second language spoken rather than French, and Gambians have an incredibly welcoming spirit to tourists of all sorts. You commonly see a European couple or group with a young Gambian guy who serves as a guide or host of some sort. The place is absolutely filled with English tourists. I happened to find one of the tourist enclaves on the beach with cool tree houses to put my tent next to. Which also provided me the opportunity to repair my rear brake not a moment too soon. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DW...Y=w599-h449-no She is a little crusty around the edges, but I love her just the same. She earned those scars. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1000946.JPG I went out and had a surf in the most meager of conditions with the waves standing up so softly that I could barely catch one and get to my feet before they would outrun me breaking down the line. Although not so fun, conditions like this are actually quite good for your surfing. Slow reactions and inefficiencies of motion are magnified because the power that the waves provide is so little, there is no extra, no slop to cover your own shortcomings. The ability to feel and respond to even the most subtle of changes in curvature of the wave is needed to suck the most energy out of the wave possible to keep you moving smoothly. This is how nice it is on the beach in Gambia – I’ve managed to find the bright side of a mortifying surf session hopping around in 2 ft closeouts. |
Guinea Two Times
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Riding across the Guineas served up a bit more than I had anticipated.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif It started uneventfully enough leaving The Gambia to re-enter Senegal for a couple of days on the road and a brief stay at Cape Skirring. I rode ride some mediocre beachbreak for two days and explored the inlets and peninsulas that occupy the craggy southern coastline of the country. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-8...6/P1000960.JPG The guys at the Guinea-Bissau border were incredibly laid back and welcoming, and I found this warm attitude prevalent throughout the country. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Q...0/P1000970.JPG At the first customs stop in Ginnea-Bissau I heard someone sitting at the nearby shop give a shout: "Hey, it’s the guy with the surfboard on his motorbike!" This was Niels, an expat from Germany living in Santo Domingos who had heard about me from another traveler that I’d met in Morocco. After sharing a couple of beers at the shop he invited me to stay at his place for the night where I got a taste of village life in Guinea-Bissau. All of the houses were constructed nearly identically, with handmade blocks and corrugated tin roofs and are only accessible by footpaths. No one has electricity or running water. I watched one woman carry water from the well (about 200 meters away) to her home all day long. At night, we walked into the center of town to eat from the street vendors who operate in nearly total darkness, with no ambient light source from anywhere in the town. Niels does what he can to help the local villagers by bringing things down from Europe, making improvements in the compound of homes where he lives, and coaching the local soccer team. A group of soccer players turned up in the evening and sorted through used soccer cleats that Niels had brought down on his last drive, looking for a pair in their size. Among them was the goalie for the Guinea-Bissau national team. I bush camped across most of Guinea-Bissau enjoying some epic jungle meadow sunrises. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-7...0/P1000965.JPG As I rode I would periodically emerge from thick vegetation to a river valley where women were usually doing laundry on the volcanic rocks that the rushing water cut through. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-v...0/P1000966.JPG Finding place to bush camp had actually become rather difficult to due to the ubiquitous presence of people. Time after time I would head off down a dirt track off of the main road and run in to the a group of huts or after stopping for a while someone would eventually wander out and find me. Basically any place that you may think would be a great camp site near some shade trees or a water source is sure to have someone living there. After spending the entire day interacting with people and communicating with some difficulty I usually just wanted some solitude, so I would motor on, looking for my place to hide in the jungle. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-r...0/P1000972.JPG About 50 km from the border between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea (Conakry), the tarmac ended and the road turned to a rutted out mess that alternated from two track to single track. I don’t see how you would traverse it in a truck, and during the wet season, it looked as though this stretch may be difficult to pass even on a motorbike. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-d...0/P1000979.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...0/P1000973.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-3...0/P1000978.JPG Moto fans mugged for the camera. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-C...0/P1000975.JPG This is what the international border crossing between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea looks like: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e...0/P1000980.JPG After crossing the border, the same road conditions persisted. I couldn’t believe what I was riding through, given that I had simple taken what looked to be the most direct route between Bissau and Conakry. Stream crossings of varying depths continued, and finally the road dead-ended at a river that even the mighty Dyna Rae balked at. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-H...0/P1000997.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-O...0/P1000984.JPG The guys by the side of the river were hand building canoes for crossings and joked that I would need to wait until they were finished before I could cross. After a couple of hours, a guy came across on a cable driven barge to carry me to the other side. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-V...0/P1000989.JPG Rather, to carry me almost to the other side. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-m...0/P1000995.JPG As the sun sank low, the road became graded, my speed increased, and the grassy plains turned red before me. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-W...0/P1010002.JPG At the town of Boke, the tarmac unexpectedly resumed after more than 150 km of dirt tracks. I had resolved that getting to Conakry was going to take days longer than I anticipated. It seems that nothing is wasted here. The villagers use the tarmac as a surface to dry their harvested grain. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-8...6/P1010007.JPG It was smooth riding all the way to Conakry, other than a stop by a shabbily dressed policeman who demanded my passport and proceeded to disappear into the adjacent busy marketplace. Of course he wanted some money for its return, but I had run out of the local currency, Guinea Franks, so he settled for a few Central African Franks that I still had from Senegal. In Conakry, by pure chance I met Tony, the Belgian in the van, on the street near the Sierra Leone Embassy. We hadn't seen each other since Dakhla. Conakry was a hot, sticky, loud, stinky mess and it was nice to find a familiar face. The only place we could find to stay was the parking lot of the Total gas station, which also happened to be next to the local dump/open sewer. The highlight of the day was when a cute gaggle of piglets would waddle in to root around for their lunch. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-n...0/P1010010.JPG At night it smelled as thought I had my head inside the gas tank, headlights periodically blazed straight into my tent, the club across the street blared music until 3 AM, and the military guy holding the semi-automatic weapon tasked with protecting the gas station milled about 10 ft. away from my tent joking with his friends. I lay there sweating through my sleep mat. This is the adventure part of the surf adventure. We got on the road an hour before dawn. The crossing into Sierra Leone proved to be our next trial of endurance. Having come across a rural border crossing I had no entry stamp on my vehicle document, the Carnet de Passage, for Guinea, which was sure to cause some kind of problem and ultimately cost some money. There were a mind boggling 5 customs stops before leaving Guinea, each of which checked the exact same thing. By pure luck, I miraculously managed not to show my Carnet to anyone at any of these stops. After each one I breathed a sigh of relief and couldn’t believe it when another one appeared 200 meters ahead on the road. At the final checkpoint, we found large man in a bad mood, He had an air if self-importance and seemed to enjoy scolding some local folks trying to clear customs. I thought, ‘This is it, I’m sunk’. Again, I just chatted to the police guys about my bike while Tony got his documents stamped and in the end realized that the big man in the bad mood didn’t realize that we had two vehicles. Due to poor coordination between him and the guy who held the gate I was allowed to pass undeterred. On the Sierra Leone side, the red tape continued, although in more organized fashion than in Guinea. Again and again, we thought that we were home free only to come upon another stop to sweat through in the mid-afternoon heat. The final stop was the kicker. We were being asked to pay 50 Euros for liability insurance that Tony and I had both already purchased. The folks selling the insurance indicated ours was not valid because it was a different color than the one they were selling even though it said the exact same thing on it. The army guys running the checkpoint were in cahoots with the insurance guys and they wouldn’t let us pass without a receipt. After 1.5 hours and much frustration on our part trying in vain to get someone to even respond to any sort of logical statement, we talked them down to a 15 Euro ‘handling fee’. We had finally made it. We were free to explore the fabled beaches of Sierra Leone! We sped along the tarmac, busting to find an ocean to jump into to wash the dirt and frustration away. Then Tony’s van broke. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...0/P1010013.JPG A bushing on his shifter had disintegrated and the van would no longer stay in gear. We found a mechanic who jumped on the back of my bike as we sped back 10 km north to find a part that could be used to bodge it together for the time being. A few hours later we were back on the road and almost immediately found an ideal camp spot next to a gorgeous river. Its what we had been dreaming about since Conakry and it seemed that after our series of trials in the preceding two days, the universe had ultimately provided. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-4...0/P1010016.JPG I jumped in and had my first proper wash and shave since two weeks time. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T...0/P1010018.JPG |
Back to the Beach
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/z8...g=w694-h461-noUpon arrival in
Sierra Leone we found a tiny little island paradise owned by a London expat named Jason who generously allowed me to pitch my tent on the sand for a few days free of charge.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif (check it out here: Welcome to Lakka Beach Resort Hotel | Lakka Beach) https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Od...M=w694-h461-no Other island lurkers included a couple of British guys with various business dealings in Sierra Leone and like Jason, had a military history here. These were tough characters, all lifelong adventurers and fighters of one kind or another that seem to need the daily uncertainty of a place like Sierra Leone. After his time in the army, Jason did mercenary work around the world. Exploits of the other guys included a Thai boxing championship and some truly hair-raising survival situations during of the years of civil war in Sierra Leone. It struck me that these are the kind of guys characters are patterned after in Hollywood movies set in west Africa. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CW...xZL0=w800-h427 The local people here truly have very little of the basic necessities to live and it's a sharp contrast to the privilege that those of us from rich countries enjoy. Jason gives some of the young guys in the village the work that he can and supports the village football team. Many of the guys sleep outside during the dry season. Most things are made with what is on hand and nothing seems to go to waste. Tony has carried soccer balls, umbrellas, cooking utensils, tools, and all manner of other things in his van all gotten for free in his home of Belgium that he distributes to the people we meet. Nothing is ever refused. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/E3...g=w612-h461-no Anytime that Tony and I were making a meal at the van we would have a crowd of boys and young men hanging about who were curious about us and our vehicles, but often also really could use something to eat. When the crowd was small enough we shared what we had. Being a spectacle from morning to night truly becomes exhausting. This is Tiboi. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8s...-McM=w640-h425 He is 14. His father was killed during the war and his mother died shortly after, so he has been mostly on his own for a long time. Unfortunately, his story is not so uncommon in this country that still shows the scars of a bloody civil war. He carries water over to the island and does some cleaning for money. He ate breakfast and dinner with Tony and I and slept on my board bag at night. It was time for at oil change and valve check for Dyna Rae, so I stripped her naked and got to it. It’s never fun opening up passages to your engine in the dirt, but in central Africa, there is lots of dirt and not much tarmac that isn’t a road. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hN...8=w694-h461-no The access plug on the side of the magneto cover to crank the piston over to the correct position for a valve inspection was very tight and there was plenty of play in the allen socket. Stripping the soft magnesium plug seemed a certainty if I really laid into it. So, with Tony’s help, a solution was reached Africa style, bodging a sleeve from an aluminum can to shore up the play in the allen socket. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/dx...U=w694-h461-no While we were still congratulating ourselves for the creative solution, Tony noticed a piece of metal sitting in the bottom of the inside of the engine case. Unfortunately, in pounding the allen wrench in with a hammer, we had pounded through the back of the plug. Brilliant mechanics, eh? I now had a nice hexagonal hole in my engine case -you know, where the oil moves around. You don’t have to know a lot about engines to surmise that this is not a good thing. JB Weld to the rescue! Good as new. There was no surf at this end of the Freetown peninsula, so I had time to wander around and take some photos. Faith. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1010036.JPG Survival. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1010043.JPG Change. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1010040.JPG Escape close at hand. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-A...s=w694-h461-no Colonial relics. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1010057.JPG Communication. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1010054.JPG Held fast. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1010050.JPG |
Excellent!
More prize winning pics :D:D and great descriptions of tough times on the road. Big ups! bier
Lots of DR650 riders get stymied by that ****ing engine plug ... PITA. It vibrates tight (as some Alu can tend to do) and then corrosion on top. The popular solution is penetrating oil (or WD40) and HEAT. A careful application of heat can help it break free. Never force. Mine was very tight first time I removed it. After that, I applied Anti-Sieze grease on the threads and did not put it in very tight. All good since. BTW ... if it's stuck ... to check valves simply remove the other small inspection cover (usually not too tight), pull one spark plug out, put bike in 5th gear ... and rotate rear wheel until on the mark. YES .. you have to get the rear wheel up to turn it ... but this works pretty well! How were your valves? In spec? Mine have needed very little adjustment in 55,000 miles. Lots of time spent at 90 mph too! All good ... fingers crossed! Good luck, stay healthy! :scooter: bier |
Epic report! Thx for sharing. Great photography too.
Sent by wing, prayer & ATT |
Awesome trip!!
Love your way of writing and your eye for great pictures! I'll follow this thread. Have safe trip and stay healthy! |
Freetown Sliders
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Some of the most stoked surfers I’ve ever met are here at Bureh beach at the south end of Sierra Leone's Freetown peninsula. They have the bare minimum needed to surf, yet their enthusiasm for sliding on waves is undaunted and they are in the water anytime a ridable wave presents itself. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifThey share waves, rip turns, switch stance, fall off, and shout for each other. Being in the water with these guys reminds me of learning to surf with my friends when I was 13 years old. There is no fighting for waves and no egos on display, only the stoke of learning something new every time they get in the ocean. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...6/P1050697.JPG Sierra Leone was ripped apart during bloody civil war that lasted from 1991 to 2002 well known for atrocities committed by rebel armies with large contingents of child soldiers and funded by the country’s productive diamond mines. For many in the developed world, the war in Sierra Leone entered into popular consciousness as the backdrop to the 2006 film ‘Blood Diamond’. The reality of war left a third of the population displaced, 50,000 dead, many more seriously injured or maimed. Operation ‘No Living Thing’ laid waste to Freetown. Doesn’t exactly sound like a place that you’d want to visit, right? However, this bloody episode in recent history stands in sharp contrast to what you find as a visitor to Sierra Leone. While the people and places still bear the scars of the conflict, I couldn’t imagine a friendlier, more welcoming place. Sierra Leone is now peaceful, and the economy is on the rise as people begin to discover what a great place it is to invest and to visit. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-p...P1050724_2.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-s...0/P1050727.JPG An Irish surfer named Shane O’Connor living in Freetown recently helped the local surfers start the Bureh Beach Surf Club. With his help, they are promoting surfing in Sierra Leone, training new surfers, and run a restaurant and some bungalows on the beach. As a non-profit, community-based organization, a cornerstone of the club’s business model is to use their natural resources in a sustainable way to the betterment of the entire Bureh community. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-V...0/P1010108.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/--...0/P1010107.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...0/P1010112.JPG Bureh beach itself is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, with a turquoise meandering river emptying to the ocean near a rocky headland that tiny Bureh village sits upon, flanked by steep jungle covered hills. The river bar creates a pretty consistent left-hand wave and some rights that pop up here and there. The water is the absolute perfect temperature – cool enough to be refreshing, but you never get cold even after hours out in your boardshorts. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q...0/P1010091.JPG The guys here live like some romantic vision of the surfer lifestyle in California in the 1950’s. They sleep on the beach and cook communal meals together. For two weeks, I’ve made my home on their beach and shared meals with the Bureh beach surfers. They are the most welcoming surfers I’ve ever met. What little they have, they share with me and I feel honored to be their guest. The spirit of surfing is alive and well in this remote corner of West Africa and it humbles me to find it here. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-U...0/P1010109.JPG Money earned by the club goes to purchase communal surfing equipment, upgrade the facilities, provides meals for the surfers working there, and into Bureh Village. They make most of what they need with simple hand tools. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H...0/P1010101.JPG Part of what they earn goes to supporting the 30 or so orphan kids in the village, many of whom lost their parents during the civil war. Seven thousand Leones (about $1.60) for each of them provides transport to and from the closest school and lunch 5 days a week. On Wednesdays and Fridays all the kids from the village come down to play and have some surf training. The beach is filled with little ones running about, dancing, singing and surfing. The energy on the beach on these days is truly joyful. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...2/P1050677.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...0/P1050655.JPG Grommets in flight:https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...P1050657_2.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...P1050660_2.JPG Meet KK, the first female surfer in Sierra Leone: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_...0/P1050715.JPG This simple, slow living comes with some real hardship. The club has no electricity and there is one well with a hand pump for water. Meals are basic, consisting of mostly rice with a sauce of casaba leaf and minced fish. The cooks bring out a massive plate of the dish du jour and a pile of hungry surfers dig in. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...2/P1010103.JPG There is nowhere to buy surfboards, leashes, or even wax in Sierra Leone and most of their equipment is delivered personally by traveling surfers from the UK and Europe. When everyone wants to surf, they take turns trading off boards. When their boards are damaged, they have no way to repair them. I spent an afternoon in Freetown looking anywhere and everywhere for some fiberglass cloth and polyester resin to no avail. Most people had no idea what I was talking about as all of the small boats here are made from wood rather than fiberglass. I added my board to the communal stock during my stay. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-J...0/P1010113.JPG Shortly before I arrived, they made a trip to a left-hand pointbreak. It was the first time any of them had surfed anywhere besides their home beach, which is to say that it was the first time anyone in Sierra Leone had surfed anywhere besides Bureh beach, since they are the only surfers here. Welcome to the surfing frontier of West Africa. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-L...0/P1050668.JPG Check out the Bureh Beach Surf Club on their facebook site. Donations to the club go directly to supporting a surfing community with very little means. If you happen to be traveling to Sierra Leone, bring a surfboard or a leash, or even just some surf wax! |
Schools for Sweet Salone
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While surfing at Bureh Beach on the south end of the Freetown Peninsula I met a Spaniard named Coco who is building schools in the remote Wara Wara mountains of Sierra Leone.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif He invited Tony and to come for a visit and we spent two days chasing Coco around on jungle tracks getting to know the country and people of the region. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1090792.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1010245.JPG First, we had to get his extra bike running after it had been in hibernation for a few months, so Tony and I set to work checking for fuel, air, and spark. Soon enough, we had the Honda XL125 roaring back to life and ready to roll. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1010130.JPG Well, almost ready to roll anyway. We made a quick stop at the local garage to replace the chain ring carrier rubbers and shock bushings that had disintegrated. While there we watched the guys in the most primitive of makeshift garages yank the engine out of another XL125, which are ubiquitous in the area, and have it half disassembled in about 20 minutes. They are fantastic mechanics who can bodge together about anything that you might need from what they have on hand. The parts we needed were made on the spot from scrap rubber. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1010141.JPG The mechanics kids ran around the place and played with their toys. By toys, I mean greasy engine parts. They can probably already rebuild a carburetor. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/BI...I=w654-h434-no Midway through the morning Tony’s rear tire punctured. After patching the tube, the tire was incredibly difficult to get back onto the rim. Tires for small dirt bikes like this are usually fairly easy compared to the bigger bikes like my DR650. After much grunting, sweating, and knuckle bashing, we managed it, only to find that we’d pinched the tube with the irons in our struggle to coax the tire back onto the rim. We’d fairly mangled the tube so that it wasn’t patchable. Now we had a problem. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/7m...E=w481-h434-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1090796.JPG Coco and I set off to the next village 7 miles ahead in the blind hope of finding a tube and left Tony to contend with the heat and incessant flies. The flies were so bad that he lit a fire by the roadside, so that the smoke would keep them at bay. As small as it was, the next village was actually the capital of the Wara Wara region, called Bafodia. Luck was with us: the single tube available in Bafodia would fit the tire. Everyone in town knew Coco from his work in the area, but they were curious about the other visitor on the big bike. There are generally no bikes bigger 150cc here, and so the DR650 always gets plenty of attention and praise from the locals. ‘This moto is strong” they proclaim. Inevitably followed by the offer, “We trade, ya?” https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/81...w=w654-h434-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/4Q...Y=w521-h434-no We returned to rescue Tony from the flies, put his bike back together and we were off again, riding deeper and deeper into the mountains. We bounced along two tracks winding through the jungle, small stream crossings, and steep rocky hill climbs. It’s no wonder Coco rides a motorbike everywhere, as crossing this terrain in a 4x4 truck would be terribly arduous. On a motorbike it's tiring, but really lots of fun. In fact, Coco’s ride to work is what most dirt riders in the US or Europe would seek to ride on weekends or longer off-road trips. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kb...Y=w579-h434-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/su...I=w580-h434-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...P1050786_2.JPG This is the old school building. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_I...0=w654-h434-no This is the new one. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p9...A=w654-h434-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/P1010180.JPG I met loads of cute kids and make them giggle showing them photos of themselves. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/je...U=w654-h434-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_D...c=w654-h434-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Lm...Q=w621-h434-no Coco really knows how to work the people of the villages there. It would be impossible to do this work without a good understanding the culture here and a willingness to adjust plans accordingly. Everyone knows the man on the little dirt bike and shout 'Mr. Coco!' as we ride past and they project incredible warmth towards a visitor like me. Places like this are the heart of ‘Sweet Salone' as the locals affectionately refer to their country. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/8C...U=w654-h434-no In a nearby village, building of the school was still in progress. Bricks were being formed, timber cut, and walls were coming up. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/GQ...E=w654-h434-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mc...s=w654-h434-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/wB...Q=w654-h434-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1010270.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/82...8=w543-h434-no It takes a special type of person to do this job. Coco's work reminded me the story portrayed in the bestselling book Three Cups of Tea about an American who runs around building schools in rural Pakistan by sheer force of his own with no resources or experience to begin with. I watched Coco talk with the village councils, keep workers on task, and try to track down some bags of cement that had gone missing. He bargains for the price of materials like a local and holds everyone to account for what they are meant to deliver and keeps a positive tone throughout struggles. He acts like every dollar wasted is a dollar that the village kids miss out on. Because it is. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ng...4=w654-h434-no The people here live a simple but difficult existence and are vulnerable to disease and hunger. Some villages don’t have access to clean water. Back in California, I spent most of my working hours helping find solutions to water pollution problems. As important as those problems are, being able to work on them seems like pure luxury in comparison to the very basic need of having clean water to drink which many of these people simply don’t have. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010207.JPG We raced down from the mountains, eager to return to the town of Kabala for some dinner, but our bike problems weren’t finished yet for the day. Coco’s front sprocket retainer had failed, the sprocket came off and let his chain jump off of the chain ring. While we probably could have towed Coco’s bike back the 7 miles to Kabala there were a number of steep rocky sections that may have been tricky. Instead, we pushed his bike to the nearest village and met with the chief, who agreed to let us leave Coco’s bike at his place for the night. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1010233.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/P-...8=w654-h434-no Coco and I rode 2 up on my bike back to Kabala and returned the next morning with a new front sprocket. We repaired Coco’s bike and shot into the mountains for another round for the day. The days in these Wara Wara have been some of the most memorable of the entire trip so far. |
Some Kids in Sierra Leone Need Your Help
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In a remote mountain village called Kakonso, I got a bit caught up in the moment and promised some really cute kids that I would have a well built for the school in their village, where they currently have no access to clean water. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif Since I’m presently an unemployed surfer living in a tent, I’m not exactly in a position to be funding village infrastructure projects. So, I’ve shot my mouth off to feel like a hero and now I want you, the person reading this post to help bail me out. Sound fair? See what I mean about the cuteness? https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/r9...4=w517-h485-no This is Coco. He's the Hero. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1010271.JPG I met him surfing at Bureh Beach near Freetown, where told me about the schools he was building in the severely impoverished Wara Wara mountains and he convinced me to come for a visit. He operates the Wara Wara Community Schools Project on a shoestring, barely pulling a salary to bring the most bang for donors bucks to the people of this region. There are all kinds of good ways to spend your hard earned cash, so I’ll give you a few reasons that you should use a bit of it here. In 2013, the UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranked Sierra Leone 177 of 187 nations assessed. Sixty-three percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. The province of Wara Wara Bafodea is one of the country’s poorest – it makes the Freetown peninsula beach villages with their burgeoning tourist industry look well-off by comparison. Wara Wara province has about 30,000 inhabitants spread over some 150 villages, many of which are very difficult to access due to the steep mountainous terrain. Coco rides a 125cc dirt bike everywhere. There are no hospitals. Two nurses and one paramedic serve the entire area. Less than half of the the rural population of Sierra Leone has access to clean water and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die every year from a water related illnesses across the country. The primary school enrollment rate is one of the lowest in Sierra Leone as the government fails to address existing schooling needs. This is what the Kakonso school was like before Coco arrived. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010284.JPG Now it looks like this. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1010179.JPG People here live in a beautiful natural setting in very basic mud brick houses with thatched or corrugated tin roofs. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1010216.JPG This is the water source for the school and in fact the entire village. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1010202.JPG These are some of the kids who live here. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1010264.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010210.JPG Their warmth completely disarmed me. If you were standing in the same spot as me, you might also have found it hard to simply walk away. It's likely that without a clean water source, some of the kids that live in Kakonso village will die of a water borne disease. But that doesn't have to happen. Let's help these people. This is the spot in Kakonso village where we want to drill the well, just below the new school. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010197.JPG Once drilled, it will be sealed with a concrete cap and a high quality hand pump installed to and bring water from about 100 feet or so below the surface. It will provide clean water to the more than 400 people in and around Kakonso village. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1010236.JPG It will cost $4500 dollars to build and maintain this well. I told Coco that I would have the funds for the well by the time I reach Cape Town in June, 2014, so time is short. If you like reading this blog as much as I like writing it, you can ensure that it continues by not making me pay for this well myself! In return, I’ll provide images and updates from the people of the Kakonso village so that you can see first-hand the good that your hard earned cash has done. Sold yet? Come on…. give 20 bucks. I’m just going to keep interrupting the moto and surfing stuff until you do, like a funding drive on NPR. I might even call you at home like Ira Glass does. A few clicks can change these people's lives. Please go to bugsonmyboard.org to make donation via Paypal and be part of the team to help get this done. And leave a comment if you like, so we can all know who is making this happen. I'll keep this post at the top of the blog and update regularly with our progress. |
So far so good!
http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-content/...9.11.27-AM.png thanks to all for the generous donations :thumbup1: |
Going Left in Liberia
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After more than a month, I finally managed to extricate myself from the Freetown peninsula. The welcoming nature of the surfers, my beautiful camp spot on Bureh beach, the buzz of new beginnings in Freetown, and the ever-present hopeful spirit of the people made it a good place to get stuck. Sometimes a long journey just feels looking for one place after another to get stuck. Places that fill in the gaps for a while that widen with every mile on the road.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1010085.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-M...o/P1050803.JPG While in Freetown, I'd procured a fresh new passport from the US Embassy and employed the usual African ingenuity to repair the broken latch on my toolbox. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1010314.JPG I even managed a to leave with stack of calling cards courtesy of Tony on the Road’s mobile media center. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010118.JPG When it was time to head off, some of the kids from Bureh wanted to come along for the ride. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/n-...0=w706-h469-no I managed to shake them. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-l...o/P1090654.JPG Motoring south through Sierra Leone the road deteriorated to the point that I weaved in S-tracks back and forth across the road to avoid all of the truck sized holes. The smaller holes had nice smoothly curved sides that I could into ride into using them as berms to bank off of. Massive woops created by the trucks swallowed up every inch of Dyna Rae’s travel and sent me weightless over their crests. I thought that I may have taken a smaller road by accident, but I knew that those holes must be from the biggest of trucks. If they were on this road, I figured that it must be the main road south. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...M=w625-h469-no The road eventually turned into a river. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/2b...o=w625-h469-no Roads like this are utterly arduous to travel in a truck as you get shaken to bits with every hole and protruding rock. While tiring to ride on a motorbike, it’s fun also plenty of fun endeavoring to keep pace with a smooth flow through the whole mess. I made my stealth bush camp for the night out of sight from the road and as usual ended up hearing voices for hours along the road and hoping to stay undetected. Sometimes I feel a bit old to still be honing my hiding skills. The jungle bloomed around me. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uH...8=w625-h469-no The trees towered overhead. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1050820.JPG The forest corridor stretched on. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/06...w=w625-h469-no I couldn’t have timed my arrival to the beach in Liberia any better, with a fresh swell just rolling in to the legendary left-hand points of Robertsport that I was so keen to ride. The continental shelf drops off abruptly offshore of Liberia, allowing open ocean swells approach the coast at full steam. Swells slam into a series of points to generate the storied reeling, down-the-line waves that are still rarely ridden by more than a handful of surfers. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1050830.JPG Like Sierra Leone, Liberia endured years bitter civil war that left the cities in ruins. The second Liberian civil war lasted from 1999 to 2003, close on the heels of the first civil war lasting from 1989 to 1996. Together the wars resulted in 250,000 people killed. The first war ended with Charles Taylor in control who went on to play a role in further atrocities committed in neighboring countries. In September of 2013, Taylor was found guilty of war crimes in a tribunal at The Hague for his role in Sierra Leone's civil war and sentenced to 50 years in prison. A tenuous peace has in endured for the last 10 years in Liberia with democratic elections dictating changes in power rather than coups by warlords. While peace has come to Liberia, the tourists have not. In fact, the only white people that I meet here are those working in some capacity or another, either for the US State department, US AID, Peace Corps, or one of the NGOs. Your only company non the beach are fishermen going about their daily business. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1010393.JPG Robertsport is filled with interesting looking buildings with plenty of dilapidated character. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ws...8=w567-h469-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1010331.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1010394.JPG I rode the points of Robertsport at about head high for days with hardly anyone to share it with. I did enough backhand snaps to get on my own case when I did a bad one and congratulate myself a bit when I did a good one. It’s a funny thing surfing good waves by yourself all day: its a fantasy when you’re surfing your normal crowded breaks in California, but after you do it for a few days straight, you just want someone to share in the fun (and see when you do a good backhand snap). I wasn’t even surfing the best points most of the time, which really get cranking during the wet season. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1050865.JPG I camped beneath a massive cotton tree that reminded me of ‘Home Tree’ in the movie ‘Avatar’. The trunk was huge and had roots that created vertical walls radiating out away from the tree. It felt like I was getting a big hug from that tree. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1010345.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1010337.JPG When traveling in Africa you have to get used to lots of attention. The kids that you spent the previous afternoon playing with appear at 7 AM to watch you make breakfast and pack your things. The morning that I left was no exception, and I tried to keep my patience with them but failed and ended up telling them that they had to go away. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1050878.JPG At the campsite I met a British girl named Louise who is working for an NGO called the Sustainable Development Institute in Monrovia, which advocates for legislation and policies to improve the lot of local village people in land transactions. This sort of work is critically important in such a corrupt country as Liberia, where whoever has the cash generally gets to make the rules up as they go. This usually results in the village people, who often use land communally, getting royally screwed when a big company arrives with plans for a forest tract. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/1Z...o=w692-h544-no Louise invited me to come stay in Monrovia where I slept on the hammock on the balcony for a few nights and had a great time with her and the crew who lived at the house. Most importantly, I learned that I absolutely love sleeping in a hammock in tropical climates. Beats the crap out of sleeping a little tent sauna. The UN is still here in force as are copious NGOs still helping to put the pieces back together. Nowhere is the UN presence more apparent than in Monrovia – the place is filled to the brim with UN workers and still some troops. The white trucks with the big UN marked in black letters on the side are ubiquitous throughout the city. American accents can be heard all over the place. It’s kinda weird. I scurried off from Monrovia for more hiding in the bushes. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L...o/P1010408.JPG |
What funding drive would be complete without a sappy video? If you've already donated to our little mission I thank you sincerely and hope that this video gives you a better idea of who you've helped. If you haven't yet, I hope that it gives you the final push!
Clean Water for Kakonso Village from garnaro on Vimeo. |
Holding Steady on the Ivory Coast
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One of the great sources of trepidation I’d had since setting off on this trip now loomed 200 feet ahead of me on the highway. There wasn’t a lot of time to think about what to do, so I set my gaze dead ahead, slowly opened the throttle, and hoped for the best. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif The day hadn’t started out great with my bike refusing to run after just pulling out of my camp spot. Symptoms indicated that she was either fuel starved or not getting enough air. While this sort of problem inevitably comes up after many miles of dirt riding and usually has a simple solution, it's still an irksome feeling when your bike kills leaving by the roadside hoping that you don’t have to start taking things apart in a dirt patch under the beating sun. While I worked on the bike a portly Frenchman named Henry approached to see if he could be of assistance. When I told him that my plans for the day were to ride from San Pedro towards Abidjan, he advised caution, as there had been reports of bandits wielding Kalashnikovs along the road between San Pedro and the next big town, Sassandra. A substantial UN troop presence was apparent since I’d entered Ivory Coast, and a contingent of the blue helmeted soldiers with a fleet of armored vehicles prowled the streets of San Pedro. A UN convoy was leaving that day which would have been good to travel along with, but I’d already missed them. As I sped towards the barrier now about 100 feet away, I could see that there were 4 men, 2 of them in military fatigues, talking to one another in the shade off the road. They had not yet noticed me approaching. I had passed more than a dozen military checkpoints since entering Ivory Coast and this one had two important differences: 1) There was a makeshift barrier from branches - every checkpoint thus far had the same spiked steel barrier laid across the road and 2) The 2 men wearing fatigues were of a color that I hadn’t at any checkpoint in Ivory Coast yet. Back in San Pedro, I’d checked that fuel was flowing to the carburetor and banged some dust out of the air filters. That seemed to do the trick and sent Dyna Rae roaring back into action. I was more than ready to get going, as San Pedro had turned out to be a bust for surf. I did a lot of looking and no surfing. Before I’d gotten underway, Henry the Frenchman had told me that 3 days ago a woman was robbed of everything she had including her documents along the stretch of road that lay ahead of me. He added that couple weeks ago a friend of his on a motorbike along the same stretch had made run from the bandits and escaped but not without a bullet landing in his leg. By the time I was 30 feet from the barrier, a man had looked up from the covering of shade to see me approaching and stood up. My heart beat faster. I was wearing my goggles with a reflective lens on, so it wasn’t obvious from a distance that I was a white man. I pretended not to notice anything other than the road ahead and carry on steady forward. Still, no command had been issued from the men at the roadside. As I shot through the small opening in the branches, one man gave an indeterminate shout at my back. And then there was silence. After a couple miles, the thump of Dyna’s single cylinder overwhelmed the thumping in my chest. For all that I know, I’d just blown through a legitimate checkpoint. In which case, there never was much danger. When I’m stopped at checkpoints, soldiers and police usually just want to chat about where I’m from and where I’m going and my motorbike, and of course they often want some money. I took a calculated risk that panned out and hope I don’t have to take another one anytime soon. After all of the fun on the road, I was really ready for a wave to ride. The best I managed was some bodysurfing in pounding shorebreak slamming into the steeply sloped beaches near Abijan. I shook the sand from my hair and pointed the bike east to Ghana. One of the great things about traveling is that you continually get to satisfy your curiosity of whether the grass is greener around the bend than the patch you stand on. In this case, the grass couldn’t help but become greener, as I had finally run into the rain. I donned my rain gear for the first time on the trip, put my visor down and spent the day hoping to punch through the other side of a nasty storm. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-U...o/P1050884.JPG Ghana welcomed me with another easy border crossing, a far cry from the trials I’d become accustomed to crossing borders in the north of Africa. However, the rain had turned to roads to a red slippy slidey mud pit. I watched a huge passenger bus in front of me do a slow-motion sideways drift as its rear wheels spun in vain, gaining little purchase in the mud. I was sure that it would end this comical looking maneuver resting perpendicular to the road, blocking traffic in both directions. It proved tremendously advantageous to be on a motorbike. As trucks and buses lined up either direction for their turn to get stuck in a narrow section of road, I simply motored along the side of everyone. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1050892.JPG While feeling pretty smug about the agility of my motorbike I stopped to take a photo and found that the toolbox latch that I’d repaired in Freetown had failed and my tool roll was missing from its usual place inside the narrow aluminum box. I’d just ridden 10 miles through this slop of a road and now I had to turn back to retrace my tracks. On the ride back, every black plastic bag lying in the mud inspired a moment of hope that was quickly dashed as I came close enough to correctly identify it. Traversing the mud for the third time to get back to where I was 2 hours prior, a hollow feeling of defeat occupied my belly. I was now powerless to solve even the simplest of mechanical problems. As luck would have it, my carburetor had just started acting up in the last couple days. It was probably just a clogged jet but without tools, every hiccup of the carb provoked a twinge of unease. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1050887.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d...o/P1050890.JPG I found a clear patch in the forest to make a camp and discovered that the zipper of my tent had finally given up the ghost, so I now had poor sanctuary from things that creeped and crawled in the jungle. As darkness fell, the clouds let loose some more rain and finished the job of soaking me to the skin. My boots, clothes, bike, bags, and board were absolutely covered in the red mud of Ghana. I simply looked forward to the packet of Lemon biscuits that I’d bought at the gas station and stuffed in my bag that would serve as my dinner. I dug them out and found banana rather than lemon biscuits. Devastated. I hate banana flavored biscuits. It was the final blow for the day. I was soaking wet, cuddling up with bitey things in my broken tent, had a carburetor with a cough and no tools, and choking down banana cream biscuits in the dark. You could say that it was a low moment. I told myself that his is the adventure part of the surf adventure. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1050897.JPG |
When does the fund raising have to be done by?
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They are ready to drill in May, so I'd like to have it sorted by then - about $1000 still to go!
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Hi Gary, don't tell me the toolbox was still fixed with that girly pink gaffa tape of yours?:nono:
I love reading your adventures, especially the stuff that goes wrong :D, but your probably typing this from a nice place with airco and chilled drinks so I'm not too worried. As soon as I'm home I will make a donation for the well in Kabala too, so folks, please donate, don't make Gary pay for the last 1000 $...I've seen the village where they will make the well, they realy need it! |
The AC is saweeeet man! Just got Angola and DRC visas in Accra!
Titbird in a tight spot in Sierra Leone: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9H...k=w819-h544-no |
Quote:
Maybe one day I'll get to drink from the well. How does that sound? :) |
will do Moose!
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Thanks for another great update! Good to see your DR toughing it out! bier
(very generous offer Moose! :D:D:D:D:D ) |
Garnaro- great and inspiring ride report, looks like an amazing adventure thus far.
And great call bringing the board along......surfing and moto-ing through foreign lands, great combo. Thought about doing that on a trip in s america, but it wouldn't have taken me long to drop the bike on the board side rendering it useless. I hoping to head to Africa in the next year.....you're providing great info and inspiration. Cheers, safe travels. |
thanks much guys.
the old girl is doing great - gosh I love my DR. :mchappy: |
The Gold Coast of Ghana
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After I’d finished sliding around in the mud near the Ghana border, I looked up to see oddly familiar wires overhead running parallel to the roadway. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif An electricity grid! Ghana is substantial step up in development and stability in comparison to most of West Africa. With prosperity comes electricity without gasoline and diesel generators thumping away in every building. Air-conditioned buildings and an affordable variety of foods were more common. I saw 125cc motorbikes with fewer than 3 people on them. I heard rumors that there was even a shopping mall in Accra. My first stop was Basua Beach, where I found some nice sandbars and a small gang of friendly local surfers. This was the pattern emerging as I moved from country to country in West Africa: a beach that is the center of the surf culture with nearly all the surfers in the nation living there (usually about 20). As in other places, hardly anyone ever surfs anywhere besides the local beach mostly due to the cost and inconvenience of getting somewhere else. In Ghana, local surfers paddle right up to you and say ‘Hello, what’s your name?” It makes me laugh to think of someone doing the same thing on a crowded day at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz. Maybe I’ll give it a try when I get home. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1050908.JPG Right on Basua Beach sits a surf shop of sorts called ‘Black Star’ that has some basic wooden rooms to stay right above the shop. I tucked for a week of surfing with the local crew and learning what it was to be a surfer in Ghana. Several of the surfers rode the fast breaking waves at Basua really well, quick and light on their feet, racing down the line to bust a big turn before the wave closed out. In waves like this, half a second too slow on your takeoff and you don’t make the wave. The surfers here have somewhat greater means than other places in West Africa and seem to have enough surfboards, wax, and leashes. I happened to be at Basua for a long planned music festival that provided plenty of fun after the sun went down. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/P1050931.JPG Room with a view. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1050905.JPG Venturing out from Basua I found a cape with several craggy points and reef breaks that caught about the double the amount of swell as Basua Beach. The reefs served up head high empty waves with decent shape, though a bit slow moving, and a few too many rocks protruding to the surface in the middle of the lineup. Out on the cape there were eco-lodges run by Canadian and French Expats that had used the local material to buile some very funky huts. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-t...o/P1050913.JPG Hauling in the fishing nets is a family affair. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1050923.JPG Always Coca Cola. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-w...o/P1050934.JPG When I had my fill of surf, I rode east from Basua Beach and to find the castles of Elmina and Cape Coast. These are two of about 30 forts in Ghana that were originally built as trade settlements and became key stops on the Atlantic slave trade route during the 17th and 18th centuries. Europeans were originally attracted by the prospect of trading gold and timber from this part of Africa, but as the slave trade boomed, the castles were used to hold slaves before they were loaded onto ships bound for the Americas. For Africans, these castles in the sand were gates of no return. The Dutch seized Elmina castle from the Portuguese in 1637 and drove Swedes from Cape Coast Castle in 1663. Slave trade continued under the Dutch until 1814 when the Anglo-Dutch treaty put a stop to Dutch slave trade. In 1872 this region, then known as the Dutch Gold Coast, including the all the forts and castles became a possession of the British Empire. Independence from colonial rule of the British in 1947 gave rise to the modern nation of Ghana. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-b...o/P1010439.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1010447.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1010450.JPG I’d been dreading arrival in Accra as I was about to launch back into the red tape nightmare of procuring visas for countries that didn’t want to give them to me. Like Ghana, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) both have policies not to grant visas outside of your country of residence. This poses a real problem for folks like me traveling overland as any visa acquired back home would have been long since expired on arrival. Angola is the major potential showstopper of the trip – a tourist visa is notoriously difficult to get and there is no easy way around the country. Stories abound of travelers in years past having to figure out ways to ship around Angola or ride the infamous road from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi all the way through the Congo. In the dry season it’s an arduous route and in the wet season it can be nearly impassable, with scores of trucks getting bogged in the mud and sometimes being forces to pitch a camp for months waiting for the rains to stop before anyone can move anywhere. Needless to say, I am keen to avoid a long trip through the Congo jungle mud pit. Additionally, there have been reports over the last year of some epic barreling lefthanders on the Angolan coast. Fortunately a fellow motorcyclist living in Luanda volunteered to write me a letter of invitation in Portuguese to submit with the Angola visa application (thanks Hugo and Alvaro!). Luck was on my side, and in just a few days I had the infamous Angola tourist visa in my hand! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1010461.JPG Riding into Accra I found a mess of hopelessly clogged streets. I didn’t mind the slow moving traffic because it gave me an opportunity to scan the roadside vendors on the way in for someone selling tools. I managed to replace the essentials of what I’d lost when my toolbox latch failed near the Ghana border: some wrenches, allan keys, pliers, a screwdriver. Its not the ideal overland toolbox, but it sure feels a lot better than nothing. Driving in Accra is a bit like the best of both worlds on a motorbike –relatively wide, well-maintained roads, but while car traffic is much more organized than other capital cities in West Africa, there still seems to be no rules whatsoever for the motorbikes. You ride wherever you want, and the lanes are wide enough to shoot through most of the traffic that seems to clog every single road in Accra at all hours of the day. Motorbikes constantly blow straight through red lights with police sitting right on the corner. Motorbikes don't have to stop at toll booths and there are little trails across the medians of all the big roads that you can ride right over if you make a wrong turn. It's awesome. My time in Accra was shockingly clean and comfortable. At Basua Beach I’d met the only other foreign surfer there – a Peruvian named Bruno. He invited me to stay at his place in Accra where I passed my days in an envelope of cool, dry air, lit up the night with the flick of a switch, slept in the most comfortable bed I could imagine, washed my clothes with a machine, and enjoyed my first hot shower in 5 months. . Bruno’s wife Catherine works for the US Foreign Service, which provides them level of accommodation that makes me feel like I’m back in California. On the road I spend most of my time exceedingly hot, damp, and filthy. It can pull you out the moment with daydreams of what used to be normal. A brief reprieve like I’ve had at Bruno’s place is rejuvenating and reminds me that I’m still willing to trade those comforts for the daily wonder of what’s around the next bend. I even had a good place to work on the bike and mount some new tires acquired via a fellow traveler who had the tires shipped out but had to return to the UK. I rode right up to the arrivals desk at the airport to find two brand new Continental TKC 80's with my name on them. The moments of kindness and serendipity seem to just keep coming. I did manage to damage the valve of my front heavy duty tube in the process of wrestling the tire onto the rim and had to take it off again to install my spare standard thickness tube. The whole process involved mounting the front tire a total of 3 times. Fun. There was so much sweat pouring off of my face that it soaked the bead of tire. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1010455.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ra...E=w595-h446-no Leaving Accra, I ran into 8 miles worth of gridlocked traffic. No problem though, I just rode on the shoulder for 8 miles right past everyone. So rad. When I got to the front of the line, I found what was causing the backup - a string of 10 black shiny SUV's raced our way with a full compliment of motorcycle police. I asked someone on a motorbike next to me what was happening and he said that the president was coming. Sure enough, out of one of the SUV's trotted the man that I'd seed smiling down at me from campaign billboards all week in Accra, coming to bless the latest roadway project. That was pretty rad too. |
Sitting in Santa Cruz
I'm currently sitting in Santa Cruz, surfing the crowded breaks in town everyday, drooling over your photos of empty surf and perfect waves. The adventure parts of your trip only make my jealousy well up even more. Reading about ur journey as it happens is amazing and serves as a constant reminder for me to keep my ass in gear on putting my own trip together. I plan to ship off for a circumnavigation of South America with a surfboard in the fall. Hunting for peaceful beaches, perfect waves, and even more amazing people.
Keep the posts coming. They serve as constant motivation for me to keep myself on track in planning my own trip. |
that sounds like an awesome trip man!
happy to keep the daydream fodder streaming in ;-) |
mission accomplished
And that my friends is all she wrote. Next step is wire transfer to Coco's non-profit org bank and then get this thing dug.
Coco visits the villages up there regularly and he will provide me the info on progress and images that I'll post on the website (see my signature) and here on this thread. Nice job guys, more than anyone, the riders made it happen. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-content/...0.52.16-AM.png |
Straight Up Togo
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Arrival in Lome, Togo landed me back into a maelstrom of motorbikes on the road. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif It occurred to me that the reason motorbikes generally didn’t follow any rules in Accra was because there were so few of them cruising the streets. In Lome, with so many bikes about, it would create a lot more chaos if everyone were blowing through red lights. There was something very comforting about being back in a sea of motorbikes – surrounded by my African two wheeled brethren! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1010470.JPG In Lome I sought visas for Benin, Republic of Congo, and Gabon. On arrival at the Gabon embassy, they wouldn’t let me enter wearing shorts. Mind you, the temperature was 98 degrees F with 70% humidity. Since the visa window was to close within 20 minutes, I raced off to the local marketplace for a very quick shopping trip. I returned wearing the cheapest pair of pants that I could find in the 5 minutes that I had to look. They were very colorful and I looked ridiculous. On leaving the Gabon embassy in my festive pants, I made a momentary wrong turn into a street that led to a military facility of some kind. There was no sign and I had just gone about 20 feet from the intersection before I tried to turn around, but of course the military guys who happened to be on the corner ordered me to stop, demanded my documents, and detained me for an hour. The delay caused me to miss the morning visa submission for Benin, which would keep me in Lome over the weekend. Thanks guys. Must have been the colorful pants that made them so suspicious. The new tires that I’d mounted in Accra (Continental TKC80s) started with the usual squirmy new tire feel, but quickly wore in and felt far better than the Mefo Explorers that I’d had been running up to now. Hopefully this set will make it all the way to Cape Town since there is nowhere in between to get tires. Getting this set from another traveller who’d had them shipped to Accra was no more than a stroke of luck. In Lome I joined Mikayla who I’d met in Cape Coast, Ghana. She had been living in Lome for a few months already and she and her roommate Sylvie took it upon themselves to show me some of what the city had to offer. Mikayla hopped on the back of my bike and we sped around the city to find restaurants, bars, and beaches. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1010463.JPG Near the Benin embassy I found a guy to repair my seat, which had blown a seam due to abrasion from my boot when I hopped on from the high side (since the surfboard was mounted on the low side). https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-C...o/IMG_0176.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3g...A=w504-h438-no By the end of the week, my passport was tanked up with visas and I was ready to roll. Unfortunately, Dyna Rae was not. Just outside of Lome she began to stumble occasionally. I’d felt the same issue back in Ivory Coast and had used the tried and true approach of ‘ignore it and hope it goes away’, which had worked fantastically well up to now. After riding some distance, her stumbles became bad enough that I decided to pull over so that we could discuss what the problem was. It seemed as though she was having trouble breathing, so I cleaned and re-oiled the air filter as best I could along the roadside and had a look inside the top of the carburetor. The entire time that I was tinkering away a woman working at a nearby toll both was trying to convince me to give her my phone number so that I could meet her sister. I had trouble making her understand that I was only passing through and wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t broken down and I would never be here again as soon as I could get moving. Dyna’s problem improved somewhat, but it was still evident that she was very irritated about something. I had a long ride ahead, so I just carried on and tried to ignore her complaints. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jl...Y=w584-h438-no I spent the day riding the wrong direction: straight north along the entire length of Togo. The next day I was happy to make the turn eastward and I burned across Benin on excellent roads,entering and exiting the country within just 5 hours. Oddly enough with such a well-maintained road, I didn’t find a single petrol station on the traverse. In Togo it seemed that there were petrol stations on practically every corner. It reminded me not to rely too strongly on assumptions for what lies ahead. Upon entering Nigeria, the road disintegrated completely. It turned into my least favorite kind of dirt to ride: a narrow, grooved track filled with about 6 inches of sand. The hard sides of the grooves seemed to continually knock your front wheel sideways to start it plowing forward and have you jump out to the groove where the sand was deeper. Local guys on 125cc bikes flew past me smooth as could be and I told myself that it was because their bikes had narrower tires, running lower pressures and were unloaded. But I honestly fear that I just can’t seem to figure out how to ride in this stuff. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/IMG_0204.JPG Since crossing into Nigeria, military and police checkpoints resumed that had been nearly absent in Togo and Benin. Some were legitimate and some were not. I’d read about the Nigerian ‘Stick Men’ who stand at the roadside laying spiked barriers across the way to demand money from travelers and truckers. Part of the reason for taking a route through the middle of Nigeria via Abijan is that these characters and other lawless folk are more prevalent and aggressive in the south of the country. My route seemed to be a good choice as all I encountered were friendly people. At every village smiling kids ran towards the road as I passed shouting 'Oyibo! Oyibo!' which is the Nigerian word for a white person. Even the Stick Men were nice let me take their photo. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/IMG_0210.JPG I was trying to make it to a village called Kaima, but soon found that was a terribly optimistic target given the road condition. As night fell I turned off of the dirt track to find a campsite amongst the giant termite mounds that dotted the forest floor. The ground was flat, solid, and free of low brush so it was easy to ride into the trees and out of sight without even a trail. Unfortunately I’d lost a water bottle during the journey along the bumpy road and had been sweating like crazy moving slowly in the dirt. That night I learned that trying to go to sleep thirsty is a lot less fun than trying to go to sleep hungry. I had to focus to stop dreaming of a giant glass of iced tea or a bottle of Gatorade straight out of a California gas station refrigerator. As I lay sweating in my tent my thirst grew and eventually I became so desperate that I climbed out to suck out the few drops of water still trapped in my water filter. I swear that I nearly packed up and motored to one of puddles I’d seen on the road to suck some water through my filter. Since my tent was broken, I’d rigged the rain fly to press against the tent body to keep insects out. It worked well for anything flying around, but the giant ants that prowled the forest floor were a different story. One after another, I would feel one crawling on me, I’d shoot up, click my headlight and punch them into the floor of the tent. As I lay there surrounded by ant corpses, swallowing against the dryness in my throat, and trying to slip into sleep, I wondered what in the world I was doing in the middle of Nigeria. |
Spending it All in Abuja
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As I sat at the Nigerian police station I wondered how in the world I’d managed to land myself in such a tight spot and when I would finally be able to go to sleep. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifThe day had started out well enough getting on the road at 6 AM and finding some water within an hours ride after a thirsty camp the night before. I knew that I was in for a long day, but as the road changed from dirt to broken tarmac and then some sections of good tarmac with less massive craters to weave around, I became hopeful about making it to Abuja before nightfall. If I’d know what the day had in store I may have simply stayed lying thirsty in my broken tent on the forest floor. No one seemed to have anything good to say about Nigeria. The north is awash with rebel militias and stories abound from the south of aggressive bandit type folks stopping people on the road. Consensus amongst overlanders seemed to be that the safest path was to shoot straight through the middle, via Abuja. At one checkpoint a soldier asked me what I thought I was doing riding here on a motorbike alone. “Have you not heard of Boko Haram? Is it not safer to stay home?” he asked. I said that I supposed it was, but then I would have to see Africa only on television, which got a laugh from him. Boko Haram is an Islamist group with links to al-Shebab and al-Qaida, responsible for numerous bomb attacks and thousands killed over the last few years in Nigeria. The group is known for attacking Christians and government targets,bombing churches, attacking schools and police stations, and kidnapping western tourists [1]. I had believed their exploits were constrained to the north of the country, but I apparently I need to do my homework a bit better. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...o/IMG_0209.JPG I rode 16 hours before reaching the outskirts of Abuja, long past nightfall. The last section of road before Abuja felt like the most dangerous thing I’d done on this entire trip. Taxi bus drivers hurtled through the darkness with no lights, dodging the deep road craters however they liked, no matter what was coming the other direction on the narrow road. In the dark, you barely see holes in the road and whatever random thing coming from the roadside before it is right in your path. I’m rather used to chaotic driving by now, but what I found myself in that night seemed like a reckless abandon of all sense whatsoever. As I looked down at my map, with the distance still to go to Abuja, my heart sank, knowing how long the previous stretch had taken. I was elated when 20 miles outside Abuja, the road changed from that chaotic mess to a brand new, perfect modern three-lane freeway with very little traffic. I was flying. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, beautiful shining streetlights appeared over the road to light my way. I couldn’t believe it - I was home free. I had been riding for 16 hours, only stopping for gas and to pound a couple sodas. And now I was going to make it. I hooted loudly in my helmet. Five miles from my exit the bike sputtered and died. She would start, but would die under any throttle. After a few desperate attempts it was clear that I wasn’t going anywhere quickly. I put the bike on the stand, leaned against it and put my head down. I’d spent everything I’d had and hardly had anything left to care about what was wrong with my bike. I was at the roadside in the dark in the middle of a Nigerian city. This was exactly the kind of exactly the type of exposed situation that I wanted to avoid. I let the whole scene of the road blur out in front of me and shut my eyes. I just wanted to sleep. Then I got up. I started pushing my fully loaded bike up the mild grade ahead. There was simply nothing else to do. In Accra I’d met a guy named Bill who lived in Abuja and invited me to crash at his place when I arrived. His house was only about 5 miles away, but it was uphill and I didn’t know the best route to get there. Sweat streamed off of my face, and the last of my water was gone before I made it a mile. After two miles I could see the grade steepen ahead and decided that I would need to figure something else out. While looking for some bushes to hide in by the side of the road I found 6 young guys sitting on their motorbikes and convinced one of them to give me a tow. Neither of us had ever towed a bike before and the first attempt nearly ended in disaster. Eventually we figured it out with me doing a lot of shouting "slowly, slowly!" I was moving again. Slowly, but there wasn't far left to go. Maybe this was really going to work out OK. I dreamed that Bill had a cold beer waiting for me. Then the police showed up. They officer demanded that we come to the police station with him which first involved towing my bike the wrong way down an off ramp straight into oncoming traffic. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do, with cars swerving to avoid us at the last second. But he was the one with the gun, so we did what this moron ordered. Once at the station, the officer explained to me how that I had committed very serious offence and that I was in quite a lot of trouble. Mind you this is a place where you regularly see people riding on the highway sitting on the roofs of cars. They put on a show of concern that I was who I said I was and going where I said I was going. They insisted that we call my friend Bill to vouch for me. Even with Bill’s diplomatic status as a US AID worker and a confirmation that his place was indeed where I was headed, there were plenty of other reasons manufactured that I should be detained. I tried the usual approach of contritely acknowledging my wrongdoing and offering that perhaps I could simply pay the ‘fine’ and be on my way, but to no avail. There were 8 officers in the police compound that night and it seemed that I was to be the entertainment for the evening. After 3 hours with the police going round and round in circles trying to figure out what in the world these guys really wanted I nearly lost my cool. It was past midnight and I was exhausted and very thirsty. Finally I let them know that we could either figure this out in the next 10 minutes or I was going to go curl up right next to my bike in the police compound and pass out. They finally released me on the condition that I had a police escort to where I was headed. I arrived at my destination at nearly 1 AM along with my policeman friend who now had his hand out for payment of the escort that he’d provided me. My day was finished. I was incredibly grateful to Bill and his family for the hospitality they extended to me as I arrived late at night looking like a bum with the police in tow. The next day I got to work fixing the bike. After a thorough carburetor and air filter cleaning she fired right up and pulled strong as I rode around the block. I congratulated myself on a job well done and went back to enjoying some air-conditioned socializing with Bill’s family and friends who all seemed to have interesting paths that brought them to Abuja. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-D...P1010484_2.JPG Nigeria is a wild place to be working as an expat. Nearly the entire economy is based on oil revenues and the system is so corrupt that hardly any of those proceeds get where they are supposed to and mostly end up a long series of official’s pockets. The US government has a massive AID mission in Nigeria, but the corruption endemic to the existing power structure makes it difficult to gain traction on the most important problems. Security is an ever-present concern for the workers as foreigners are often the targets of attacks or kidnappings by characters like Boka Haram. One morning we were set to leave for the park, but were stopped by the security guard as he listened intently to his radio. A few blocks away, a crew of Boko Haram had tried to bust a few of their homeboys out of prison, which resulted in a shootout. Before it was over, 20 Boko Haram suspects lay dead. I was having a much nicer time in Abuja than might be expected from reading the news. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-M...P1010490_2.JPG Monday morning I loaded up my gear to get moving, but when I tried to start the bike there was no happy thumping Dyna’s single cylinder. After reluctantly unloading everything to get to the engine, a spritz of carburetor cleaner carburetor at the air inlet gave her the kick she needed and I was on the road again, but not for long. Before I’d gone 10 miles she started stumbling again, killed, and wouldn’t restart. I really didn’t feel like taking my bike apart again in the street, but few other options presented themselves. I found some fuel in the airbox and the carburetor full of gas up to the overflow leading me to believe that I had a problem in the float bowl of the carb. On the last disassembly I had replaced the o-rings of the float, but not the float needle which blocks further gas flow into the carb after it has reached the correct height. I took the float apart and replaced the needle with a fresh one, although the existing one looked fine to me, and checked the float height. I put the bike back together and she started but still ran like crap. Since it was already 3 in the afternoon at that stage, I decided that a retreat to Bill’s place was the most prudent course. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-_...P1010493_2.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6...P1010494_2.JPG I couldn’t believe that after 4 times disassembling the carburetor I still hadn’t managed to fix the problem. There were only so many things that could be wrong! I felt inept and my gumption was sapped. I checked for vacuuming in the tank, verified that fuel was flowing from the petcock, looked for a vacuum leak at the carb, looked for loose wire connections, used a clear hose connected to the float drain to determine that the float was indeed shutting off fuel at the correct height, and I had already checked for compression and for a strong spark on the last go-around. Spark. Oops, I had spark, maybe I no longer did. When I removed the spark plugs the next morning I found that they were absolutely caked with black carbon. As it turned out I had probably solved my initial clogged jet problem on the first try, but reinstalled the float carelessly so that it hung up and wasn’t shutting off fuel flow. The 20 or so miles that I had run with the float stuck created a super-rich condition, and the black as soot plugs turned out the be the new running problem with very similar symptoms to a clogged jet. A good cleaning of the plugs and I was good to go. My head had been so stuck in the groove of a carburetor problem and I was so ready to believe that I’d failed to solve it that I failed to see the simple solution. A silly mistake, but I was happy to have it solved. I had shown up late at night looking like a criminal to the door of a guy who I’d met only once before. As I failed fixing my motorbike day after day I felt as though I was wearing out an already undeserved welcome, but Bill and his wife Ida just kept helping and telling me not to worry about it. I had a safe place to sleep while I sorted out my bike and Ida pretty much fed me three meals a day. Bill and I drank beers on the back porch and solved the problems of the world while his three boys ran around finding trouble to get into. Again and again on this trip I’m met with kindness from strangers when I need it most. It inspires a state of gratitude that I get to carry along with me for the miles ahead. State of gratitude or not I absolutely hate how people drive in Nigeria. It’s a maddening mix of aggressiveness, unawareness of surroundings, and lack for regard for consequences. The evidence presents itself frequently enough as semi truck and busses smashed to oblivion on the side of the road. During the 11 hour ride from Abuja to the Cameroon border I was run off the road 4 times by oncoming trucks occupying my lane either passing someone or avoiding potholes. Once was on a blind corner, but the others were straightaways. They could see me coming a quarter-mile away and just didn’t give a shit. Getting out of the way was my problem. One of these instances I had to jump off the road into sand and loose rock at about 45 mph and could easily have crashed. That time it was a police truck that forced me off the road. Can’t say that my stay has made me a fan of Nigerian police overall as they seem to be either arresting me, asking for money, or trying to get me killed in traffic. Leaving Abuja I stopped for fuel more frequently because stations were often out of gas or had massive lines to contend with. Ironic that the people of a country with nearly all of its revenue from oil have to endure fuel shortages with regularity. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-x...o/P1010499.jpg As usual I drew a crowd at every stop. The demeanor of the Nigerians I encountered could best be described as aggressively friendly. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T...P1010497_2.JPG As I approached Cameroon, the landscape became lush and hilly and I was happy for a change of scenery. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1010524.JPG |
Help Appears in Cameroon
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I crossed the border into Cameroon at dark after 11 hours ride from Abuja and collapsed in an oven-like flea infested room. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif I didn’t care and passed out almost immediately. But I do think that I have fleas now. The guys at this small border crossing were friendly as could be and made the end of the day a piece of cake. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...P1010505_2.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-V...P1010509_2.JPG The road near the border with Nigeria was rumored to be very difficult, especially in the wet season. Fortunately for me, we are right on the edge of the wet season and the roads are still in decent shape. The roads are currently being graded, most sections are pretty good, and soon enough the trip from the Nigerian border should be smooth as can be. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-I...o/P1010513.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-j...P1010511_2.JPG As I rode into the Bamenda Highlands of Northern Cameroon I felt wonderful cool air rushing past my face for the first time in months. I wound up a steep valley with an opposite wall of dark sheer cliffs with vines running down them and topped by lush vegetation. The never-ending bends, sparse traffic, and perfect tarmac made it difficult to resist laying the bike over hard through the bends on the throttle, scraping away precious millimeters of rubber on the tires that had to make it all the way to Cape Town. The steep jungle valleys and crisp air reminded me of a miniature version of the Andes. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/P1010517.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0...o/P1010536.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-W...o/P1010532.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Y...o/P1010527.JPG I had a bit too much fun on one of the bumpy sections of road and managed to break my surf rack again. This time the rear arm of tubular aluminum snapped right off. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1010515.JPG I rigged up a surfboard belay anchor to get me down the mountain. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1010516.JPG I simply wandered down the street in the random little village that I slept in the night before and didn’t have to go far before I found someone to help. With my metal working savior, James, I carried a relic of a pipe bender out from a garage and he and his crew got to work fashioning me a new arm for my surfboard rack from piece of tubular steel. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1010554.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-p...P1010560_2.JPG The entire operation required some bending, cutting and welding to make a bend that was tight enough without collapsing the tube. Get a load of his welder: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-G...P1010597_2.JPG And viola - a new handmade surfboard rack! https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1010601.jpg All of this was done right in the front of his house with the whole family milling about. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-A...o/P1010541.jpg The chicken just chilled in the house. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D...P1010590_2.JPG They use to most primitive of tools and materials that are on hand to make things work. Back home in the US you could imagine someone saying that the problem simply couldn’t be solved, but here these guys use ingenuity and persistence to the job done. I watched James spend hours trying to extract a bolt from my rack that was frozen in place and had the head snapped off. He must have welded a rod onto it to try to turn it more than a dozen times before he finally managed it. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-y...P1010577_2.JPG The shop crew all ride motorbikes too. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-L...P1010585_2.JPG But they weren’t really fans of airboxes. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1010549.jpg After spending nearly the entire day at his house I bid farewell to James and his family with my surfboard again solidly attached to my bike and rode out to the coast. Once again, I’d quickly found help when I needed it most – with my poor surfboard swinging in the wind. Days like this make it feel as though when you’re chasing after something worthwhile the universe truly can conspire to make it happen. Maybe it’s just easy to perceive it that way. Or maybe there is little difference between the two ;-) Just before dark I found a nice reef break peeling across a tight little bay filled with dark brown volcanic sand. My view from the water was the volcanic cone of Mount Cameroon that towered just behind my camp, ringed in wispy clouds. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-8...P1010609_2.JPG The next morning I surfed until lightening strikes near the horizon chased me out of the water and motored south to find another wave and another camp for the night. As usual, I arrived after a day of riding with my face caked in diesel dust, looking like a character straight out of a ‘Road Warrior’ movie. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1010615.jpg And as usual I receive a friendly greeting, offer of a cold beer and a gorgeous spot on the beach to pitch my camp and rest. Life could be worse. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-8...P1010620_2.JPG At my next surf stop I met the local surfer, Peggy. By all accounts, he is the only surfer in all Cameroon, surfing here since 1994, when his boss brought him a surfboard from France. Since then, his surfboard collection has grown substantially, but company in the water has not. Unfortunately - the ocean provided no waves for Peggy and I to trade. Leaving Cameroon, I found a gorgeous undulating dirt track leading me towards the Gabon border. No trucks running me off the road, no massive tarmac craters, and no diesel dust collecting on my face. The short rains from the previous nights had put just enough moisture in the ground to make the dirt nice and tacky - perfect for railing around corners with a confident feeling about the friction between the rubber of your tires and the surface below. It was the most fun I'd had riding in months and I was stoked to have a long dirt track and nothing to do all day but ride. It's the start of the rainy season in this part of the world and I wanted to make some progress south before the Congo turns into a proper mud pit, so I kept on the gas. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ia...c=w626-h418-no |
Surfing Hippos and Other Equatorial Legends
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In 2004 National Geographic ran a story about a national park in Gabon with what they called ‘surfing hippos’ that make their way right into the surf zone from the adjacent estuary. I’m not sure there’s a better way to enliven the imagination of an adventurer in Africa. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif More recently, there have been reports from surfers of reeling left-hand barrels in the same area. Like surfing hippos, some things have to be seen firsthand to believe. A perfect ribbon of virgin tarmac stretched out in front of me as I swung the bike over from one side to another through the curves. Along the sides of the road, the vegetation was neatly trimmed for 20 feet away from the tarmac. Charming villages with lined the sides of the road with children smiling and waving as I passed. There was hardly any traffic on the road as I headed south from the border with Cameroon. There was no trash by the road. The temperature was cool. I’d somehow found this perfect riding scenario embedded in my usual African riding experience that includes feeling like a blow drying is blasting in your face all day, dodging massive square edged craters, and being hunted by truck drivers. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Qz...6B38=w720-h481 I rode about 10 hours each of the next 2 days, making quick work of the road through Gabon. It was fun riding and it flew by as I rode in a relaxed, nearly meditative state. I crossed the equator just north of Libreville and soon after, Dyna Rae turned 30. I told her that she didn’t look a day over 20 thousand. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ZG...o=w807-h539-no A cloud burst forced us to hole up under a church roof until the squall passed. Fortunately, church was not in session. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1010636.JPG The reason that there are hardly any people on the road is because hardly any people live in Gabon - only 1.5 million in the entire country. Compare that to Nigeria with 170 million or Ghana which is similar size to Gabon, but with 25 million people. For the first time since I was in the Sahara desert, there was wilderness without people. I saw untouched hills and clear rocky streams that weren’t crowded with people doing their washing. It all reminded me a bit of being back home in California on a road trip into the backcountry. Finding a spot to wild camp in Gabon would be a breeze. On the afternoon of the second day, my pace slowed somewhat when the tarmac dissolved into red earth. It looked like an endless track into the clouds. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1010658.JPG Gabon is hard at work changing some of the bumpy dirt sections of the main roads to tarmac, and they aren’t doing a halfway job of it; with massive terraced hillsides lurking around several corners in the work zones. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Jx...A=w807-h539-no Heading out to the coast, the dirt road became ungraded and strewn with rills and ruts that creates and incredibly rough riding surface. The clay rich soils dry into sequences of these undulations perpendicular to the road as solid as cement. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/kG...w=w661-h539-no In addition to hacking up the road, the recent rains had swollen the rivers to engulf the treetops. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7k...c=w807-h539-no You have to wonder whether what you’re getting yourself into when the roads disappear. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...o=w809-h539-no On the map I saw that I was approaching a large inlet and had no idea how I was going to get to the other side. I imagined that it was going to be something difficult and long. As I approached the inlet I couldn’t believe when I saw a massive modern bridge spanning the water and it was nearly complete. This bridge was a total divergence from what I’d been traveling on the last 3 hours and simply didn’t make any sense to be there at all. I later learned that this place is to be one of the largest shipping ports in West Africa; with waters deep enough to host even the largest container ships. The road to the interior of the country is being built to transport goods to and from the ships. All of this building and the perfect roads that I’d enjoyed nearly the entire way across the country are the result of the usual agent of prosperity in African countries: oil. As it turns out, Gabon has plenty of it. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/bm...8=w807-h539-no I heard a shout as I motored out onto the bridge. Apparently it wasn’t quite finished yet. So unless I fancied getting Evil Knievel over the unfinished section I would have to take the floating road instead. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/In...k=w719-h539-no After nearly 8 hours of travel on rough dirt tracks, I arrived at a village on the coast. As usual, orientation upon arrival takes some time. It’s not like when you want to go visit a national park and can find that on the map and simply head that direction. I usually have a vague notion of where a surf break is and often end up doing a fair bit of looking around before I do anything else, since deciding where to stay usually has to do with where the surf is. Per my usual routine, I motored up to the beach, walked out and looked up and down the coast for a clue of where I should head. To my south I could see a prominent sand point with what looked to be left breaking waves peeling along it. That was good enough for me and I set off to find a way to access the coast nearer to where I’d seen the waves breaking. After a bit of looking and some help from local village folks I found an overgrown, barely visible pathway from a road into the brush A quarter mile mile walk through the brush dumped me onto sandy white beach, near the waves I’d spied from about 2 miles north. As I emerged from the tangle of branches and vines, I stood staring slack jawed at what was in front of me. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/pM...c=w719-h539-no The setup was perfect. It was an overhead grinding freight train of a wave. It was difficult to pick the right one that let me in early enough and didn’t heave an giant unmakable section unloading in my path. But I got as many tries as I liked. Making one all the way to the end with a few good snaps along the way was cause for a loud howl on kicking out. There was no one to hear anyway. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ni...I=w719-h539-no It wasn’t quite the endless ruler edged perfection that I’d dreamed of during long hours on hot, rough, dusty roads, but legends do loom large in the imagination. The wave had power and speed a plenty and I could hardly complain having it all to myself for a few days. I was stoked. Never did get to drop in on a hippo though. Now that would have been legendary. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-W...o/P1050976.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/rG...s=w719-h539-no |
Great road report. Much fun to read. As silly as it sounds seeing all your fabulous pictures I love the shot of your speedometer. I can't remember the last time I saw a speedo in miles without kilometers inside cluttering up the dial...the things we notice! Please keep posting as, on a more serious note you are a great help keeping me going through the night at my desk.
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Shelter in the Congo
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I took a wrong turn getting back to the main road in Gabon and ended up riding in seven hours to cover what should have taken five by inadvertently back-tracking north. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1010688.JPG The delay put me across the Republic of Congo border just about dark. When I asked the immigration official how long it was to Point Noir, my spirit sank when the answer came in days rather than hours. What I supposed might take me three to four hours to cover would take two days. I didn’t really believe him, until I got a little way along on and found a mud bog where a road once was. Being that I had no plan whatsoever, I just kept riding. I traversed a couple of 40 foot long mud puddles that swallowed my front wheel. With darkness closing, and a storm gathering I started to have that ‘what am I getting myself into’ feeling. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--...Y=w533-h462-no I passed a village composed of a score of mud brick homes, found the chief, and asked if it would be all right if I camped there for the night. They couldn’t have been more accommodating and let me set up my tent right underneath a little open-air covered area with a corrugated tin roof. A storm was quickly approaching and I was happy to have some shelter in addition to my broken tent. I slept restlessly. Every time I woke up with the rain still drumming away on the roof I thought of what it was doing to the road. I had a dream that I was stuck in a mud bog with hippos trying to eat me. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Ij...U=w692-h462-no The trouble with these big, long puddles is that it’s difficult to gauge how deep they are. Never did I want more for some other riders as companions for when things went wrong. I walked the first couple big ones to check their depth, but there seemed to be an endless string of them, so I just started looking for tracks around them or just barged on through. A few put me headlight deep into the water. Escaping from the deepest one was not a terribly graceful affair. Dyna’s front end disappeared abruptly beneath the brown water and she revved high and slipped sideways trying to find her feet in the mud beneath. I dare say that a lesser bike wouldn’t have made it out of that one, but she pulled me though it but the skin of her gear teeth. After the giant puddles tapered off, the track became a giant muddy slip-and-slide. As soon as all the knobs of my tires packed up with mud, the slightest nudge of a rock or rut would send me sliding sideways. I’d overtopped my boots and filled them with water in one of the first puddles and spent the rest of the day with swampy feet. Again and again I hoped that made it through the worst of it but found no lasting reprieve until 80 miles of mud bog had been traversed. It took eight hours. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/1_...w=w692-h462-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1010709.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/35...g=w692-h462-no The feeling was nothing short of elation when I returned to graded, hard-packed gravelly goodness. It was bumpy as hell and filled with holes, but it felt great to have some traction under my tires again. As I bounced along at a good clip I felt pretty happy not to have my bike lying drowned in a giant puddle somewhere. I blazed ahead into the Congo sky. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/zV...0=w692-h462-no I’d ridden twelve hours and was happy to find some friends when I arrived in Point Noire. I’d first met the two German couples traveling in 4x4’s with roof tents in the beach town of Kribi, Cameroon, where Marc approached with a friendly call of “Hello, you must be Gary!” I wasn’t terribly surprised that he knew who I was as the network of overland travelers up and down the west coast of Africa has by now all either met or heard of one another. I’m not hard to spot as the only guy on a motorbike with a surfboard. Our home in Point Noire was a shipyard amusingly referred to as a ‘yacht club’. The price of admission was no more than a couple beers to share with the security guys. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1010722.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/iJ...Y=w692-h462-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Nh...8=w692-h462-no I paddled out the next morning at the main beach in sheet glass water with super fun shoulder high sandbar peaks curling all around me. I spent three days in Point Noir surfing the beachbreak, every day spying turtles poking their heads up at me in the surf like periscopes. Dyna Rae got some fresh oil and her from sprocket changed from a fifteen-tooth to a fourteen-tooth one, gearing her a bit lower, which should help in the mud. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Wo...Q=w616-h462-no Some other overlanders had reported back that the road to Luozi where I could cross the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was very bad and maybe not passable when wet. We’d had a few dry days in Point Noir and I hoped that the same was true further east. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5N...s=w692-h462-no The other problem that we all were going to have to contend with was that there were reports of people being turned away at the DRC crossings at Kishasa and Boko because their visas weren’t issued in their country of residence. This is a requirement for the DRC visa and one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get on the road. You would think that you were all set after you’d convinced the guy at an embassy to give you a visa, but more and more immigration officials at the border were becoming savvy to this requirement not being met and turning travelers away. This was not a small problem as there is no way to get around the DRC, you simply have to go through it if you’re headed south overland. Unlike most problems at borders in Africa it would seem that even few bills to the right man in uniform didn’t make this one go away. I rode all day from Point Noire to reach the village of Mindouli, where there was supposed to be a small border crossing into the DRC. Without a few people pointing me the right direction, I never would have found the way. I followed rutted tracks up hillsides and it looked like I was riding into the middle of wilderness. It was as rough of terrain as I’ve ever ridden, even unloaded. The rain from the night before had made the dirt slick enough that I quickly found myself sliding sideways straight into some deep ruts that I really didn’t want to be in. I got properly stuck twice and had to enlist the help of a local guy passing by to help get me out. It wasn’t far to the border with DRC, but it was very tough going and I didn’t earn any style points on the way. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1010744.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/nt...4=w692-h462-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/5s...I=w692-h462-no Some places it was difficult to call this thing a road. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/QL...c=w692-h462-no As Dyna revved high tracktoring up the last steep rutted slope I saw the flag that marked the border post. I’d made it to the DRC, or so I thought anyway. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1060023.JPG Small rural crossings generally have less hassle than the bigger ones and I hoped that my visa being issued in Accra would go unnoticed. It did not go unnoticed. In fact, they didn’t want to let me in at all. My stomach turned at having to ride back down the slippy mess that I’d just ridden up. It didn’t take long to surmise that these guys were on my side – but that this directive had come down from higher up. I convinced them that I was a resident in Ghana when I’d been issued the visa in Accra, which helped my cause, but since I had no documentation in support of my claim, lots of phone calls had to be made to higher up dudes in different towns. Each round of phone calls started with me providing the money for some credit for the phone, which of course had no credit, some guy running off somewhere to buy credit, and the immigration official running out of credit while having a lengthy discussion about the American trying to enter the DRC. There were three rounds of this process while I lay under the single tree that provided the only shade and waited to know my fate. In truth, my options were very few if they didn’t let me pass. Maybe I could get a boat from Point Noir to Angola? It was five hours before they got the OK from a higher-up official to let me pass, largely because I already had a valid visa for Angola in my passport. I was happy to have made it into the DRC but now I only had about four hours to ride before dark, and a storm was again gathering overhead. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ex...Q=w692-h462-no I saw no gas stations in the Congos outside of Point Noire, so gas always came from bottles sold at the roadside carefully measured by friendly folks. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-W...o/P1010738.JPG The road was better than the approach to the border but still terrible with ruts deeper than I am tall. The afternoon sun had dried things out some and I’d say that some sections I wouldn’t have made it through in the wet conditions. Progress was slow but steady. I marveled that I hadn’t dropped the bike yet with plenty of opportunities around every corner. I marveled a bit too soon. I managed to find the biggest hole in the road throw my bike into it. On a bumpy, steep, rutted section, my front wheel got bounced abruptly a direction I didn’t expect and sent me careening towards the crater. I couldn’t believe what was happening as I flew sideways with my bike quickly becoming more on top of me than me on top of it. Whenever something like this happens, you’re initially trying with all of your might to recover the situation, and then at some moment you realize that it is beyond saving and it is not going to end well. There is no panic in that moment, just calm resignation and some lingering disbelief at what you’ve just done. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/jk...Y=w568-h462-no I was unhurt, which was great, but my bike was now in a rather inconvenient position: upside down inside a massive muddy hole. Gas was trickling out the tank’s breather hose so I didn’t want it to stay that way too long. I unloaded everything from the bike and tried a few initial grunting heaves to no avail. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I shouted for help: “Little help down here, little help anyone!” Then I laughed, both at the fact that there was obviously no one to hear me shouting and that I’d managed to create the situation where I was covered in mud in the Congo shouting for help. I held steady for a moment considering the situation and my options. As I stood staring at my fallen partner in the mud, I saw a way to position myself under the bike for better leverage. After a few rounds of heaving the bike on its side and with some well-positioned footholds, I managed to hoist her upright. A small victory, but now I had to get her back down the slope. It was much more grunting to make tiny little sideways movements of the rear wheel to get the bike in position not to fall into another deep rut trying to back down the slope. I was exhausted after 30 minutes of this arduous process. My hands were so sweaty that I could hardly keep a grip on the bars. I couldn’t really take a break since I still had to keep the bike upright and a hand on the front brake when I wasn’t pulling with all my might at the side rack. I finally got her in a good spot, rolled back down the slope, and put my head down on the handlebar, relieved and nearly spent. The bike had no obvious damage and started right up: another victory. After a rest, I easily ascended the same slope, selecting a different line this time, and soon I was buzzing right along again. A wave of euphoric relief came over me. I’d burned plenty of daylight with my antics in the mud, but was happy to be moving forward again. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-P...o/P1010760.JPG The landscape was gorgeous, dotted with tidy little villages perched above the valleys below on rolling grassy hilltops. As I rode the sky darkened ahead and came afire with lightening striking the hillsides all around. I had burned up all of the dry hours waiting at the DRC border and now the sky was about to open up in a fury. The wind strength increased as darkness neared and I started to get the feeling that I really didn’t want to be outside in the middle what was coming my way. Half of what I was riding in looked like it was a river channel. Just as I started looking for somewhere that I might shelter beneath in the villages I passed, a man flagged me down. I’d ridden in to Magambo Catholic mission and the man who flagged me down was Vincent, the mission English teacher. Nothing could have looked more attractive to me with the imminent storm approaching than the substantial brick buildings of the mission. Vincent invited me to take shelter in one of the basic guest rooms they had there and I was more than grateful. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-S...o/P1010764.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1010769.JPG As the rain continued the next morning almost I thought of how much deeper the mud was getting and how long I would be holed up at the mission before I could carry on to reach Luozi, where I would be able to cross the Congo River. I could have cursed the immigration officials for holding me up, but in the end, I’d made it in to DRC, managed to escape a nasty crash with no harm done, and found shelter from the storm just when I needed it, so it was hard to complain that things weren’t going my way. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1010750.JPG By mid-day the sun had baked dry the super-slick surface layer of mud so I decided to get moving again. Since I’d only been in the very rural mountains of the country, I had no local currency and so I left Vincent my watch as thanks for his hospitality. Things started out pretty slippy and the road still had some really torn up sections, but none were as bad as I’d seen the previous day. There were still some massive puddles to traverse, but I’d gotten pretty good and making my way through those. As the day wore on and I could distinctly feel the traction returning to the surface beneath my tires by degrees every hour and I rode faster. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/nK...Q=w692-h462-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/e8...Y=w692-h462-no |
Shelter in the Congo II
I sped along the ribbon of red earth cutting its way through grassy green hills undulating without end to the horizon. As beautiful as the landscape was, it was apparent that it was substantially altered from its natural state where forests would have covered much of these hills. All around, the hills bore red scars where the earth had been incised and eroded where it was no longer held fast by tangled roots of mighty trees.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1010716.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-5...o/P1010787.JPG I saw a local guy on a motorbike at the side of the road and stopped to see if he was OK. I ended up helping him patch his tube and replace a broken valve stem. By the third time we aired his tube up and found yet another puncture my patience and my tube repair supplies were nearly at an end. This guy was carrying a spare tube with four holes in it! https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-X...o/P1010779.JPG After an hour by the roadside, I left my motorbike friend with an airtight tube and I motored off, climbing a ridge to catch my first view of the Congo River. It was enormous and majestic. And the last ferry of the day was about one-third of the way to the other side. I’d feared as much while we toiled at the roadside, but I was overdue send some good karma out into the universe anyway. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1010789.JPG The next morning, the sky was clear until about 5 minutes after I packed up and headed off to catch the ferry across the Congo River, then rain started to absolutely dump with no sign of stopping, halting the ferry service. I found a schoolhouse roof to shelter beneath and practice my patience while the rain continued to dump in waves for half the day. I was fairly content to sit there, comfortable and dry reading my book until Mother Nature decided that I could be on my way. Eventually she may even let me out of the Congo mud bog. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-r...o/P1010781.JPG |
A bout of bromantic nostalgia hit after some time on the road..
Get Moving on Vimeo http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-content/...5.44.31-PM.png |
Chasing Down Rumors in Angola
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During the last few years, there have been murmurs of endless barreling lefthanders somewhere in Angola. Two weeks before I’d left California in September 2013, some video footage surfaced on the internet that would seem put to rest any doubt that there are world class waves to be found somewhere out there in the desert.http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif I was dressed head to heel in the red earth of the Congo when I finally emerged at the border with Angola and before long I found smooth tarmac guiding me south. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T...+Version+2.jpg I bush camped my way across the north of Angola. Costs were shocking upon entering Angola even well outside the capital city of Luanda. Food in a restaurant of any kind could generally not be had for less than $20 and even very modest accommodation was $60 at the least, both of which were far beyond my daily budget. So it was that I arrived in Luanda a few days after crossing the border still caked in my Congo mud crust and with Dyna Rae sputtering from some bad gas poured from plastic bottles. Fortunately I’d met some other riders who lived in Luanda and had been following my trip on the web. In fact, their letter of invitation was key to my getting a visa to enter Angola at all. My hosts, Hugo and Alvaro, put a gin and tonic in my hand nearly before I got of the bike upon arriving at Alvaro’s restaurant inside the Villa Aruajo Resort. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-n...o/P1010805.JPG The food and drinks kept coming, courtesy of Alvaro, as we had endless discussions about bikes. Alvaro rides a KTM 530 and Hugo just got a Honda XR650R, both of which are much lighter and with about 20 more horsepower than my humble machine. Alvaro is a new addition to the Angolan enduro racing circuit and is currently running in third place for the year. A pang of desire hit as I ripped around the parking lot on Hugo’s barky, aluminum framed XR. It was difficult to keep the front wheel in the ground. Not that I would ever stray from my girl Dyna Rae; she is my rock – steady, reliable, and strong, but it sure is nice to look around sometimes. Alvaro put me up in a room in the air-conditioned office of the restaurant providing me a much-needed reprieve from long days on the road. I washed my clothes, swam in the pool, cleaned Dyna’s filters, and Alvaro even had a pressure washer to give her a good scrubbing. I’d gone from bush camping to luxury accommodation. ADVrider hospitality takes the cake again. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/uG...M=w666-h529-no Difficult as it was I finally tore myself from the comfort of Alvaro’s place to head south, I was ready to find some waves again. I found some beautiful spots, but my timing was poor and there was little swell in the water. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Cs...Y=w705-h529-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1010808.JPG It’s amazing how within a few days of riding this little machine beneath me, I’ve moved from jungle, to plains and then to desert landscapes. As the air became drier to the south, the lush vegetation melted away and was replaced by rocky outcrops and low shrubs cut by sandy arroyos. If I didn’t know any better, I could easily mistake this landscape for the north end of the Baja peninsula of Mexico. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1010821.JPG Riding out to look for surf in the Angolan desert feels a bike like riding to the end of the earth. The landscape is vast and desolate and laid to waste for extraction of resources beneath the surface. Angola is rich in petroleum, iron, and diamonds and is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but despite its abundant natural resources, output per capita is among the world's lowest and subsistence agriculture provides the main livelihood for 85% of the population. Growth is almost entirely driven by rising oil production. After independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola was ravaged by civil war between 1975 and 2002 and is still rebuilding infrastructure. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1010815.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1010813.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-v...o/P1010825.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-V...o/P1010826.JPG Per my usual routine, after breaking my camp and orienting myself I went for a first exploratory venture looking for surf where the landscape told me I was most likely to find it. Each point of land held enough of a wave to keep me enticed to keep moving forward and see what was breaking on the next one. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-_...o/P1010831.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/0V...o=w705-h529-no It reminded me of another excursion long ago. When I was five years old, my brother and I went on our first adventure. It was up a winding creek bed behind our house. The banks had been steeply incised to create an earthen corridor with tangles of roots spilling out the sides. Our parents had no idea where we were and I knew that we weren’t supposed to be wandering off down a creek, but it was just too much fun to resist. Every time we rounded a bend, I would think to be satisfied just to see what was around the next one. But then there was another one ahead. On we went for hours until our parents were in a panicked state wondering where we were and called the police, landing my brother and I had in plenty of trouble. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q...o/P1010842.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i...o/P1010856.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-9...o/P1010845.JPG The same driving feeling of needing to see what lie just ahead on the next point or section of reef was undeniable as I motored along these tracks all day in the Angolan desert. The tracks crisscrossed in every direction and with no indication of which way to go, the best I could usually do was to try to stay close to the coast. Sometimes that worked well enough and other times it landed my in a dune field that I certainly couldn’t traverse with my bike fully loaded and would be forced to backtrack. In sand, you really have to keep moving to not get stuck. So sometimes you just keep powering ahead in the hope that the loose sand will firm up ahead soon enough. Enthusiasm to see what was around the next bend once again got me in too deep. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-c...o/P1010863.JPG Fully loaded and running high tire pressures, I was no match for the dune field that had covered the track. It was an hour of digging in the heat to get myself unstuck. When I finally managed it I made a retreat to the nearby town for a rest and a cold drink. At a street side café a curly haired guy approached smiling and said, “Hey, you must be Gary.” Nuno has been living here away from his home of Portugal for the last eight years and is the only surfer living on this stretch of the Angolan coast. He serves as kind of a de facto host for traveling surfers. Some friends in Luanda had let him know that I was headed this way and it wasn’t hard to track me down in this tiny town. I was more than happy to have someone to show me around the surf and keep me from getting stuck in dune fields. I spent the night sleeping in a hammock on Nuno’s patio and the next morning we surfed a shoulder high lefthander peeling onto a craggy urchin-encrusted reef. I hadn’t had any surf since Point Noire and I was super stoked from my first wave. Nuno was less lucky this day: he broke his board in half and got a foot full of urchins. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/eo...w=w655-h529-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/B6...Y=w705-h529-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vE...I=w705-h529-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/0V...c=w705-h529-no The little bit of swell in the water died after that, but there was another swell approaching the following week. I pitched my tent out at as desolate a campsite as I ever have found and waited. There were no trees or any shade whatsoever, so I balanced my board on top of the bike and spent most of the days cowering beneath the shadow that it cast. The fishermen came and went, the wind stirred and calmed, and the tide rose and fell, while I held steady at my little dessert camp. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4M...8=w705-h529-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4y...g=w705-h529-no I spent couple more nights in the hammock at Nuno’s place and we surfed some micro waves at a nearby beach. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/AM...I=w793-h529-no This is going look rad. People are going to think I'm awesome.https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ZA...0=w794-h529-no Oops. Maybe not.https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Sh...o=w794-h529-no Then the much-anticipated swell arrived. I loaded Dyna up with water and provisions, got some instructions for where to head from Nuno and headed off into the desert for the week in search of the endless sand bottom point breaks. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9s...E=w705-h529-no After a few wrong turns on the desert tracks and crossing the edges of a few dunes I found what I was after – craggy black headland with a head high lefthander peeling along the sand. The wave was fast and long, with the section ahead of you always seeming to stand up taller than the one and you were on. It had had you constantly looking for the highest line you could find to get a few pumps and make it to the next section. If you made all of the sections, you earned yourself some burning thigh muscles and a half-mile walk back up the point to do it again. |
Chasing Down Rumors in Angola II
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https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/bk...4=w706-h529-no The landscape was desolate, beautiful, and brutal. Sandstone mesas capped with harder rock were flanked by dendritic badlands in the distance. Flat coastal plateaus spread forever above jutting points and crescent beaches. The wind here is always offshore, but it never stops which ultimately wears on you being exposed all day long. When the wind was at its strongest, it would blow waves of sand across the beach that that would get into absolutely everything. After ever so carefully setting wind blocks and covering my pot to keep the sand out while cooking, I’d note my failure with the extra crunch to my pasta. My solace from the wind and sun was a single overhanging rock wedged into the sand dune made of the same shell rich conglomerate as the headland that formed the point. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/wV...4=w705-h529-no The good thing about the wind and the desert was that my broken tent was no longer an issue for insects. More woes on the gear front though as my sleep mat exploded. My board bag is now my bed. I actually kind of like it. I spent five days racing along those watery walls in the desert in utter solitude. On the last day a pod of dolphins put on one of the most spectacular acrobatic wave riding exhibitions I’ve ever seen. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u...o/P1010915.JPG A subsequent effort with a few guys to reach a further flung wave beyond the dunes proved challenging. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...o/P1020050.JPG I motored back to civilization with my stoke reservoir refilled and once again very grateful for the kindness of folks that I’d met along the way. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1020047.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/6X...g=w705-h529-no |
Rhinos in the Bush, Skeletons on the Coast
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I rode south from Angola desert with my brain still full of memories of racing down watery walls above desert sandbars. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifI rode through a gorgeous canyon of metamorphic rocks with walls dropping vertically to the valley floor. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2...o/P1020061.JPG In Angola, the level of development had ticked up a substantial degree from the Congo, and now in Namibia it did so again. Things were remarkably organized. I felt as though I may need to actually stop when someone in a uniform told me to. And things were cheap - with prices a half to a third of those in Angola. The highway was a corridor tarmac flanked by game parks that seemed to stretch on endlessly. The air temperature was perfect and as the sun went down, I would turn on my music up and float down the road. Some Kudu crowned by their playfully twisting horns appeared at the roadside gingerly prancing about. Total bliss. I’m riding a motorbike through Africa. There are African critters about. I have a surfboard strapped to my motorbike. This is ridiculous. I just didn’t want to stop riding those nights. It didn’t have to plan very carefully either, as a nice little safari lodge with bush campsites seemed to come up every so often along the road. Sure enough, one of the little lodges appeared ahead in the fading light and I tucked to enjoy a first beer in Namibia. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/6W...g=w669-h502-no There were some uninvited dinner guests. Or maybe he was just the local lawn mower. At night in my tent at the bush camp I would hear these guys milling about making grunty noises. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_o...M=w669-h502-no I got up at 5AM the next morning to go find some critters. I had no idea that animals got to work so early in Africa. The jackals flanked us. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...o/P1060103.JPG The lions lurked about stealthily. I swear there’s a lion in this photo. He just happens to look quite a bit like a brown rock. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/JH...Y=w669-h502-no The zebra got surly. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lD...c=w669-h502-no The Rhinos did pretty much went wherever they wanted. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Uz...I=w669-h502-no A sea of pink flamingos bobbed about flamboyantly. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Wk...U=w669-h502-no I also spied a dik –dik (super cute little miniature gazelle thing), oryx, springbok, and giraffe. Pretty cool. Maybe there is more to Africa than great surf. Regardless, I rode off the same day to go find some surf. Approaching the coast, the air became very wet and very cold It was the first time I’d been cold since the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a century ago. I made camp on the Skeleton Coast in frigid temperatures and a thick blanket of fog that completely obscured my view of the ocean. When I crawled out of my tent in the morning, I wasn’t exactly charging into my wetsuit. For months I've dreamed of being cold, but the novelty has worn off quickly. But was here to surf, so I manned up, got on my bike, and blazed forth into the cold misty morning. After about 10 miles, the bike killed. Wonderful. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-e...o/P1060136.JPG I took the tank off and started fiddling. Plugs were fine, but I found the fuel filter clogged and cleaned it out. It was so cold that the fuel filter was frozen stiff to the carb inlet and after a couple of yanks I got it loose, but mangled my thumb in the process. My manliness quickly faded. Nothing like the combo of a frigid motorbike ride followed by a good thumb mangling to wake you right up in the morning. Owwwwwwwaahh. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/GK...c=w669-h502-no Don’t even need coffee after that. I pressed on and eventually found a well know chunk of reef with a mellow rippable right and left peeling to either side. The next day I ventured further afield looking for a wave that has enjoyed recent Youtube fame and is claimed by some to be the best wave in the world on its day: a long, long, dredging, fast, lefthand barrel with a very difficult take-off. That’s a lot of expectation to put on the day as you munch your corn flakes. Today I’m going to try to find and ride the best wave in the world. Better have another cup of coffee. As I rode along sand tracks I felt a bit of Sahara Desert deja vu. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...o/P1020123.JPG Along the way I met Jim, a bodyboarder/surfer from Durban, South Africa, who was traveling through Namibia with his friend Anna. He flagged me down on the road to ask what on earth I was doing with my surfboard strapped to my motorbike. He happened to be in search of exactly the same wave that I was, so we headed off with Jim and Anna in their 4x4 as I led the way. I rode through a narrow causeway between miles of salt farms, or whatever places are called that extract salt from seawater. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MO...S_W0=w720-h540 The salt crystals made some fantastical looking dendritic branches into the water. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/74...E=w733-h550-no When we got into the vicinity of where I thought the wave should be, Jim and I tried to decide which way to head. We hemed and hawed about a number of different spots. Could this be it? https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q...o/P1060145.JPG When we finally came upon it, it was strikingly obvious. Ah, there it is. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1020115.JPG We hopped around to warm up as we turned our wetsuits right-side-out and steeled ourselves to jump into the frigid looking water with a bone crunching little barrel grinding through it. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/s9...w=w413-h550-no Jim got some nice little tubes on the bodyboard. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/v2...0=w733-h550-no I mostly got stuck in the lip and pitched ass over tea kettle. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/hn...g=w814-h550-no Once in awhile I made the drop and stuffed myself into a little backside tube. By the second day of surfing here, I even made it out of one or two of them. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/kV...U=w821-h550-no The surf was good, but nothing legendary and we had as much fun exploring as we did riding waves. Even the best wave in the world has its off days and we had a swell running that was angled a bit to southerly for this spot to really do its thing. While usually I don’t like to stray too far from the coast, I have to say that after the swell subsided I was happy to leave the drippy wet weather for the inland desert. I crawled out from underneath the fog bank to find another gorgeous desert landscape stretched before me as I headed south. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-p...o/P1020151.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-y...o/P1020198.JPG Soon after leaving the coast, a young blonde guy in a land cruiser flagged me down on the highway. It was Jonah! Remember this guy? https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/XG...k=w733-h550-no He and his uncle Chris had helped push me out of the Senegal River and Jonah and I had ridden 2-up on my bike from Dakar to the Gambia. Since then he had come to Namibia to work for a desert resort owned by some family friends. Quite a turn of chance to run into each other on the street half a continent from our last encounter! Jonah invited me to come stay at the resort free of charge. This place was a true Oasis in the middle of a completely barren landscape and had the coolest pool I’d ever seen. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/QA...I=w733-h550-no I slept in a wonderfully comfortable bed for a change and was happy not to cuddle up with some of the dessert critters that prowled about. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/IG...E=w733-h550-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/vp...Y=w733-h550-no We had a commanding view of the valley floor from the rocky outcrop the resort was built upon, making for a gorgeous desert sunset as the shadows of the hills stretched long below us. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zC...c=w733-h550-no The morning brought another long day on dusty roads with gorgeous vistas. The gravel roads were perfect – better quality than the tarmac roads in most of Africa! Again riding adjacent to game parks, Oryx and Springbok matched pace with me running alongside or right on the road. Some Springbok stayed with me for several miles running at nearly 40 mph. One poor unfortunate one darted for the barbed wire fence that ran parallel to the road, leaped, and caught one of his horns in the wire. The poor little fella's body wipped over the fence snapping his neck. I stopped the bike and walked up to him as his eyes gaped wide and a trickle of blood ran from his nose and his mouth. These animals have the pretties faces. It was a sad interlude to the day, but overall and all I was having a fantastic time riding my bike around in Namibia and hardly wanted it to end. Only a few hundred miles of South African coast lay ahead before reaching the bottom of Africa. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-J...o/P1020147.JPG |
Case Closed on Kakonso
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Update as of 6/9/2014 : Kakonso Village now has clean water to drink http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifWell, no one said it would be easy. Unfortunately the drilling team found some difficulty, drilling 5 bore holes before finally hitting water. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/n4...E=w384-h512-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-M...31_resized.jpg The sixth hole that they dug hit water but a very low flow rate and contaminated with clay. Check it out: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/0k...w6WM=w384-h512 The equipment for the well that you see above was removed, since the well wasn't deemed viable and Coco got most of the money refunded form the drilling group. Fortunately another group with a different drilling technique had better success. Here is the other well setup, when it was nearly ready to go. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l...34_resized.jpg From Coco's last report, this well is now perfectly functional and Kakonsoso village has clean clear water to drink. Yahoo! http://d26ya5yqg8yyvs.cloudfront.net/clap.gif We'll probably have some more updates from Coco, but I think we can call it cased closed on Kakonso for now. Again, so much thanks to everyone for all of your help solving this problem. Please stay tuned for the next project.... |
The Bottom of Africa
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Sitting in a comfy Cape Town backpacker hostel where I’d pitched my tent for the week, I began to feel nostalgic for places now many miles in the rear view mirror. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif I walked into a supermarket and bought everything that I could possibly want to eat. I went into a hardware store and found any tool I could need. I spent half an hour in a motorbike shop gawking at shelves of tires and parts. On the way to all of these places, drivers courteously allowed me to occupy an entire lane of traffic without shoving me over to the shoulder. A wonderful little machine washed the dust from my clothes for me. Much of the inconvenience and uncertainty of my days has faded away. The things that I once complained to myself about are no longer a problem, and in an odd irrational way I miss them. They were the sour that made some of those sweetest moments possible when sliding on a wave or flying through the dirt or meeting the kindness of a stranger on a dark road in the rain. I’m going to do my best to remember this feeling in the months ahead when I’m eating lots of rice with fishy sauce for every meal and trying to find a clear spot in the jungle to pitch my tent. Namibia is long. I rode and rode and rode and there was always still some Namibia up ahead. Crossing borders has become astonishingly easy: no visas, no hassle, just present the passport for a stamp and on my way. I made a camp just across the border in South Africa and found a storm waiting to meet me during my ride the next day. I hit the coast about 100 miles north of Cape Town with huge storm surf furiously pounding on the shore. My target was a classic lefthand reefbreak, but with the chaotic mess that the ocean had become, I couldn’t even tell where the spot was. There was a big campsite right on the beach, but with the storm raging, I was the only person staying there. The next morning, the storm had subsided, the surf cleaned up and as I sipped my morning coffee I began to see some defined lines forming up on the reef. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-O...o/P1020215.JPG As the tide rose, a couple of local surfers appeared in the line-up and I suited up to join them. Getting out involved slogging your way through thick stands of bull kelp with their holdfasts attached to the shallower parts of the reef. Trying to dodge the kelp paddling into a wave made it feel like surfing back home in Northern California. I surfed fantastic head-high walls in light offshore winds with four of the local riders that morning. The inside pitched over a shallow chunk of reef and I got a few quick, super easy and nearly dry little tubes through that section. By the afternoon, everyone was finished and after running back to my campsite to scarf two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had it all to myself for the rest of the day which was just too much fun. The campsite had endless hot showers that made coming in from the surf a total joy. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Gg...g=w669-h501-no A motorcycle trip: possibly the only time in your life when you will store your olive oil next to your chain lube. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p9...Y=w671-h503-no I went to sleep excited for what I’d find the next day, but woke up to another stormy mess in the ocean showed no signs of letting up. I’d caught a lucky break between storms on that first day and after 4 more days of waiting in the wet, my patience gave out and it was time to head to Cape Town. I laughed to myself when I got under way that after all this way, it was only a few hours ride ahead to Cape Town. I was glad for it as well, given the state of my bike. The rear tire was absolutely done, the front brake pads had only the smallest fraction of a millimeter left to burn, and the rear brake pads were on the metal. The rear tire was starting to show the steel belting in one spot, which can be dangerous, so as silly as it seems I took the only preventative measure I could think of. It is not a good sign when you start putting tube patches on the outside of your tire. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-D...o/P1020217.JPG I removed the rear pads and dug my spare ones out to find that I’d carried the wrong brake pads all the way from London. Now I had no pads in the caliper at all, so I had to take care not to hit my rear brake. The rain started in again the morning I headed off – less than ideal conditions to be short on braking power. No problem, I’ll ride slowly. It’s only a hundred and twenty miles, perfect tarmac the whole way. Unfortunately, the road leading away from the coast was under construction and the rain made it super slippy. With poor traction it becomes reflexive to use your rear brake, since using the front brake can easily cause the front wheel to wash out when turning, resulting in a rapid face plant to the dirt. It took total focus not to touch my rear brake for that stretch, but eventually the tarmac returned and I sped along to Cape Town. In Cape Town I found the great guys at Outriders moto shop to help me sort out my bike. How luxurious it felt to watch someone else wrestle a tire on to my rim while I stood by drinking a beer with the guys in the garage. Dyna Rae got some new rubber on the rear wheel and fresh set of brake pads front and rear. After tucking into the backpackers in Cape Town, I found a place to change her oil, clean the fuel and air filters, check the valves, lube the cables, replace the headlight bulb, and redo some electrical connections. With a little TLC, she was running smooth and feeling strong again. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ZV...8=w671-h503-no After a couple days in Cape Town, I met up with my good friend Mike from California who is to join me riding the stretch from Cape Town to Tanzania. Mike is a dirt rider and a surfer who was with us on the Circle the West journey on his DR350 the summer before I’d left the US. While we set to finding Mike a bike to ride and figuring out logistics, we had a look around Cape Town. For some reason we decided to hike to the top of Table Mountain on a day that the top was completely shrouded in a bank of fog - the ‘tablecloth’ flowed down the slopes and over us as we ascended into the mist. One of the wonders of the natural world and we decided to climb it when we could hardly see anything. Very well done, American tourists. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/wT...E=w671-h503-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/MC...0=w671-h503-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/OO...Q=w671-h503-no In Swakopmund, Namibia I’d met a Samantha, a UK doctor living in Cape Town, and also a surfer. Mike and I met up with Sam and her friend Carla for a few days of super fun longboarding at the south facing beaches of the Cape Town where the wind always seems to blow offshore. The water was bone chilling, but we were a hardy little surf crew and quickly had steaming chai lattes from in hand upon exiting the water. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-3...o/IMG_0640.JPG Sam is an adventurous type and I had to stop her from making off with my bike. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6...-no/photo1.jpg Unfortunately the registration system changed this year in South Africa, requiring up to a month wait for foreigners to acquire something called a Traffic Register Number to register a vehicle in their own name. They wouldn’t even let Mike submit the application without proof of residence in Cape Town in the form of a bank statement or a power bill. Even a letter from the management of the backpacker place stating that we lived there wouldn’t suffice. So that left us running around to banks trying to open an account. This was turning into a major fandango. The only alternative was to have a bike registered under someone else's name, but that could only add trouble to border crossings. We enlisted some help from a guy named Alex who knew his way around the traffic departments in Cape Town via his business called Drive Africa. By using his address and contacts in the traffic department he saved us weeks of time for getting on the road. In all it took us about a week and a half get a bike sorted and on the road. Mike went with the low budget option of a Chinese manufactured 250cc bike. The thing is obviously of dubious quality, with plenty of unnecessary colorful plastic bits bolted here and there, but the cost was less than half of its Japanese counterpart. Never mind the less than 6 inches of dodgy feeling suspension travel, it’s got radical off-road styling. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-a...o/P1020255.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1020250.JPG The Chinese Dream only broke down twice on the way out of Cape Town. The first time, the battery wasn’t charging properly due to a connection that had come loose and the second time, a faulty retainer clip had allowed the exhaust to burn a hole through the rear brake line creating a little brake fluid fountain every time he used it. Half the adventure may just be keeping this thing going. The upside is that that most of Africa is riding around on Chinese made bikes like this anyway, so if we can’t fix it, surely someone else can. This model from Bashan Motors is called the Xplode. We really hope the Xplode doesn’t explode. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w...c=w671-h503-no The cows gave moos of approval for Chinese Dream https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Aw...c=w671-h503-no and rainbows appeared overhead. I think we’re going to be OK. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-4...o/P1020272.JPG From Cape Town we rode along the coast to the southern tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas that marks the boundary between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Warm turquoise waters and Indian Ocean swells lay ahead. This was it, the bottom of the continent, the point I’d been aiming towards for eight and a half months; riding through deserts, mountains, and jungles, across rivers, mud bogs, and dune fields. It seems like ages ago that I collected my bike in a London shipyard warehouse and pointed her south towards the straight of Gibraltar. I can hardly believe that I’m about to turn around and ride back up the other side of Africa. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1020267.JPG |
Cycles South
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We reached Cape Agulhas at the leading edge of a storm and turned north to begin the journey back to the top of Africa along the east Coast of the continent. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifWith my friend Mike from California having joined me in Cape Town, I would have company on the road all the way to Tanzania. In true feral surf tour fashion, we camped rough when required. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T...o/P1020491.JPG The first stop on this surf tour was a tiny little pocket bay that hosts a rocky righthand pointbreak at one end. The swell cranked up, creating a good size wave with a messy jacking take-off in a field of rock boils and a short wall that allowed a few turns before it moved near to a deep water channel that turned the wave into a giant pregnant musher. She was pushing 8 months. After riding lefts most of the way through West Africa, I was just happy to do a bottom turn facing the wave. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zk...HK_g=w771-h503 At the peak of the swell it was a bit of tricky business to launch off the rocks without getting bounced around like a pinball. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/MX...3WTk=w718-h538 This is winter in South Africa, prime time for big swells, and so far we haven’t been disappointed. After the swell subsided we got on the road knowing that another one was stacked up right behind it and we knew right where we wanted to be when it arrived. Jefferey’s Bay is a place that looms large in the imagination of surfers the world round. Arguably the world’s best righthand pointbreak, it ropes in swell energy from storms in the roaring 40’s and turns it into a freak of nature: a kilometer long stretch of coast with perfect reeling walls of water for surfers to race along. The black volcanic reef is oriented such that it holds the sand delivered from up-current securely in place to create the perfectly the groomed walls that this place is famous for. It has been surfed since the mid-1960’s and since then has become a Mecca-like pilgrimage for traveling surfers, in the same league with treks to Hawaii and Indonesia. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/S4...A=w718-h538-no The waves at J-bay lend themselves to high-line speed runs, deep bottom turns, arcing carves, and midface snaps in the pocket. The star of the show is the chunk of reef called Supertubes, where multiple tube sections pitch out as you speed along. Its super duper. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fJ...I=w717-h538-no You can ride a barrel with your buddy right behind you riding a barrel. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/wf...Y=w893-h538-no Sometimes when you pull into a tube a rainbow appears overhead with unicorns flying around and magical flowers sprout on the beach. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/rB...vuteyU=s471-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/64...M=w717-h538-no Unfortunately unicorns cannot be photographed. To my taste, Supers is just about the perfect wave to ride with its perfectly groomed walls and tube sections. There are even nice little keyhole channels of deep water in the reef to help you get in and out of the break. A down-side it is that sharks prowl the lineup from time to time. South Africa has got to be the sharkiest place on the planet to be a surfer. Nearly every South African surfer that you meet has a shark story of one sort or another. The last time I was here, surfing a place called Nahoon Reef, a week after I’d left a surfer was filmed being grabbed by a shark on the arm just as he was taking off on a wave. The eerie footage of the shark silhouetted in the wall of the wave as he makes for the surfer became a hit on Youtube. This time around, the day before we arrived in J-bay, a great white briefly appeared and scared everyone out of the water for a few hours. I’ll be happy to get my waves in South Africa without a shark story of my own. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9y...0=w718-h538-no The day that we arrived it was too small to surf Supers, but Mike and I rode some really fun waves further down the point, where the waves break a bit easier and slower. The next morning the swell cranked up and we rolled out of our beds to find offshore winds and Supers doing its thing at about 6 foot. I scrambled into the lineup and began to find my feet, remembering what this wave is like. The last time I rode it was 14 years ago when I was a rambling surfer hopping on and off of buses in Africa. Some of the surroundings have changed since then, but I was happy to find that the wave hasn’t changed one bit. A photographer called Ross Turner generously shared some of his fantastic shots from the week, which you’ll see throughout this post. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ZK...8=w984-h483-no The crowd was mellow and per local parlance, ‘the waves were cooking bru’. It always takes me a while to get used to surfing a wave like this. You don’t have to be super quick to surf it well, but you do have to be smooth and read the wave correctly. On my second wave, I did a fast carving top turn then layed into a deep bottom turn, waiting for the next barrel section to stand up in front of me. Here it comes, get back up on the face and get on the gas. I did a half snap two thirds of the way up the wave face as the lip started to pitch above my head and I held steady in the pocket. The lip charged ahead as I looked through the almond shaped window of the tube. Stay high, drive through to the opening. I was buffeted by a few chunks of the lip collapsing on me I watched the opening recede away from me and I knew that I wasn’t going to make this one. I didn’t care very much. It felt fantastic anyway. I surfed all day in light offshore winds and a sparse crowd and managed a few good carves, snaps and tube rides. By my own personal standards (ego-cushioningly low), I was ripping. Surfing J-bay is all about finding your line, a path that suits both the wave and rider. I suppose that all of surfing is this way, its just that the waves in J-bay make it strikingly obvious. I believe that it was the former world champion and J-bay resident Derek Hynd who once commented that Surpertubes isn’t actually a hard wave to ride, but it is a hard wave to ride well. It feels like a surfing analog to Michelangelo’s perspective on sculpture: the figure already exits within the marble; you just have to remove the unnecessary bits. There are endless possible lines on such a perfect watery canvas and you just have to find the one you want to draw and leave out anything that doesn’t add to the ride. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1020344.JPG People were stoked. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/EX...k=w874-h538-nophoto by Ross TurnerAs the storm grew nearer, the swell boosted and the wind strengthened. It rained during the night and in the morning the waves were 8-10 feet and with a nasty strong cross-offshore wind. The ‘devil wind’ they call it. The wind made getting into waves difficult and created warbles in the lip that would cause unmakable sections to throw over here and there. Picking the right one was key. Grant ‘Twiggy’ Baker was killing it. The guy shows up in my hometown to win the Mavericks big wave contest and then shows us how it's done at Supers. Legend. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nW...E=w912-h538-nophoto by Ross Turnerhttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/jR...I=w935-h538-no We watched for most of the morning, hoping that the wind would mellow out. When it didn’t, it was time to charge out anyway. I stood at the keyhole channel at the top of Supers for 20 minutes behind a local guy holding a seven-foot gun waiting for some sort of break in the sets, but there was hardly anything. My rationale was that this guy knows the place better than I do, when he goes, I’ll go. But he never did. So I jumped in at a moment when it looked slightly less punishing. The current swept me way down the point before I made it out the back, making for a long paddle back to the top of Supers. By the time it was starting to get dark, I’d only caught one wave. Something manageable looking marched towards me and I swung around. The offshore had me hung up in the lip, but I was already committed. I free fell midway down the face and got whipped over by the lip giving my neck a good wrenching. After that sad display, all I felt like doing was drifting down towards the point and finding something to ride in before it was dark https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ib...M=w957-h538-no The next day the storm had moved eastward away from the coast and the swell and wind mellowed out leaving us with 2 more days of perfect 6-foot waves to ride. I earned some redemption from my flogging the previous day snagging a couple of the big sets, finding a few tube rides and laying down some decent carves. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...mi_MG_0621.JPGphoto by Ross TurnerHad enough of the epic lineup and tube photos? One more. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/70...k=w984-h508-no Ok, just one more. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/NX...k=w960-h538-nophoto by Ross TurnerAfter a final surf at Supers it was time to pack up and leave the legend behind. Our timing couldn’t have been perfect really as the Billabong Pro World Championship Tour (WCT) was about to descend onto J-bay turning the shoreline into a circus and filling the water with the best surfers in the world. While it would have been a blast to watch the show, given the choice I’ll take our 5 days of relatively uncrowded waves any day. I would spend the next week feeling my stiff neck that resulted from my flogging on the big day and replaying a number rides over again in my head. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/eC...A=w892-h538-nophoto by Ross TurnerFrom J-bay, Mike and I rode into the rolling grassy hills dotted with traditional roundel huts of the Transkei Region where life moves slowly and people live simply. We wound along a strip of rough asphalt approaching the Wild Coast of South Africa where we passed one hilltop village after another with no shortage of kids waving and smiling as we rode past. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/DW...8=w840-h538-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ck...4=w854-h538-no We ripped down rocky dirt tracks that paralleled the coast jutting out towards the ocean and then arcing back inland to traverse a river valley. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/FY...8=w956-h538-no We found a number of pocket bays to surf with plenty of size but decidedly mediocre shape. It was the landscape and people that that captivated us here more than anything else. We probably had the best campsites of anywhere yet in South Africa, perched atop trimmed grassy hills and looking right down on the surf. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/y2...8=w729-h538-no South of the industrial center of Durban, I finally got to take the wetsuit off again to ride an easy, rippable righthander breaking along a small rocky headland. I surfed all day long in crystal blue water and never even got cold. We found some punchy quick waves at Balito Bay, which, like J-bay was also gearing up for contest season. A World Qualifying Series (WQS) prime event (highest level event below the WCT) was starting in 2 days time, and the lineup was already full of wave hungry competitors. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/dn...Y=w957-h538-no Mike and I have had a blast ripping through South Africa surfing. The waves have been truly fantastic, but I think we’re both ready to leave behind the perfect roads, comfortable accommodation, and general high level of civilization found here. It’s time to head north to the wild spaces of the continent where everything feels a bit less predictable. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/v0...8=w984-h501-no |
Thank you for sharing your trip! I'm always happy if I see a new posting here!
Well written, nice pictures - definitively the best current trip to follow at the web :thumbup1: Safe travels, Surfy |
The Mozambique Sandbox
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1020496.JPG
Traversing the Kwazulu-Natal Coast of South Africa we didn’t know whether or not Mozambique would let us into the country. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifFor 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AH...s=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/7Y...0=w794-h493-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/O-...Q=w794-h447-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H...o/P1020497.JPG 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Tp...c=w794-h447-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Xf...I=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6...o/P1020517.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/17...0=w794-h530-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/oI...M=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Fs...A=w720-h540-no 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? https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Tl...0=w794-h447-no 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. |
Congrats
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!
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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?! |
Kalahari Beauty
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/BH...NwCA=w569-h427
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. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gif 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/QY...3lbI=w685-h514 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...o/P1010375.JPG 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2A...g=w687-h516-no We foraged for food https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/14...Y=w688-h516-no We uncovered artifacts https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/B9...g=w687-h516-no We rocked out https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Vq...E=w938-h480-no In desert-chic style https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mu...Y=w687-h516-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Ft...s=w687-h516-no In the north of Botswana, Mike got the tunes cranking and the good times rolling. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ex...g=w687-h516-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/G3...0=w687-h516-no Jamie looked cute under a tree. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/la...8=w687-h516-no I set up our camp in desert as the sun went down and got a kiss for my trouble. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/--...E=w687-h516-no As the sun went down we curled up for a frigid night amongst the sand and thorny things of the Kalahari https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/H6...8=w687-h516-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Um...k=w687-h516-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/OS...g=w641-h516-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/7g...M=w688-h516-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/oi...4=w687-h516-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ho...g=w687-h516-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N...o/P1060269.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1I...Y=w688-h516-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/O1...U=w688-h516-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/iS...Q=w688-h516-no We rode north towards Chobe national park mostly eating a steady diet of gas station fare and developed a persistent habit of Coca-Cola. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Ct...8=w603-h516-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/we...c=w687-h516-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...o/P1010593.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/5W...o=w687-h516-no |
Kalahari Beauty 2
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.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Wp...Y=w688-h516-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-K...o/P1010622.JPG https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/YA...0=w687-h516-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-j...o/P1010694.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/pF...I=w688-h516-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/aM...g=w793-h516-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-k...o/P1010666.JPG 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/nX...M=w688-h516-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/P7...s=w687-h516-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/rx...0=w687-h516-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/lB...E=w687-h516-no 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. ;-) |
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.
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hey thanks loads Jim - glad you're digging it - I'll keep em coming :thumbup1:
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Been following your trip for a while now. Great reading and brill pics :clap:
Tried surfing a few weeks ago on hols with my daughter but spent mor time under the water than on top of it! doh Think I'll stick to surfing this forum... at least I can drink some bier whilst surfing :mchappy: |
A Rift in the Heart of Africa
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Vo...xCmA=w551-h541
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. http://bugsonmyboard.org/wp-includes.../img/trans.gifWe'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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/fz...4=w719-h540-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4f...0=w719-h540-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h...o/P1010744.JPG And rode and camped. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/au...8=w732-h550-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/6i...o=w732-h550-no Tempers frayed on the road. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/BM...E=w732-h550-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-z...o/P1010736.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6z...o=w732-h550-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/9b...M=w612-h540-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/O8...o=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Q7...s=w901-h460-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...k=w568-h540-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-G...o/P1010804.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/y8...w=w498-h540-no 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 https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/h8...o=w719-h540-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/OP...4=w519-h540-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Lj...c=w720-h540-no https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/yU...0=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jM...bj2M9o=s540-no https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/58...g=w659-h540-no https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/oe...4=w623-h540-no https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/tX...Y=w720-h540-no |
A Rift in the Heart of Africa II
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.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/p3...M=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/p4...Y=w886-h540-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/06...E=w719-h540-no Further up the mountain, some local kids showed us a curtain of waterfall to duck behind. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sA...Y=w531-h540-no In between hammock lounging sessions that is. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/ox...g=w719-h540-no 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. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/rh...E=w719-h540-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/11...I=w719-h540-no Mike's chain was barely hanging on and would now drop from the chain ring at the slightest perturbation. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CH...E=w720-h540-no 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. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/K8...M=w722-h542-no |
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