Hello - I understand this forum is really geared to the independent bikers out there, but I write about Travel in Africa and just finished a piece on motorcycle tours in Africa. Since I haven't experienced one personally, I would love to get someone's input on the piece to make sure I haven't left out any obvious destinations or great tour companies. Keep in mind, this is about motorcycle tours and hopefully just an intro to the topic for those interested. Motorcycle Tours in Africa

Thanks!

Anouk

goafrica@about.com

the internet is full of disingenuous information, why add more?

Hey Anouk.

Not sure why DougieB got all pissy. But apparently a toe or two was damaged by your post.

In any case, there seems to be something wrong with your link. But I typed it in manually and got to the right page. Looks fine to me and, for the novice, quite informational. And as you said, those are your "target audience". Sort of a point of entry to the whole thing.

Destination wise I think you'll have you work cut out for you. Africa is huge! Each country offers sights that are worth traveling for. Perhaps a sight-list per country would be more in order. But again, there are so many I would have no idea where to start. and since you are refering to guided motorcycle tours, I'm not even sure such a list is appropriate. Tour operators have their own sights-list and it would propably be more appropriate to link to their descriptions of the trip.

The only tour operators that I know on the top of my head are kudu expeditions. And I see you have them on your site, so I can't realy offer more insight to that.

Just my $ 0.02.

Anouk,

If you scroll down to the third last section of the column on the left side of the H.U. pages, you'll find a section titled 'Links', which has a link to 'Tour operators', which contains an extensive list of motorcycle tour companies classified per continent, including Africa.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/lin...mpanies-africa

Why don't you make life easy for your readers (and at the same time give credit to your information source) by just referring readers to the Horizons Unlimited web site, so they can browse to their heart's content for info on organized group bike travel.

En valt dat nou een beetje mee om vanuit New York dagelijks over Africa te moeten schrijven? Geen last van heimwee? Ik zou zelf ook nog eens graag terugkeren...



Met vriendelijke groeten

I may well have picked this up wrong, apologies if I have. But it sounds like this guy is trawling the Internet looking for content, to re-use in an article he'll construct about a subject he knows nothing about and has no experience of. So, taking this site as an example, skimming off content and passing it off as your knowledge (implied if you are listed as the author of the article) is taking the piss. And, why generate a second, third, fourth copy of original content, which you'll have to alter slightly to make it look semi-original?

My point is that the Internet is full of 'experts', dishing out advice and opinion with either no or extremely limited authority.

Based on skimming content from this site alone I could write an article on the 1200GS and the Enfield Bullet. I'd only by qualified to do the Bullet, as that's the bike I have plenty of experience with. Would you not feel cheated to discover the 12000GS article you just read on about.com was written by someone who'd never even sat on one?

if the question had been, 'Guys, I want to do an article on motorcycle tours in Africa but don't have any experience. Can you recommend some tours that I can go on, which will give me first hand experience to be able to write an article.' Then fair enough. But it wasn't.

It's more like, I've constructed this article, can you look over it and point out anything that makes it look fake. As I really don't want people to realise I have no experience upon which to write the article.

About.com needs to generate traffic, in order to generate revenue from adverts. The more content, the more site visits, the more revenue they make. Same as a lot of sites, including this one. I think we're all happy to contribute to this site, as it gives back more than we probably contribute. And our contributions rightly generate traffic, which earns this site money through advertising. If about.com takes some of the traffic from HU, that's bad enough (advertisers pay less for low traffic sites). But the idea that their travel writers are creating articles based on other peoples content, which could include content from here, is not good.

If the guy is a travel writer, then why is he not writing about actual travelling? Most do, whether by plane, boat, motorbike, cycle, feet. Travelling via Yahoo! doesn't really count...

Thanks for your replies, I appreciate your responses. My aim is to try and inspire people to visit Africa and if taking a motorcycle tour will get them there, that works for me. I can't be an expert in every aspect of travel to Africa but I try and provide readers with information that will get them excited to visit. There are plenty of people that don't know that motorcycle tours are even a possibility in Africa. I try and link extensively to this site and others that offer tours, so if someone is interested, they can get more information and book their trip with the experts.

Anyway, the idea to write the article started because I was looking to surprise my husband with a motorcycle trip in Ethiopia. So I may yet get a firsthand account on the site next year...

Anouk