8615KM, 5 COUNTRIES IN 25 DAYS ( Off road motorbike tour )

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8615KM, 5 COUNTRIES IN 25 DAYS, BY FABIAN DE PREY

Its not every day as a tour operator that you get a e mail from a prospective client stating that he wants you to put a tour together for him for 25 days travelling trough 5 countries. At first I was very sceptical but as I was getting to know Fabian on Face book and Skype I came to learn that he was a man on a mission.
This RR is compiled out of the emails that he sent every day to his friends and family back home, to me this is exactly how a person touring our great continent sees it and I left it as it is and just added the photos.

I hope all of you will enjoy it as much as I did reading it when I came home:

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Preparation day and training day

Before embarking on our tour it was important that we get the basics imprinted once again and who better than my good friend Rony to give us some training in the 42 degree Wellington heat.




Hennie and Fabian:







Day 1

We started off at 6am on Monday November 1st from Worcester, near Cape Town. We arrived after 670km in Noordoever by a camp owned by a Eric, a friend of Hennie. We met polish people who are cycling up and down in Africa in a relay trip. Not much to say about the day as it was hard riding to get to the border and relax in the pool.
We hit 43 degrees at the rock pass just before Vioolsdrift.






Day 2

We spent the next day canoeing on the orange river and saw a massive catfish dead in the river getting eaten by a Likiwaan.

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DAY 3

The next day we crossed the border to Namibia heading towards Aus. This road was my first off road and I had to concentrate a lot but it was beautiful. I think Hennie was more nervous than I was, probably for me, surely for his bike. We arrived in Aus, where it was cold.









We were over the border to Namibia and towards Aus





The Fish river canyon:




At Aus we found this map on the side of the building that shows where we are and where we are going:



Riding in we had this sunset:

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DAY 4

We are in Luderitz on the South Namibian coast. It's day 4 and sand is making its way into the adventure. I fell twice at low speed yesterday in the reserve, after 500km of which almost 300km of gravel. 28degrees as we are on the coast. We were happy a we saw some 44 degrees in the shade yesterday. It should get colder the more upwards we go.

This morning we saw ostriches, meerkat and gemsboks, plenty of buck and wild horses (which survived after being abandoned by German soldiers at the end of WW1)

The colours are stunning with some green patches in the middle of drought and heat. The sky is blue like never has been in HK and the sunsets are absolutely amazing.

Tonight we go back from Luderitz to Aus in our lodge isolated in the mountains in the middle of nowhere but surrounded by animals. We have achieve 1400km so far with an average of 80km/h.

Starting from tomorrow, we should slow down, even if we have 436km waiting for us, because road are said to be difficult and rarely used. Goal Sesriem. Leaving is planned at 6.30am. In the coming days, we should see any tar nor cell phone network (that was obviously wrong).

At this stage I collapse every night as days are intense and we have to concentrate a lot on those roads to avoid any fall that would jeopardize everyone's expedition. The best is to come despite the fact that landscapes are already stunning as you can see on the website picks.

We have well working comms systems. GPS, music and intercom to talk to each other including with the backup vehicle that schleps all our stuff as we are 100% self sufficient for a month.

Since this morning we have installed a camera on Hennie's helmet to tape the animal encounters. The videos should be on you tube some time after the trip.

The beard grows, the skins gets tanned, the images accumulate and the HK stress disappears.



this is the view from our lodge:





And this was just on the way out the farm!!!

The road to Luderitz was great.........












That night hennie and abri went out until 02:30 wit the camera and took these pictures!!!

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Day 5:

Today we left from Aus to Sesriem. 346km of gravel and sand patches. Only one scare on the bike and a very sore right wrist from holding the gazes and the handle bar as I haven't ridden a bike for years. Voltaren and tiger balm are on the menu. Loads of places where we encounter warbling with the bike floats but no problems so far.



Tomorrow same thing until Swakopmunt after a visit of the world's highest red dune, dune 45, red as brick.

We are now in Sesriem, no tent to set up for me as I will sleep on my stretcher in the shower.

The picks are stunning. We cruised through a game reserve for 250km with a lot of gemsboks, zebras, ostriches, springboks, kudus, two jackals, one all white wild horse and prey birds, all of it at arm length. We were hoping for giraffes but it will be for later. It's not easy to look around to spot animals while focusing on the drive but the landscapes are fabulous. We rarely see other cars and we drive through vast field in the middle of the mountains. The roads can sometimes be straight for 20km.




The worst was a 50km gravel road that had been scrapped, meaning basically that all the gravel had been thrown back into the trails. This made the road very difficult to read and very wobbly. I honestly had enough of it after a while. So we stopped, only to realize later that it was getting a bit better 50m after that. It took us 11h to do 346km. Note that we had about 7 meters of tar today, a bridge to cross a river, well that is when there is water...









Yesterday in Luderitz, a 5y old boy asked playfully for a lift, I said he was big enough to ride himself, so I helped him to hop on the bike. He had a big smile on his face, was so proud and his mom took a picture with her cell phone,

Fire is ready, the bbq is launched.



Wake up at 5.30am tomorrow