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

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Day 6:

We arrived today in Swakopmunt on the Namibian coast a bit up north. After 348km of poor roads ridden at a 80km/h average speed "flying" over gravel, sand and dirt, and having the bike to wobble at the rear and more worrying sometimes the front wheel too.





Globally, my wrist is better despite a sharp pain during the day but the voltaren and an improvised strap worked.

All of this puts the Paris-Dakar in perspective...





On the animal side, nothing ! Well one ostrich. It was too hot, up to 37degrees and we were too concentrated on the riding. The scenery was extraordinary. We crossed the namib desert, the largest in the world according to Abri.

We ditched the idea to see the red dune as we had a long degraded road ahead of us and wanted to leave early. Nevertheless, we saw dune "4", the highest in the world, still according to Abri.



We met plenty of people who were admiring our trip as there were few if no other bikers, only 4x4 on the roads. Some people ask us weird question, the weirdest was at the Tropic of Capricorn board an English lady asked if I was a Belgian celebrity to have such organization around. Others ask who are our sponsors.

We passed Walvis Bay where Abri's gps tried to find a restaurant or should I say where Abri tried to find a restaurant on the gps. We quickly had to forget about it. From there on we joined a tar road but it was sometimes completely covert in sand. Indeed, the wind blow sometimes up to more than 150km/h and we heard stories about cars being blown upside down.




As we arrived on the coast, the temperature dropped down to 17 degrees. The sky has been bright blue all day.

We had a drink on the beach in Swakopsmunt at a beach bar, 10m away from the sea. Hennie drove his Harley on the beach, 3m in front of the bar. This gives nice picks with the sunset.





Tonight we set up the tents in a camp on the border of the city. During the last kms we saw kite surfers, dune surfing and a lot of quad bikes in the dunes. Tonight we go to the restaurant.



Tomorrow is another day. We intend to quad bike in the dunes. The bikers might rest their wrists. Having to hold the handlebar with the vibrations is a pain. The roads look sometimes like ski slopes after being scraped with the chains traces in the ground.

We are going to eat, eland steak for me, Einstein for the others. The next 2 days should be quieter in terms of riding.

[ADMIN]

Day 7:

Today is a rest day. Pharmacy to get a strap for the bikers. With the voltaren it doesn't worsen.

I finally decided to go for 1h of quad biking in the dunes with Abri. It was extremely nice as we used the dunes as half pipes. The biggest one was 100m high facing the ocean.





After that I went to ride a couple of km in town and along the coast seeing the Sunday fishermen with their huge fishing rods. I visited the lighthouse and the salt fabric. This while the others updated the picks and the website.




The published picks are not especially the best ones but those easy to be published.



Tomorrow dirt roads but only for 178km. We have done more than 2200km so far.

We found the fishing boats returning from the sea and got  afresh snoek that hennie prepared for us that night!!

[ADMIN]

Day 8:

THIS WAS A BIG DAY



After a fresh night (18degrees) and an excellent improvised diner (snoek we bought on the street from returning fishermen). We left quite late as we had few km to do and needed the tents to dry up from condensation.



We left for 50km of tarmac. We stopped on the beach first to see a village that looked deserted. Then we stooped to see a wreck on the beach and where Hennie managed to put his Harley onto. I got stuck in the sand. Our tyres were still inflated for tar, my tyre is thinner and the bike is heavier. (Almost 300kg when filled up).








There were sellers of stones that we first thought could be thief’s.

Then, after a stop to drink and take some info about the rest of the trip in Henties Bay. We deflated the tyres for the dirt road. Henties Bay is a fishermen village where they found few diamonds in the past. The biggest marlin in photo was 260kg).





Only error of the day, to have forgotten to put sun cream resulting in a face and especially nose sunburn.

After 50km without seeing another vehicle we stopped in the middle of the desert to have a sandwich lunch on the car cap.



We then left in the middle of nowhere and a couple of km later there were, really in the middle of nowhere, stands made of wood and boxes. Women were selling stones. It's a tribe, the Herrera’s, speaking a bizarre language making tongue noises in between syllables. We clearly saw they were really poor so we gave them a lot of food and a lot of sweets to the kids. We gave beer to the man and I put a kid on my bike.







I've got mixed feelings. We did the max to help them and make them happy. They probably received more in one day then in years, yet the more we gave, the more they asked for. On the other hand, we had to split the food as they don't share. I was expecting a community to share but they kept for themselves what they received. I was also expecting them to show more gratitude but Hennie told me this is normal for this part of Africa. In any case, they will be happy tomorrow and at the end of the day, we were those born on the right side of the barrier. We talked about it tonight again around the fire. Hennie cleverly made sure the kids opened the sweets in front of us so they wouldn't be sold by adults.

We than headed to spitzkoppe. In the middle of the flat desert, we saw, in the middle of nowhere a series of concentrated mountains. It's spitzkoppe ! We arrived in the middle of the mountains. The roads are nice to ride, there made of dirt and sand giving opportunities for nice slides.



The panorama is extraordinary, absolutely fabulous ! It looks like an apache reserve. It is a natural reserve. We took a lot of picks of the bikes with blue skies. The sunset was magnificent.









We set up the camp under the sunset protected by 50m rocks, the car and the bikes. Indeed we protect ourselves against hyenas and leopards. Nevertheless, the chances are small as we packed up all the food. The most dangerous here are snakes, scorpions and all the ramparts. So boots and clothes are in the tent. We always have to check before putting on anything.








Tonight the stars are fantastic and I saw some shooting stars. We made a fire like usual except this time we are in the middle of nowhere. There is no water, nor toilets, well the spade is our best friend at this stage. It's the desert. The first village must be miles away.





For diner, they prepared chicken potjie with veggies, potatoes and onions and bread on the fire too. Yummy ! Hennie had promised me a surprise, something I'd never expect in the desert. I thought about swimming and other things are some places are called rock pool etc but understood it when the ice cream was brought out of the fridge. He had witnessed all the ice-cream I ate so far.




On another note I forgot to mention that in Luderitz we saw a whale breaking the surface in the far. And for Hennie, the most epic moment between Sesriem and Swakopsmunt was, after 300km of gravel and a sharp wrist soreness I said "I won't mind to see some tar again, fuck the adventure".

Tomorrow we leave for Windhoek, the capital before heading for Botswana. We should go towards less civilized places.

[ADMIN]

Day 9.

We left Spitzkoppe afer a very good meal in the middle of the desert underneath the stars watching for all dangerous crawling animals and listening to Nickelback. This place was just stunning but I understand there is more to come.

We left for 60km of dirt road with a few sand patches. When we arrived at the tar road, Hennie and I inflated the tyres again in some shade while Abri for more semi precious stones shopping.






While we inflated the tyres more and more kids came slowly towards the bikes to see what was happening. We hadn't any sweets left but they seemed happy kids.

The tar road lead us to Windhoek in the middle of more bush landscapes. Now this road seemed pretty boring compared to previous rides, uet we had to focus on overtaking trucks and cars and other cars overtaking us. It was in a way more dangerous than riding some dirt roads. This road is the main road in Namibia linking the capital to Swakopmunt, the main harbour. The temperature on my bike computer showed an average of 27 degrees.



Today was nice but less exiting than others. We arrived at 2.30pm in Windhoek and arrived in the lodge. Now it might seem meaningless to most of u but we have a bed and a hot shower. And it is refreshing to shower, jump in shorts and go and explore the city, which we did with a friend of Hennie before heading to Joe's bierhaus. Note that for the first day in many I don't have sand everywhere including my ears :-)




Everyone in a bit of a strange mood today, not particularly bad, but strange. Probably because we are really in the the adventure now and because today seemed like a transition day between Namibia's first chapter and Botswana.

I stayed there for dinner with Hennie as Abri needed to sort out some business stuff and I guess he needed a bit of time out. We had Kudu steak and dom pedro for desert, which is a drink made of kulula (south african liquoe comparable in a way to baileys). Abri joined us later and fetched us. The mood and athmosphere is again at its highest.







Tomorrow we are off for 538km to Ganzhi and will enter Botswsna. We hope we will not be to long at the border. We have not much idea of what to expect there but we are looking forward to it. The two others seemed puzzled about taking a plane at sunset or sunrise to fly over the Okavango, as they prefered to spend money on taking out a boat to go and check the animals from closer. I told them I'd offer the flight for the three of us as I really want to experience both. So now we are up for a canoe ride and a flight in the Okanvango delta.

We are waking up at 5am tomorrow and hopefully I can sent more info.

[ADMIN]

Day 10

We woke up at 5am. By the time we packed up and filled in the tanks, it was 7am when we left the city. We headed East towards Botswana. It's a tar road but surrounded by bush fields. We saw male and female Kudu's including a massive bull. In the morning we drove at 120km/h but had to be very careful as the road was surrounded by high grass in which were a lot of Warthogs (facocheres), I saw 7 of them less than 10m away. They're amazing animals. We also had a chacal crossing the road in front of the bikes.

We also saw some more usual donkeys and plenty of cows as we are in Cattle country. We stopped at 9am after 180km in Gobabis for breakfast.




After that we kept on riding but it was too hot for the game to be out. We crossed the border with Bostwana.




That was no hassle except that Hennie's driving license went missing. In Botswana, it was pretty much the same landscapes. The aim of the game here being to go quickly from one place to the other to do what you want to do like safaris etc. It was still too hot to spot game. Nevertheless, compared to Namibia, there are no or few fences along the roads. We had to watch for more animal crossing, eventhough at this time of the day it was more about cows, donkeys, goats and wild horses.




Most of the petrol stations had no petrol so we stopped at one in a village off the road. A cow with massive horns decided to give me a nasty look so I had to make a sharp turn. At the station that looked like everything but a petrol station, the guys had rarely if not never seen a motorbike. One of them went balistic shouting "boura boura" and imitating a biker in front of my bike. At this stage there was too much exitement to be safe and we decided to quickly dash on the road again. We had to fill the Harley and back up vehicle tanks from our spare tanks that we carry in the vehicle.



After a last push of a straight 100km and a sore bum, we arrived in Ghanzi to fill up with petrol. This is were I had my first marriage request from the girl processing my card. We arrived at our camp site after a fence to keep the game inside and 3km of dirt and sand which I think I can manage well now.

As we came in, the farmer put his riffle on his shoulder and we all know what it means. Hennie cleverly got him to take us for a ride. So I jumped from my bike onto the game drive vehicle.He didn't shoot anything as we didn't have the opportunity. Nevertheless, we saw plenty of kudus, elands, impalas, steenboks, springboks and a wildebees (gnou). We also could admire vulture (vautour). And well, we saw two turtles doing a mating dance.
Chris, the farmer is an english man, a lovely man who has lived mostly in Zambia. He wears the typical farmer's hat and shorts, and has a greying beard. He drove us through to see it all on his farm: the game, the veggie garden, a dead eland bull shot by poachers etc. We were all on the vehicle with driver stopping whenever we'd request to.
We took stunning pictures of the animals. We actually Abri and Hennie did as Hennie is enjoying my Nikkon more and more and might even be converted. There are also cheetas (guepards) and lepards (leopards) around.




We then set up the camp and are careful with mosquitos are we now are in the malaria zone. So tomorrow we can't forget to take our malarone tablets again. We discovered the fridge in the vehicle goes on and off and hence is not keepong the temperature lower than 10degrees. Tonight we decided not to cook and go to the restaurant of the lodge. This serves two purposes, one we give a bit more of our money away to that gentleman, two it gives me one more day without washing the dishes from Spitkoppe (2days ago) I did promise to wash :-)

Game is on the menu tonight and tomorrow we'll wake up at 5.30am to leave for a kill and another game drive as Chris needs some Kudu or Wildebees to supply his restaurant.

I organized a game tonight where eachone of us had to guess the 2 others highlights and low points of the day. Here they are:
Hennie's highlight of the day: seeing vultures in the wild
Hennie's low of the day: fridge problem / missing driving license
Abri's highlight of the day: the sight of the wildebees
Abri's low of the day: fridge problem
My highlight of the day: seeing the game on the road, especially the warthogs reminding me of the Lion king.
My low of the day: waking up at 5am to only get going at 7am. Amazingly I didn't think of the bank neverending problems.

Chris is now at the bar telling all his stories about cheetas, lepards and lions...

Exiting day ahead tomorrow starting with a game drive and then a 327km ride to Maun where we will stay for 2 nights and explore the Okavango delta.