Al's 2016 Africa Tour

African Adventure

By Al Holtsberry

My Africa trip had been planned for a long time, finally I was on my way. My Delta flight took me from Columbus to Atlanta Ga. and then on a 16-hour flight to Johannesburg South Africa. I managed to sleep most of the night. The airline food was not as bad as expected. Johannesburg airport makes LAX seem efficient. I was to be there over night before catching a morning flight to Victoria Falls. My bag was pulled by security, probably because the Kevlar pads look to an x-ray machine like they could be explosives. My wait wasn’t very long. Everyone spoke English but it took a while to get accustomed to the accent. They also spoke very softly, which sounded good but didn’t help with understanding.

​As I headed for a hotel across the street from the terminal, a young man who seemed to be there to guide people around the airport asked where I was going and then introduced me to a young woman who was looking for customers for a nearby guest house. It didn’t take much to convince me to accept the ride to the guest house. At least I would see a little bit of the city.

​After a pleasant night in a very nice guest house and meeting center and an excellent breakfast, I took the shuttle back to the airport. My cost -when I got home and got my credit card statement- was $62.50.

Back at the airport a young man offered to guide me through. Accepting his offer was one of my better decisions. The place seemed more like a shopping mall than an airport. It took about an hour to get through the maze and security to my gate. The gate took me to a bus which took me to an airplane parked away from any buildings. My guide advised me not to get any local currency in Zimbabwe since it is worthless and they use either US or South African money. I gave him a tip for his hour of work that I thought was more but when I got an accurate exchange rate it was about $6.00. He seemed pleased.

​The hotel where the tour of the area began was a short walk from the falls. The porter who insisted on showing me to my room advised me to keep the patio doors closed to keep out the monkeys and baboons. I attempted to get adjusted to the 6-hour time change, attended the welcome briefing and had a very good dinner.

​When walking to Victoria falls in the morning, there was a guard that prevented us from going the shortest way through the rain forest that is watered by the mist from the falls. We had to go along the road because of an elephant that had had a calf there and was aggressive. We saw a lot of elephant droppings but no elephant. Maybe we really didn’t want to see that one. We did see baboons and a mongoose tribe plus our first impala.

​The falls are twice as high as Niagara and over a mile wide. It was the end of winter (equivalent to the end of February here) and the driest part of the year so the falls were at only about 20% of their maximum flow but still they were impressive. The water flows over the falls into a narrow canyon and we could walk down the other side of the canyon to look at the water thundering into the stream below. The canyon appeared to me to be a rift from tectonic forces and not caused by erosion.

​After spending the morning at the falls, we boarded an open air bus for a 90 km ride to our hotel in Botswana where the bikes were waiting. The border crossing went fairly quickly but, according to Edelweiss, it would have taken hours with the bikes. We arrived at our hotel in time to take a boat tour around an island in the river where the moisture makes a great habitat for animals. The island is a national park.

​We saw hippos, elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, impalas, fish eagles (similar to our bald eagles) and many more animals and birds. We got to watch two elephants crossing the river. The big one waded all the way but the smaller one had to swim. One of the items on the buffet dinner was crocodile. It was chewy and not very flavorful.

​The tour group consisted of three US citizens (myself, an orthopedic surgeon from Maryland and a dentist from California), two Germans, a father and son from Turkey and an Indian. Our guide, Domenico, was from Italy and the chase van driver, Scooby, was from Cape Town.

​When we get the bikes in the morning, mine is the only one without a wind screen. Actually, it is the only bike I remember getting at five Edelweiss tours that didn't have a wind screen. There is really nothing that can be done about it until we reach South Africa when the tour is almost finished.

I had chosen an F800/GS believing a lighter bike would be better in the gravel that we were told to expect. I soon came to believe that I had made a mistake in not going with the R1200 with which I am more familiar. The highway speeds, frequently as high as 140k if I wanted to keep up, would also have been more comfortable on the larger bike with a wind screen.

​The first riding day was only about 200 miles, which was a good thing. Domenico and Scooby had a difficult day. One bike wouldn’t start, one had a flat tire and two or three were not full of gas. In my case the fuel gage didn’t indicate that the tank wasn’t full. It always continued to show full until about 20 kilometers before the low fuel warning light came on. Gas stations were usually over 200 km apart. Among other things they siphoned fuel from the spare bike that they carried on the trailer to get us going when we ran out of fuel.

​One of the interesting things for the day was elephant crossing signs and an elephant crossing the road in front of us. There was also a very large elephant watching us from beside the road.

Our lunch was at an open-air restaurant that overlooked a pond where we saw zebras, musk ox, and impalas.

​The next day was also short. There was some excitement. The gas station where we planned to get gas was closed and Domenico was worried that some of the bikes might not make it to the next town. The previous day’s problems probably added to this fear. All of the bikes made it, some with the low fuel warning light glowing.

We came in contact with Bandits with Badges similar to what we find in many places in the US. They said we were speeding but none of us remembered seeing reduced speed limit signs. Domenico gave them a small bribe and they sent us on our way.

We stopped for lunch at a place with many baobab trees. They have huge trunks and short limbs. They appeared to be very old. We saw ostriches, which I thought only existed in Australia.

​Most of us would have made the first two days into one and still thought it was a short day but there was a good reason for stopping. Maun is located at the edge of the Okavango Delta. It is the largest inland delta in the world, about 12,430 square miles. One of Africa’s longest rivers spreads out to form this marshland in the Kalahari Desert. Much of the delta is a national park where we took a safari. We saw a cheetah with a cub, 4 lions, countless zebras and impalas, elephants, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, buffalo, wildebeests, hyenas, wild dogs and many birds that were not like any I have ever seen.

​The road to and from the park was extremely bumpy gravel. We were in a very old International Harvester open-air vehicle of the design you would expect for a safari.

On the way back our safari guide stopped to speak with some friends in another, much newer vehicle. Their frame had broken from the rough road.

In the morning we divided into two groups and took small planes for a look at the delta from the air. Of course we could see all of the animals but we could also see how the delta spread out across the desert. There were also some small farms outside the park area.

​After the plane ride we started riding about 11:00 AM and were gassed up and into our hotel by 3:30PM. The area had slightly more moisture and some small elevation changes, then we passed a line of old shield volcanos. We even saw some high thin clouds. There was a gas station which was out of gas. The road was through open range where we saw all kinds of farm animals including a dead horse along the road.

Then we stopped to get the soles of our boots wet with some kind of chemical and then ride through a shallow pool to bathe the tires. We had several of these stops which are for preventing the spread of hoof and mouth disease. Wild animals can spread it to farm animals and the bacteria can be spread in the dirt on tires and boots.

​Since it was early, I took a short walk around the little town. There was a small strip mall with a row of tents along the street that could be rented. The businesses in the tents, which included a barber shop, were mostly selling some kind of clothing. Some had women with sewing machines who seemed to make clothes to order. People in the entire area where we traveled were extremely poor by our standards but were always smiling and laughing.

​Two boys who I would guess to be about ten and seven tried to sell me cigarettes. I told them I didn’t use them and then they asked for money. At first I refused but then the small one said they were hungry. I noticed that their clothing was not really appropriate for the climate. I finally gave them the coins that I had in my pocket and they ran away very happy. I hope that the little rascals conned me and that they did not really have to beg for food.

​Our hotel was made up of small round buildings, each with a couple of rooms and a bath room. They may have been trying to be fancy but the design was inefficient and the maintenance was poor. Our group seemed to be the only customers.

​The next day was a ride of 329 miles, which Edelweiss thinks is a long day. We crossed the border into Namibia. Botswana is about the size of Texas with a population of around 2 million. Namibia is 40% larger with a population of 2.3 million. We saw a large group of baboons -my guess was close to 100- along the road and many wart hogs. The terrain became slightly rolling before Windhoek: the capital of Namibia. We encountered low mountains which looked volcanic, reminding me a little of Route 2 or 20 west bound into the Cascades.

​In the morning of our seventh day we had a little traffic. It seemed like a lot since we had become accustomed to none. Domenico took us on a short gravel ride to prepare us for what we were going to see for the next few days. Anantha, our Indian companion, fell and decided against riding any more gravel roads.

As we approached the Atlantic we had a heavy mist which was as near as we would get to rain, while riding, on the trip. We wound up in the pretty little town of Swakopmund which was a fairly busy port while Germany ruled the area but became less busy when the British took charge after World War II and used a port further south.

During dinner, which was on a covered patio, there was lightning a long way off and a light rain shower.

​Day 8 brought us to the start of serious gravel. The Edelweiss literature said we needed experience on unpaved roads. It didn’t prepare me for these unpaved roads. If it had emphasized that the unpaved roads were difficult I would have thought that I would be OK.

I have ridden the Alcan Highway before any of it was paved. I practiced on single track trails in the Wayne National Forest. I rode Copper Canyon. I rode 2000 miles round trip to Goose Bay Labrador on gravel made for trucks. In the Patagonia, I rode gravel roads back and forth over the Andes. I never rode gravel roads as difficult as the ones in Namibia. The gravel was small, no bigger than pea sized and the sand was deep and more like powder than sand. Where there were wheel tracks that were fairly solid it was the bumpiest washboard surface I have ever seen, so bumpy that it continuously bounced my bike off line.

​We crossed a very low but pretty mountain pass and ended our day in Swakopmund, a town of about 30,000 which is fairly large for the area. It was formerly an important port city but there is no sheltered bay and the water is shallow with strong surf. It was also replaced by the British port as mentioned.

​We stayed in Swakopmund for two nights and took another safari. This time the safari was to the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The major features here were gigantic sand dunes and an area which was an oasis a few hundred years ago before the river changed its course.

The area of the old oasis had dead trees estimated to be 500 to 600 years old but had not rotted because of the lack of moisture. Drifting sand of different colors were separated by color due to the different size and density of the sand.

​I walked an old river bed and down into a small canyon where water once flowed. On a short walk in the desert I found small rocks that appeared to have been rounded by flowing water. They lacked the varnish surface of rocks rounded by wind and sand. The geology was very interesting but at a souvenir shop with several books about the area there was none that discussed the geology.

​While the rest of us were on the safari Scooby took the spare bike and Anantha’s bike ahead to the pavement. I took advantage of this opportunity to load my bike and ride in the van. Anantha was riding in the van as well. Mike, the dentist from California, was not feeling well so he also loaded his bike and joined us in the van. The road was so rough that the van frequently bounced off line and Scooby had to correct. After what must have been about 60 kilometers, but seemed longer, the roughness broke a spring on the trailer so Mike and I unloaded our bikes and rode on. Mike was much faster on the dirt than I was and was soon out of sight. Fortunately most of the roughest road was behind us. We tried making repairs enough to get the trailer to the next town where the pavement started but it turned out that Scooby had to stop frequently to reinforce our temporary fix.

Since I was going to be riding in the van I hadn’t paid close attention to the morning briefing on the route. I thought that we were only 20 to 30 km from the pavement when we unloaded the bikes but it was actually 60 km. I became convinced that I had missed a turn and stopped to look at my map. It was easy to see on my map where we had started and where we were going but there was no way to find where I was. The wind made it very difficult to study the map along the road.

Finally I decided that I must have missed a turn and turned back to find where I was. After about 15 km I found Domenico and Scooby working to keep the trailer going. I had turned back just 4 km from the pavement where we were supposed to have lunch! Scooby left the trailer in the little town to be repaired. His next day though, was a long one because he had to drive back to get it.

​There was a very nasty 3 km sand lane leading to our stop for the night. I tried riding it but gave up and parked the bike and walked.

​Day 11 was only 186 miles, all but about 15 miles were paved. Our lunch stop was at an interesting little plaza. John, the orthopedic surgeon from Maryland and I had lunch at the Hungry Lion which was similar to our fast food restaurants. There was a very cute little boy who I estimated to be about four with a brand new bicycle with training wheels riding it carefully around inside. His father seemed to be almost as proud of the new bike as the child.

​That night was my favorite stop of the trip. It was at a farm with a couple of very nice guest cabins. Many of the animals on the farm were more like pets than farm animals. My favorite was a wart hog that was like a very friendly dog. In the morning he wanted to go into the house, since there were guests he wasn’t allowed. He lay by the door crying. Of course there were dogs as well.

We took a short ride to the Giant’s Playground, an area with very large rocks stacked on top of each other. According to a pamphlet at the farm the rocks were magma (lava) intrusions that had formed inside pockets of softer overlaying rock which had then eroded away allowing the denser lava rock to rest in stacks.

Back at the farm we walked to the Quiver Tree Forest. Quiver trees appear over a wide area but rarely if ever are there as many as here. The tree trunks look a little like a quiver and the limbs sort of like arrows sticking out of the quiver.

There were horses being trained and a Brahman bull. We watched our hostess feeding a pet cheetah. There were four cheetahs but just one that looked more like a large cat. She told us that the government required the males and females to be kept separate so that they couldn’t breed.

​Dinner was a buffet featuring oryx meat. If they had told me it was very lean beef I wouldn’t have known the difference.

​In the morning I met our hostess heading for the main house and asked about the reason the government wanted the cheetahs kept separate so they could not breed. Since the animals are endangered it would seem that at the very least the cubs could go to zoos. This got her started on a tirade about their government and governments in general. I really liked this lady.

We back tracked a short distance and then soon were on dirt again. This dirt road was not as bad as some but very dusty. Sometimes when we met another vehicle I stopped to let the dust clear so that I could see where I was going. The Turks, very skilled in the dirt, were always far ahead. I told Murad, the father, that I would tell everyone that when the dust was so thick that they couldn’t see they just went faster so they would get thru it sooner. He laughed and slapped me on the back.

​The road got bumpy again as we neared Fish River Canyon. This is the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. The gravel got even worse on the short ride to Canyon Village which was our stop for the night. This was our third night in a row with no TV.

​In the morning the sand and gravel was the worst yet. A grader was working on the road but if anything, it was making it worse for motorcycles. The grader might have been smoothing the road slightly but it was also leaving deep piles of sand and gravel. Four-wheeled vehicles were driving in the deep sand to avoid the washboard bumps.

We hadn’t gone very far when these bumps bounced me off line and I ran into the deep stuff. I tried to power out of it and thought I had made it when the bike took two more violent swerves and went down. My left toe caught in the deep gravel while my right leg was still on top of the bike so I couldn’t roll. The bike went down on my left. I knew the leg was broken. The van arrived before the dust had settled.

​Scooby and Anantha couldn’t get my bike loaded onto the trailer and I couldn’t help. We waited a few minutes for Domenico to come back looking for us and help rearrange the two bikes already on the trailer and load mine.

As we went further the road got even worse. The terrain was extremely barren with small, rocky, mountains.

​We took a slightly longer route than the one suggested to get to pavement in only about another 100 km. Anantha unloaded his bike and rode again.

We crossed the border into South Africa where I had to walk a short way. I began to hope that the leg was not really broken. When we crossed into South Africa there was more moisture, even a river with running water.

There were many large patches of wild flowers in the desert. They were not as plentiful as the wild flowers in Texas in April but there was more variety. Scooby said that the flowers were not as thick this year because it had been a dry winter and spring.

​In Springbok, the first town and the goal for the day, there was a small hospital. It was a long wait in their emergency room where, with Scooby’s help, I removed my boot. The only really serious pain I suffered was in this process. I would have cut the boot off if there had been anything available strong enough to cut the thick leather. Since it was Saturday they had to call in a technician to take x-rays which confirmed that the leg was broken. The x-ray tech gave me a disk with the pictures to bring home, they put on a splint that curved and went under the foot and gave me pain medication which I used that night and the next. The doctor let John -the orthopedic surgeon from Maryland- look at the x-rays and they discussed them. John felt that the care was very good. It was a government hospital and there was no bill. I used other riders’ shoulders for crutches until Sunday morning when we found a pharmacy where I got crutches.

I used to be pretty good with crutches but I failed to realize that my right foot, for which I used the crutches before, doesn’t work as well as it should. I can’t balance on it so I can’t swing forward, balance on the foot and move the crutches forward. Trying to do this at lunch I managed to fall and skin my right arm. I was reduced to swinging my foot up between the crutches and then moving the crutches which is a very slow process and makes me appear much more disabled than I feel.

​Lunch was at an interesting little place with many antiques and memories of earlier days in the area. The proprietor who was also the waitress explained the history of many of the antiques and talked about the history of her family in the area.

There was more and more moisture as we went south. There were farms with goats, sheep, and beef cattle. The mountains were higher and we saw miles of grapes, oranges and other fruit trees. Many of the fruit trees were in bloom.

​On our last travel day the desert was left behind. There was a beautiful, though not really very high, mountain pass. There were grapes, grain, hay, fruit and crops that I can’t recognize. There was no corn and I couldn’t see any preparation for planting it.

​The climate in South Africa is very temperate. Scooby said that there is never any snow and that 40 degrees Celsius (86F) would be very hot. The highway became divided about 45 km before Cape Town. The only divided highway on the trip.

Before the last group dinner, I asked Domenico if there was a first aid kit in the van. I had used 3 bandaids to cover the scrape on my arm and was looking for something like a 4X4. My Turkish friends took over the bandaging and soon I had a bandage worthy of a serious wound.

The farewell dinner was great and a little sad. It was a great group of people most of whom I will never see again.

​The riding? Well, imagine riding Route 50 in Nevada for two weeks then throw in a few hundred miles of the nastiest sand, gravel and washboard surface you can imagine. If you want to ride great roads go to West Virginia or even Switzerland. Still the territory was very interesting and I saw many things I have never seen before, some not even in pictures. It was a great adventure.