The Ultimate Adventure - Cape Town to Kilimanjaro on Royal Enfields
- Sarah B
- Feb 23, 2022
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 30, 2022
Wow, it's been a year since I updated the blog - oh dear, how time flies! "Samahani" as they'd say in Kiswahili - "I am sorry". The only real main event for us in the past twelve months... we moved from Kenya to Zanzibar and swapped wildlife for beaches and from living at an altitude of 2,200m to zero! I know some of you may think we are crazy for travelling during this pandemic, but each to their own hey?
Our African adventure surpassed itself over the New Year when Chris suddenly announced he had put our names forward to ride motorbikes from Cape Town to Arusha! Initially I didn't bat an eyelid, thinking "yeah right, dream on Biker Boy". However, a few days later all was confirmed and we were busy ordering motorbike gear from the UK. My original lackadaisical attitude soon turned to horrendous anxiety and trepidation. How on earth would I manage 7,000km without continually moaning about being uncomfortable and thereby letting the team down?
The four Himalayans had previously been hired out from East African Motorcycles a Royal Enfield dealership owned by our friend Eric Allard. A group of four Americans had ridden them from Arusha down to Cape Town and the bikes needed returning to Arusha. So aside from me and Chris, the northward bound Trans-Africa Team consisted of a couple of Italian journalists, Emilio and Cristina who work for various motorbike magazines (Italy and Australia) Cranko (an absolute bloody hoot) and his best buddy and neighbour Jan. The latter two also based here in Zanzibar. Eric planned to join us in Windhoek with one of his support vehicles and a trailer.
On Christmas Day our gear arrived from the UK courtesy of MK Logistics. What a disastrous haul! My boots were too small, trousers and jacket way too big, hey ho, still better than not having any protection. Chris's jacket proved not to be particularly waterproof, the sleeves about five cm too short and the zip damaged within a week.
The journey was to start on 9th January allowing time for the bikes to be serviced at Retza in Cape Town beforehand.
South Africa
840 km
We arrived a week early so that we could have a bit of sight-seeing exploring The Cape and to catch up with our long lost school friend Michelle in Greyton.
But back onto the motorbike bike trip. So, having picked up bikes the trip had to start. We had a day's trial on the Royal Enfield Classics... a "Coffee Shop Group" led by Retza which was immediately pursued with a coastal ride of our own on the Himalyans we'd be taking for the trip:
Namibia
11 - 23 January 2022
3,210 km
The Namibian roads are definitely not for the faint-hearted. I was told that only 9% of the 50,000km road system in Namibia is paved, the remainder being 'dirt-roads' of very varied quality - a 'loose' definition is literally either corrugated grit or sand or a frictionless mixture of the two. The latter being very tricky to negotiate akin to skiing on two wheels with a very quick and steep learning curve to lean back, change down a gear and accelerate or 'brap' on through. Despite the often long days of riding on ridiculously bone shaking roads, Namibia was without a doubt the highlight of the trip for us both. The scenery is absolutely stunning, a geologists dream, and varies dramatically almost at every turn with the most incredible vistas from mountains to deserts and salt plains to canyons.
After only one days ride into Namibia from South Africa, we reached the first of many highlights: the Ai-Ais National Park and the Fish River Canyon, the second largest canyon in the world. The canyon is open to hikers (hurrah, next time I'll definitely be on foot rather than two wheels!) but it's only open for three months a year as the temperature reaches 10 degrees higher at the bottom! We'd been experiencing temperatures of 45°C on the ride there that day and whilst that may sound excruciatingly hot, bizarrely it felt really quite pleasant for us as the humidity is so very low compared to Zanzibar. Later on that day we continued our ride to the coastal town of Luderitz and experienced a drop of 20°C, and we were all so cold we had to layer up!
Our next destination after an overnight stop at Betta which had the most amazing accommodation and a superb breakfast, was Sossusvlei. The ride there was by far the worse of the trip. It was only 180km but the continual patches of really deep sand and brutal corrugations made it very slow and gruelling. I ought to point out that I had absolutely NO experience of off-road pillion riding, which unfortunately for Chris added to the pressure of getting it right, deciding on the right track to take and just simply not dropping the flippin' bike! No pressure then!!! In addition to the road conditions we also had a couple of chain problems and our silencer came loose.
I couldn't help but overhear the other riders were also quite keen to see tarmac again... as for me, all I could think of was getting off the bike, I was just a tad fed up, tired and achey. We finally arrived at Desert Quiver Camp early evening and were treated to yet another unbelievably amazing camp with exceptional accommodation and an outdoor bar which we all headed to immediately (I almost ran, but as usual Cranko beat me to it), just to be rewarded with the most overwhelming treat:
We arrived in Swakopmund quite late in the afternoon without having any accommodation planned and quite by chance ended up finding the most gorgeous AirBNB; The Alternative Space, which offered super quirky accommodation, including an honesty bar and the most friendly and helpful hosts. They recommended we try The Tug for supper right on the oceanfront where we had yet another surprise.
Waiting in the queue to get a table were a couple of Brits, Owen and Lucy, whom we'd briefly met back at the Bahnhof Hotel in Aus on the way to Luderitz. Owen, it transpired, is in the RAF and based a hop, skip and a jump from our previous hometown. Quite a coincidence on that front, but then to bump into them again...so we invited them to join us at our table. Within a few minutes we realised not only was there the Lincolnshire connection but also that we'd been to the same school in the market town of Oakham, where Owen's late father was Head of Biology! This and the fact that Owen and Lucy were on their honeymoon was clearly reason enough to celebrate with bubbles and enjoy long conversations about being the old school network, teachers, the RAF and travelling.
We stayed in Swakopmund for three nights which gave us time to organise a 4x4 ride across the dunes to Sandwich Harbour (guess who we bumped into again?) and have some welding work done on the motorbike. The dunes were spectacular and our driver, Nico thankfully very skilled.
So having had a couple of days sight-seeing and shopping (splashing out on new socks - we only packed two pairs each and they were getting slightly crusty) we headed off from Swakopmund (the mouth of the river Swakop) to Windhoek (Windy Corner). And yet again the joys of the scenery - I just can't put it into words how to describe the exhilarating feeling of travelling slowly through the utter vastness of this incredible country; the endless deserts and scrubland, the dark mountains on the horizon, the big skies dotted with pink-hued clouds reflecting the colours of the red sand, the strange hardy flora and the occasional glimpse of wild fauna such as kudu, ostrich, oryx and zebra. A feeling of complete freedom as we drifted through this 'earthscape', such an area of outstanding natural beauty that I was literally high, giggling on the back of the bike, breathing in the rush - it is my heaven, only to be shattered again as we hit more sand and start going sideways with shouts of "lean back, lean back"...
From Swakopmund to Windhoek we took the C28 despite being warned off by a couple of the locals. The C28 is said to be to be one of the less traveled roads in the world - and true to word we only passed one car during the 310km stretch. It has some very steep gradients (up to 20%) and thus forbidden to trucks, trailers and caravans. The road which also incorporates The Boshua Pass takes you through the Namib-Naukluft Desert, The Great Escarpment and the Khomas Hochland Mountains. The scenery changes so dramatically at every twist and turn and the desert flora is absolutely spectacular.
We arrived in Windhoek knowing that Eric would meet us with the newly serviced support vehicle and a trailer at UrbanCamp. I couldn't hide my excitement... the forecast was ridicoulsly heavy rain - we were about to head into the tail-end of Cyclone Ana and my options were staying warm and dry in the car... or enduring a day of downpours on the bike with no waterproof gear. I won't lie, I choose the car and forbade any photos be taken!
We rode up from Windhoek via Grootfontein to an area called Bagani where we stopped at Shametu River Lodge on the Okavango River with views of the Popa Falls. WOW, yet again another very breath-taking experience and one I didn't really wish to leave quite so suddenly the following morning. We were accommodated in an amazing, five star chalet overlooking the river which I'd have happily and very easily spent a week in. The owners had a couple of gorgeous Golden Retrievers who they'd somehow manage to integrate with a couple of orphaned eleven week old warthogs!
We were coming to the end of our journey in Namibia and I was very sad to be leaving, not only the wonderful scenery which Namibia has to offer but the things we take for granted in the western world and I'd not previously experienced in Africa; a high percentage of the population spoke German, the electricity remained stable for more than thirty minutes at a time and water and waste management didn't appear to be a problem.
Botswana and Zambia
23-30 January 2022
1410 km
We rode through two border crossings Ngoma Bridge (Namibia/Botswana border) and Kazungula, (Botswana/Zambian border), the latter referred to as a "one-stop" border crossing, but actually it was closer to 7 and an extremely lengthy and costly process. In addition to visa and PCR test costs, stops included:
immigration
customs
Interpol
back to customs
carbon tax
road toll
insurance.
The ride through Botswana took us through Chobe National Park where we had rather a close encounter with a pair of elephants. The park is said to have one of the largest elephant populations in Africa.
Once in Zambia we headed straight to Victoria Falls Waterfront in Livingstone for a well earned rest and to visit the Falls.
We covered nearly 1,500km of often wet and treacherous roads with potholes so deep they were capable of breaking HGV axles in half. The majority of Zambian roads have numerous toll stops with charges of up to 500 Zambian Kwacha per truck per toll (€25) their promise: "the fees collected will assist with road maintenance". Not once did we spot any road maintenance being carried out!
On our penultimate stopover in Zambia we reached the stunning Kapishya Hot Springs and Shiwa Ngandu House owned and run individually by two brothers, Mark and Charlie, grandsons of Sir Stuart Gore-Browne. The history behind the estate is absolutely fascinating and coincidentally I'd already had a friends recommendation to read the book - Africa House by Christina Lamb. We had two luxurious nights at Marks enjoying scrumptious food, straight from the farm, ranging from home-made kefir, yoghurt, butter and jams at breakfast to a lavish chinese supper to welcome in the Chinese New Year. Oh, the food was so good I almost forgot to mention the hot springs! They were pretty good too!
Tanzania
31 Jan - 2 February
1080 km
After a relatively straight forward border crossing in Tunduma we were finally back into Tanzania with the home stretch in sight. Alas, we ran into more downpours and really inopportune timing as we were on a road most bikers dream about; bends galore up and around the mountains with what would usually allow for superb views. We will obviously have to go back and do it again sometime soon!
It was the ultimate adventure, but for sure not our last!
A massive thanks to the team: Eric Allard, Emilio and Cristina, Cranks and Jan for the support, friendship and fun. Until the next time!
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