Blog 12 by Mick: What goes clunk when it should go splash?

Stellenbosch, our destination for the following evening, is just 30kms north of Somerset West up the main road, but going that way would be pretty boring with so many other great options available. So we started off that morning riding south, in the completely opposite direction of our destination.

R44, known as Clarence Drive, is a beautiful road hugging the shoreline in much the same vein as the Great Ocean Road in Vic, and is quite famous in this region for its fun corners and its ocean views. It lived up to the reputation. We rode past many a biker giving his sports bike a bit of a twist of the right arm, which made me pine for my (now long sold) MV Agusta. Never mind, the 80’s tech dirt tractor DR650 was fun enough, plus the views were great and soon enough we were presented with many great photo opportunities.

It was a great day to be riding Clarence Drive

Lovely views of the Atlantic

We stopped for brunch in Kleinmond, but quickly found that the café we were in only served coffee and cake. Considering the venue was Tanya’s choice it should have rung alarm bells – “Ah shame! They only do cake! Oh well we are here now :)”. Leaving the café a little sick after 2 coffees and a large slice of quite reasonable baked cheesecake, we headed east and then north and after some dirt back-roads we hit the tar twisties of Viljoens and then Franshoek Pass. The vantage point at the top gave us great views of Franshoek and its wineries.

Some dirt roads coming to the bottom of Viljoens Pass

On the edge of Theewaterskloof Dam before going over Franshoek Pass

View of Franshoek from the top of the pass. You can hear the local poppies from all the way up here. “Ahg shame!”

We stopped for a very late lunch at Grande Provence, one of Franshoek’s more well known wineries and we were not disappointed. After parking our bikes a little worried that Winery Security must surely be mobilised and we stinky bikers were about to be forcefully escorted from the property, we settled in for a wine tasting and some food. We got a little more tipsy than one really should when travelling by motorbike, so ended up staying for a couple hours. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting to observe the more affluent echelons of South African society after some of the sobering places we had been recently.

The driveway for Grande Provance. “I don’t know if we should keep going? The might shoot us on sight?”

Tan and some wine tasting

It was a pretty decent way to spend an afternoon

And there was funky art in the garden. This horse statue made of old car tyres was worth a photo

We arrived at Danie and Sara’s after riding 193km (my GPS counted for me) to finish up about 30km from our start point, and were welcomed with great conversation, great wine and a great meal of South African specialties. Danie, a member of the Wild Dogs adventure riding forum in South Africa, had invited us after we had introduced ourselves there are about 2 months previous. Little did we know at the time that if we had been on BMW’s we may well have been walking into a trap, but thankfully the humble Suzi’s, while certainly no Yamaha, were acceptable enough for Danie to permit them to stay inside the gate for the evening.

We woke a little late and a little lacking energy after such a late and well lubricated evening, and tried to muster some energy to get moving. We failed. Danie had a very nicely setup workshop so I knocked off a few little maintenance jobs that were still to be done – adjusted my valve clearances, fixed my horn which hadn’t worked since the whack the bike got on the Wild Coast, plus a few little odds and ends. We did finally hit the road quite late in the afternoon, but not before organising with Danie and Sara a return visit to continue some discussions on riding in Angola, have a braai, and meet some of their friends.

We made our way down to Cape Town thankful that the traffic was pretty casual on a Sunday evening, and met Hannah and Steve, kids of our friends Beth and Pete back in Howick. They had kindly offered to accommodate us in Rondebosch for a couple days while we sorted out some issues with our bike paperwork and saw the place.

One handy feature of our pannier bags, a bottle of wine fits nicely in the front water bottle holder

Our bikes are still registered back in Western Australia and are in essence just holidaying in Africa like we are. To do this they travel on a kind of passport for vehicles, a Carnet de Passage, which allows us to temporarily import and export the bikes for personal use without incurring any duty. It’s a pretty simple document with 3 parts, an importation voucher that goes to customs when the bike is brought into the country, an exportation voucher that customs takes when the bike exits the country, and a counterfoil which stays with the Carnet that shows when and where the bikes have been.

Sadly, when the bikes entered the country through Jo’burg airport, customs hashed up the importation. Tanya’s Carnet had the importation voucher filled out but not taken and counterfoil was uncompleted, whereas my Carnet had the counterfoil completed correctly but both the importation and exportation vouches were taken. On face value it looked to us that Tanya’s bike was never properly imported whereas mine could well be already exported.

We needed to sort this out, and Cape Town was our last and realistically best chance. South Africans will freely admit that their bureaucratic systems are not particularly robust, however in the Western Cape they tend to work a bit better then elsewhere in the country. Hopefully Cape Town customs could resolve the issue.

We battled our way into town, parked on the footpath and got to the customs office without too much hassle. After clearing security where we were asked to declare our sidearms (“err what? like a gun?”) we settled in for a long wait. Thankfully the process wasn’t quite as painful as I was expecting, although to be fair I was expecting very painful – maybe that’s why they asked me to hand in my pistol before letting me in? Anyway, there was the usual ‘no you need to talk to so and so’ and when asking them ‘no you need to ring this person’ type handballing, but after bouncing around between a few people, leaving and coming back 2 hours later because the person we now needed was out for lunch, then talking to them and getting yet another contact in Pretoria, we finally got to talk to the person we needed and they were very helpful. It seems Carnets being filled out incorrectly is a common occurrence as she was not at all surprised and had the issue resolved quickly and efficiently. An awesome result.

Since arriving in Africa, Tanya has had a broken filling that she has been avoiding fixing to the very limits of her highly developed procrastination skills, however with Cape Town being the last proper city for while she finally succumbed to the discomfort of the dentist chair. She was able to get a temporary crown put in, but with our visa ending so soon there wasn’t enough time to get a permanent crown built. So the fix would have to be put off once again until probably Windhoek in Namibia.

With Tan still grumpy and a bit numb from the run-in with the tooth torturer, we made our way back into the city to look around and do some touristy stuff. My anxiety levels were pretty high the day previous with the bikes parked downtown for the entire day and that was something I wasn’t keen to repeat, so we decided to try the public transport system instead.

Let’s just say catching the train was an eye-opener. It wasn’t the lack of air conditioning or the general untidiness of the ageing carriage which was surprising. It was the abundance of stickers advertising the likes of home abortions (yep, really), penis enlargements, treatment for premature ejaculation, tender submissions, contract evaluation, unfair dismissal conflict resolution, how to win back your lost love in 4 days and other crazy crap. And often all offered and performed by the same doctor/contract lawyer/miracle worker/life coach/hack scammer scumbag. Some areas of the carriage were basically wall papered with these ads.

Made me wonder…… who on earth would be sitting on some grubby train on the way to work thinking “that cream from the bus stop just left me with a nasty itch and my willy definitely hasn’t doubled in size, in fact I think it hasn’t grown at all! I wonder if there is a better way??? Mmmmm I wonder??? Oh hang on what’s this? Dr Jaju’s penis enlargements? Wow he sounds legit, and 100% guaranteed! and he can re-write my resume and give me some interview training while I wait. What a pro!”

Surely people don’t fall for that shit? Surely… and surely the Police would be interested in tracking down Dr Jaju and his backyard abortion clinic and the Municipality would want to remove the very public advertisements? It wasn’t a great look for Cape Town.

I think Tan had jimmied the doors open, alighted and was making a mad dash for the relative safety of downtown Cape Town (scary thought) before the train had even really started to slow down. We made our way towards Bo Kaap, a famous street of colourful houses built by indentured Malay labourers. On the way there we stumbled upon a famous hipster café called Clarkes, which did sadly watery micro-brew beer but one of best sandwiches I’ve ever had. I know that’s a pretty big call as we’ve all had the odd sandwich in our lifetimes, but here goes – it was slow cooked pulled pork, melted mozzarella cheese and kimchi on bread fried in butter. Nom noms.

Bo Kaap. Paint some houses pretty colours and bam – instant tourist attraction

Back to the beer though, and I can say this now that we are safely across the border in Namibia and can avoid the ramifications of such a declaration of war, but South African beer was a bit of a let down. Common lagers like Castle or Hansa are very much the same as any mass-produced beer like our common ones back in Oz; that was no surprise. But at every opportunity there was to try something a bit different I did, from the micro-brewery at Nieu-Bethesda to Stellenbosch restaurants and Cape Town hipster café’s with local craft brews on tap, and never managed to find a good gutsy ale.   Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places, but I tried everything I could find (often a few times to be sure) and my expanding beer gut is testament to that. There is definitely a market here for a good master brewer to set up a craft brewery.

 

Tan and the worlds best sandwich. Even she thought the beer wasn’t so good

The other repercussion of the unsatisfactory beer was that I then went to our next engagement sober. We arrived at the Mount Nelson Hotel where I was excitingly told that some sort of semi-famous TV person had also gone for high tea once upon a time. Can’t remember now, Opara or Ohpra or some bloody thing. Whatever. I sat there pretty bored while Tan ordered the high tea option that included champagne, which was pretty good of her. To be fair the place was pretty flash, the staff were very attentive, the food and nibbly things were excellent, as was the champers and tea. It’s just that those types of places aren’t really for me; just not my cup of tea, so to speak. Tan loved it though, and for everyone’s info, to get home we used the safety of a taxi…

Tan is happy

I’m bored

Tan doesn’t care, she is really very happy

With our customs and dentist chores complete, it was time to get our tourist chores done and see some more of Cape Town, and then get the hell out of Dodge as our visa was rapidly evaporating. We hopped on the bikes and had a good look through town, had another spectacular pulled pork sanga at Clarkes (the beer was still underwhelming though, I checked again to be sure – I’m thorough like that), did Table Mountain the cheat’s way (up and down the cable car), plus Signal Hill and Lion’s Head.

The cable car to Table Mountain

 

Great views from the top – Table Mountain rises to over 1000m above sea level.

 

View of Cape Town from the top

We rode to Camps Bay and then onwards down the Chapman’s Peak Rd, which was fantastic and well worth the R40 toll. We were keen to get all the way to Cape Point but we were running out of time and we had places to be – places that had beer and meat and good red wine. There is a lot more to Cape Town than what we saw but cities, even ones as nice as Cape Town, aren’t really our thing. So, happy that we had enjoyed our short time and seen enough to get a feel for the place, we packed up, said our goodbyes to Hannah and Steve and made our way back up to Stellenbosch.

Chapman’s Peak Rd south of Cape Town

It was a pretty cool road, closed for a number of years and re-opened a couple years back mainly as a tourist attraction

The fire was cracking and the beers flowing by the time and we belatedly arrived at Danie and Sara’s house for a braai with their friends. They had invited some riding buddies and other travelling types to come over for the occasion. It was a fantastic evening of great food washed down by a number of bottles of the local produce. We poured over maps of Namibia and Angola discussing interesting offroad routes through Kaokoland and north of the Cunene River. I have read over the years a couple reports about the Doodsakker and have always been dead keen to do it; Tanya was coming along whether she wanted to or not. It was invaluable to sit down with people who had firsthand knowledge and discuss the risks of the route, of which there are a number of rather significant ones. Little issues such as the 700kms between fuel stops, the complete lack of civilisation, and the itty bitty fact that the most treacherous part of the route is only open at low tide and is known to eat vehicles that don’t get out in time. See sounds like fun!

Some pretty big pieces of cow were cooked up

Waking the following morning was a real mission, a good sign that the night before was a great success. I had planned a busy but achievable route through the Cederburg and Tankwa Karoo to Sutherland then up to Botswana for the coming 5 days. I wanted to knock off the last of our SA “must do” list before being forced out of the country. At some stage I mentioned to Danie that the bikes were due for a service and he suggested I do it in the convenience of his driveway – he has a drum to store sump oil and gets a small sum of money from the recyclers when its disposed of. Knowing that I wasn’t encumbering anyone with 5l of old oil, I went for a quick ride to the local auto store for supplies.

Loosening the sump plug, I pulled my hand away quickly and heard a good sharp “clunk” as the oil went into the pan. Oh shit. Oil doesn’t go clunk. Oil goes splash, it always goes splash. Oil. Does. Not. Clunk. I had a look at the magnet on the sump plug and was greeted with slivers of steel. Lots of them. Oh shit, this is not good; in fact, this is very, very bad.

Oh shit

I stuck my hand into the warm sump oil and fished around for the offending piece, and pulled out a broken tooth. It looked like a gearbox tooth to me, although there are a fair few gears in a motor so technically it could be a lot of things. I called over, “Hey Danie do you mind if stay over for a few more days” and showed him the oil covered tooth. Now Danie might ride a Yamaha but he is still a decent bloke, and he was more than happy to accommodate us unemployed and now immobile itinerant foreigners.

The tooth

Tan had been out picking up some supplies for our coming days riding and returned only just a few minutes after we discovered the gear tooth. The reality of it all was starting to sink in as she walked over and saw the concern on our faces. “We aren’t going anywhere” I told her and passed her the tooth.

We considered the options. Forget about it and keep going came to mind, although was quickly eliminated as not really a valid option, more of an ignorant disregard of reality. I was lucky enough to be given a free-motor-life by the gearbox tooth fairy, as the broken tooth came out in the oil and did not lodge in the gear cluster, which would instantly result in complete motor annihilation. Another significant probability was that with one tooth broken there was more soon to break off. Doing nothing when we have still so far to go was not an option.

Getting someone else to fix it was also considered, but paying people to do things when we have no jobs and no income isn’t really an awesome plan either. Back in Oz, paying a mechanic to strip and rebuild a motor would easily turn into thousands of dollars, and doing that for a cheap bike seems a bit like polishing a turd, or putting My Family stickers on the back of a Nissan X-Trail; i.e. a pretty poor use of our limited resources.

The final option was to strip and fix the motor then and there. While I’ve never rebuilt a motorcycle motor, I have stripped and rebuilt a few car motors with my old man. So with access to Danie’s well set out shed, the service manual, and my fairly passable knowledge of how motors work, I figured it was the best course of action and set to it.

It was about this time I figured I better ask Danie what he actually did for a living. I knew he ran his own business, which is common in South Africa, and he did it from home. But that was the limit of my knowledge and seemed plenty sufficient considering we always had much more interesting topics of discussion; such as types of motorbikes, riding motorbikes, and places to ride motorbikes. So when he mentioned that he was a motor mechanic I was mightily surprised, and thankful (again) to the gearbox tooth fairy that of all the places for something so significant to break, to do it in the driveway of a motor mechanic in wine country was pretty fortunate!

I had the motor out and sitting on the bench in pretty good time. With Danie taking the lead, we took the side covers off, and when we couldn’t see any damage, stripped the head and then split the cases. I came to realise pretty quick that while the basic principle of car and bike motors is the same; the layout is significantly different and I was thankful to have Danie show the way.

When taking the motor out by yourself, its easier to tip the bike over first

The flywheel and all the starter gears were fine. On the clutch side however, the primary drive gear was loose on the thread. Researching this online, apparently they can come from the factory this way. Scary thought.

Bit of blow-by past the first ring

This looks important; we better remember where this one goes.

Eyeballing the gearbox cluster, we soon found driven 5^th gear was the source of the problem with one tooth snapped off, a couple more teeth looking very sad, and lots of wear also on drive 5^th. Both drive and driven 3^rd weren’t looking too flash either and with the DR’s reputation for disintegrating 3^rd gears leading to catastrophic motor failure, that was added to the required spare parts list.

Broken tooth on driven 5^th, the one on the left

Inspecting driven 3^rd

Close up of the broken tooth

And a close up of driven 3^rd. The hardening is coming off.   A number of teeth on both sides of 3^rd and 5^th had damage like this

While this was all happening, Tan was looking into the visa issue as ours now only had 4 days left. What we had been told was that if we could get out of the country for a day or two, or according to some even just a couple minutes, we could re-enter with a new tourist visa and we would get anywhere between 30 and 90 days depending on the mood of the immigration officer. We booked a hire car for pick up the next day with a plan to drive to Namibia, and cooked some dinner and dessert to pay the rent.

Back in the shed some phone calls were made and we found that new 5^th gears where available in 3 to 4 days, however 3^rd gear would be ex-Japan and take about 4 weeks! Another option was to get a custom made billet 3^rd gear pair from a gearbox engineering shop in England for the princely sum of about A$500. In comparison the Suzuki gears were about A$150.

Even the dog was worried

Danie thought there could be a 3^rd way, as he knew a mate that had a DR650 motor that had been abused to death by a rental client. This motor was brought to the party and stripped, and wouldn’t you know it, 5^th and 3^rd gear were also worn. Certainly not to the extent mine were, but they were showing all the same signs of deterioration. This wasn’t a long-term solution, so I bit the bullet and bought the Suzuki 5^th gears from the dealer and the custom 3^rd gears from Nova Racing in England.

An extra job while we waited for gears, I repacked the exhaust cans with stainless steel scouring pads. The idea is they provide nearly as much noise attenuation as proper fiberglass exhaust packing but is much cheaper and lasts much longer

The following day our rough plan was to pick up the car, have Tanya go to her dentist appointment and have a crown made, then pack and hit the road for Namibia and our new visa. Ursina, one of Danie and Sara’s friends from the braai a few days previous, invited us to a wildlife sanctuary she volunteered at. We made time to come say hello to the baby cheetahs and other critters and were on our way when the hire car overheated.

We limped into town, wasted a few more hours getting a new hire car, and arriving at the wildlife sanctuary in the afternoon we received yet more bad news. When chatting to another employee about our predicament, we were informed that now our 90 day tourist visa was complete we may well be denied access if we tried to re-enter the country! She had some family members trying to return and they were facing this problem. We drove straight to a winery to calm down a little and consider our options.

 

A bat-eared fox at the wildlife sanctuary. These critters have such large ears they can hear bugs crawling around in the ground and then dig them up and eat them. Unfortunately their hearing is so good traffic scares and disorientates them and they are commonly run over. We saw some roadkill bat-eared foxes later in the trip.

A baby cheetah. The main purpose of the sanctuary is to breed and raise cheetahs

Snoozing after a long day of entertaining tourists

Ursina, Tan and I with one of the adult cheetahs

Hello, we would like to drink all the wine please. Yes you heard correct, all of it

With a few bottles of wine came some clarity, and the following morning we got up and set to rebuilding the motor with the second hand gearbox. We had done some research and with no useful information whatsoever on the Department of Home Affairs site, and all other info on the internet so contradictory, we decided we would have to ride the bikes to Namibia. If we could re-enter SA in a couple days we would, and if we couldn’t we would have the gearbox parts and Tanya’s crown couriered to us in Windhoek and we would do the work there. Working all day, the motor was back in the bike before dinner and the bike was started around 9pm. We celebrated with a Sticky Date Pudding and some liqueur for Tanya’s birthday, and tried to get some rest ready for our early start the next day.

Cleaning the stator cover readying for reassembly

Danie made a unsaid statement by wearing a spotlessly clean Yamaha shirt

Torqueing the head down

The donor motor. Its was from a rental bike where the client had overheated the bike riding in sand like a douche noob, then seized the motor redlining the bike down the highway. The piston melted into the bore

Putting the motor back in. I couldn’t get near it for Danie and his friends. Bike started first go

Blog 11 by Tan:  Big Fun in the Little Karoo

We were excited to be staying with relatives of our friends from Howick, Fiona and Charlie. Sheila and Rodger were rather trusting to be taking in a couple of smelly, road weary bikers but we later discovered as life long yaughties they could relate to living like nomads. We had a great night sharing stories and it was a real shame to be moving on so quickly, however our visas are fast running out and we had a lot more of the country to cover.

The lovely Knysna Heads

Sheila and Rodger took us for a tour of Leisure Island and the Knysna Heads which afforded gorgeous views and a whole ‘nother part of South Africa. On the lookout tour of the Heads we came across a seat dedicated to a guy that Rodger knew that had passed away. He was a passionate biker and yaughtsman. Prior to his death he had resolved to be cremated and arranged to have his beloved Harley Davidson taken out on to his yacht and his ashes put into the air intake and blasted out to sea through the motor. Unfortunately the ashes proved not a good thing for the bike which had a lot of carby trouble after that. Sounded like a cool guy. So much so we could have forgiven his lapse in judgment of owning a Harley.

Cheers to you Jürgen!

They took us to the most expensive street on the Knysna heads which fit very much with the saying that ‘money can’t buy taste.’ Some of the multi-million dollar monstrosities looked like an unholy marriage between Vagas casino and Alcatraz. At the top of the cliffs there were 2 blocks for sale for R1.6M (about AUD160, 000) for a ¼ acre block at the top of the cliff overlooking the ocean and The Heads. They were right on the cliff top so can never be built in, and also relatively flat so not difficult to build on. And it would not be too hard to build the best looking house in the street. Very cheap for a fantastic block. We considered buying it then relocating the Bikie Pikie caravan from Baviaanskloof and living the highlife. But in the end we opted to keep riding.

Mick and I looking like civilians and contemplating a sedentary life on Rich People Street ‘The Heads’

Crack dens in Australia cost more than this ¼ acre block with stellar views was going for

Sheila and Rodger Clancy – our hosts in Kynsa. With their awesome names, love of the water and laidback attitudes you could  easily mistake them for Aussies

After saying goodbye to our wonderful hosts we rode along the coastline to George before heading inland and doing the dirt road up Montagu Pass, which afforded yet more awesome views. The pass was built to safely and quickly access the diamond fields at Kimberly. The earlier ox cart passes up the Outeniqua Mountains were very slow and dangerous, taking a couple of days and littered with dead animals and the occasional ox cart. Montegu Pass was named after the governor of the time who commissioned the pass. Being the former governor of Tasmania, he utilised the Australian colony technique of getting convicts to do the work for free. We stopped at the top of the pass for tea, sandwiches and fantastic scones at a lovely Cape Dutch style house as has become a common occurrence for us – to my supreme approval I might add. The guy who ran the place joked about giving us a discount for not riding a BMW like the vast majority of bikers in the country. We suggested that he might want to instead consider a tax for any Beamer rider and allow himself to retire earlier.

Views of the coast

The stunning Montegu Pass

We don’t have a clever caption for this photo

Cape Dutch style tea house for Devonshire tea

We carried along the winding backroads past a bunch of ostrich farms out to a relaxed and low key campsite called Amber Lagoon located about 25 km west of Oudshoorn. The place is owned and run by a cool German lady who was highly gifted in the art of pancake making as we were soon to discover.

Geometric tortoise – one of the 100 most endangered species on the planet. I think I know why. They seem to spend a dangerous amount of time on roads

Backroads to Oudshoorn – lined on either side by ostrich farms

We spent the next few days chilling out, planning routes and trying to catch up on blog writing and other chores. We had an incredible ostrich egg omelets in cheese pancakes for breakfast. We have done some significant revision to the originally proposed trip, including aborting the West coast to Europe in favour of travelling up the East coast. We had been happy to avoid Sudan and the infamous border crossing into Egypt, which is said to be the most horrendous and corrupt border for crossing with a vehicle in the world. It looks now like it may be on the agenda after all. Although we are still considering freighting the bikes from Ethiopia to Spain where we can still zip down to Morocco. We’ll see what happens.

Route planning, ditching ebola and boko haram on the west coast for the ‘relative’ calm of the east coast

In other exciting news I thought I’d go for a short 3km run to see just how bloody unfit I have gotten on a diet of steak, toasted sandwiches and copious amounts of milk tart. I ran past a number of ostrich farms and was amused to have a couple of ostrich running along with me before leaving me in the dust. I was rather pleased and shocked to discover the run to be easy meaning the bike riding is not just getting us stronger but has some cardio fitness element to it as well….even if there appears to be extra cake on the both of us. That night we braaied our first ever ostrich fillet and ate it with vegies and millie pap. It tastes a lot like kangaroo but with a much coarser grain.

Ostrich steak – very lean and very tasty

After a hearty biker breakfast of chocolate and cinnamon crepes with Amarula for breakfast we left for a day trip to Swartberg Pass (Black Mountain) and Die Hel. Of all the passes in South Africa these two came the most highly recommended and as we soon discovered, for very good reason. We had one of our best days of riding of the trip. The scenery was on another level! We rode through the eastern end of the Groenfontein Valley towards Swartberg Pass, where there was a mountain bike race in progress. It was hard enough motorbiking up the pass in the scorching heat of the day so we felt for the poor, tired and fit buggers doing it by bicycle. We felt sorry for them and then we were like ‘brrrrrrppppp eat our dust suckers’.

From Swartberg Pass you can travel down a 48km winding dirt road that takes you to a valley that was once a hidden village of sorts set up by Boer farmers who wanted a bit of privacy one would presume. Nowadays it is a bit of a tourist draw helped along by the fact it is called Die Hel which means ‘The Hell’. With a name like this and given what we had heard we expected some really hectic road conditions but instead it was well graded and just simple riding fun. It was an extremely hot day so when we arrived we looked for shade and a cold coke before jumping back one the bikes and doing the same trip in reverse. It wasn’t as hard as we expected it to be but it was still a fantastic ride. We went to Hell and back with a smile on our face the whole way.

Use this road at your own risk – Challenge accepted!

On the way to Die Hel

Mick and hairpins extending into the distance

Me accelerating into the water crossing for maximum photographic effect

A scorching hot day I really wouldn’t have minding if I had binned it here

About to descend into Die Hel valley

The valley and its hairpins

We continued our way down Swartberg Pass and were totally blown away by the views. It would appear that all the hype was warranted. It was so impressive that when we got to the bottom be rode straight back up again. It was hands down the best pass of all the passes we were fortunate enough to ride while in South Africa.

On the way down Swartberg Pass

Tilted 90 degrees, this is known as the ‘Wall of Fire’

Mick’s bikes and the Wall of Fire

Tanya – gobsmacked and remembering why she became a geologist

The pass dissects some spectacular geology and is said to be one of the world’s best example folding in any range, anywhere. 700m high quartzite cliffs – anticlines, synclines – isoclinal, recumbent and overturned folds – you name it, its got it.

View from the top of Swartberg Pass looking south

That afternoon we did an ostrich farm tour with one of the local farmers which was really interesting. We learnt that historically ostriches were farmed for their feathers, where at one stage the value of white ostrich feathers was the same as gold on a weight basis. They say that at the turn of the twentieth century a single quality ostrich feather could get you a first class passage from Cape Town to London. However, once ostrich farming was found to be lucrative, the level of farming increased domestically and then ostriches were allowed to be exported overseas, breeding programmes in Europe and California flooded the feather market and the feather price dropped significantly. Interestingly the rise in motor vehicle travel, which at the time was mainly in open top cars, was one of the nails in the coffin of the ostrich feather boom. It seems the ladies couldn’t perambulate in new fandangled motor vehicles and sport their ostrich feather embellished fashions at the same time. Either the feathers went of the cars did. Then when World War One broke out the world had more pressing matters to attend to and the ostrich feather market completely collapsed.

The average ostrich egg weighs about 1.5kg and is the equivalent of 24 chicken eggs

The males are black and the females brown. During the mating season the males woo the ladies with their highly stylized dance moves 

These ostriches had been recently plucked of their nice white feathers

Today’s ostrich farmers have looked for other markets for the animals besides the feathers, which unsurprisingly are sold principally to Brazil. Leather was found to be a good potential market as ostrich leather is quite lightweight but strong. Lots of the leather that our farmer guide exported made its way from Oudshoorn to the fashion capitals of Milan and Paris. Also, meat became a good market domestically and then internationally as ostrich meat is very lean. When the bird flu crisis hit all ostrich meat exports to Europe were banned and many ostrich farmers struggled with 50% of farmers leaving the business. And due to huge culls there was a shortage of ostriches so the poaching of feathers took off. Europe then re-allowed ostrich meat imports but only with strict new controls, which the farmer spoke about. Lots of the work of ostrich farmers is tracking movements of animals and also testing so if one were to test positive to bird flu it is easy to cull all animals that have been in contact. Most money (about 60%) is made from leather, but a significant amount comes from feathers and meat also. The carcasses are then sold for fertilizer. Only 25kg of meat is butchered off of a 100kg ostrich. Another interesting fact is that the male ostriches have all their male bits on the inside. I learnt this upon observing the disturbing sight of one of the males defecating. When this happens EVERYTHING sees the light of day before the waste is removed and EVERYTHING makes its way back to where it came from. It was an alarming sight like something from a horror film. Bet you’re glad I bought that up.

You can see the malicious intent in the eyes of this ostrich

Be gone vile, featherless being!

One of the ladies looking coy for the camera

Mick with a recent hatchling – the fatality rate with these guys is 10-50%

That night we went to an excellent braai restaurant called Karooboom where we gorged ourselves with steak and ribs and spent the evening chatting with the proprietor about the region and his experiences growing up during Apartheid and then post 1994. He spoke how the ANC (African National Congress the current (and if they get their way probably indefinite) ruling party) had recently (in May) been voted out of Oudtshoorn in favour of the DA (Democratic Alliance, thought of as a progressive/liberal party for whites). However the ANC is refusing to leave the offices so the DA can move in. The central government won’t intervene to get the ANC to move out. When we first got to South Africa and people rather grimly suggested that South Africa would one day be like Zimbabwe we thought surely, surely that is an overreaction. But then you hear unbelievable stories like that and shudder.

More tortoises – Found these two guys fighting each other in slow motion with a bigger guy nearby

 

Views of the Groenfontein Valley

Before we knew it, it was time to move on to our next homestay at Swellendam. We rode out through the western end of the Groenfontein Valley to Calitzdorp then through to Rooiberg Pass which was great riding and views. I came within an inch or so of hitting a crazy bushbuck that chose the worst possible time to cross the track. It took a good 10 minutes to calm down after that.

I rescued this little guy from the middle of the road

Then Mick rescued him from my excellent plan of taking him around the world

Views from Rooiberg Pass – different scenery and not as steep as other passes but really scenic nonetheless

We were running a bit late so went for the tar to get to Barrydale a little faster and stopped at Ronnies Sex Shop for a beer. The place is a bit of a biker haunt and a must stop sort of place. The ride through Tradous Pass on the way to Swellendam was another stunner of a pass. Our host for the next two nights was Lauren who is the sister of our mate Charlie from Howick. She cooked some great food and plied us with great wine and kept us entertained.

Ronnie’s Sex Shop – it’s a bit of an institution. Story goes that friends of Ronnie’s thought it would be funny to pain the word sex in his sign. And that is all it takes to make the punters come – including us – sex, hehehe

Tradous Pass on the way to Swellendam – great views, nice windies and asphalt smooth as a baby’s bottom

The next day’s miserable raining weather fortuitously coincided with a day of bike maintenance. Mick checked the valve clearances on my bike which were tight and fixed the neutral light which had been routed poorly and was rubbing on the chain. He also repaired his license plate light which had stopped working when his bike got hit on the Wild Coast. We said a fond farewell to Lauren and were sad to have to leave so soon but the next day’s ride was to be quite the milestone for us. We were to visit Cape Agulhas which is the first of the ‘4 ends’ of the trip. When we came up with the trip we liked the idea of riding from the southern most tip of Africa to the northern most tip in Europe. We aim to do the same thing with the American land mass too.

This is the kind of hospitality that these South Africans have been showing us. Still can’t believe that people invite us smelly, stranger, biker Aussies into their house and go to so much effort for us

Lauren – sister of Charlie, provider of warm bed and conversations, cooker of lasagna and supplier of wine

The next morning however, my bike was not playing ball. When my fairing was put back on the power supply relay decided not to work. Mick did some diagnoses and with 12V in all the right places, decided the relay had failed. We stopped at a local auto store and bought a new relay and sure enough, that didn’t fix it. Mick by this point was thoroughly shitted off with all these minor motorbike issues.

We came up with an interesting route to the end of the African landmass. We rode down to Malgas on the eastern side of the Brede River and crossed on the last hand drawn pont in South Africa. The wind on the way to Agulhas was hellish, and the last 25kms from Bredasdorp was really bad south easterly that made our necks sore and the bikes work really hard. Wind is the enemy.

Tanya pulling the hand drawn pont

Mick chilling out after a horrendously windy ride in

We made it to Cape Agulhas and got the obligatory photographs. We then celebrated the milestone at the local famous fish and chippie where we met a lovely Polish now South African woman who took a keen interest in the trip and just generally made our day. We then rode to Somerset West on some back roads through some timber plantations and pass a small nature reserve. We got to the coast and we were going to do the famous coast road to Somerset West but it was so windy we headed inland onto the N1, which was a pretty poor decision as the traffic was busy and most drivers seemed to be on the crazy side of the sanity ledger.

Happy to be where I am

Sometimes we can’t believe we are doing this trip. This was one of those times

We snuck the bikes past the pedestrians only sign for a sneaky photo op. We are the outlaw bikers they speak of

The first of the ‘ends’ – next one is Nordkapp the top of Scandinavia

Tan packing in some awesome fish and chips – now cannot eat chips without vinegar

Tan and the bottom of Africa

We were put up for the night at Stu and Ros’ (friends of friends from Howick, Beth and Pete) place where we met their gorgeous kids who relegated us with tales of their pet hamsters. I particularly loved the story of their “friend who had a hamster but she fell on top of it one day, but it was ok as it only had one of its eyes pop out of its head so they took it to the vet who sewed its eye shut and now it’s a pirate hamster”. Classic.

Next stop WINE COUNTRY!