Here's the thing: women are extraordinary creatures. In every picture since the beginning you are readily identifiable, whether disguised as Mad Max or the Great White Hunter on Safari, as a Beach Bum or Bike Mechanic. Add a woman into the mix and in every frame she looks completely different. Its like you're suddenly riding, no longer alone but with 17 of them, some blonde, some not, some in dresses some in riding gear, now disguised as Jackie Onassis then as a t-shirted student, and presto! you're with some woman tourist in a hammock.
I have no desire to return to Africa on my bike but this tale is filling long summer nights at work quite nicely.
Thank you for the effort. It is well worth while.

Jamie and I had decided to slow our traveling pace down a bit, so much so that we were now headed backwards. We’d come north through Botswana, Zambia, and Malawi rather than along the coast of Mozambique. In addition to wanting to see some the places along our alternative route, the middle latitudes of Mozambique have recently erupted into fighting that could make travel inconvenient as militant groups have been active along the roads. The hearsay that we received was that groups aren’t targeting foreigners, only military convoys of the central government. The problem is that the Mozambique government is requiring travel for some stretches within these convoys for tourists, so you get to be part of the target. You might be better off riding down the road with an American flag streaming behind your bike waving fists full of greenbacks in the air.





Jamie and I planned to enter Mozambique from Tanzania and stay far north of any of fighting. After what seemed like an hour in congested streets, we finally broke from the traffic and headed south from Dar. Free again! We sailed along the highway for hours passing small villages and waving at kids until we found a section of road construction that we were diverted around. We ran into long stretches of fine, deep sand. Blast - our nemesis! We flailed around for 10 miles or so and I was getting exhausted in the heat, wrestling to keep the bike upright with all of our weight behind it. Jamie even had to get off to walk one super deep section. The shame!


We stopped for a break and considered the situation. We didn’t have very good information about this stretch of the journey and for all we knew, the deep sand could continue for hundreds of miles. In that case, we just weren’t going to be able to pull it off very easily. We decided to carry on for another 20 miles or so and if nothing changed, we would discuss our options again. To our delight, the sand ended and the road returned. I breathed a sigh of relief and rolled on the gas whizzing by the landscape studded with thorny trees scratching at the clouds above.



We had fast food for lunch.



We spent the night at a place called Kilwa Mosoko and motored towards the Mozambique border and the river we would need to cross to get there. We arrived too late for the ferry, which could only run at high tide so we had to stay another night just near the border. Living on a motorbike is no excuse for being disorganized.

The next morning we made our way towards the tiny immigration and customs offices. About 10 miles from the boarder the road turned to very rough ride with big protruding rocks and lots of sharp edged holes that were hard to see.

We were getting rattled to bits, but all we cared was that it wasn’t deep sand. We arrived at the river and spent a few hours staring at the water level waiting for it to rise high enough to allow the ferry to cross. As the tide rose, the riverbank began to come alive with activity: mini-bus drivers vying for position to get on the ferry, taxi drivers fighting over passengers arriving from the other side, and kids push poling small boats around. We watched two grown men have a wrestling match over the rights to a single passenger. The poor passenger didn’t seem to know what on earth to do, and no one else seemed to take any notice as this was just business as usual. Jamie kept a smile through the madness of it all.



They weren’t kidding about the water level – on the hour long crossing, we could hear the bottom scraping the sandbars below. There was barely enough water in that river to float the ferry and the driver had to pick his line very carefully to avoid getting stuck somewhere. Meanwhile Jamie and I did some ferry surfing.

It was dark by the time we got across the river and we found a family at the border village with some very basic rooms where we could pass the night. There was nothing but a candle for light, but they had cooked rice and fried some fish for dinner and had plenty for the weary travelers.

We rode some more rutted track on the other side of the border headed south. After four days journey, we finally arrived at the beachside town of Pemba and found our camp spot for the week. Unfortunately our camp spot also turned out to be the party spot and we endured some all-night dance music sessions in our tent. Very bad dance music; the same overplayed mixes that you’ve heard a million times. It literally sounded like our tent was right in the middle of the party even though the party was on the beach across the road from us. When the first rays of dawn began to shine through I thought, awesome, they’ve made it to dawn, now its time for everyone to go home and we can get a couple hours of sleep. But the dawn didn’t send anyone home. In fact the music continued at the same quaking volume until 11 that morning.

Aside from the nightlife that we just weren’t up for, we found Pemba a beautiful place with pretty beaches and fishing villages.


I even found some waves. If only I were 3 inches tall, I’d be out there. Suffice it to say, we found no waves to ride on north shore of Mozambique, which is just as you’d expect, given that Madagascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles all sitting pretty much right in the way of anything that would be coming from the Indian ocean.

Despite some beautiful beach scenes, Pemba just wasn’t our place. Drainages from the fishing villages were overflowing with trash that spilled out onto the beaches and most of the accommodation and restaurants were out of our price range. Some expats found Pemba a long time ago and made it their place and we’d crashed the party. After a few days we decided to start the return journey north.

We rode a long day to get to the last town before the Tanzanian border, called Palma. It was already dark and I was nearly out of gas when we arrived. I had stopped in a village to buy just enough fuel in plastic bottles to get us to Palma, but unfortunately the single station was out of petrol, and Palma had no affordable accommodation for us. We were exhausted and hungry and were running low on options.

We rode the length of the town a couple of times before we returned to the petrol station. This time, we met the manager of the station, a very nice Indian man named Vijay. We chatted for a bit and asked if he thought it would be safe to bush camp just outside of the town. He invited us to camp right there on the lawn of his gas station where he had a security guard all night. He also let us know that he keeps some petrol in reserve and that we were welcome to some of it. And just like that, after a friendly conversation both of our problems were solved. We set up our tent and got to making some pasta for dinner while Vijay went about cooking some chapatti and dhal in his little cookhouse that he had set up on the same lawn. He had only been in this little town for a year from India running the station for his uncle and still felt very much an outsider there. We set up a table of milk crates on the lawn and shared our meals together and talked all about the charms and frustrations of living in Africa.

Arriving at the river the next morning, we learned that the tide was too low for the ferry to run and would not come high enough for three days hence. We couldn’t have screwed the timing up any better than this. There was a bridge over the river about 100 miles away, but by all accounts the road was deep sand much of the way and I didn’t think that Jamie and I would still be smiling at the end of such a trip. But we certainly don’t want stay here for 3 days waiting! Options were looking slim until an alternative presented itself: one of the boatmen could motor us across in one of the small boats. His craft looked seaworthy enough, but the trick would be getting the bike in and out of the boat.

There was a steep sand bank down to the water level and it took four of us to hoist Dyna Rae over the rail and into the boat. It was precarious, and she could very well have ended the morning upside-down in the river on the traverse from the bank, but slow and steady, we managed it. Our captain motored us safely across the river and the crew helped us hoist the bike up and out to solid ground once again.


On the opposite bank, we met a Dutch couple driving a Toyota 4-Runner who also wanted to get across the river. The solution that the local crew came up with was to build a raft using beams to tie three of their boats together. They were mid-way through the construction when we arrived and so far the craft didn't look terribly confidence inspiring. The Dutch couple looked on, mildly concerned with the plan to keep their vehicle off the bottom of the river.

The ride back across southern Tanzania towards Dar was just as long as it was on the way south. We rode 350 miles, which made for a very a long day since we’re constantly slowing way down for villages along the way. The deep sand section was easier this time around, since we knew that the end wasn’t far ahead. We spied some perfect pointbreak setups in southern Tanzania that would never be.

Back in Dar, Jamie and I took care of logistics for the next leg of the journey to come. We found the Kenya High Commission and managed to get an East Africa tourist visa the same day. A single visa that covers 3 countries and took 3 hours to get, unbelievable!

We also paid a visit to the American embassy to have pages added to our passports as they were filling up quickly with colorful visas. My passport was blank at the onset of this trip and now was completely full up. I’d managed to procure a second passport from the embassy in Freetown and space in that one ran out with the Mozambique visa and border crossing stamps. Thanks to the friendly folks at the US embassy in Dar, I now had two extra-thick passports ready to roll.


There’s something truly satisfying about getting through a couple weeks on the road and meeting the little challenges that the journey brings. Compared to the day to day back home, out here we have such basic problems to solve: find some petrol, find some food, find a place to sleep. The magic of the journey is that in the course of their resolution, we’re often led to unexpected places and find things that we had no notion to look for in the first place. The next stop for us has loomed large in my imagination since forever. Jamie and I spent some time online researching climbs and costs in the mountains and made ready to ride north, dreaming of the snows of Kilimanjaro.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

as always... brilliant report and fantastic pics.. you really should publish a book of your travels. Safe riding..

Bones

Ha! Jamie liked this one. Happy to do it brother.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

Epic!! Thank you for letting us into your journey!!
I currently commute on a 200cc Chinese Enduro, and, since I live on the US/Mexico border, have contemplated riding to Ensenada or San Felipe, but was worried about how/if the bike would hold up for a few hundred miles in a foreign country.

Your friend Mike showed me I have nothing to worry about (I already took care of the chain)

Yes man, do it!

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

I’ve underestimated the difficulty of wilderness situations before and suffered for it, but even with that experience to draw from I still can’t seem to stifle my overconfidence in how far, high, and long I can go when I get moving. On the third day of our climb, at 6 AM after 5 hours of going straight up, most of my swagger had been swaggered out. In fact, I lost it about 1000 feet down trying to scramble across a rock face in the dark. The kicker is that we weren’t even climbing Kilimanjaro; rather, it is Killi’s little brother, Mt. Meru that was providing this early morning wind sucking exercises. For all of the effort of the ascent, we would hardly have any bragging fodder. Who the hell ever heard of Mt. Meru anyway?





If you’ve ever been backpacking in the wilderness of the American West, the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania may not be what you expect if you don’t do your homework very well. I don’t do my homework very well. It’s kind of like a Disneyland ride version of mountaineering: it’s expensive, it’s as safe as something inherently dangerous can be made to be, tremendous efforts are taken to maximize your comfort, and there are lots of people there.





Jamie and I shopped around in the town of Moshi for a way up the tallest mountain on the African continent and the best price that we could come up with, not taking advantage of any of the cooks or porters was far beyond our budget on a long trip like this one. We’d been prepared that this was a possibility but hoped that by actually showing up we could find a cheaper alternative. Elimination of Kilimanjaro as an option brought our enthusiasm to a low point. We we went to the neighboring park to find out about climbing Mt. Meru, which in terms of sheer altitude pales in comparison to Kilimanjaro. Fortunately, the price to climb it is similarly diminutive, about one-quarter the cost of the Kili climb, which would cover our park fees and the cost of the required ranger. We’d heard great experiences about he climb, so we were stoked again and ready to head into the mountains.





Mt Meru is about 15,000 feet high. As a point of reference, that’s roughly 500 feet taller than Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada, however the ascent is about 10 thousand feet in total rather than the 6 thousand required to climb Whitney from Whitney Portal. I’ve done lots of backpacking at similar altitudes in the Sierra Nevada, so I wasn’t daunted by the distance or altitude gain for this trip. And we certainly wouldn’t be making use of the multiple porters that organizers were nearly insistent that we needed to have to ensure a successful climb. We would carry and cook our own food, just like we always do back home. Call it backpacker pride. There are huts along the climb, so we didn’t even need to carry a tent or sleep mats, just sleeping bags, clothing and food. Piece of cake! Needless to say, after long distance trips into true wilderness back home, a sizable chip was developing on my shoulder about this whole experience.




My shoulder chip grew when we showed up on the first day and found that amongst 10 people headed up, Jamie and I were the only ones not using porters. One German couple had 5 porters. My pack was no larger than anyone else’s and was full of our cooking gear and food for two people. I couldn’t imagine what in the world everyone thought they might need up there. I found out later that one guy was carrying his 15’’ MacBook Pro in his pack. Just about everyone was wearing massive Everest-capable hiking boots. I was wearing my Keen sandals and someone asked if the porters were carrying my boots. I thought I would look funny wearing motorcycle boots with shorts, so I would do the climb in sandals. They’re comfy. And oh so stylish.





We met our ranger at the park gate, a mountain savvy fellow called Oswald, and off our merry band of hikers went, meandering though lush forests and meadows at the foot of the ridge that we would ascend during the following two days.





Oswald toted his rifle along to keep any wilderness critters such as buffalo and elephants at bay, which roamed freely about the park. While not normally a danger, if taken unawares at an inopportune moment or position, one of these creatures could become aggressive.




As we walked, I became increasingly annoyed at our maddeningly slow pace set by Oswald at the front of the pack that kept us in one tight bunch. I hate having someone right on my heels and staring at the back of someone’s head while walking in the wilderness. Additionally, I find it difficult and even more tiring to hike at a rate that isn’t my natural pace, even if it is slower. Eventually, Jamie and I got a head of the pack and felt as though I’d just burst out of traffic congestion in Dar Es Salaam.





After walking ahead of the pack for half of the second day, we saw something on the trail that gave us pause. The leg of a buffalo lie severed from its owner with blood drippings that looked like they were nearly still wet, but no sign of the rest of the buffalo. Frequently, you could observe buffalo trails with fresh tracks on both sides of the trail, so it was obvious that they were quite active on these lower slopes of the mountain. When Oswald arrived he studied the leg and surmised that the hyenas had been at the poor buffalo the night before and dragged the rest of him off into the bush.




As we all stared dumbly at the buffalo leg, Oswald shared that two months a tourist had been gored badly by a lone buffalo before a ranger was able to get a shot off at him. Imagining Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa depiction of the danger of coming upon a buffalo in the bush, I swallowed my hiking ego and rejoined the pack, walking right behind the guy with the gun. Further along the trail we found some scraps of bushbuck pelt. By careful examination of a sandy part of the trail, Oswald made out a fresh leopard print and figured that he was the predator that brought the bushbuck to its end.





Porters passed us with massive loads balanced on their heads: wicker baskets or a tarps wrapped with rope that were full of food, cooking gas cylinders, and the full size packs of the other hikers. They raced ahead of the tourist, wearing jeans and sandals and carrying three times the weight of any of us. Jamie and I enjoyed a lunch of cheese, canned tuna, plantain chips, and apples and by evening we were more than ready for a double helping of pesto pasta to replenish calories and salt burned during the day’s climb. The huts had bunk beds and made for pure sleeping luxury while on the trail, which made it all the more difficult to rise at 1 AM to begin our push to the summit.





We spent hours in the dark climbing and either scrambling along rock faces that seemed to drop off into an abyss of darkness, or walking up a slope of scree that had you sliding half a step back down for every step up. My hands were very cold and I tried to keep them in my pockets when I didn’t need them for scrambling or holding an additional light for Jamie. I was wearing two pairs of socks, so my toes were cold, but still ok. By 6 AM, some light began to glow from the opposite side of the face we were climbing in the direction of Kilimanjaro. The sun was on the way up, and I couldn’t tell from the glow how long we had before it would crest the horizon. I was feeling strong still, but Jamie was nearly spent. She was breathing very hard trying to get enough oxygen to her muscles for every step up. Less than 100 feet from the summit, we even talked about stopping the ascent, but every time we stopped, after a short rest, she went a bit further, until we finally emerged to find Kilimanjaro poking its head from beneath its blanket of clouds as the first rays of morning sun turned the sky to fire.





We stared at the scene in front of us and finally laughed.





After savoring the sight for a while and having a rest it was time to begin the climb down. There was a storm forecast for the afternoon and we had 10,000 feet to descend before the sun reached the opposite horizon. The scrambling sections that we’d sweated on the way up now required due caution, but were no cause for concern as they’d been in the black of night, and the scree sections were a joy to bound down, sliding with every step and letting gravity do some of the work. When we reached the hut that we’d slept in the night before, we had a rest and made some soup and oatmeal to replenish some of the calories that the intervening 9 hours had transformed into altitude and elation. The soup was absolutely terrible, with clumpy bits of the powder that wouldn’t unclump to mix properly, but we drank every drop and thought it was fantastic.





By the time we were nearly to the bottom it was 5:30 PM and our thighs were on fire. Our legs would shake whenever we stopped moving. We’d been hiking for 16 hours on 4 hours of sleep with little more than an hour’s rest. I think this was the largest vertical decent that I’ve ever done in a single go. The flat meadow at the bottom was a joy to walk through. It’s hard to describe the wonderful flatness of that meadow. A perfectly level surface in equilibrium with gravity, with hardly any effort required from your leg muscles to keep you from toppling forward. A lone giraffe watched us and sauntered along a nearby watering hole. A family of baboons went about their evening business with the dominant male playing sentinel near the trail where we walked while the young ones tumbled about, wrestling one another and making quick runs out to get a closer look at us. Each time they would run out a bit further, testing their courage. Jamie and I got on the bike and rode back to Arusha, ready to sleep for a week.




In Tanzania, things happen riding in traffic about every 5 minutes that back home would warrant an exasperated tale upon arrival at your destination. Here though, a friendly nudge here and there in the fray of it all is quite alright and doesn’t indicate any aggression. Intersections are a comedy of chaos with street signs utterly ignored and everyone seeing just how far they can push before they are physical stopped from forward motion. No one gets upset, this just how it works. You get in the habit of using other cars as blockers when making a turn on a busy road, shielding you from other motorists that know you’re there but just don’t care. So it was upon our return to Arusha, but given my fatigue from the summit and decent of Mount Meru that day, it was all that I could do to keep the bike upright in the traffic maelstrom.


After a day of rest, we left the busy streets of Arusha behind us and rode westward across the windswept plains towards the N’gorogoro Crater, which was said to have the highest density of wildlife of any park in Tanzania. Even though Jamie had a harder time getting up the mountain than I did, I was now sore as could be and hobbling around while Jamie seemed perfectly fine. She giggled watching the comical spectacle of me gingerly hoisting myself on and off of the bike. The plains were full of Masai tending to their cattle, the warrior tribe known for their adherence to a traditional nomadic lifestyle. Their bright red and cobalt blue blanket garb punctuated the grassy landscape. Not from from N’gorogoro, one particular Masai tribe are said to be the last living functional hunter-gatherers.




At N’gorongoro Crater we found a continuation of the sky-high costs we’d found at Kilimanjaro. To enter the crater would cost ten times as much as the other safaris that we’d been on elsewhere, so we rode away without seeing a single furry critter. These places were just catering to a different audience than moto hobos. Riding away from the crater we fought a strong headwind that buffeted us around like crazy. I knew that our gas mileage was going to be suffering, and didn’t know if we would make it back to Arusha on what we had in the tank. Just as I was thinking that it was stupid to have set off without gassing up something moved at the edge of my peripheral vision, something big. I turned my head to the left to find that it was not one big thing that I saw moving but lots of big things. A massive herd of wildebeest was bolting for the road, making these direction changes that just looked fantastically fast for such big animals. The movements looked erratic, but somehow they all stuck together like a flock of birds in flight. They bounded lithely over the road then zigged and zagged their way into the distance as we stood by the by to bike and smiled. The wind shook our helmets sitting on the mirrors and whipped Jamie’s hair around. It wasn’t the canned safari with piles of lions and cheetahs dancing with rhinos that we imagined at the N’gorongoro Crater, but we found it pretty spectacular all the same.

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches

It is interesting that you find these costs on a continent that is supposed to be (at least in stereotype) among the poorest of places. I know that obviously the laws of economics are at play, with enough people with cash paying these extravagant prices to see the 'good stuff' of Africa, but it seems kind of weird at the same time.

I remember reading someone's travel blog here on HU several years ago they encountered the same kind of thing while motorcycle traveling in Africa. I don't remember the country in particular, but it had many resorts catering to Hollywood types, or wannabe Hollywood types costing several hundred $'s a day. It might have been the same country that Angelina Jolie was adopting her kids from which does not come to mind, but most likely factored in someone's business plan

Seems like its really just the places that have been established for decades as THE African Safari type destinations. Namibia, Botswana, Zambia haven't been as established, so while there are high dollar options for those places, they aren't the only options. Places like N'gorogoro crater are just for a different type of traveler. Fair enough, and you hope that the proceeds aren't going in too few pockets...

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bugsonmyboard.org
two wheeled wave hunting dispatches