issue5

Tech - Gear - News - reviews

AFRICA’S ONLY ADVENTURE & OVERLAND E-ZINE

ADVENTUREMagazine

Tech - Gear - News - reviews

AFRICA’S ONLY ADVENTURE & OVERLAND E-ZINE

ADVENTUREMagazine

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Wow, issue 5 already!Last year, running an adventure based publication was only a dream. Something I had never really given much thought to up until recently is the support we’ve been receiving from friends and fellow riders. It has been somewhat overwhelming and I must say, the “Thank You’s” after each issue makes it all worthwhile.

In this issue, Yamaha recently launched the comeback model Tenere’ and it’s set to take the adventure single market by storm, but is this bike as good as everybody thinks? The only way to find out is to put it through its paces. Etienne van Rensburg gave

us a nice review on an older but not yet forgotten Honda XR400. They are perfect for beating around the bush as well as beating you into the bush (Etienne had a little off and fractured his wrist and is currently suffering the pain of being out of the saddle – recover soon buddy.) A couple of nice readers trip into Lesotho via Sani and the Alfie Cox Dual Sport Festival.Mark Galliers takes us with him on a trip from London to South Africa; a trip most of us only dream of doing. The usual stuff can still be found here: photo of the month and some gear features… Enjoy the mag!

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Crew & Contributors Editor-In-ChiefStephen de VriesCopywright EditorKirsten SheldonContributors Wilddog Adventure RidingEtienne Van RensburgPhotography & DesignKirsten SheldonStephen de VriesStitchedkitten Photographywww.stitchedkitten.co.zaWeb Hosting Redhammerwww.redhammer.co.zaContact082 5888383022 461 2526Advertising [email protected]

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Contents

Ride ReportAfrican Enduro

Road TestYamaha Tenere XT660Z

Owners ReviewHonda XR400 Owners review

Readers RidesAlfie Cox Dual Sport FestivalSani Pass

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Contents

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GearFull HID kits

H1 , H3, H4, H7, 9004, 9005 Available.

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Pimp your bike with a new MRA Screen.

Available for most models.

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MRA Screens

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Click me to feature your product here.

Crash bars available for the new Yamaha Tenere XT660Z

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Bugs bugging you?Repell them with a rubber wrist band repellant.

For more info drop Nico a line.

[email protected]

Crash Bars

Insect Repellant

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Photo of the MonthSubmitted by Michiel - Cape Town.

Submit you pictures to [email protected]

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African

Enduro

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THE ROUTE I’d been scheming about a trip like this since I was a young boy, but in many past years the route has not been possible through the countries I wanted to travel (mostly due to borders being closed with situations in countries such as Libya & The Sudan). As is the custom, I had many friends who would be coming with but when it came down to the crunch nobody seemed committed enough to quit their jobs or ask their wives permission so I thought whatever, I’ll do it on my own. I’ve always wanted to go from North to South so I could arrive at home, and along the East coast. So this was the idea:

I contacted each country consulate and read all the other recent Africa RR’s I could find and although entry into each country wasn’t 100% guaranteed I had worked-out some plan B’s, so the game was on. I had also done some research to find out some

more challenging off-road legs through each country. The Chinese are building roads through Africa like it’s nobody’s business, and my preference with bikes is generally toward dirt surfaces.

Oh and if you’re wondering about this, people have told me it’s a relatively similar route as legends Ewen & Charlie took in Long Way Down. I haven’t watched it, and don’t want to. From what I’ve heard my trip couldn’t be more different to theirs in so many ways.

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THE PREP This is the boring part. It took me about 6 months part-time and 1 month full-time - and mostly entailed research for: * Visa’s, carnet, & other documentation * Route & local contacts * Bike mods, repairs, spares & riding gear * Camping, eating, living & medical equipment I’ll spare the boring detail, but visa & documentation requirements were extensive and had to be done in advance. THE BIKE

OK, the awesome part. I’d read everything I could find written on this route and the overriding bike advice was to keep it light & simple. The shortlist was these

usual suspects (ahem, in alphabetical order) * BMW 650 Dakar * Honda Transalp * Honda XR 600/650 * KTM 640 Adv * Yamaha TT or XT 600/660 I gave each contender an equal opportunity. The choice came down to being the most off-road biased while, at the same, time was strong and most ready out of the box, and most importantly not require a computer to be plugged-in for a service. There was a clear winner in my opinion, especially as it needed the least amount of aftermarket mods, which can become costly from this part of the world.I decided to buy a brand new one, especially after hearing about them being discontinued and managed to grab one of the few new models from the importers at Pro Action in JHB. My research suggested that the newer LC4’s were very reliable if given appropriate TLC, and because I was going solo through some pretty unfriendly places I wanted to

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be 100% certain of the bikes history. THE MODS I thought the bike could handle it out of the box, but my extensive research on Advrider revealed many bits that would aid fall protection and luggage capacity/ease. My shortlist was anything but short, so I trimmed it by 2/3rds and was left with these: Limbs * Sprockets upgraded to steel (Longer life-span thus

spares shouldn’t be required) * Chain upgraded to X-ring Gold (As with sprockets, prolonged lifespan) * Stenhouse handlebar risers (Comfortable for taller rider & standing on pegs) * Tyres (Standard Metzeler Sahara’s for Europe, Continental TKC80’s for Africa, Pirelli MT21 purchased on-route) * Ultra heavy duty tubes (Ask me afterwards how many punctures I get) Heart, lungs & stomach * Akrapovic silencer (Apart from the nice tune

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& performance I needed the flexibility of the silencing insert) * The usual airbox, carb needle & emission control restrictions removed. Tuned at the average altitude I would be at. * VisuFilter inline fuel filter (Extra protection against dirty fuel) * Mr Funnel (Even more protection against dirty fuel) * Loctite blue (Added to just about everything that could turn on the bike) Body & clothing * Acerbis Multipro hand guards (much better than the stock plastic ones) * Front high fender conversion (purely aesthetic, but does help in thick mud) * Neoprene fork covers (to keep dust & kak out of seals etc) * Carbon fibre tank protectors (lightweight bump & scratch protection. Hand made by an oke in the UK) * Side stand (In addition to centre stand) * Headlight guard (Protection against stone-

throwing Ethiopian juveniles) * Rallye crash plate with side toolboxes (Tougher engine / lever protection plus low-down tool storage) * Sheepskin on seat * Tankbag (nice & small, by Wolfman, with rain cover) * Front fender bag (Handy for tube spares/repair) * Andystraps panniers luggage (This is my thread, so I can say soft luggage is the ONLY option for off-road terrain) * Pacsafe security netting for panniers * Pelican top box * Luggage rack extension for top box * Registration number plate (Not essential in Mpumalanga but a useful accessory when travelling abroad) Eyes * Garmin 60CSx with maps from tracks4africa * Garmin plastic bicycle handlebar mount * Cigarette lighter to hella power adapter There were two major mods

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which I couldn’t afford; stronger rims than the standard Behr ones and a steering damper. I thought I’d use my guns as a steering damper (and to straighten the rims). I’ll reflect on these omissions at the end of my trip.BIKE PREP The bike was brand new 5 weeks before my scheduled departure date (what a gamble hey). I spent this time installing most of the mods and running in the motor for its first 1000km’s. I opted for the ‘take it easy’ run-in method, only opening it up slightly past 5K rpm towards the end. Although I had ridden a number of 640 Adv’s previously I was astounded by its off-road ability while chasing a China on his 250 MX bike through the Lowveld forests. On the road I found it a pleasure, especially when tightening up the suspension. The renowned vibes of the LC4 didn’t bother me in the slightest, besides if it was comfort I wanted I would be staying at home in front of the TV with my slippers on and a

brandy in my hand.During the run-in I had a total of three punctures so had plenty opportunity to test my pathetic 6inch tyre levers and shed much claret from my knuckles in the process. The 1000k’s came and went in a few weeks and I was back off to JHB for the first service (which sadly they wouldn’t let me watch). At this point they removed the emission restriction and fitted the one luxury I had granted myself in the mod list; the Akrapovic silencer. After the service I got a wooden pallet from the Pro Action, loaded it onto the pick-up with the bike and drove to Oliver Tambo Airport. I then packed it onto the pallet for freighting to the UK. This entailed taking the front wheel off an undoing the handlebars to lay them long ways, and then strapping everything securely on the pallet with tie-downs. I watched my pride & joy being taken away precariously balanced on a forklift to be inspected by customs, wrapped in plastic

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and then queued for its flight to London, UK. My bike was due to land in London in four days so I spent that time packing all my gear, eating as much biltong as I could (about 1kg a day) and drinking as much brandy as I could (won’t say how much).

AFRICAN ENDURO - The Start Glad I’ve got some interest here - I’ll try to write each post within a couple of days. This picks up from my first post; where I found myself in London, UK waiting anxiously to be re-united with the somewhat necessary ingredient of my trip (my bike). London the freighting flight was delayed by a couple of days, and then another three days added to that with the useless staff at UK customs & excise trying to come to terms with the fact that all my paperwork was actually in order. After declining the subtle

request of a bribe by an employee of BA world cargo (what an idiot), my bike was finally released to me at 2am in the morning on the day I was supposed to depart. An SA friend in London with a GS helped me unwrap the freight, inspect the damage and re-assemble the bike.

This only took us 20 minutess and I was then able to pour some fuel into the beast and crank it up for the ride back to Gary’s place. Despite the sub zero temperature this 20 minute ride was the first since the run-in service AND having the Akra fitted. It was a good feeling being able to ring the neck of my dream bike through the streets of London at 3am. The un-silenced Akra was setting off car alarms and

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emitting the odd flame out of the rear. Yes please.I caught three hours of sleep that morning and then woke up to fit the final bits of kit I’d bought in London (Pelican top box, side-stand & electronic bits), and then proceed to pack the bike for departure. I was seriously tired but had no choice but to leave ASAP. I had already booked the ferry ride from France to Tunisia in advance, and the customs delays meant that I now had 24 hours to get from London to Marseille (approx. 1,300 km’s). I didn’t mind this at all because I had backpacked through Europe before and my trip was only really starting on African soil.

The route to Marseille was pretty much on one highway all the way, and after adjusting to riding on the wrong side of the road and having such a heavy load I focussed on dispatching the km’s one by one. I was able to comfortably cruise at 130kmph and used this to calculate that if I kept my average speed on the GPS odometer above

105km/ph I could stop for a total of 5 hours during the 24 hours that I had to get to the ferry in time. After a good 5 hour session in the saddle it was finally cold (snow) and not fatigue that got the better of my and I pulled into Dijon to find somewhere to get my head down. I chose the best looking hotel so that I could park my bike somewhere secure, have a quick bite & dop, sleep and then get up and back on the road immediately. My bike was parked in the locked basement parking lot but when I got back to it after my nap I noticed that the locks on my top box & pannier netting had hacksaw cut marks on them and my ignition looked as though it was jimmy’s with a screwdriver. Thieving

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bastards. The idiot must have been startled as none of the locks were cut through an nothing stolen. The ignition still worked. At this point I decided that I would be sleeping next to my bike from now onwards. I did the final 700k’s to Marseille early that morning despite being blown around like a balloon on the highway. They were experiencing gale-force winds and my bike & luggage was exhibiting the aerodynamic properties of a Sherman tank. I pulled into the Marseille port at full tilt and made the ferry with 10 minutes to spare. Although I was in need of some sleep a more important duty called at the bar of the ferry where I celebrated with numerous French lagers and the good company of an Englishman named John. I then retired to my shared cabin, where my three Freddie Mercury lookalike room-mates were hosting a snoring competition, but I slept well and woke up the next morning busting to get back onto my bike.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Tunisia I was busting to get back into the saddle and onto African soil. I kitted-up and rode off the ferry - for the first time feeling that this dream was actually taking place. I was spared a lengthy customs procedure as they were more interested in the 200 French 4X4’s on the ferry that were attending a rally somewhere in the desert.

As I rode out of the port I experienced for the first time the amazing feeling of adventure riding. I had (purposely) only researched places to stay in the major Capital cities where I would be doing bike services, so here I was riding through a very foreign land not knowing what was around the next corner, where I would be kipping or

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what I would be eating next. Insane! Well actually I had seen what I could be eating - fresh roadside barbecued lamb. I passed through a number of road-side stopovers where you chose your preferred cut of meat and it was then thrown on the flames. I noticed a local guy who fancied a cut that wasn’t available on any of the carcasses so another one of the tied-up animals bit the dust. Africa is not for vegetarians!I tracked the coast for a couple of days, heading in a Southerly direction. As I was to find out throughout my trip,

camp sites don’t really exist in some countries and I didn’t want to chance road-side camping by myself so early in the trip so I clocked into cheap hotels I found along the way.

These people had clearly come for a show. I would have loved to do some donuts for them

but access was tricky. The riding was mostly on tarmac but the surface was pretty rough - prefect for the KTM’s suspension. In many of the small villages I passed through the locals would gesture me to lift the front wheel - but I didn’t want to be showing off so early in the trip

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(bad karma). As I suspected a bike as big as mine (above a 125cc) and packed with loads of gear is an absolute rarity in almost all of Africa until the South. It was flattering being such a main guy.

After the attempted theft in France I slept very close to my bike - in this case next to it in this courtyard. I felt a warm feeling every time I saw my

MP number plate in a remote location. MP can be like a

black hole - some people can’t leave for generations.

My final leg in Tunisia was to

leave the coast and hit the desert in an Easterly tangent to get to the border of Libya. This was my first encounter with the Sahara desert, which would be my constant companion for at least the next 8,000km’s until Ethiopia. I was stoked to be out in the middle of nowhere and on some dirt.

When I was a few hundred kilometres from the Libyan border I started looking out for a top-up of petrol. There was none to be found except this guy selling a

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large variety of octanes out of dirty containers. He wouldn’t accept my petro reward points and was all out of cappuccino’s so I took my business some place else.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Libya As I said in my previous post, this was to be the biggest border gamble on my trip. Europeans seem to be granted entry quite easily (with transit visa’s) but for unsavoury characters like South Africans its much more difficult. The only way I would be allowed to enter was by having a government (well dictatorship) approved tour agency supply me with an invitation to visit the country, and then provide a tour guide to shadow me the entire visit. This wasn’t cheap but the alternative was a 5000km round-trip through Southern Europe to Egypt. Then three weeks before my trip started the Libyans issued a statement that South Africans were no longer permitted in their glorious nation. I contacted a my tour operator who assured me this would blow over and that he

had the clout to get me in. I clocked out of Tunisia and waited between borders in no man’s land for a couple of hours for my guide to arrive. He then completed all the border formalities for me (all forms in Arabic and no English or Swazi speakers). After a couple of hours of negotiation and a small yet well placed bribe he emerged with my passport and the Libyan number plate that I had to attach over my MP one. By the grace of Allah (and his prophet Mohammed) I had made it into Libya! I then rode from the border for a few hundred kilos to the capital, Tripoli. The drivers on the double-track highways were INSANE. They put SA taxi drivers in the shade. I

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quickly learnt that opposing lanes could become one-way lanes at the discretion of the driver. My first experience was a large truck coming in my direction, without the speed or inclination to complete his overtaking manoeuvre before flattening me. As I result I had to disembark from the highway onto the dirt on the side of the road at high speed. I lost count of how many times this happened but thankfully the awesome suspension of the KTM didn’t mind the high speed transition into the dirt. Tripoli was fascinating. Thanks to everybody’s favourite colonel (that’s Gadaffi, not Saunders - dictatorship not chicken) there has been virtually no tourism in Libya for almost 40 years. I took a day off in Tripoli to do laundry and have a poke around the city. There were none of the tourist facilities that we take for granted in foreign cities, such as;

• All road signs in Arabic, nothing at all in English (even adverts & product names)

• No tourist-type retailing, such as souvenirs or western fast food

• Not a single non-Arab looking person in sight, and not too many hotels

• Oh, and NO alcohol, nothing, anywhere. It was tough.

Before reversing out of North Africa in WWII the Italians left behind a penchant for good coffee and ice cream. The espressos were as good as anywhere in Europe. Sorry, no photo’s of Tripoli. The AK47 clad police aren’t that keen on American looking tourists waving big Nikons around. The next day was a 200km ride eastwards to visit the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna. The ruins are of a huge port & market town dating back to 100AD and although most of the ruins are still under the cover of sand, the larger more impressive ones have been excavated. I’ve seen many similar sites in the Mediterranean but these were

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by far the most impressive.

After that we rode/drove further east and very suddenly a sand storm started coming in from the desert. The air became very thick with sand and although I had just about enough visibility to ride at 50kmph I was worried about the effects of this fine dust on the KTM’s lungs so we pulled into a town and found a hotel. Well I say hotel, it was actually a Moroccan run brothel with a thriving bed bug & flea breeding operation on the side. But at least the VIP KTM could sleep in the hotel reception under 24 hour observation. This would become the norm in the hotels I stayed at in Libya, and riding up the stairs of a Hotel after a hard day riding was very difficult. My bike was performing at 100%, and I was now so comfortable with the weight of luggage of opted to keep it on the bike rather than put it in trunk of Mohammad’s car. It was enjoying a diet of good quality petrol that was so

cheap it was free sometimes. It cost about R30 to fill the tank, and when I was just topping it up by a few litres there wasn’t a monetary denomination smaller enough to pay with so it was free! I was enjoying an adventure riding diet of one very large meal per day and just liquids & small bits either side.

After having done about 1,500 klicks along the coastline of Libya we took a very desolate road through the middle of the desert so that I could do some desert riding and we could camp out in the wilds. A few times along this road the tar would end and be replaced with sections of very soft sand and I don’t know how I stayed on the pegs. Mohammad’s

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Daewoo Nubira and more so his driving skills were impressive in this soft stuff, although we did have to stop a few times to shovel dust out of the engine where it was piling up.

Before long I had arrived at the border with Egypt. A particularly uptight official was insisting that I shouldn’t have been allowed into Libya. He didn’t see the humour in me suggesting that I’d leave immediately. I would have liked to spend some more time in Libya but the guide costs were expensive and although the KTM was performing

superbly I was not far off having done 5000k’s on the trip so far and wanted to do the next service in Cairo.AFRICAN ENDURO - Egypt Hallo-wherefrom-mister-hey-whatyourname That is a typical Egyptian greeting, which is closely followed by a rapid fire of insistence to buy anything or service you could imagine not requiring. Ironically I was actually in need of an entrepreneurial Egyptian at this border-post of Salloam in the North West of the country. Egypt is famed for having one of the more complex land

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border entry procedures on the planet, and this border specifically as the worst in Egypt. I had researched exactly what I needed to do but fell down at the first hurdle and started throwing abuse at the officials. It was time to calm down and pay someone to do the shouting. End-to-end it took me 4.5 hours to get in, and this a brief summary of what I needed to do:

• Validate pre-arranged visa, have my green mamba forensically examined for a forged photo and then have it stamped for entry. Now the bike;

• First cursory glance at the bike’s carnet de passage

• Have exhaust emissions checked

• Have chassis number traced onto a piece of paper

• Buy compulsory 3rd party insurance

• Have carnet validated & stamped

• Get ‘mini’ carnet & temporary Egyptian drivers license printed

• Rent & attach Egyptian number plate

• Final check of passport & all paperwork collected thus far

Each of the above steps took place in a different building and resulted in me receiving some sort of document or paperwork which I then needed to make a photocopy of which got retained by guy in the next step of the process. What a pain the arse. After having several hundred Egyptian pounds liberated from my wallet I left the border with some high RPM’s and some loud cracks of the Akra. I was making for a town on the North coast called Marsa Matruh but was caught short of daylight hours and broke one of my rules of the trip - riding at night, in Africa. There weren’t many villages and thus

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livestock on this highway so I thought I’d go for it. I wanted to push for this town because it was where my Grandfather had fought in World War II (all the way from the Lowveld). The only unpleasantness was the odd vehicle driving towards me in the wrong lane. The only unpleasantness on the road was the odd vehicle driving towards me in the wrong lane. It turns out that they do this when travelling short distances instead of going in the opposite direction to use an over/under pass in the correct lane. Another revelation was that these Egyptians were driving without their lights on, at night. This, I would be told was so that when they saw a vehicle approaching they would hit the high beam so that you can see them. Hmmmm, and these guys built the pyramids? After this stopover I made a run for the capital, Cairo. I must explain that I wasn’t purposely rushing Egypt, as I had spent 6 weeks here as a backpacker some years back when I was still very young. I knew Cairo traffic would

be hectic but nothing could prepare me. For the first time on my trip the KTM was getting a bit hot under the collar. The temp wasn’t lank hot (low 30’s) but the traffic was so slow moving that there wasn’t enough air moving through the radiator. A couple of times I had no option but to stop and wait (with the electric fan running) and this seemed to work. I had found a cheap hotel and for the first time on my trip tried to use my GPS’ mapping facility - which was not much use with the maps I had loaded. Other than to arrange a visa for Sudan my time in Cairo was spent with my first big service on the bike (5000k service). Although I had all the tools & parts with me I decided to take it to a mechanic as the alternative was to do the service in the street outside my hotel. This mechanic was a guy who all the over-landers use and although his facilities (and English) are modest he is known as the best bike mechanic in all of North Africa, and specialises in DS bikes. Together we spent a

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whole day doing the service. Major items were:

• New plug, oil & filters

• Cleaned air filter

• Checked valve clearances (they were spot on)

• Checked brake pads

• Replaced both stock sprockets with steel ones

• New X-ring gold chain

• Changed Metzeler Enduro’s to TKC 80’s

So the report after 6000k’s was that the bike was in perfect shape, and I had 100% confidence in it for the more challenging roads leading southwards. My health was questionable and a few times I was to be caught short of a latrine facility with the first strike of the unavoidable runs. I like to call it the ‘Cairo Quickstep’ and have a new appreciation for the robes that these guys wear. I can’t think of anything more practical for

performing a dark alley squat in. Once I had my bearings I enjoyed riding around Cairo with no luggage, however it took a while to get used to the Egyptian use of a car horn. They use it constantly, a driving control as fundamental as the accelerator or brakes. Here is a clip of me negotiating some Cairo traffic. It’s a bit drawn out & excuses the quality - I fastened the camera to my helmet with insulation tape. After the Cairo stop over I hit the road again, first travelling east towards Suez and the Red Sea and then

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South along the coast. Shortly after leaving Cairo I ran dry of fuel for the first time on my trip. It was my fault. Despite there being plenty of petrol stations some looked more questionable than others and I had become fussy. I pushed the bike for about one K and then freewheeled another one to a conveniently close pump. During this day I was aiming to get as far down Egypt as possible - as I said I’d seen

every corner of the country before. In much of Egypt South of Cairo tourists can only move around in Military convoys, but I was able to avoid these with the ‘next town’ gag. (I’m just going to the next town down the road, china). These convoys are absurd - there is no threat in Egypt these days. I regrettably had my first flare of road rage on the trip. I was on a tiny road on the banks of the Nile and an oncoming taxi pulled out to overtake and to kill me. He could clearly see me but that didn’t stop him. I had river on one side of the road and a steep drop on the other and don’t know how I squeezed passed. I swung around and chased him. He was apologising profusely through his window but didn’t want to stop so I have his car door a nice Alpine Star tattoo & gave up the chase. I felt my rage was justified; I had come close to certain death. After almost 900k’s in the saddle I stopped-over in a town called Luxor for a welcome few beers after a long day.

The next day I woke up at

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crack of dawn (I think that was her name) and hit the road further south. I only needed to do 100k’s but needed to get there before midday to arrange my paperwork for the ferry that runs into the Sudan along Lake Nasser. I was about 20k’s away when I got stopped at a military checkpoint where a particularly difficult soldier wouldn’t let me through. He insisted that I go back to Luxor & wait for a convoy. I tried every angle but he wouldn’t budge, and when I tried some aggression his AK47’d comrades flinched. They wouldn’t let me wait there for a convoy either, so I went back to Luxor where I had to wait for one. In the end I arrived at my destination of Aswan 10 minutes after the government offices closed. I had missed the ferry. Next sailing was in 10 days. My anger was off the scale. Later that day while riding around looking for a place to stay a guy in a pick-up rode into the back of me at a slow moving traffic circle. Thankfully I wasn’t on the brakes and the clutch was in so I just rolled forward instead of falling. I got out and throttled the

driver - something I regretted within seconds and stopped myself from further action. That night I drank like an Egyptian pyramid builder with a MasterCard and made sure the surge of recent road rage was no more and good karma was restored. While I was in Aswan I started noting a clicking or ticking noise coming from the engine at very low or very high revs. It was disturbing. I didn’t know what the ‘pinking’ low octane noise sounded like and started getting paranoid about the valves, so through a guy I had met arranged a place to do a quick inspection service. This ‘place’ was in fact his cousins’ lounge - nice! This was to be my first solo

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attempt at a valve clearance check. I enjoyed doing it and took a very long time to make sure I wasn’t cocking anything else up. The clearances were fine and it was in fact just low-octane pinking. Time to engage the low-octane CDI switch that the 640 Adv comes with.

I didn’t have a straw to place through the spark plug hole to onto the piston to find top-dead centre of the 4-stroke and the only thing I could find was my little SA flag with plastic pole. Nice. Proudly South African top-dead centre, Mr Venter.

After an extended riding break and much time to reflect and lubricate my system in the hot weather it was time for the next ferry sailing to The Sudan. This ferry travels the length of Lake Nasser, which is a dammed-up section of the Nile and is the only means of getting between these two countries. The ferry is only for foot passengers and any cargo (my bike) is loaded onto a separate barge which hopefully also arrives at the

same destination.

AFRICAN ENDURO - The Sudan Picking up from that 30 hour ferry ride across Lake Nasser from Egypt to Sudan... The ferry was very primitive. I had opted for a day and night on the open deck of the ferry rather than a smelly cabin. It seemed as though the other 700 citizens on this 300 person ferry did the same, but with a bit of negotiation I was able to secure a space big enough to roll my sleeping bag out that

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night. Those on the deck who had made this journey before knew to bring with a blanket or sheet to make some shade with and the rest of us just sat & dealt with the 45C/110F heat. As I was entering yet another strictly no alcohol country I took the opportunity to dispatch with my hip flask of rum, which made the heat much more bearable. There would be some hard times ahead until I could have another drink in Ethiopia. I met some interesting and very friendly characters on the ferry, like the guy featured in the video further down.

We arrived at the Sudanese port of Wadi Halfa and I conducted my entry formalities and went into the town in search of somewhere to kip that night. The barge carrying my bike was taking more time to make the crossing and was supposed to arrive the next day. This town was very backward compared to the Egyptian one I had left and the best place to stay was a steel bed surrounded by four cement walls. The best toilets were particularly full

long drops and the shower was a two litre container of water which was also utilised for washing purposes (strictly no toilet paper as per the Muslim ethics). After dinner I joined the rest of the inhabitants in the dusty town square where the only television in town was situated. It was showing WWF wrestling, something these Sudanese would watch every night, over & over. While I was in this town I met an Irish guy by the name of Hugh who was heading north, having almost completed a lap of Africa after having come down the West coast. Some Wild Dogs might know him from his time in SA. He was great company and a good source of information for my route southwards. He was on a very well kitted-out GS 650

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Dakar. His bike was parked in the reception of our hotel and obviously at an Eastern tangent as I noticed someone bowing down to the almighty BMW (and Allah). Blasphemous as it was I had to take a sneaky photo:

The barge finally arrived at the port and when I went to fetch it the tie-downs were quite loose - I put the thought of my bike at the bottom of Lake Nasser in the back of my mind. It took all morning to check my bike into The Sudan and I then after filling up all the extra containers I

could with petrol hit the road southwards. Together with a Swedish couple in a Land cruiser and an Aussie couple in a VW van we formed a convoy for safety & security purposes. I scouted the route from the front and stopped for a drink of water every hour to wait for them to catch up. There was no tarmac now for at least the next 800km’s and the terrain was absolutely lifeless and resembled the surface of Mars.

The riding was awesome; a combination of hard but rocky road with sudden patches of very soft sand. I started getting crazy in the soft stuff when all of a sudden I found myself lying on the floor, spitting out sand. My front had dug into the middle and I had continued forward motion over the handlebars. This was a high speed spill but I was very thankful to be in one piece. I was wearing full riding gear ALL of the time on my trip and I could tell from a bruised elbow & knee my armour had done its job. In a few places I encountered what the Aussies call ‘bull dust’, which is soft sand that is ground as fine

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as powder by passing trucks & 4x4’s. My rear got bogged down on a few occasions and I needed to drop my bike down to one side, pull the rear out and pick it up again. The VW of our convoy got stuck in a particularly large patch of this stuff (as I suspected it would - even though it had 4x4 it was far too low for African roads). I helped try & dig it out for two hours in heat with no luck. Eventually a local in a 4x4 gave us a pull.

After a few nights travelling along and camping beside the Nile I decided to head into the Nubian desert to cut off a large meander of the Nile. There were several routes

exiting the last town I left on the Nile, and most were going in the same direction so I opted for the most fun one. It was a hard surfaced double-track with great berms on the sides and was good fun but didn’t last long. Slowly the tracks faded with age until I found myself with none. This is exactly what I had dreamt about for so many years; I was in the middle of the desert with no tracks and no people. I took plenty of photos and enjoyed the slow-going ride through some pretty deep sand. My GPS was useless in these parts so out came the old compass to ensure I was heading east where I knew the Nile (and some civilisation)

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would be.

After a few hours in the solitude I was reunited with the Nile and the small villages that scatter its course. I had recently picked up a bad habit of kicking a foot into the sand each time I thought I was going over. It was easy enough to do, even when standing, but when done at speed it would knock my foot back into a pannier. Then, just as suddenly as my other wipe out I was on the deck, but this was a little more serious. My right leg was pinned under my right-side pannier, with foot pointing in a worrying looking direction. My knee hurt and for a moment I thought the trip was over and because I was on the ground I couldn’t lift the bike to free my leg. After a few attempts I was very luck to see a couple of locals walking in the distance. I shouted & whistled for them to come over, which they did sedately and proceeded to lift the big orange just enough for me to get out. Thankfully I could still walk so picked up the bike and carried on. I was wearing some very expensive

Alpine Star boots and motocross knee guards under my rally pants, without these I would have suffered at least one break and one dislocation. Close call. A few hours of very slow riding after this incident I was re-united with tarmac, which was a great relief as my experience of the soft stuff wasn’t too good this far. After a refuel of every receptacle I could find I took a very long (300km) and very desolate tarred road through the desert to cut off another large meander of the Nile. It had been in the high 40’s since leaving Egypt but this day was on another level. I couldn’t ride without my visor down and even at 120kmph the KTM was running quite hot. When I was once again reunited with the Nile I stopped in a little town for some food & liquids. I had a look at the little digital thermometer I was carrying and at 2pm it read 53.7 C, in the shade. I put it on my bike in the sun after hitting 70C it stopped working and hasn’t since. While I was in The Sudan I always carried at

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least 4 litres of drinking water which I replenished at each village I could find. By the end of this day I had consumed just less than ten litres of water and was never quenched. I was seeing mirages of water in the desert and couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have an ice cold quart.

I then spent the next few days making my way down the remainder of the Nile but now on tarmac and slowly encountering more civilisations on the way to the capital Khartoum. In Khartoum I stayed on the green grass of the Nile Sailing Club, a favourite among Over Landers. After pitching my tent I walked into town to buy some groceries and find an internet cafe. While I was in the cafe the owner came running in from outside saying I had to get out immediately. He said that there was some fighting outside and he was closing his shop. Outside everyone was running in one direction (out of town) and there was a crackle of gunfire which sounded pretty close-by. I took up the sprint back towards

the campsite trying to cut as small a profile as possible. A tank & a few armoured vehicles rolled past in the opposite direction, which was quite reassuring. Although the campsite was very close to this action it seemed very quiet and together with a few other travellers we sat around making nervous small talk. That night we watched a delightful fireworks display of mortar fire and the odd burst of tracer on the other side of the river. The next morning I woke up at 4am, packed-up and left the campsite. There were police or army roadblocks at every street corner and although I was allowed through some others would send me back to the campsite. I tried all three exits of the city I could find and had the same luck at each. At the last roadblock I was gestured off my bike by a sloppy looking warrior who was poking my bags with his AK gesturing me to open them. I started with my top box and when he saw my Nikon Digital SLR he slung it over his shoulder and pointed with his AK for me to leave. I refused

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and tried to find out if any of his comrades could speak English. I was blocking traffic now and tempers were rising but then a soldier with some rank drove by and stopped. I had to give him a short slide-show of the photo’s on my camera, and after seeing no military related photos gave it back to me.

The reason I couldn’t leave was that there was a military curfew in place on the city. Approx. 100 pick-ups full of rebels drove all the way from Darfur to Khartoum to try & pull off a coup and dispose of the countries prime minister. They didn’t pull it off and had dispersed into the city. I tried to leave each morning for a few days but the situation had remained the same. No shops were open and the streets were deserted so I had to resort to my emergency rations of food. I did however have some good company in the campsite, a couple travelling through Africa by public transport and a young German guy riding a DT125 through Africa - I don’t know who was braver.

Finally one morning my departure drill paid off and I got out of Khartoum. Tensions seemed high even outside of the city so I didn’t stop riding until I got to the Ethiopian border. I was relieved to have no bullet holes in my person and was really looking forward to riding up into the Ethiopian highlands and out of the desert.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Ethiopia So I was thankful to have escaped Khartoum in one piece, and although it was the only capital city I was really looking forward to exploring on my trip it wasn’t worth the risk. I was now at the Ethiopian border and very soon everything would

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40change dramatically, the countryside, the people and the language. For some reason (well apparently because they didn’t ever have colonial occupation) Ethiopia is just so different to anywhere else in Africa. Its Amharic language is nothing like its neighbours Arabic or Swahili and the countryside is some of the most green & fertile to be found on the planet. Hard to imagine they had some serious famine in these parts not too long ago, but I was to find out that many things are very primitive in Ethiopia, including agriculture. A few well placed Afrikaaners could work wonders with this soil.

I got my visa stamped at the very official looking immigration office but the customs office was closed for the day so I had to ride 40k’s up the road to the next town where I could check my bike in. The tarmac had ended on the Sudanese side and was replaced with a very rocky dirt road. After checking my bike in I found the only hotel in town as this country was still a bit new & scary to risk

camping next to the road. At the hotel I met some friendly local engineers who were in the area drilling boreholes. They invited me to a coffee ceremony, which I accepted, but having spent all of my time in Sudan without a drink I had to punctuate the coffee with several very tasty local beers. The Ethiopians take their coffee drinking very seriously and the ceremony involved the hostess roasting green beans on a coal fire, then grinding them with a wooden mortar & pestle and finally boiling & serving (as Espresso shots). I’m a coffee snob and that was the best I’d tasted in my life. My new friends invited me to dinner with them after the coffee and a large knife was taken to the goat that was tide-up next to my bike. The diced goat fillets

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were fried in garlic & green chillis (a dish called Tibs) and served with their local sour pancake-like bread called Injera. It was obviously fresh but this was the tastiest meal I had eaten on my trip.

The next day I rode eastwards and the terrain quickly changed from desert to green as I climbed the mountains into the Ethiopian highlands. Although the dirt track was very windy the surface was really nice gravel and the KTM was handling superbly, getting the back sideways every now & then just to let me know who’s boss (sometimes). As I climbed the mountains it got greener & more populous until after about 200k’s I was on a tar road. I headed to a

large town called Dongola for fuel, but there as none to be found. Some would say there is no electricity and others would say the pumps were dry. While riding around I spotted a couple of GS 650 Dakar’s moving in the opposite direction. As they passed I saw a GP and then an EC number plate. Geez. I gave chase and stopped them for chat. They were heading Northwards through Africa and were fed up with Ethiopia and more specifically the ‘no fuel’ business. After swapping stories it turned out a particular garage that had said to me there was no electricity had said to them there was no fuel in the pumps, so having bust their cover they had to give us petrol. This wasn’t

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to be the last time a petrol station wasn’t in the mood to sell me some petrol. The next few days I spent riding mostly on tarmac towards the capital Addis Ababa. At one point I rode into a storm and was very thankful for the feel of rain, as I hadn’t had or seen any since leaving Europe and was now a third of the way through Africa. There were people everywhere (TIA), and in each village most used the tarred roads as a marketplace and it was frustrating having to slow right down to negotiate people & livestock. I started seeing the tell-tale signs of the famed stone throwing Ethiopian kids. Everyone who has travelled these parts warns of them and I always cast my eyes towards any kids before paying attention to livestock in the road. I had managed to avoid a few failed attempts but eventually out of nowhere a fist sized rock struck my left hand. It was quite painful but thankfully I had just swapped my motocross gloves for tougher waterproof ones for the rains. Little bastards.

There were many more attempts but only one more hit, this time on a pannier. A few times I would see a boy bending down to pick up a stone and just aimed the KTM straight for them which worked well. The livestock in the road was also becoming particularly risky. The herd boys would just stand-by & watch cattle or goats walk into the road without trying to herd them off. At one point I had to knock a goat out with a size 11 Alpine Star to the head. The road was littered with road kill, mostly dogs, which seemed to be the least intelligent form of life (closely followed by stone throwers). I would often herd a stray dog myself by aiming straight for them and then slipping to their rear at the last minute. Once this technique herded a dog in front of an oncoming truck and it was tickets for the pup. Later I also observed a large cow getting smacked by an oncoming truck in front of me. Most Ethiopian men I had met all chewed this mildly narcotic leaf called ‘Chat’ (pronounced GAT in Afrikaans) which probably accounted for

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the relaxed attitude towards livestock depletion.

The highlight of this pretty stressful ride to Addis was passing through the amazing Blue Nile gorge. It was a 20km ride down 4000ft of winding road to the bridge that crossed the river and then a climb of 5000ft along another 20km’s. The scenery was spectacular. The road through the gorge was under construction, a 50/50 mix of new tarmac and slippery gravel. I was surprised how much grip the TKC’s were giving when I was leaning over on the tarred bits and took a bit of video.

As I was approaching Addis I started hearing a commotion coming from my chain on the long downhill’s into the city. I thought it was just a bit loose and would adjust it when I got to where I was staying. When I inspected it the next day I saw that the plate link on opposite side of the master clip link was broken in half and the chain was all over the place, only held by the clip. Another close shave. This was the very expensive X-ring

gold chain that I had fitted in Cairo and was rated for at least 20,000km’s. I think that when I was keeping the chain oil-free in the very soft sand in Sudan the two o-rings had broken off and caused the loose play. Given the mileage I had expected from this chain I didn’t have a spare and the only one I could find locally was going to cost me $300. I did however have a spare link that came with the chain (the rivet type as opposed to clip) so borrowed the tool that is used to knock the rivet in as I only had a conventional breaker with me. I borrowed this tool from a very nice guy by the name of Flavio who has a modest KTM shop in Addis. Anyway the chain looked good (for now) and the steel sprockets were in good shape. While I was in Addis I bumped into a South African guy riding a 26 year old Yamaha XT 500 Northwards through Africa, also solo. It was very humbling meeting this guy and I had so much respect for the routes he had accomplished on this bike. I felt a bit like those hot shot idiots Ewen & Charlie with my fancy bike and all my

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kit, which wasn’t pleasant. If anyone here knows of him that would be an incredible ride report! After Addis I cut a line southwards towards Kenya. There were many more sights in the North of Ethiopia but apart from a few very friendly & helpful exceptions I wasn’t really enjoying my experience of the locals so far. I think the ghat that most people chew renders a large proportion of the population terribly

lethargic and disengaged from reality. In addition, hostile intent was noted yet again with more (failed) stone-throwing attempts. I once even had a whole pineapple hurtled towards me by an older trouble-maker. I wanted to stop & ask what the hell he was trying to achieve but good karma prevailed and I rode on. Ethiopia is known as the cradle of mankind, and I can only assume that this past-time of projectile throwing at alien objects is a very direct

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link to the Neanderthals that roamed these parts in days gone by.

Anyway the South of Ethiopia was fantastic. There were less villages & people on the roads and I started seeing more wildlife in the bush. Being a coffee snob I made a detour into a tiny village called Yirga Chefe, where my favourite coffee is grown. This coffee is pretty rare to find in shops and this proved to be the same where it was grown. I imagine every last morsel is exported. After a bit of exploring I found a young fella who was able to source some and I bought as much of the green beans as I could carry. It was a special treat roasting the beans over my camp stove in the mornings for a cup of coffee. I was now very close to the border of Kenya and about to take another large gamble; an infamously bad road through Northern Kenya, which was also home to some delightful bandits that prey on passers-by.

I’ve cobbled together another small video clip - with some

truly appalling editing (forgive me). I sped up the boring part but the rest is normal. First bit is the ride down the gorge, second bit a large truck blown over by strong winds, then me leaning at a silly angle to negotiate the winds, typical village congestion, and lastly a mad junction in the capital; six four-lane highways all coming together with no traffic lights or form of order. As per Cairo I used a car as a shield.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Kenya So here I was at the Kenyan border of Moyale. I was a little anxious about the road that lay ahead. Most people had said it was very bad, but then these were the people that were sticking to tarmac where I was to dirt and were on less off-road biased bikes. My Kenya border formalities were taken care of by one person and in about three minutes. That’s how it’s done. Although Kenya’s election problems had kicked off just before I started my trip they seemed stable (ish) now, but I had heard of an Austrian couple on bikes that were shot at a few weeks ago

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on this road. I found the local policeman and inquired about the security situation on the road and he said it was ok, nobody was shot at, this week. It was Tuesday. Charming. I didn’t ask about the previous week. So I hit the road, and for the first 50k’s it was very cool, but then some severe rockiness started. It ranged from slippery fist-sized loose rocks to very large immovable ones that required some very slow riding and dodging. Although I love off-road riding this was intense and there were no good sections for a bit of a break. I don’t think my vocabulary can do this road justice so I won’t bother. Below are a few pictures, again they don’t really show

all its glory. There were a few tiny villages on the way where I stopped to ask the local policeman (or guy with the coolest looking gun) if the road was safe. The people in this area are from the Samburu tribe, all wear very impressive traditional clothing and seem very aggressive. At one point I saw a flicker of movement in the bush and there was a tribesman sitting in the thick scrub with the butt of his gun in his shoulder. Hostile intent was evident but thankfully my rally jacket armour was not tested. Later in the day I rounded a corner to find a large herd of camels in the road, being herded by three teenage tribesmen. As I passed-by one of the he lunged at me with his spear. Time slowed down and I put

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the KTM on its side and gave plenty of throttle. I can’t tell whether his intentions were murderous but it was pretty scary. I rode for the rest of the day without any more hostility from the Samburu’s but the road was the killer. In one rocky and rain eroded section I didn’t leave first gear for 45 minutes and covered 10km’s slower than I can run it. The KTM had taken some very serious knocks, either by rocks buried in soft sand or when I didn’t have the strength to avoid them. Twice the knocks on the front deflated the tyre and I was sure both rims were square but the KTM ploughed on through. At sunset I arrived at the mid-point of this road from hell and the town of Marsabit where I stayed at a very nice campsite on a farm owned by a Swiss man & his family. They were pretty self-sufficient and with the lodging he sold me a few of ice cold Tusker beers, some home-baked break and home-made Swiss cheese. Those beers were glorious and bit the dust very quickly.The next day I woke up at sparrows fart and hit

the remainder of Lucifer’s path. This day was mentally draining where the previous was physical. Other than the odd patch of bull dust it was just continuous and irregular corrugations. Other than travellers the only other traffic on this road is large un-articulated trucks which plough along much faster than a bike or 4x4 can travel. The corrugations were huge and required more very tedious first gear riding. Like the previous day there were no easy bits for a rest. Again the KTM’s suspension did an incredible job but I really didn’t expect it to take this much abuse and still be capable of forward motion. I heard from others after my crossing that most people took four days for this road,

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camping in the bush, but that wasn’t an option for me as I was on my own and would have been short work for a bandit. Still I’m glad I did it fast, it was an awesome enduro ride. After 520km’s and two days I finally arrived on tarmac at the town of Isiolo. I stopped to have a photo taken of my relief and shortly afterwards a nearby crowd of road construction workers gathered around, some becoming quite aggressive and shouting for money or food. They started tugging at me & my luggage but thankfully I had left the bike running on its centre stand and my helmet on so ploughed through them. If the spear thrust had left me shaken, this mob had left me stirred. When I was further down the road & refuelled I

stopped to inspect any damage to the KTM. The shocks didn’t seem to be leaking any fluid but the rims were littered with dents - four on the front and two on the rear. When riding, it only seemed to wobble at 90-100kmphs, so I either kept it above or below that. The tyres (both TKC’s) also took some serious abuse but held out well. I’ve heard some horror stories about people that used Korean or Chinese rubber on this road. You get what you pay for

I was so chuffed with the nice tarmac road for a change that I carried on riding all the way to the capital ‘Nairobbery’, stopping for some photo’s at the Equator. It was cloudy & raining so I couldn’t get to see mount Kenya and made my way South. I had misjudged sunlight hours and found myself breaking the rules again, riding at night and the rain. It took me a couple of hours to get through the Nairobi traffic and to the place I was staying at; the famous Jungle Junction (JJ’s) in Nairobi. I just about collapsed

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with relief but the fridge full of Tuskers kept me upright to socialise with the other travellers there.

As I approached the Equator my GPS trip odometer was

scarily close to a very round number. Give or take a few it was 10,000km’s from London to the Equator, incase anyone

was wondering. I stayed in Nairobi for several days, washing & repairing clothes & gear and having another 5K service done. The inmates of JJ’s were all also in a frenzy of repairing & servicing bikes & 4x4’s. As I had done the last two valves clearance checks myself, I opted to take the bike to the local KTM dealer (the only official one in Africa outside

of South Africa). Although they had some impressive (if pricey) stock I was not altogether impressed by their work on my bike. They had a set of Pirelli MT21’s so I bought the rear to carry with me when the TKC ran smooth. So the report on the bike after 10,000km’s on the trip so far was that it was in almost perfect shape. I don’t think they checked the valves at the service (one of my gripes) but things felt & sounded good. I got a 2nd & 3rd opinion on my fixed chain and both said

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it looked fine and wasn’t stretched. One of my wipe outs in The Sudan had put a lot of stress on the long bolts of my handlebar risers and I had to tighten them a few times since then. One was just about stripped so I re-threaded to a couple of smaller nuts. The only other fix was to weld a broken joint on my luggage rack (also from a desert wipe out). The KTM now had a shade under 17,000km’s on the clock and was ready for the worst roads I could find.

Although there is much more to see in Kenya a lot of is in game parks that only allow closed vehicles, so I made for Tanzania. I had heard from the owner of JJ’s about a very remote and untraveled border between Kenya & Tanzania which he had been too many years previously. Although I didn’t know whether it was still open or the road passable I thought I’d give it a shot so left ‘Nairobbery’ and cut a line Southwards. I left the main drag to Mombasa and hit a very unused road through Southern Kenya. It got more & more rural but was a great

surface and really fun to ride. At one point I passed through a park and briefly rode next to a herd of galloping Zebra’s, which was very cool. The people here were very friendly (unlike the North) and spoke excellent English like everywhere else in the country.

I was giving it horns on a nice open dirt track when I noticed another bike in my mirrors. I slowed to let this guy pass so I could have a look and was immediately suspicious. He was riding a Yamaha AG200 with a huge top box on the back and was wearing some top MX kit. What’s going on here? I knew what this was about. One of the things I had done as part of my prep was sign up to a charity for my trip. Generally I think

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foreign aid in Africa is a load of nonsense (like Bob’s use of it in Zim) and I wasn’t aiming to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize but thought I might as well try & do something for Riders for Health. I knew about them from watching MotoGP. They teach nurses & doctors how to ride and give them dual sport bikes & riding gear so that they can supply aid to very rural areas that are not accessible by 4 wheeled vehicles. This was one of these ‘Riders’ that I had just happened to bump into. I stopped him & we had a long chat, took some photos and then rode together for about 20km’s. He was riding like a pro, on the pegs and ringing the neck of the AG. It was pretty special meeting this guy on the road, especially as it slightly altered my opinion of aid. In Ethiopia all I had seen was hundreds & hundreds of brand new Toyota Land cruisers donated by aid agencies, being driven around as taxis. In the capital cities I had been through so far I would find the best hotels so that I could use the internet connection in their business

centres. These 5 star hotels were often overflowing with ‘aid workers’ smoking cigars and knocking back cocktails at midday. This guy was the other (real) end of the aid work spectrum. His top box was full of medicine and he was riding some hard tracks to the remote villages to give treatment where people had very little. Most of my friends & family are the pre-historic types who don’t use credit cards online so my fund raising has failed abysmally, but if anyone reading this would like to drop a few coins in I’d be very grateful.

As I approached the border with Tanzania the spectacular Mount Kilimanjaro was covered in a large and low bank of cloud, but hopefully I’d be able to clock it from the other side. I eventually got to the tiny border where I was glad to find out that I could pass through and exit the country. Hakuna Matata (no problem). I was noted in the immigration book as being the 182nd person to pass through this year - not a particularly busy border. I was looking forward

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to the unknown on the other side of the fence, as I hadn’t heard of anyone having taken this route before.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Tanzania Picking up from this remote border-post with Southern Kenya, which was called Oloitokitok. I had been through a fair few border-posts by now and although each one is interesting and different, what happened next proved to be solid gold. I went into the tiny immigration office and waited for the official to finish reading his newspaper and then motion me forward for processing. He had a quick look through the interesting visa’s & stamps in my green mamba, closed it and put it in his top pocket, tore off a piece of newspaper and excused himself, disappearing out the back door. It was obvious to me where he was going but I looked out the window to confirm just that. Either he was caught short, or my passport was a particularly interesting toilet read - I suspect it was the latter. He

emerged after short while with the newspaper missing, but thankfully all the pages of my passport in-tact. As I left I inspected my passport for a brown stamp. I enjoyed this comical moment immensely. After wiping the tears of laughter I hit the very slippery track around the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro for a couple of hours. This was the only part of Africa where I encountered rainforest jungle vegetation and conditions, which are only found in Central or West Africa. Although it was wet the dirt track was incredibly good fun - the best days riding I’d had on my trip so far. After waiting in a small town at the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro for a day for the cloud to disappear I lost patience and hit the road eastwards along

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the impressive Usambara mountain range. Although I was tempted to climb into the mountains I thought I’d give the KTM a break for now and head for the coast instead. I made for a little-known coastal town of Pangani and again had a really good and fast dirt road ride to get there. At the little village I found the local chief and he suggested I wasn’t allowed to camp anywhere so I treated

myself to an up-market but very remote luxury tented camp called Mkoma bay. This was a very nice place and the owner hosts were hospitable and good company. They had a fully stocked bar and some very good graze.

Unfortunately I couldn’t track the coast Southwards as there were a number of river mouths without bridges or ferries, so I hit the same road I came on,

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but this time after an evening of rain (before & after photo’s above). I then stuck to the tar and made for the Capital of Dar Es Salaam. In Dar I stayed at a great beach campsite about 10k’s out of town and met a few other travellers, also heading northwards in the opposite direction of me. I stayed at this spot for several days, as it was the first decent rest period of my trip so far with no work required on the bike. Dar was my favourite city on the route so far, largely due to the very pleasant Tanzania people. As I had made my way down Tanzania I had decided to purposely bypass certain interesting bits as I loved the country so much I wanted to go back some time (with company).

After having my batteries recharged on the beach in Dar I packed-up and got ready for the final leg of my trip, which was very exciting. Most people on a trans-Africa swing inland after Dar and head for Malawi but I had decided to leave that for another trip as I desperately wanted to cross into the far North of

Mozambique instead. So this left me with about 800k’s of Tanzania which I had no report of anyone doing recently. After the tarmac of Dar ran out the dirt track become very sandy and very bumpy. I was once again slowed right down and it occurred to me that doing 800k’s of this surface was not going to end well. I had done about 70k’s of this when all of a sudden an amazing new single lane tarmac road appeared. I was thankful for the tarmac as it gave me a chance to admire the very wild and interesting surroundings. About half way to the Moz. border I pulled into a beach-side campsite that I had seen a sign for. The campsite was empty except for a couple of locals and a dog and I made an offer of cash if I could pitch my tent. The setting was incredible easy on the eye and the inhabitants were very glad for the company. One of the guys was a security guard and the other a cook, who I asked if he had any food I could buy. He beamed at the opportunity to cook for me. He said I had to choose what I wanted to eat immediately so

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that he had a few hours to go and forage for it. The options were prawns, fish or chicken. I chose the prawns and he promptly got into his dug-out canoe to retrieve dinner. He left me with a cooler box of Kilimanjaro lagers but before I got stuck in I stripped the luggage of the KTM and took it onto the beach. I had long fantasised about doing some Dakar-style wheelies through the surf and this was the moment. The security guard enjoyed the show and although I gave him my camera to take some video he was so fascinated by the viewfinder which showed exactly what he saw with his eyes that he couldn’t quite follow my ride-by. The prawns were fantastic, which I was thankful for as the chef would have fallen on his sword if I hadn’t enjoyed them. The security guard was a traditional tribal warrior and wore all the finery to go with it. He never moved from within 20 meters of my tent & bike at all times and was there, on guard when I woke up early the in the morning. When I left he refused my appreciation offer of money,

but did accept an apple I had in my bag. He was typical of the Tanzanians I had met on my trip; the nicest people and country by far.

The next day I had a long ride to the very South of Tanzania. There was no fuel in the two villages I passed through, which was a little worrying. I ran the tank dry and then moved on with the extra 5 litres I was carrying in a plastic container. That ran dry too. My camp stove (the multi fuel type) had run out of kerosene earlier in the trip and I had filled it with petrol, so in went that ample 750ml into the tank to get a little further. There were a few hills which I coasted down and amazingly made it into a village with petrol, running dry very close to the pumps. While I was in this town I took the opportunity to replace my smooth rear TKC with the Pirelli MT21 I was carrying. The TKC had done very well, around 12,000km’. I thought it charitable to make a contribution to the Tanzanian GDP by employing someone at the fuel station to change

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it for me. I was happy to see that the top tyre changer in the village had as much trouble changing tyres as I did.

That evening I located yet another beach-side camp, owned by a Belgian ex-big game hunter & fisherman. We had a great seafood meal, again sourced from the water a few metres away and washed down with Kilimanjaro lager. He was an avid Dakar

fan and loved the KTM. He said it looked like I was a good racer. Thankfully he didn’t see my pathetically slow arrival over the sand dunes to his camp, or the little wipe out on-route. The next day I proceeded to the very bottom of the country and its border, the great Rovuma river. There were no petrol pumps but I was able to source some ‘bush fuel’ and filled the tank and again every other receptacle

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after filtering it. After paying a small bribe to the immigration officer in the village (to avoid unpacking all of my kit) I was checked-out of Tanzania but still on their soil and made my way to the banks of the river.

I’ll take a little time to explain this crossing. As I said, not many travellers use this route and similarly very few locals seem to move between this border, and if so it’s by foot on a small boat. There is a small two car ferry which allegedly operates to cross the river but it is hardly ever in operation due to the river being so tidal, and the mass of sand banks along its 2km width. When I was in Nairobi I had met a very adventurous German guy who had recently crossed it in his Toyota Land Cruiser. He used the ferry which had got stuck on a sand back, where it remained for three days. Out of desperation he then charted three of the little passenger vessels, had them tide together and drove his Land Cruiser onto the makeshift raft, which only cleared the water by 20cm.

At the river bank there was no ferry but a collection of these small boats with outboard motors. The huge swarm of locals’, desperate locals, fighting to be enlisted as crew for my crossing, one of them even resorting to wind milling with his fists to reduce the number of contenders. I selected 6 of the sturdiest fella’s (this number would rise) and the biggest looking boat. They man-handled the KTM onto the boat and I quickly enlisted an extra person to start bailing the water that was flowing in from a couple of little holes. We pushed off the bank and did a couple of hundred metres downstream towards the sea before the captain could get the spluttering outboard to start.

AFRICAN ENDURO - Mozambique Where was I? Oh yes, on this magnificent water vessel on the great Rio Rovuma. I had been good china’s with the Nile for many thousands of kilometres on my trip but this river was on a different

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scale entirely. My excitement for making this crossing far out-weighed any notions of misfortune - something my Mother describes as the benefit of youthful folly. Ignorance is bliss. The crew were all very proud to be holding the KTM upright so I could turn my attention to making sure the guy bailing water did not get lazy. I also took this opportunity to remove the large ZA sticker from the front of the bike. Some friend in the Lowveld

had told that the Mozambican were hurling stones at ZA vehicles after the recent xenophobia that was going on. My jovial spirits were put on hold for a moment when our craft got stuck on a sandbank and a couple of the crew had to disembark to dislodge the boat. Although the river was approx. 2km wide here at the mouth most of it was very shallow (low tide) and our zig-zagging between little islands resulted in the crossing taking about half an hour. We arrived at the far side to an unwelcoming looking steep bank. The captain kept the motor on to push the boat against the bank and the rest of us plus some additional Mozambicans dragged the bike up the very steep 10 foot bank. There was much

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sweating after this exertion so I flashed a few more dollar notes in appreciation. I had made it!

There was nothing on this side of the river. No signs of life or road. The few Mozambicans that we had encountered on this side pointed me in the direction I should take through the bush - obviously there was a road somewhere in the distance. After a short while crashing through the riverbed I found a rudimentary track and followed it for about 10km’s to the closest village. In this village it was easy to spot the only permanent looking structure and I was welcomed by the immigration official who booked me into the country. His English was good and assured me that

there would be no xenophobic backlashes on team oranje. I asked why the road leading out of the village had a large collection of branches blocking it off. He said it was only used by a vehicle once a week when he was relieved, and the obstruction was to keep the elephants out. This place was stupidly wild!

I hit this track and it quickly became the most difficult riding of my entire trip. The sand was so deep that my panniers would knock on either side of the ruts now & then and usually send me to the deck. I was barely creeping along with the KTM at full taps in first gear. To quote WC fields; the road was fraught with imminent peril. Something had to give. To my surprise that something was the bike and not rider. The sand had just got a little shallower when I heard & felt much liquid erupt from the engine. In a split second I had thought it was oil and the trip was over. Thankfully it was not. The radiator pipe leading to the engine had popped off and all coolant liquid was

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liberated from the engine & radiator. This was not a fatal blow but nonetheless I was in a bit of a pickle. I only had about a litre of drinking water with me and quickly decided it should be kept for my good self in the interest of self-preservation. I found the nearest tree to sit under (one that could be scaled in the event of an encounter with an elephant) and began to ponder my predicament and wait a few years for a passer-by. Africa being Africa it was only a few minutes before a local emerged out of the thick bush and walked up the road towards me. He had a little boy with him, who hastily disappeared into the bush to hide when he saw me. I explained in sign language what had happened and asked him for some ‘agwa’. He understood and disappeared back into the bush, returning half an hour later with a bucket of the finest Mozambican river water. I filled-up and gave him a $donation for his efforts. His very shy son had been slowly & carefully creeping forward towards us throughout all

of this. He was very shy and nervous. I inquired why and his father rubber the skin on my arm - a gesture that I took for this little fella probably not having seen many or any white guys before. Eventually he came & stood for a photo but when the strange and noisy orange horse started he ran back into the bush. His father & I both laughed - probably his first sighting of a motorcycle.

I carried on riding on this very difficult road and eventually made it to the next village or Palma. My first 40km’s in Mozambique had taken me three hours of riding and one hour under a tree. I cannot stress how WILD this place was. I was fortunate to grow up a stones-throw from the Kruger Park and spent most of

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my childhood in the bush, but this was absolutely untouched. Although I rode over many Elephant dung mines I didn’t get to see any live specimens. I stopped to buy some water in the town of Palma and an English speaking guy told me of a resident lion that was picking off the villagers every now & then. I didn’t stick around as bait and made for the biggest town in the North called Mocimboa Da Praia where I camped for the night.After this town the roads generally got better with some patches of tarmac starting to appear. There was however no fuel so after exhausting all the bush fuel I had bought in Tanzania I had to resort to a few litres of Mozambique’s finest high octane palm wine. I made it to the coastal oasis of Pemba where there was plenty fuel, food, drink & company. Pemba is an incredible place and not as spoilt as places to the South. It has some of the best looking beaches on the planet, an endless supply of fresh seafood and is also a diving mecca for those who prefer to look at the marine life rather than eat it. In

Pemba I stayed at a fantastic camp site with a huge bar that was the hub of the small SA community there. During the last few days of tough sand tracks I had noticed a slightly different knocking noise coming from the LC4 so took a day to do an ‘inspection’ service. I thought that the valve clearances were slightly loose so tightened them up. Another thing I had noticed was that the KTM guys in Nairobi had not put in the correctly sized spark plug - it was a larger sized one that left no room in the recess for a plug socket. I was eventually able to get it out with a pair of long-nose pliers, probably what they had used to put it in. In went one of the decent spares plugs I was carrying. I was to find out much later

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that the valves were actually fine and I had made them a little too tight. The noise I was hearing was a combination of LC4 paranoia (totally unjustified) and the usual audio changes of an engine getting looser. A very good family friend in South Africa has a huge hunting concession in the Rovuma area and I met up with his local partner for a tour of Pemba and its watering holes. He told me that he had been asked to get rid of the man-eating lion I had heard about in Palma and was just waiting for a delivery of bullets before going to take it out. Some people get the short straw.

After Pemba I took the main roads inland leading southwards. I had little choice but to use the tarmac network as they usually led past fuel pumps (funny that). The country of Mozambique is incredibly long, especially in the North, and I ended up doing much more mileage in Mozambique than in any other country on the continent (almost 3000km’s). I spent the next few days getting

some big mileage under the belt (about 500-700km’s a day) and although the engine was perfect my chain woes returned. The chain was making a big noise and was now stretching rapidly and taking the sprockets with it. One day in particular I stopped to adjust it four times at the side of the road. During all of this it had also worn through the plastic chain slider and then started having a go at bisecting the swing-arm. I was mega-paranoid about this and couldn’t stand the thought of failure being this close to completing the trip. At one point I fabricated a new slider using a piece of truck tyre and some cable-ties. This gave me one day of riding without swing-arm deterioration and the following day I replaced

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it with an even better version - I flattened a couple of large 2M beer cans and moulded them over the swing-arm. This proved to be just as good as the chain slid over them without cutting through for two more days. Although I was still on tar there were some silly sections of around 50km’s that had more sandy potholes in the road than tarred-covered bits.

By now I was past the fairly boring central interior of the country and approaching the touristy coastal South that I was familiar with. There GP 4x4’s were now coming thick & fast on the roads and before I knew it all you saw were pick-ups loaded with Quad’s towing Jet Ski’s. It’s a pity some of Portuguese charm is being eroded by these people but I’m just as much to blame having done countless deep sea fishing holidays here myself. It is good however seeing the infrastructure of the country improved. Having grown up in the Lowveld there wasn’t much exploring for me to do in the South so I made a final dash for home, getting

serious bouts of broken chain paranoia.

Although my back sprocket had teeth that looked like wave crests and the chain felt as though it was about 5 metres long, amazingly it held and I felt a warm sensation of homecoming as I neared the border of South Africa. I only had about 1.5 hours of riding left after the border and could almost smell victory (and the BBQ being lighted), but would the chain be playing the game?

AFRICAN ENDURO - South Africa So there I was - at the Mozambique / SA border with my awesome trip almost, but not quite yet complete. The border formalities were a piece of cake and I took the opportunity to place another ZA sticker on the KTM. I didn’t experience any xenophobia backlashes while in Mozambique, which was nice. Very close to the border in Komatipoort I paid a visit to my sister and brother in

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law - who farm in the area. I was quite apprehensive of seeing people I knew for the first time in a while and if I knew my sister there would be a trick up her sleeve. As I rounded a corner to the start of their farm there was the said trick; the security guard at the boom gate was waiving an orange checkered flag that she had painted, standing beside a welcome home sign. I had a substantial grin, and that was increased when I saw my brother-in-law (Shane)

coming towards me on a KTM 525, on one wheel. We settled down to a typically wild Komatipoort BBQ of guinea fowl & nyala which Shane had shot recently. This was to be the first of my dietary rehabilitation program - I had lost over 10kg’s during the trip.

It was very tempting to stay for the night so Shane & I could get amongst the brandy and try & pull in a few tigers from the Komati

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but I desperately wanted to finish the job and get the final 100km’s done. I rode up out of the Kaapmaiden gorge and past a large rock in Karino where my grandfather once sat when he saw his first motor car (the first one in the Lowveld). As special moments go, riding past that old rock was pretty much up there. Miraculously the chain was still holding and I made it all the way to my home town of Witrivier. As I drove through the town on a quiet Sunday evening I started to get excited about having completed the trip, and as I was nearing home I realised I could even push the bike from here so started giving the KTM plenty, over cooking the corners and liberating the front from terra-firma. I pulled

up the driveway to a small welcoming party who had heard the bellowing akra from some way away. Although I was very tired and needed rest I was ‘buzzing’ for quite a few days afterwards, and found it strange having to sleep on a bed and being able to eat good chow whenever I wanted to. I also realised that my hands were shaking uncontrollably and that I had lost much dexterity in fine motor skills - probably from hanging onto a bike all day every day for the last few months (and a nice vibey one like an LC4 at that). I spent a few days cleaning up my gear and my bike was in the capable hands of the best mechanic I have come across in a third of the planet - who happens to runs a small KTM workshop in Nelspruit. He confirmed that I had over-tightened the valve clearances and other than that the engine was in perfect shape. After the full service and a few new bits (like sprockets & chain) the KTM looked and felt like it had just been run-in.

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I was missing the daily routine of riding so decided to take a small warm-down trip, as I hadn’t enjoyed the paranoia filled last part of Mozambique. I packed on all my trip gear and rode 700k’s to a the Alfie Cox dual sport festival that some of you dogs were at. It was very a nice change riding without luggage and with decent tyres on, especially when I was in a small pack of LC4’s. I had to leave before most people got back to the ranch on the Saturday so lost contact, but if anyone of you guys I rode with is reading this please shout. I was surprised how much my riding abilities had come on since the trip, probably the most important one being the ability to stay on the bike at any costs. I suppose this is the number one requirement when you’re riding alone on a trip through some pretty unfriendly places.

After the event I spent the weekend with my sister who lives in Umhlanga and also picked up a few more bits from Alfie’s shop before heading back to the Lowveld,

via the North coast and then into Swaziland. Swaziland is a very cook place to go riding, as you can ride just about anywhere you want without picking up any trouble from the authorities (we pick up a bit of flack from the forestry people in the Slowveld sometimes). After Swaziland my trip was well & truly over, and it has been very difficult since then to try & get back on the straight & narrow of leading a normal life and not becoming a full time ‘rolling stone’.

As promised, here’s a bit of a report on the most crucial member of team orange. As I said in my first post; I am a fan of the orange equipment but did much research which

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suggested this was the bike for the trip. It was simply phenomenal. I always put the bike first, some nights searching for good fuel for so long that I went without food, and servicing it religiously and performing ‘inspection services’ between each interval (I inspected 5 times on the trip). Although I’m quite partial to the 990 Adventure I don’t think I would have had as much fun on the heavier bike, and its better road manners wasn’t really a factor as I always tried to stay off road. So in summary...

The Engine 100% reliable and never missed a beat. It now has 20,000 trouble-free km’s on it and is only six months old.

The radiator pipe incident I put down to my good self not checking the hose clamps when doing inspections and I think the pipes were just getting a bit soft in the ultra-hot conditions. I did experience a small bit of low octane pinking before switching the CDI but haven’t inspected the piston for damage as I don’t see the point of opening up an engine that has been otherwise untouched. The Wheels The standard Metzeler enduros were very good on road and justifiably crap on the dirt. The TKC’s were very good on road and quite good on gravel, especially the rear. The front was very sketchy in the soft desert sand. I’m not sure if it was the tread pattern but it often took some very strange lines through the soft sand (opposing lines to the rest of team orange). An ex Dakar rider I met in the UK had told me not to use them in the sand and he was right. In Kenya I switched to a Pirelli MT21 rear and it was just as

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good as the TKC’s on road and even better off-road. I bought a couple of Michelin Deserts form Alfie Cox and they were phenomenal off-road and really crap on-road. The TKC & Pirelli rears both gave in about 8-10,000 km’s which is good, and probably due to adventure riding being a bit more sedate than the thrashing we give our bikes on an average w/end ride. The Behr rims were quite soft. Although they took some serious abuse they are now littered with dents. I couldn’t afford Excels for the trip but will be making that upgrade when I can. The Suspension I think this is what puts the bike very far away from anything else on a trip like this. The knocks that it soaked up were staggering. At one point I smacked a rock so hard I thought I had broken both wrists, but I stayed on. I don’t want to brand bash but I met a total of seven other bikers on my trip, all going North and none of them on bikes like

mine. Two of them had spent quite a bit of money upgrading their standard suspensions, and the other five ALL had suspension breakages or leaks. Two of these five I met in Nairobi, waiting for new suspension parts to come from Europe after that bad road in Northern Kenya. Chain woes I rode the stock sprockets & chain until I got to Cairo and although they were still in good shape I changed them to the steel ones I was carrying and put on the flippen expensive high tech Gold X-Ring chain. On paper this combo was rated for around 20,000km’s and I only had 10,000 left on the trip. The chain broke after 5,000.

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When I inspected the damage I noticed two of the o-rings at the break were missing, they probably expired from the entire desert riding in temperatures over 50 degrees C. I didn’t lube much in the desert to stop the chain collecting bull-dust. Anyway as far as drama’s go this was a pretty small one to contend with on such a big trip. Next time I’ll be carrying spares for the spares. The Rest Nothing wrong with the chassis or sub frame - in all the tumbles I took the only break was to a pannier frame. The seat wasn’t too bad, but I did use a very thick sheepskin on the longer rides which worked great. The tank size gave me plenty of range and those carbon fibre protectors were magic - they’re full of scratches now, which is good. The soft luggage was awesome. I kept valuables in the top box and the bags soaked up the brunt of my off’s - the only damage was a few dents in my cooking pits & tin mug. The GPS was tough

and very useful for working out distances & using as a compass. I had tracks4africa loaded but they didn’t feature any roads on quite a bit of the journey and were pretty inaccurate at other times. They were however very useful showing the major roads that lead in & out of the big cities like Cairo, Nairobi & others. The one other thing I really could have done with is a steering damper for the soft stuff. I’m sure I would have had less off’s with one of these but couldn’t afford it - maybe next time. Well sadly that’s all folks, thanks very much for reading and thanks for all the kinds words. Really appreciate it. LASTLY, if any of you are interested in joining me on my next trip feel free to leave me your details. I’d like to do a lap of Southern Africa, probably taking in bits of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia & ZA. Nothing planned as yet but I’d like to do it sometime in 2009. Cheersvireers!

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K

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There has always been something about rally inspired dual purpose adventure bikes. Could it be the styling with the higher windscreen and bigger fuel tanks that appeal to the buyers out there? Is there a reason to choose it over a regular dual purpose bike? The XT660Z Tenere has recently been launched right here in South Africa, after the dreaded waiting period, it was definitely worth the wait. There is nothing currently available off the showroom floors that offer the build quality and features of the Yamaha Tenere. Im sure by now, most of you are aware of the models history, dating back nearly 30 years. What we have now, is a neat package consisting of a great fuel injected engine, mid 400km tank range, High fly screen, hand guards, bash plate and plenty of accessories. From the aesthetics, the Tenere’s styling is spot on.

There’s nothing like it, on the road. The high screen

and low mudguard is typical adventure tourer, the 23liter tank will give you endless range and the step seat will provide plenty of comfort on those long days in the saddle. From the rear, the hexagon shaped under seat exhausts, add some flamboyance to the package. The pegs are metal Off-road foot -pegs to add better grip on your boots when riding off-road. The tank has a plastic protector added to it, incase you do drop the bike. There are a couple of extra’s available from hand guards to panniers, even some Akroprovic exhausts.

When the Tenere was designed, they decided to build the frame around the engine, instead of the usual, frame first and slotting the engine in. What this equals to is a bike that handles exceptionally well with a low centre of gravity.The black rubber whoops are courtesy of Michelin. The Sirac range some might feel aren’t the perfect tires, but no-one really rides a

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long time on factory tires anyway. Rest assured though, they do a perfect job of just about anything besides, sand, mud and grass. They are provided in 90/90/21 front and 130/80/17 rear. Both are tubed tires.The 43mm Paioli conventional forks in front work well with the Sachs monocrosser in the back, that is adjustable for preload. The front brakes are 2 brenbo floaters at a size of 298mm dual piston callipers and a 245mm rear disk with single piston calliper.

The gearing is spot on… the 1st gear is reasonably low, you find yourself idling up hills the size of mountains, run out of oomph in 1st, shift to second and it starts right over. I really cant stop raving about how well the bike builds power in the lower end of the power band. This is probably the 58nm making things work well on the bottom. On top things are a little different… 35kw for a bike

like this is sufficient, but we end up running out of steam around 5500Rpm. This could also be due that we were pretty high up in the mountains. One of the journo’s did have a short case of altitude sickness, could the bikes have the same? Who knows… The Top speed is just over 160kph, (100mph) although I really wouldn’t keep it there for the day. No doubt the bike is and will be reliable, but if you intend cruising high-speed Id suggest you look at a bike with a multi-cylinder configuration. The bike is very happy at a respectable 120-130kph. Its fuel efficient too… you should see over 20km/l depending on how heavy the bike is loaded.Is this the best single cylinder adventure motorcycle available today? I would say yes. There is nothing currently available with a stock long range tank, windscreen, long travel suspension and a superbly smooth fuel injected engine.

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XR400 Owners Review By Etienne van Rensburg

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In the everlasting quest for the perfect dual-sports bike, we take a look at one of the smaller contenders; The Honda XR400R. Standing tall, it shouts presence, you either love it or hate it. There are no grey areas with this bike - it came, it conquered and it’s still here, but has it passed its sell by date? Definitely not, the bike is amazing, maybe it’s a combination of world class front suspension, 43mm Showa cartridge; 12 position rebound and 18 position compression adjustability, which offers 300mm wheel travel (XR650 is 285mm), or the power delivery from the single cylinder, air-cooled motor producing 25kw, the whole package only weighing in at 116.5kg. The bike is very minimalist, it has a headlight to show you where you’re going and a mirror to show where you’ve been, instrumentation is also dead simple, it has a speedo and the usual idiot lights, but then again this bike is all about weight

saving. But stats are irrelevant with any bike, doesn’t matter how good it looks on paper, it has to prove itself on the road. And that’s exactly what it did. I had this bike for a weekend and it astounded me, power wheelies in the first three gears are effortless. I found the gearbox smoother than a lot of the bigger, more expensive dual-sports bikes. The bike doesn’t have a starter button, which is a big letdown for a lot of potential buyers, but in actuality the kick start is very easy if you know the technique. Pull in the decompression lever and push the starter through 3-4 times, release the decompression lever,

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then slowly push the starter down until you can feel resistance, let the starter return to the top, then pulling in the decompression lever, push the starter down gently just about an inch to get the piston past the top, release the decompression lever and let the starter return to the top. Give the bike one thorough kick all the way down; if it doesn’t start within 2 kicks, you’re doing something wrong. Once the bike is hot it takes about half a kick to start, see, it’s

easy! In the sand, the front suspension made whoops seem like nothing, although the back end has a tendency of kicking you in the arse. On gravel, the bike really comes into its own. You can open the throttle in almost any gear and the rear wheel starts to spin - a slight adjustment of your weight will have the rear sliding all day, not good for your tyre life, but great for your adrenalin fix .The bike is heavy on fuel

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though, and the standard 9.5l tank doesn’t really help the cause, but luckily, Clarke, Acerbis, IMS and Aqualine tanks all make larger aftermarket fuel tanks for this bike. However, don’t necessarily go for the biggest tank if you still want to use the bike as a play bike, 15l is about the ideal setup. The handle bar is low, but this problem is easily resolved with a set of bar raisers, or even just a higher bent handle bar. When buying a XR the first thing to look out for is the swing arm bearings. Honda’s notorious for not greasing them properly, also the oil is in the frame so when it gets too hot over a long period of time, the

steering head bearings also overheat and result in it seizing. The lasts XR400’s were produced in 2004, so these bikes have become like hens teeth, but parts backup isn’t a problem as the Honda XR’s are famous for having the largest aftermarket parts base. All round this is a great bike if you intend on using it off road only, but prolonged periods on tar can become daunting. If you’re concerned about heated grips, side stand switches and ABS then this isn’t the bike for you, but if you’re looking for power in a light weight package, coupled with awesome suspension, look no further than the XR400.

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Alfie Cox Dual Sport Festival

Readers ReviewRika de Bruyn

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ALFIE COX DUAL SPORTS FESTIVAL: 13-16 August 2009

Thursday, 13 August: We were 5 Nelspruit riders and one rider, Anton, from Maputo who left Nelspruit at 07h00 on a 600km journey to Sierra Ranch Resort nearby Mooiriver to participate in the 2009 Alfie Cox Dual Sports Festival.

The riders and one pillion were: Rika de Bruyn (BMW R1200GS), Sampie Haasbroek and Anton Prins (BMW1200ADV), Igna de Villiers (KTM 950 Super Enduro) as well as Henk and Jana Goedhart (KTM 990 Adventure S).

An approximate of 160 dual purpose bikers of all different brands gathered to enjoy two days of fun and adventure riding on the Red and Green routes.

Friday: The scenery was spectacular and especially with the red route being very technical at times. I intended to ride the green route but due to not having a GPS, I thought

I was following the green route riders after the first fuel-stop, I ended up on the red route. This included sand, very slippery marble rocky sections, technical one-track paths which certainly tested the bigger 1200’s to their utmost limit of skill riding. Numerous river crossings also swallowed a few bikes. I was lucky that I did not have one fall on either day! Navigation was done by GPS only and if one did not have

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such a luxury, you had to keep up to any such rider that owned one with the risk of getting lost.

I got lost at the end of day one! I ended up stopping a tractor on a farm to get directions. My very strict rule of not riding off-road alone had to be broken as the sun was setting at the speed of light. Problem was that I had prescribed sunglasses which made my view of sun-set a lot quicker!

I was quite nervous with not knowing where the hell I was and in which direction to ride.

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90 minutes later and freezing after sunset, I was welcomed by my three very concerned GPS riding buddies in the bar.

Saturday: Myself and Anton made sure that we hooked up with trusty GPS riders Kurt and Carol Beine for some green route riding. We decided at breakfast that we would only ride half the day up to the lunch spot. The reason being that we needed to save our energy when teaming up with Henk and Jana the following day for an epic journey of Lesotho’s Sani Pass and Katsi Dam.

It was my birthday and an awesome way to spend it among riding buddies in the forest and Kamberg Mountains. I was also surprised by receiving the top prize of the event from the master Alfie himself – a set of dual purpose tires for being the Legend-ess of the event! Whatever that means! Anton also received a prize for being the person whom travelled the longest distance to the event.

Sunday: After a great breakfast and goodbyes to all our riding

friends and organizers, we headed off for Lesotho. This story continues….

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Sani PassReaders Ride: Rika de Bruyn

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LESOTHO - Sani Pass and Katsi Dam: 16–18 August 2009

Sunday, 16 August: After 2 days of hectic riding on the red and green routes at the Alfie Cox Dual Sports Festival nearby Mooiriver, myself, Anton Prins, Henk Goedhart and his pillion wife Jana were packed and ready for our epic journey of Lesotho.

We headed off towards Sani Pass and we could clearly see the snow on the Drakensberg in the distance. I was nervous – very nervous! The closer we got the more I was thinking how stupid I was to attack the Sani Pass in winter with a two wheeled monster of a BMW1200GS – packed with a tank bag, top box and a “pillion” (kit-bag) which I kindly carried for husband and wife team Henk and Jana.

I couldn’t decide if the nerve was due to the snow in the far distance or the reason that I had to travel with an expired passport dd 2000-08-26 and first date of issue 1990-08-27. I couldn’t turn around – I was

carrying luggage which didn’t belong to me! The evening before departing Nelspruit I discovered that my passport accidentally travelled with a friend to Paarl – whom visited Mozambique with me a month prior to this trip. I managed to get through 4 border controls in and out of Lesotho. Ask no questions, hear no lies!

And so the famous 8km Sani Pass was staring at us after the SA border control. I decided to take it bend by bend – taking my time and remembering the wise words of Country Trax instructor Jan Staal du Toit – stand up, look up and go! I was also told that one must try not to stop due to the steep incline and loose gravel. I remember glancing ahead to kind of see what’s awaiting me – then focusing on the following 6 – 10 meters, glancing from the corner of my eye at the immediate front of the tire. And so the nightmare began – approximate 80 % up – ice on two hair pin corners – therefore not giving one space to pick up momentum to clear the ice in each bend. All three of us managed to clear the first

Sani PassReaders Ride: Rika de Bruyn

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bend – with Jana walking about 60 % of the pass. The second icy bend was just too tough – we witnessed a 4x4 coming down, hooking up its winch to the smaller SUV in front of them to assist it through the icy downhill hairpin bend! Once they managed to clear the bend – they stopped to assist us. But, there were no ways of walking the bikes through due to no traction also under our own feet! We decided to pick a line and ride it through with all others assisting on the sides. The guys made it while I fell over and after a long struggle

we managed to get the Beemer through. Fortunately no damage to the bike and body! This 8km journey took us 90 minutes to complete – and once we arrived at the Lesotho border control at the top, I felt such a relief and the kind of conquering of my own little Everest! I managed to once again clear customs and all of us rushed to our lodge, approximate 300 metres from there for an icy beer at the cozy fireplace and bar. Here, high on the Drakensberg escarpment on the border between South Africa and

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Lesotho, Sani Top Chalet offers comfortable accommodation beneath a sea of stars at night and breathtaking landscapes by day. It is also home to the highest pub in Africa at 2874m. We were welcomed by the owner and very friendly staff whom didn’t hesitate to fit 2 mattresses in their last available 2 sleeper chalet. Temperatures dropped to -1.7 degrees and all the guests were treated by a great “boere” 3-course meals alongside a fireplace in the dining room! Monday: After an awesome breakfast which included “slap pap”, hash brown, bacon and eggs and fresh orange juice, we left for what was the highlight of my trip! After climbing another few meters, not as hectic as the Sani pass, we were welcomed by a snow-covered mountain. This was the beginning of 250km’s of numerous passes, all gravel riding through numerous villages towards Katse Dam. Awesome sceneries! We, however, were attacked with stone throwing on about three occasions by groups of young kids – screaming “sweets!” We were told by locals to

slow down on each occasion, presuming that we would offer something and then race off. Else you would be thrown at with stones from the higher hills when passing by the villages / schools. Fortunately we did not have serious problems like guests from the Sani Top Chalet whose vehicle was damaged the previous day coming from the opposite direction.

It was also quite interesting to see how some cattle were covered with mielie bags to protect them from the cold on the higher mountains.

Mountain after mountain pass followed and never-ending gravel roads. 250km’s and 7 hours later we finally viewed the Katse Dam wall in a far distance. What a relief – I was exhausted! My hands were blistering and my feet aching from standing due to technical and much loosed gravel sections. I was now ready for a dinner, a hot bath and a bed!

Tuesday: An awesome sunrise view of the dam from our cottage got us excited for a tour

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of the dam wall! We headed off to the dam’s offices from where we were taken on a 90 minute tour that started at 09h00.

The Katse Dam is part of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and Africa’s second largest dam. The potential of the project was identified to supplement water supply to South Africa. The dam was completed in 1996 and the reservoir filled with water by 1997.The dam’s high elevation allows a gravity flow delivery system to South Africa, in addition to hydroelectric power for Lesotho, and was a prime reason behind the choice of site.

Water delivery officially began on 22 January 1998. The dam currently supplies about 30 m³/s of water to South Africa, which pays Lesotho $35 million per year, plus a variable royalty based on calculated water usage benefits.

Dam features:

• Height - 185 m

• Crest length - 710 m

• Design - double arch, concrete

• Concrete - 2,320,000 cubic meters

• 1993 meters above sea level (highest Dam in Africa)

We were done with gravel travelling – so much for my Wild Dog bumper sticker: “I only travel on gravel!” The rest of our route towards Clarens /Golden Gate was tarred – yeah! I unfortunately discovered a slow-puncture in Clarens, probably resulted in Lesotho already. Fortunately the tubeless tire resulted in a 10 minute repair.

Wednesday: We were happy to be going home – but also sad to be ending this great journey and the beautiful mountains at Golden Gate National Park.

Henk and Jana unfortunately picked up trouble with their bike as we entered Harrismith resulting in having to call a friend with a bakkie to load and take them back. With a possible fuel pump problem on the KTM, Anton diverted

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for Maputo at Ladysmith and I ended up travelling and fighting the gusty winds all by myself for 400km via Ermelo! A successful 2300km journey, including the Alfie Cox festival, was completed with no serious incidents and with only a broken indicator and one flat tire for me! A total of 38% gravel and 62% tar travelling during the entire journey were done.

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