Alle Beiträge von Christopher

Zim to Nam

27. Januar 2015 Christopher 4 Kommentare

Hey Guys, it’s been a while. We are meanwhile back in Germany, after reaching Cape Town safe and sound. But there is still a lot to write about left. So let’s take it from the last blog entry.

Initially we wanted to visit some good friends of mine in Harare/Zimbabwe. Unfortunately we were running a bit out of time and had thus to cancel the visit. So our only Zimbabwe time was in Victoria Falls and from there to the border to Botswana. Zimbabwe is nowadays infamous for its high corruption and endless check points. During the short time we spent in this country we realized that a travel on the bikes through Zim has the potential to be a massive pain. We got in several check points and everytime our bikes road worthiness was tested. Lights, indicator, horn and documents. Luckily Daniel repaired his broken indicator back in Zambia so we just had the annoyance of the check points but never had to pay a “fee”.

At the Botswana border we went through our first disinfection bath with the bikes and boots. They try to prevent the spreading of the foot and mouth disease, which is apparently a big problem for the mostly farm based industry of Botswana and also Namibia. They also try to prevent the spreading of Ebola by checking the body temperature at the border. We had to put a thermometer under our arms (very hygienic) and note the temperature on an official paper. We all had readings around 35°C. I asked the officer what to write down, since with this temperature we were pretty much dead. He replied “Just write it down”. OK… Effective measures…

We stocked up supplies in Kasane at the Chobe River and had our first look at Namibia on the other side of the river, but first Botswana. The highway down to Nata could be pretty boring if it weren’t for all the elephants and other game standing along the road. The road runs between the Chobe National Park in Botswana and the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, both with large elephant populations and no fences (elephants don’t mind fences too much anyway). So plenty of animals migrate between the two parks and the “caution elephants” signs should be taken serious.

One of the many elephants along the road

We passed a camp along the road named “Elephant Sands” and decided to spent the night there. What a well named place, they got plenty of sand and even more elephants. When we pulled up on the camp ground we saw several other motorbikes. All overland travelers like us. And a total coincidence as well, like us the other travelers haven’t seen much bikes around Africa. We had a nice night constantly surrounded by elephants.

The next destination was Maun, the gate to the Okavango Delta. A place which I thought while planning the trip of being one of the highlights. It turned out to be to be a major letdown. There was too much water in the river and a boat tour with the high grass would have been pointless. So we didn’t really see much of the Delta and decided to push on towards Namibia also because we needed spare parts which we only could get in Windhoek. While doing a bit of a service on our bikes David found his front sprocket to be worn beyond limit. Three teeth were already missing and we needed urgent replacement. Also, our front tires we mounted back in Istanbul were down and needed replacement. Funny thing with these Mitas tires. The front wears faster than the rear. The rear was also mounted in Istanbul but made it until Cape Town with still some km left on them (according to African standards, not European).

Those guys cycle from Cape Town to Burindi

It was a long and rather boring ride towards Namibia. Botswana is extremely sparsely populated, with only 2 million people on an area 1.6 times of Germany. 50 km before the border it started raining and never stopped with temperatures dropping to 16°C. This doesn’t sound too bad but we are used to the heat by now 😀 After the border we were soaking wet and the motivation to camp pretty low, so we looked for a roof and bed that night and found a guest farm along the way. Plenty of farms in Namibia offer rooms and food. This one was called Zelda Guest Farm and probably the worst you can find. The white owners were the most unfriendly people we met in a long time and even tried to cheat us with the bill. If you ever find yourself along the Trans-Kalahari Highway don’t bother to stop at the Zelda Guest Farm. At least we had our first night in a bed since Iringa/Tansania!

We made our way towards Windhoek, the last African capital city of our trip. The last days Daniels bike was acting up again. Constant power losses to the degree that the engine went off and wouldn’t start again for a few minutes. 60 km out of Windhoek it got so bad that we couldn’t get much driving done anymore and I had to tow him into town. Towing with the bike is still no fun… We found a nice backpackers accommodation and spent the next days working on the bikes. Windhoek was the first city since Nairobi with a proper selection of spare parts. We got new front tires and David could get a new chain kit from the local BMW dealer and also replaced his steering head bearings, which also were beyond.

We still couldn’t really figure out the problem on Daniels bike, it was either the ignition or the something with the fuel supply. Replacing the spark plugs did not improve the situation. We tried to leave Windhoek three times in one day and the bike always came down with the same issues some 30 km out of town.

One of the plenty stops — One of the stops

In the end Daniel and I swopped the fuel pumps on a parking lot outside Windhoek in order to find the source of the issue. The problem was transferred with the fuel pump to my bike, thus highlighting the fuel pump as being the source of the problem. The original Africa Twin fuel pump is known to break easy, therefore we already had new mechanical pumps on the bikes. Didn’t stop it from breaking either… We went back to Windhoek and could find a low pressure fuel pump at the Quad and Bike Clinic in town. After the new pump was installed we could leave Windhoek with no problems.

We rode towards Swakopmund and stopped at the Spitzkoppe Mountain, a truly wonderful camping spot. Once you leave the main highway in Namibia its gravel roads. Most of them are in a pretty good shape and riding on them is good fun, especially with new tires!

It's a tough life :D — It’s a tough life 😀

We had a nice fire at the camp and tried to fry some marshmallows. The marshmallows didn’t really like the heat on the bike and were kind of tough to get out of the bag.

We had a funny bird at the camp who really liked our bikes mirrors.

With Swakopmund we reached the African Atlantic coast. The water is pretty cold here, around 13°C and is having a strong impact on the air temperatures close to the sea. Even though we were riding from shrubbery savanna into the sand of the Namib Desert temperatures were dropping from 34°C to around 20°C. It again felt cold while riding 😀 Swakop is an remarkable place situated in the sand dunes of the desert. The architecture reminds a lot of the old German cities along the Baltic Sea and the German population is quite strong here with many street names and stores in German. We celebrated the reaching of the Atlantic Coast with a fantastic dinner at the Swakopmund Brauhaus 😀

Swakop is pretty touristy and we made use of that by joining a tour into the desert called “the little five” where one gets the small animals of the Namib shown. After this impressive demonstration of survival in this hostile environment we went again into the desert with rented quad bikes blasting over the sand dunes, making the survival for the small animals a bit more hostile… Words cannot describe the fun we had! Our guide constantly tried to slow us down and stop us from goofing off, but no chance, just too much fun 😀

Our guide looking for the small five — Looking for the small five

Got some food for the little guy — Got breakfast for the little guy

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Happy Chameleon

The chameleon liked David but charmoflage is not his strong site

Sidewinder Adder. The bite is not deadly but apparantly you wish to die…

On a daytripp down to Walvis Bay we climbed the Dune No.7 which is a bit of an afford but gives a great view.

We’ve been riding a lot towards south the last months, so for a change we drove a bit north towards the Brandberg Mountain, passing Cape Cross with its very large seal colony of about 250,000 animals. For some random reasons motorbikes are not allowed on the road to the cape, but our combined persuasion skills convinced the gate keeping lady to let us through. We promised her to tell anyone, oh well…

It was the time of the year were the seals get their young and the colony was crowded with seal pups. Sounds sweat? Nope. Plenty of them die, this plus the almost unbearable stench of the colony is pretty disgusting.

Shippreck towards Cape Cross — Shippreck on the way to Cape Cross

This little %$§Y#* had some serious anger issues and atacked all of us

Also in Namibia the bikes draw a lot of attention

From here on we left the cool sea side again towards the hot back country seeing more of the multiple facets of Namibia.

Africa, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania

Piki Piki Problems

16. November 2014 Christopher 3 Kommentare

During a hundred days between April and July in 1994 one of the largest genocides of the last century took place in Rwanda. To date 1.1 million dead are counted. The exact number will never be known since entire villages where wiped out without a single soul left to tell about the killed. Like most people we didn’t know much about the events leading and during the genocide and thus visited the Genocide Memorial in Kigali where about 250,000 victims of the mass murder are buried in mass graves.

It all started in the 19^th century with the colonization of Rwanda by the Germans. The established an artificial separation of the people in Hutu and Tutsi. The 10 % of the population owning more than 10 cows where Tutsi, the rest Hutu. After the first world war Germany lost all colonies and Rwanda was from then on controlled by the Belgians. They pushed this separation to better control the population and only Tutsi where allowed to get higher education and in higher offices. Naturally this lead to a strong imbalance in the society which summited in the well planned and fast genocide in 1994. The international community failed to intervene and even withdraw their troops from the area as the slaughter started. After the genocide the UN and the “first world” countries promised to never let such an event ever happen again. The value of this promises can plainly be evaluated when looking at the events happening right now in Syria and Iraq.

The degree of violence erupted in 1994 is described in detail in the Genocide Memorial. Killer squats with blunt weapons applied methods of cruelness I don’t want to get in detail with but showing the deep hate in the country. Apart from murder and mutilation Tutsi women were systematically raped by HIV positive man leaving 500,000 million women raped, and this is only the confirmed number!

The visit to the Memorial left us in a shocked stage. To this day I think back a lot to this visit. We still cannot figure out how the country could recover from this events. Statistically every fourth man over the age of 40 is a murderer. But surprisingly enough the country is developing very well and everywhere is a general friendly and very cheerful atmosphere. We talked to Rwandans and they said “We are all victims of the genocide, regardless of the deeds”. This seems to be a good approach to form the new Rwanda.

We returned from the Memorial to the Discover Rwanda Hostel and had a rather funny incident with our laundry. We gave them our dirty laundry the day before and where assured that it will be ready the next day. Keep in mind that it is still rainy season in Rwanda and there is at least one biblical downpour a day. We enquired about the dryness of our laundry and got the confusing reply that its wet again. Again? Yep, they hanged the laundry outside and the afternoon rain got it. We asked how they imagine the laundry to ever get dry before dry season and why they try to dry stuff in the rain. The clever reply was “the trainees did the laundry and didn’t know that they should dry it in the rain and anyway there are sometimes days without rain”. I guess one has to pick up the trainees from a very basic level…

The laundry incident had us stay a day longer at the hostel. We used the time to drive the perfect mountain road in Rwanda with the empty bikes to the Lac Kivu (Rwanda is the only French speaking country on our trip, also the only with right side traffic since Ethiopia, all the remaining countries are left side again).

What is this plate on a pole trying to tell me??

Lac Kivu with some clouds... — Lac Kivu with some clouds…

The 140 km ride to the lake was probably one of the nicest rides on this trip. Perfect mountain roads, perfect tarmac and no traffic. This was in sharp contrast to the ride back, which was one of the worst during the trip. The rain hit us with thunderstorms in the mountains. No visibility since we were up in the clouds and the temperature dropped to 12°C. Since it was so hot during the day we didn’t bring any warm gear. We had to push on to reach Kigali before sunset, which didn’t work out. We returned after dark to the hostel with blue frozen hands and lips and enjoyed one of the best hot showers ever.

The next morning we left towards Tanzania. We were surprised the city which was so full of life and chaos the night before was empty just like in a zombie movie. No car on the road, almost no people to be seen. It was the last Saturday of the month, this day is a special day in the Rwandan culture. Everybody has to work on this day for the community or the family. We saw on our way out plenty of people collecting garbage, cleaning the road or the garden or doing maintenance work. Amazing. Especially when you have the fantastic roads all to yourself! On the way to the border we of course hit a big storm again. Luckily we came through after the worst was over but the freshly collapsed trees blocking the road gave us a good impression on what we missed out…

The crossing into Tanzania was hassle free and fairly fast and we did a good distance this day. With reaching Tanzania we were supposed to leave the rainy season behind us. Yet, someone forgot to inform the rain about that.

Soon our tanks were running low and we had to find an ATM and gas station. We only changed our Rwandan Francs into Tanzania Shilling at the border, which was not much. An ATM was not to be found just like something an European would call a gas station. We did get some black market gas which ensured us to be able to reach the next town with an ATM and a gas station. The town of Ushirombo was our destination. Daniel tried the ATM which unfortunately decided to switch to “out of order” with his VISA card still in. Crap! It is Saturday evening in a strange country, what do you do? The only sensible thing, ask the guy with the Kalashnikov. He politely pointed us to a man who was from this bank but obviously at this time not on duty. He went into the bank, restarted the machine and Daniel got his card back. Money though could not be obtained with foreign cards in this town. The nice guy from the bank took us to a good guesthouse for the night. To make matters more complicated it could only be paid in Tanzania Shilling, which we didn’t have. The not existing English skills of the lady weren’t exactly helping either. In Tanzania we for the first time have language issues, many people don’t speak English. Well, it’s their right, we are the guests and should soon learn some basic Swahili. Another helpful gentleman overheard us struggling with the lady and offered us to change our USD into Shilling. There are so many helpful and nice people here!

Our plan was to get fast through Tanzania and spent some time in Malawi. So the next day was a 550 km ride on the in general good highways. Only issue in Tanzania are the countless speed controls and the uncertainty of how fast we are actually allowed to go. With their old Star Trek like radar guns they are only able to measure the speed of the first of us three. So only this one has to pay even though we are obviously going the same speed. Daniel was the first to be caught. We were going 116 km/h were only 50 km/h were allowed, Whoops… In Germany you wouldn’t drive a vehicle in a long time again but here every speed offence has the same penalty, 30,000 shilling, which is 15 €. Since we all go the same speed we split the bill 😉 After this we spent the night in Manyoni.

On the day after we wanted to reach Mbeya. On the way we had to pass through Dodoma, the small capital city of Tanzania. We drove towards the Mtera Dam, where you need a special pass to be allowed over the dam. Only single file traffic is possible over the dam, so we waited at a traffic light to signal us the OK to go. When it turned green Davids bike made no sound, the electric was entirely gone. We tried to start the bike with a jumper cable. It started but would die at idle RPM. David tried to keep the engine running at high RPM and to move on but this proved to be impossible. We were 110 km away from the next town where we might have the small chance to get spare parts and especially the urgently needed internet connection to try to find the problem. The only option getting there was towing David on his bike. So we connected his bike to mine and I started towing him. I never towed anything on the bike before and it was not that easy since we soon came to a mountainous region with many sharp turns and on top of that loose gravel on the tarmac in the corners. On the way we got into a speed control. Not a joke. We were going 66 km/h in the middle of nowhere were only 50 km/h were allowed. This time we luckily could talk us out of the ticket with the argument that it’s very hard to break when towing someone…

In a special sharp corner with no visibility and gravel in the mountains a lorry cut the corner, David and I had to swirl and get slower, this lead to the towing robe getting tangled in his front wheel which instantly blocked. David had a slow speed crash, cracked his clutch lever, bended the steering a little, scratched his bike and his helmet. Helmets are really a good thing to wear. He was luckily not injured. We had to push on to reach Iringa, the next city. The last 20 km where off road with gravel and bits of sand. Really unnecessary! It was tough but we made it before sunset. Rough day.

We got a triple room in a hotel with a good yard to work on the bike and started the work. The battery was obviously totally fried but weirdly enough we couldn’t start the bike with the jumper cable or with rolling on. It looked very serious. We disassembled a lot of the bike to find the issue, but everything looked fine. On the second evening a very dark and sad “Davids journey is over” feeling got over us. David phoned many mechanics and one from BMW in Germany said, just try a good new battery. We tried it with Daniels battery and voila, the bike fired up. Strange, but who cares? Now just the problem of getting a new battery. Batteries strong enough to start a big bike are not easy to come by in Africa. One could use a car battery, but they are quite big and heavy. So we got two Boda Boda batteries, put one in the original compartment and the second in the top case, wired to the first one. This worked out. Now David has the biggest battery of us 😀

What is wrong with th bike?? — What is wrong with the bike??

Relieved in a very good mood we started towards the Malawi border. After passing the town of Mbeya we headed south and spent the night some 40 km before the border at a nice small campground. The Bongo Camp is a community project, where the income of the camp is financing the local school. The “dinner hall” is during day time the school hall. Nice project and since the town is in the mountains we had a good temperature to sleep. We didn’t know at this time that this would have been the last cold night for a long time.

The crossing into Malawi was hassle free and free of charge for Germans (nice!) but the first time we got our vaccination passes and fever checked. The fear of Ebola reached the east. Of course you could just avoid the temperature taking by leaving through another exit or immigrate while the “doctor” is taking his 2 hour lunch break. Very effective measures.

Temperatures in Malawi god soon very high and we easily reached the 40°C plus range during day time, with the high humidity anything physically had to be avoided.

Thanks for the info... — Thanks for the info…

We had a short stop in Karonga and visited the Museum where some fossils from this region, including the Malawisaurus are displayed. The place is partially run by Biologists from Frankfurt, where I studied and I remembered the first semester lecture from Prof. Schrenk who is a Paleoanthropologist and discovered fossils of human ancestors here in northern Malawi.

After rushing through Tanzania we wanted to take it easy in Malawi, so we spent the next three days at the Sangilo Sanctuary directly at the Lake. The small place is run by the British man Marc who keeps plenty of animals around to not be so alone. The small zoo includes two gigantic dogs, Samson, the bigger one, weighs 78 kg, a large boar, a giant turkey, some ducks and cats.

Funny enough Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman stopped here during their “Long way Down” TV-show and Marc had some funny stories about the guys.

I heard before about the beauty of Lake Malawi but standing in the clear warm water at the sandy beaches was better than expected. Plus we had a good time with the Malawians who are in general pretty relaxed and friendly. A good place to hang out for a while.

We used the time at Sangilos to do the necessary oil and filter change on our bikes, the last one on this trip… Since we just can’t not drive our bikes for a day we took the bikes without luggage up a bad gravel road to Livingstonia, an old mission town in the refreshing “less hot” mountains with some tall water falls nearby.

We heard that the lake is also great for diving. Daniel and I wanted to get the scuba diving license and David wanted to dive as well, so we drove down to Kande Beach and started the course right away.

After three days, four open water dives and one exam Daniel and I are now certified divers! That was a fantastic experience. The lake is so warm that no wet suit is needed. Plenty of the small colorful fishes you can buy for your water tank at home originate from Lake Malawi. Diving in this lake is like diving in a warm aquarium!

The Kande Camp is heavily frequented by overland trucks. An interesting way of travelling. People book them self into such a truck and ride usually from Nairobi to Cape Town, or only a part and get off. The drivers cover very long distances in one day and long hours are spent on the trucks. The trucks tend to stop at the same places and are mostly frequented by younger customers. The commercial overland experience without any self-planning or cooking. Strange.

After 10 very nice days at the lake we had to leave Malawi. A place we definitely want t visit again!

Africa, Kenya, Uganda

Around Lake Victoria

23. Oktober 2014 Christopher 2 Kommentare

After the great time at the Kilima Camp we had to push on. The next days we wanted to drive to Lake Victoria. From there we planned to take a short ferry trip from Mbita and drive towards the Ugandan border. The gravel road from Masai Mara started out great and we reached the lake around midday.

At this pace we were sure to reach Mbita in one day. But of course this didn’t work out. The roads on the maps and GPS weren’t existing, but since we knew if we keep the lake to our left we will go north and eventually reach Mbita. The “road” was hardly existing and mostly loose stones and rock formations with steep ascending and descending parts. Very tough to drive on. On one descend David hit a rock and we heard Daniel over the intercom “David, you are leaking”. From the impact Davids BMW took a hole in its oil pan and lost all its engine oil. This could have very well meant the end of the trip for David and the start of some proper type III fun.

We were still on a hill and David rolled without engine power to the bottom where some fisher huts where. Lacking any alternative we asked the locals if we can pitch our tents near their village and work on the bike. Unfortunately, the majority of the adult population was drunk but friendly and we could stay the night. Daniel and David removed the oil pan while I entertained the 50 kids gathering around the bike so the guys had some little space to work.

We had some liquid metal epoxide glue from home. With this we got the oil pan tight again and could reattach it. One sober guy got David some new engine oil. He drove the hill at night on his small chinese bike… But, David is now leak free! The drunken villagers were a bit of a pain and we didn’t sleep much that night. Also thanks to the kids who came around 6 in the morning again to tell us “Wake up muzungo! Good morning muzungo!”…

The rest to Mbita promised to be a rough ride again but it was worse than we thought. It was probably the most challenging ride we had so far at a very high temperature and we promised our self to do less off road in the future since we all want to get the bikes (and the riders) to the Cape in one piece.

The 50 minute ferry ride from Mbita was a nice change in pace and we had a fun time with the ferry stuff. They told us we were the nicest white people they ever met. We think they don’t meet many white people around here 😀 Plus it was only some 2 € for us with the piki pikis (motorbike in Kiswahili)

Mbita II, don't want to know what happend to the first one... — Mbita II, don’t want to know what happend to the first one…

From the ferry port the road was supposed to be all tarmac up to the Ugandan border, except for one unknown stretch of around 25 km. Since it was starting to rain we were uncertain about the road condition. We asked some locals and a very helpful lady explained us the way. Confronted with the question about the road condition she just replied ‘”The road can be disturbing”. We liked that. The morning wasn’t disturbing enough… She also told us that we actually will pass the village where Presidents Obama family is from. How cool. Their home is right north of the equator (we crossed the equator again). The disturbing road was in no way disturbing and maybe only 2 km gravel. A good end of the day!

On the equator again. This time no road sign

We slept some 40 km before the border and entered Uganda the next day. The border was pretty annoying. For some reason you’ll find the biggest idiots of one country working at the customs. After 3 hours the ugandan customs rocket brain managed to wrongly stamp our carnets. Not again… Let’s hope it’s not going to cause problems on the way out.

From the border we made our way direction Kampala. On the way we crossed the Nile, again, that river is everywhere! We went to see the source of the white Nile in Jinja.

The highways in Uganda are mostly in a perfect condition, but the bit between Jinja and Kampala is quite heavily frequented and you have the crazy minibus drivers again. Kampala city traffic was madness as well, but we got used to third world capital traffic. It’s just full of boda bodas (motorbikes in Ugandan). There are no traffic laws for motorbikes. It’s strange in the beginning but once you got used to it actually pretty cool! We often race past the traffic police, wave politely, they are happy and wave back 😀 We really have to take care not to drive like jack asses once we are back in Europe 😀

We stayed two nights at the Red Chili in Kampala and made good use of their pool while David had his rear suspension checked. He established contact with a very nice Danish guy, Micky, who fixes bikes in his spare time and is currently rebuilding an Africa Twin. Micky told us about the great Ugandan road side fast food “chicken in your face”. Basically, when you stop at an intersection you instantly have 10 guys waving grilled chicken on a stick in your face. It also comes as “beef in your face”, “liver in your face” and, if you’re near the lakes “fish in your face”. That stuff is super tasty and we frequently stuff our faces with all kinds of grilled “whatever”.

Africa, Kenya

Dribbdeequator

16. Oktober 2014 Christopher 1 Kommentar

We’ve been a bit behind with our updates. Sorry for that. We just did too much every day and hardly find time to write the blog entries.
From Marsabit in northern Kenia we still had a lot of gravel to go. We spent the night in a very small place along the road by the name of Laisamis. A very hot place with our first (warm) kenian beer.

We left early the next day heading towards Nairobi. The tarmac was supposed to start some 20 km after the town. The gravel roads here can be quite tricky. If you stay in the line where the cars drive you’ll find relative solid gravel. OK to drive on. Between those tracks the gravel is forming small hills and is very loose. Getting into that leads to terrible swimming of the front wheel. To get out you must not get slower but get the weight into the back of the bike and accelerate. 3 km out of town Daniel got in the loose gravel and even with trying these tricks couldn’t get out anymore. I drove behind him and saw him wobbling badly until he crashed. Luckily he wasn’t hurt, even though we were doing around 50-60 km/h. The bike though took some beating since it landed on the left and flipped to the right. The right mirror was broken off, the break leaver badly bended, the wind shield and plastic body cracked in some parts and the luggage rack broken again. So another welding it will be… Daniel took it quit alright and I think seeing this happening left me more shocked than him. After this we continued at a slower pace until the perfect tarmac started.

Every day we like Kenia more and more. We stopped at the first gas stations asking if they might have petrol, still working in the Ethiopia mind set. They just look at us as if we are idiots and said “of course we have petrol, this is a gas station.” Great! Also you don’t get very often forengi or muzungo prices, as white people are called here. And if they ask for too much we were told that these prices are “very open to negotiation”, which is definitely the case.
On the way to Nairobi we passed the 5200 m high Mount Kenia and crossed the equator for the first time during this trip. We decided to take a detour on the way south around Lake Victoria, thus crossing Uganda and Rwanda, where we will cross the equator several more times.

We also decided to allow us more time. I will meet with my parents and Vanessa in Windhoek on the 11th of December and we will spent Christmas and New Years in Africa. Daniel right now plans to be back shortly before Christmas but this still can change.
Due to the events in the morning and the decision not to enter African capital cities at night anymore (remember Addis?) we stopped for the night before reaching Nairobi at a small hotel along the road. They served great mbuzi (goat) and we celebrated the equator crossing with some good Tusker Lager, this time even cold! Here you have to specifically order a cold beer, I guess that’s one of the negative aspects of the British colonization.

The next morning I found my front wheel flat. We took it apart and checked for a hole in the tube but couldn’t find any. So we put it back on and were off to Nairobi.

With reaching the outskirts of this massive city the traffic got really bad. Especially the bus and mini bus drivers here are totally insane. They overtake everywhere, but especially love overtaking before corners and hills. When they see traffic coming ahead they don’t attempt to get back into their line. We often have to break until stop and get the bikes to the side of the road in order to not get hit. There are times were we just want to pull these guys out of there busses and teach them some manners.
We reached the famous overlander camp Jungle Junction in Nairobi in the afternoon. A great place to camp with a proper garage. Chris, the owner of this place is a motorbike mechanic and one of the few people along the trans Africa track who has suitable tires in stock, which were badly needed by David. We also met other motorbike travelers for the first time since leaving Khartoum. They were a bit stranded here since it apparently got very difficult to get Ethiopia and especially Sudan visa out of the home countries. Good thing we left those countries already behind us. One couple was waiting already for a month to get their Ethiopia visa sorted out.
The next days we had to do a lot on the bikes. My front wheel was flat again and this time I found the hole and could fix it. My left pannier was still badly bended by the crash I had with the tree stump along the Moyale road. Using highly sophisticated technics involving the biggest hammer Chris has in his workshop I could get it back to almost its original shape. Good enough to get me to Cape Town. Daniel worked all day on his bike and did a magnificent job getting it back into shape! Unfortunately his carburetor was leaking petrol and the gas pump stopped working, so we had to take pretty much everything apart but now the bike runs like clockwork again.

Diagnosis with Chris and work on Daniels bike

Nairobi has a lot to offer. This might sound strange to you at home but we were stunned by the shopping malls. You can buy everything! We forgot about this during our time in Sudan and Ethiopia.
We took an idle day and visited the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi. Jung elephants who lose their mother before the age of three are doomed to die out in the bush. Many lose their mothers due to ivory poachers, who sadly still have a marked to sell the ivory the other common reason are so called “human animal conflicts” which basically means villagers killing the elephants when they get too close to their settlement. If the calves are lucky they get rescued by the orphanage and brought to Nairobi where they are hand fed every day until the age of three before they slowly get reintegrated into wild elephant herds.

After some good days at the Jungle Junction we were anxious to get back on the bikes and see more of Kenia. The plan was to leave almost all of our luggage at Chris place and do a two day trip to the Amboseli National Park in Southern Kenia facing the Kilimanjaro. We wanted to do some offroad driving but weren’t certain about the rout and where to stay at the park. The normal Safari Lodges are with 300 USD per night (not including park entrance fees) slightly over our usual price range. As so often the best things in live just happen. I went to the neighbor table at the Jungle Junction and asked the guys if they have experience with the Amboseli Park. One replied “Sure, I own a lodge there”. Axel, also a German, offered us to pitch our tents for free at his lodge and showed us a good way through the Masai land where are almost no roads are and it’s supposed to be like Kenia a 100 years ago! Perfect! So we left towards the Tawi Lodge the next day. We could only leave at 1 pm since Davids tire still wasn’t there and needed to be mounted.

After some hours in the bush it became clear that we won’t make it to the lodge in one day and we had to look for a bush camp. We found a Masai farm and asked the guys if we could build our tents on their land. They were extremely friendly and hospitable and we had some protection from the hyenas. Like many Masai they are cattle farmers. The one guy asked me if I could help them getting a pregnant cow out of the bush which was too tired to get up again. This promised to be interesting. So I went with them, we found the cow, the one guy put the tail of the cow in my hand and said “pull”. I remarked that I have no particular experience in pulling up pregnant cows on the tail but that was regarded as insignificant. So we pulled the cow up. As soon as she stood she could walk, just getting up was impossible to her. Leaving her out in the bush would render her an easy prey for the hyenas and leopards. They asked me how it was and my response “not much different from lifting the fully loaded motorbike” was well received.

The next morning we left early and the road got from bad to total nightmare. Remember the liquid dust in Ethiopia? It’s called “fech fech” and we had plenty of it. In addition the road was extremely bumpy under the fech fech, not making the ride any easier. Thus started the 3 hours of the first gear where we only covered 20 km. The road just never got better. David had a wobble, put his food down and got stuck between a rock and his left pannier. His food was bended and hurt. Luckily nothing seemed to be broken, still he had a limp for a few days and a good brusing.

At some point we were really fed up and saw a good gravel road pointing south. The direction we needed to go. It wasn’t on either our GPS or paper maps but definitely preferable to the fech fech. So we made our way south along the magnificent kenian country side. We climbed a hill and after that lay the Amboseli plain with the gigantic snow topped Kilimanjaro!

We continued south, knowing that we can’t enter the park with the motorbikes. We were looking for the entrance gate or signs. Worst case would be that we have to turn back. Approaching the park the wildlife got pretty impressive. Plenty of Zebras, Gazelle, Gnus, Giraffes and Elephants were to be seen along the road. We had a brilliant time and joked “who would pay the 80 USD entrance fee when you can see all the wildlife outside the park for free?” Well, this is where we’ve been wrong. Soon after we were flacked down by the armed parked rangers who very polite and explained to us that we are infect in the park, illegal trespassed, went their against the law on motorbikes and didn’t pay the entrance fee. Ups… But he added, “no big problem ,you might have to go to court and might go to jail, but no big problem” I guess it was no big problem to him…
We were escorted to the ranger HQ with a certain “shit hit the fan” feeling. There our luggage was searched for illegal things, I don’t know if they thought we are poachers. Our passports were collected and the penalty discussed by the bosses. Luckily Axel gave us his mobile number back in Nairobi and we called him for help. He immediately pulled some strings and we got off with paying the entrance fee and around 3 € fee for using a private vehicle in the park 😀 Many thanks Axel!!! The entrance ticket was valid for 24 h so we decided to do a real guided safari the next day with the Tawi guys. We went to the lodge and can’t explain the greatness of this place. Honestly, if you want to go to Amboseli visit this lodge. You don’t even have to enter the park since all the animals just show up at the lodge waterhole!

Axel also runs a lodge in the Masai Mara, guess our next destination 
The safaris we did in Amboseli and Masai Mara will come in a different post mostly consisting of photos and videos. We saw A LOT of great wildlife. Just fantastic. Kenia is amazing!

Africa, Ethiopia

Let’s get stoned

27. September 2014 Christopher 1 Kommentar

After working an entire day on the motorbikes I couldn’t see a screw driver anymore, which is not a problem at the beautiful Tim and Kim village since there are plenty of other things to do. I brought some fishing equipment from Germany and thus we went to the lake for a nice and relaxed fishing day. Apparently they have only Catfish, Tilapia and Brasses in this lake (except of course for the Hippos, Snakes and giant Warans, also known as Dragons or Monitors).

The plan was to first catch some Brasses and use them as a bait for the Catfish and Tilapia. Catching the Brasses was easy but we got nothing else. Kim said she could make fish cakes from the 8 Brasses we caught. Nice! It was a great spot at the lake and we were visited every now and then by a rather large Snake in the water which checked out if we were still around, saw us and left again. I guess we were in its favorite exit spot. Kim said it was probably a Cobra, which are found in this area.

It rains alot around here... — It rains alot around here…

As the only guests we had every evening dinner with Kim and Mabratu, who does a lot around this place.

The next day David was supposed to come, but we didn’t know exactly when so the two of us scheduled a canoe trip around the lake with Mabratu. Just when we were about to leave David arrived and joined us for the trip. We saw some Warans on the rocks and visited one of the twenty monastery’s on the lake Tana. Only males are allowed to set food on this island, this goes to the extent that only male animals are kept on the island, so now omelet for breakfast. They are still not sure what to do about the birds flying over the island. The low living standard of the monks was impressive. No electricity, not a single machine, their church bell is an old artillery shell from the days of the italian occupation. People in Europe pay thousands to escape civilization. They should spent two weeks working on one of these islands. One of the monks told us he was attacked by two Hippos an hour earlier on the way in. We (luckily) didn’t see a Hippo.

The next morning we left the village direction Gonder. We had a great time at this place. If you are ever near Gorgora make sure to drop by the Tim and Kim village.

We took a longer but way better maintained dirt road over Aykel which was pretty easy except for one deep river crossing. It is still rainy season in the north, so there is a lot of water and we certainly get wet at least once a day on the bikes.

We reached Gonder on the 15^th of September, the day before my birthday but on this trip we go to bed so early that we weren’t able to stay up until midnight 😀

The next day was fully packed. We went to see the old castle in Gonder, build by the Amharic kings some 400 years ago. After that we mounted our bikes and headed direction Lalibela, which I liked to see on my birthday. But, the ride was too long and the last 60 km were offroad of unknown quality. The opinions ranged from easy going to close to impossible. So we decided to spent the night in an hotel completely occupied by Chinese workers. They build the roads in Ethiopia and are all over the place (which will come in handy at some point, but more later). The road took us up to 3300 m and we even had some snow along the road. A nice birthday present, with the amazing winding roads and breathtaking views in the Ethiopian highlands. Just the engines lose a lot of power in the thin air.

We pretty much only average 50 km/h on the good roads. We always have to search a lot for fuel, most gas stations have non or only sell it to locals. Forengis (this is how white people are called here) are directed to the black market to pay up to 3 times the regular price. This is very unnerving. In general we are considered as a wallet on wheels. Everybody asks for ridicules prices and most don’t haggle, so no deal. We have been approached countless times by completely healthy, well-dressed man in their twenties demanding money because we are white. This attitude is unfortunately tainting our in general good view on this beautiful country. The second, even worse habit here is the throwing of things at forengi vehicles. There are many people along the street and many pick up stones and sticks and either pretend to throw them, which is scary enough, or actually throw them at us. Daniel and I got hit already once each, luckily nothing serious, since we always wear the protective gear. I never thought it will protect me from mentally insane Ethiopians… Another “sport” is to pretend to jump in front of the bike. This is always a bit shocking. The weirdest thing is, they are super happy, laughing, smiling, waving and the next second they do these things. It’s very hard for us to understand.

Black market refuel. Not happy ;) — Black market refuel. Not happy 😉

There are very much children in Ethiopia, many stand along the street, watching the cattle or doing work on the fields (or just throw stuff at motorbikes). You honestly cannot stop in this gigantic country without a second later having a bunch of kids jumping out of the next bush screaming “youyouyou” and “give me money”.

The next morning we challenged the unknown 60 km off road to Lalibela. They were just super fun and we blasted along the dirt track, which was in general in a good condition, taking us from 3000 m, down to 1800 m and up to 2500 m again.

We reached Lalibela quite early and did the tour around the rock churches. Its 50 USD for forengis and free for Ethiopians (they are a bit racist around here). Anyway worth every penny. These 11 buildings, carved out of the rock during the reign of king Lalibela with the help of angels almost a 1000 years ago definitely belong to the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. And they are all in use, still every day services are hold in every church. A very special place. Since back in the days of King Lalibela the voyage to the Holy Land was very dangerous the smart King decided to rebuild the Holy Land in Ethiopia. You find everything significant symbolized, like the river Jordan, Nazareth, Jerusalem or Mount Ararat here.

Bet Georgis, probably the most famous church in Lalibla.

People vistiting the churches sleep in those wholes if they can't afford a hotel. — People vistiting the churches sleep in those wholes if they can’t afford a hotel.

The roofes are there to protect the buildings. They are not too pretty... — The roofes are there to protect the buildings. They are not too pretty…

Our guide in Lalibela strongly suggested us to also visit the oldest church around here, Yemrehanna Kristos, some 40 km north. So the next day we took the dirt road there and it was worth it. Again a very nice and spiritual place in the mountains. Around 500 human skeletons of people who wanted to be buried here are scattered around the church.

Two great looking guys with enormous talent riding bikes from David on Vimeo.

We had to take the same road again, plus the 60 km from Lalibela to the main road. We start to really like the dirt tracks 🙂 Our next destination was Bahir Dar, at the south end of the Lake Tana, but this couldn’t be done in one day so we slept in a Hotel on the road again. While unloading the bikes Daniel noticed a broken connection of his luggage system. That’s what you get from the fun on the dirt tracks 😀 Luckily we found a guy who get this part welded and he charged only 30 Birr (around 1 €, finally not a forengi price). With the fixed rack we made it to Bahir Dar where we found a nice place to sleep directly next to the lake.

From Bahir Dar it’s not far to the Blue Nile Falls. Surprisingly this was a very bad road again and on the way back it started to heavily rain, thus making the road not any better… We are very happy about our nice off road tires. They do a pretty good job. Who ever said you can mostly travel through Africa on tarmac must have used a different route.

From the falls we headed in the direction Addis Ababa, since we only left at 2 in the afternoon it would have been impossible to reach there in one go. The area was pretty remote and only dirt roads for the next 200 km. Luckily Daniel hat a hotel along the route in his Tracks4Africa GPS system. Like I said, bush camping is very difficult with all these people around. We reached the location of the hotel some 30 min before sunset. Unfortunately there was no trace of any hotel or anything comparable, just corn fields. Bummer… Opportunities were running out with the setting sun. Driving at night on the dirt roads is suicidal and the next hotel was some 80 km away. We continued riding in the hope to find anyplace suitable for a bush camp. Than we passed a Chinese road workers camp. They didn’t speak any English but we could make them understand that we would like to pitch our tent in their compound and that was ok. Daniel and I slept in a small hut and David preferred to pitch his tent. At night the gates were closed and only some prostitutes came in and out but obviously they knew the way to which rooms they want to go. At night a strong thunder storm hit us rendering the small hut as not the most suitable place to sleep since the rain found its way through the roof. Daniel and I quickly pitched a tent inside the hut and could get some rather uncomfortable sleep.

We left pretty early the next morning to reach Addis. First we had to tackle some 170 km of dirt road with changing grades of badness. Additionally, plenty of animals and people were on the road again. I said over our radio intercom, which we all use, that at this point I just want to get out of Ethiopia without killing someone or something. 10 min later David hit a rooster. That poor guy was done. No chance to avoid the animal. We stopped, the locals were just shrugging their shoulders. Seamed to be no big deal. David gave the owner 100 Birr, apparently more than its value and everything was fine. Sadly, this animal died for nothing. If an animal is not killed in the religious right way it will not be eaten.

The road got worse, at some point we reached a pretty deep river. Daniel just blasted through while David and I watched. Daniel somehow made it through and got almost stuck on the underwater rocks. It looked in no way like we would like to do the same. We found a way on to the bridge which was constructed over the river and crossed the river on that bridge. Not easy either, but still better than going through the river and get stuck there.

Finally we found some tarmac and continued towards Addis along the Nile Gorge. An amazing place. The road descents from 3000 m to 1200 m up to 3200 m again. At the bottom it’s pretty warm and baboons are all over the place.

The drive took a lot of time and 100 km out of Addis we had two hours before sunset. Doable, right? Nope. We should have just called it a day and find a place outside Addis to sleep. But we were so eager to make it to Addis that we pushed on. We reached the city boundaries at sunset and it started to rain (of course). We were looking for the “Wim’s Holland House”, a famous overlander place in Addis. The city is a mess right now since they build a new train track crossing the whole town. Many streets were not existing anymore or in an even worse condition than any off road we’ve done so far. That’s not a joke. So in the rain, the pitch dark, on the worst streets ever with no proper navigation and after 13 hours on the bikes, in an 7 million city we managed to find Wim’s at some point. What a great moment! We had a good dinner and a beer and went to bed right away. My advice, enter Addis at daylight!

Here in Addis we have some stuff to do and try to leave towards Kenya on Friday the 26^th.taking the infamous Moyale route. Supposed to be the hardest off road on this trip. Let’s see if this holds true against Addis at night. Internet is hard to come by here and mostly too slow to update the blog. You’ll find some additional infos, pictures and even videos on our friends site www.motorrad-tour.info

Ein Tag in Äthiopien from David on Vimeo.

Africa, Sudan

Dribbdenil

9. September 2014 Christopher 4 Kommentare

Our route over the last days.

The Sudanese make you jump through a lot of hoops before you’re good to go for an overland travel. After the registration with the police we had to get a travel and photo permission, which was not possible since Friday and Saturday are weekend days here. Luckily, our fixer Midhat could help us out with that as well. Perfect! So on Saturday morning we headed off with Grant to Midhats place to get the permit, since Grant also needed one we could do it all in one go.

We also had not paid Midhat so far and did it while we were there. I have to say this guy is amazing. He moved mountains to get our bikes and paperwork in order. If you ever find you self in need of what ever in Sudan, call Midhat Mahir (www.tour-sudan.com). Great guy!

Back when we were in Turkey I was chatting with Simon, a friend from Frankfurt and he asked me what will happen to our transport crates once we are in Sudan. Jokingly, I said they probably warm some once home or become some once home. Turns out that wasn’t all that wrong. Midhat bought our transport crates to build a partition in his flat.

After this pleasant morning we hit the road, but first stopping at the merging of the white and blue Nil in Khartoum and taking the obligatory picture.

The merging of the Nils. The white color comes from the White Nil, the dark color from the Blue Nil

We rode up along the Nil towards the Meroe pyramids, some 250 km out of Khartoum. It was a pretty easy ride apart from the unmarked speed bumps on the road which really wake you up. Also, while riding in the dessert you often face strong winds. You have to lean into the wind and drive always in an angle which results in the funny effect that you sometimes have to lean to the right in a left corner.

What is really annoying here are the frequent checkpoints along the road. Usually the guys are just bored out and see some bikes coming and want to have a chat, so you always get pulled over. In most cases they want a copy of the travel permit and or passport. God knows what they are doing with them. But they collect them like little kids collect stickers (or whatever kids collect these days).

There is no road from the highway to the pyramids in the dessert, which meant some off road action with the loaded bikes through some deep sand. I dropped my bike when I hit some deep sand that disguised itself as a solid surface. No problem, just the lifting of the bike in the dessert heat is a toughy. Grant had a brilliant definition for this kind of endeavor and we have his permission to steal it. He calls this “type II fun”. Type I fun are things that are fun planning, fun doing and fun remembering. Type II fun are things that are fun planning, no fun at all doing and fun remembering. Spot on! Type III fun would be something that is no fun planning, no fun doing and no fun remembering, commonly known as “no fun”.

After some more type II fun we reached the pyramids. They are in the middle of nowhere, no tourists nothing. But still, there is a small building with two souvenir sellers and one official to whom you give 50 Sudanese pounds each, get a recede and then can walk around the pyramids. As the name might give it away, they are from the Meroe kingdom which reigned from 800 BC to 350 AD in this region. They look different than the once in Egypt, especially due to their steeper angle.

It was fairly late once we finished our tour around the pyramids and we still had to find a place to camp/sleep before sunset. Problem was the very strong wind and the lack of wind protection, which rendered sleeping in the dessert close to impossible unless we wanted to be sand blasted.

We found a “truck stop” nearby and they let us pitch our tents inside some walls. Due to the heat we only set up the inner tent. We were quite relieved to have found a place to sleep without much searching. Yet, after a lot of trying with their satellite dish they unfortunately got a signal. The truckers and sheep herders from the dessert all gathered around the old TV and we watched with them the probably trashiest TV show ever made. It was a Bollywood adaptation of Aladin poorly dubbed to Arabic. We know some people back home love trash movies. They will have a blast if they can ever get hold of this Aladin production.

We were pretty tiered and called it an early day. Problem was that our tents were rather close to the TV which was still roaring on sound level “deaf granny”. On top of this was the lack of air movement behind the walls (yeah I know we wanted wind protection). What followed was the worst night of our lives, we all agreed on that. It was crazy hot and with the TV no sleep was possible. We have never sweated this much in our lives. Whoever claimed its getting freezing cold at night in the dessert has clearly never tried to sleep in the Sudanese dessert.

On the upside, we left the truck stop the next day fairly early and did a lot of riding before the midday heat kicked in. We drove 250 something km along the dessert highway to Karima in northern Sudan. Just a great ride. No civilization or traffic, just dessert, mountains, camels and strong wind. Luckily we started with full gasoline tanks. We even had some rain in the dessert, which is fairly rare around here. The Wadis, the dried river beds in the dessert, were bursting with water. Amazing view.

During a photo stop two Land Cruisers pulled over and a bunch of people came pouring out all wanting to take a photo with us, including some ladies. I mention this because we read a lot about the situation in Sudan where you won’t find women in public life and if you see some they are completely covered. We don’t know what you would have to do to see no women around here. but we see women everywhere on the street, bus or wherever and many just wear a loose scarf around the back of the head (some also without scarf), many man by the way cover their heads as well, which is a smart idea with the burning sun.

In Karima we visited some more pyramids, this time for free. We could even drive the bikes directly up to the pyramids, which included some more type II fun in the sand. We found a cheap hotel to stay and shared one room with air conditioning, which was highly appreciated. The owner proudly told us that the water in the shower is directly coming from the Nil. The very brown and muddy liquid though is to our opinion not the best selling point for a hotel room.

The next morning Grant parted very early. He had to do a long run up to Wadi Halfa in order to catch the ferry to take him to Egypt. We had a brilliant time with that guy! We rode back to Khartoum. On the way in the middle of the dessert we got into a speed control! Apparently we were speeding with 108 km/h (which was definitely not the case) on a road where only 80 km/h was allowed, not that there was any sign… They had top modern equipment, color photos from front and back of the bikes wireless transmitted to their laptop. Just like home… It would have been a 100 pounds penalty each but they let us of the hook and we cruised down to Khartoum (now at 80 km/h.). We were running pretty low on sudanse pounds and needed the cash we had to gas up. So they let us go. Interesting experience, I guess they were just very friendly people!

We see a lot of broken tires along the road. wonder why... — We see a lot of broken tires along the road. wonder why…

We reached Khartoum in the midday heat and had to cross the big central marked. That was definitely type III fun. The outside air was around 55°C, the bikes got so steaming hot we could burn our legs on the tank. It was crazy. We both where pretty close to a heat stroke. At some point Daniels bike ran out of gas and I went to the next gas station to get some fuel, all easy since we are in the city.

We reached the youth hostel and had to lay down a few minutes next to the bikes before we could do anything. This heat cannot be described by words. Sudan is great but we are now at the point where we long for a colder place and thus look very much forward to the Ethiopian highlands (they also have beer!)

Africa, Sudan

Touching African Ground

5. September 2014 Christopher 2 Kommentare

We are now in Khartoum/Sudan. A lot happened and had to be done to get here. But let me start from the beginning. Again, this will be a longer entry. Read it our just enjoy the pictures 🙂

The last days in Istanbul were filled with the preparation of the airfreight and organizing the arrival in Khartoum. On Saturday, the 30^th of August we went back to the motorium guys (we are actually now linked on their homepage 🙂 ) and met Daniels relative Yakup who lives in Istanbul. Funny story, they didn’t knew each other but when Daniel mentioned his last name to Tolga, the shop owner, he said he knew another guy by this name. Small world.

After that we went to Kadir, the carpenter preparing our transport boxes and had a look at them. They looked great and we tried them on with my bike J . Getting such boxes in Istanbul was a big problem so it was quite a relive to see that they are of good quality and will be ready in time for the loading on Monday.

We met with Kadir on Monday morning at the Atatürk Cargo Terminal to load the bikes into the boxes. We got the OK for the Cargo company to do the preparations of the bikes at the Cargo Terminal, which meant to empty the fuel tank, drain the engine oil, remove the battery and remove windshield and mirrors. The latter two are for size reasons to fit the bikes into the boxes. In airfreight you pay by volumen, unless you exceed 167 kg per m³, which you won’t do with a motorbike, unless you use a metal press…

Communication with the cargo company was a mess. We never got clear answers via mail or telephone, very tedious. And thus we weren’t able to meet the cargo guys at the terminal. They kept on saying they will sent someone to pick us up. Nothing happened. After 2 h Daniel found a guy of the company who took us to the loading bay were we could do our work. The guy, Hamit, was super nice and helpful, he even invited us for lunch. He had the things under control and with his supervision and “can do” attitude the loading worked smoothly.

Luckily we were allowed to pack our luggage with the bikes into the transport crates, which made our flight the next day a lot easier.

After loading things got a bit messy. Remember when we wrote “Yay, they didn’t need our carnet for the Turkey entry”? Yeah, those dopes at the border should have written into our passport that we entered with the bikes. Which, even though we had to show the passports three different officers, no one did. This fired back now. Without an import you can’t export. Solution? Blame the Greek! We entered from Greece to Turkey so the cargo guys prepared a letter saying the Greek should have written something in our passports, what they didn’t. Well Greece is in the EU, why should they write anything into the passports? Well neverminde, it worked out that way.

Draining fuel while phoning with the cargo head office

While packing the bikes no one wanted to check them. Which puzzled us, but hey, why not? Well they should have controlled the chassis number. Now the crates were closed. The Turkish Cargo officer gave us the option that for a 100 € each he would not check the number and we are good to go. No way! With Kadir we opened the boxes again and let them check the number for free. Now the bikes were ready and after almost 9 h at the Cargo Terminal Kadir was so nice to take us along with his moving van. We arrived very tiered at the house and went for a very nice farewell dinner with Daniels aunts.

Daniel with his aunts. Thanks guys for the great time in Istanbul!

The next morning we had to catch a taxi at 4 am to get to the airport and fly via Cairo to Khartoum. In Cairo we touched African ground for the first time in our travel 🙂 and had 8 h of transit, super boring. But, with the slowest wifi in the world we passed the time. We did see the egyptian football national team though! Unfortunately no photo.

The flight to Khartoum was eventless, except that we never had to show our passports and visa this many times ever when taking a flight.

We arrived in Khartoum after sunset, after immigration and screening of my luggage by the police we entered the country. Funny story with the screening. When my bag came on the luggage belt it was marked with several blue chalk crosses. I had the chalk all over my pants and the police officer kept on apologizing for the mess :D. That’s something about Sudan. You will have to look very hard to find as polite and friendly people as the Sudanese are. They have a very high level of dignity in their public life, something many other countries including Germany can learn a lot from.

At the airport we directly met with our fixer Mithad and Mohamed who would drive us to the guesthouse. What is a fixer? A fixer is someone who helps you with customs and the official paperwork, which means finding the right people and negotiating the “fee”. Since no one imports motorbikes via Khartoum airport it would be close to impossible to get the bikes without the service of a fixer. So we discussed the strategy with Midhat and agreed to meet the next day at the airport.

By the way, Sudan is hot. Not the “oh it’s a hot day, let’s have a day at the lake” kind of hot, but the “OMG I am burning alive” kind of hot. At night it’s still 35°C, thank god for the air-condition in our room (as long as there is power, which works quite ok)! The direct sun during day really feels like sitting in a fire. Great place for wearing all the motorcycle gear J. By the way, shorts in public are frowned upon, so you have to wear long trousers.

The next two days were spent sitting in front of the “Cargo Terminal” in Khartoum in the heat and waiting for the forms to be filled. We sat next to a lady making tea and coffee and as the only white people around we were a bit of an attraction. We talked with countless people. All very nice. Everybody loves Germany since the world cup J. We got invited to tee and coffee all day long, and by this I mean of course a cup of sugar with traces of liquid. When they offered us orange juice they wanted to know if we want sugar in the juice. I am sure they put extra sugar in their Coca Cola as well.

Well in the end we got the bikes yesterday evening! It was not easy and it’s probably too much to go into detail but of course a lot more people needed to be paid. Which is ok, the rates are quite low here. You get a dinner for two with four drinks (obviously no alcohol) for under 3 € all together.

Typically Africa, we got the bikes some 15 min after closing of the customs and everything was “hurry hurry” after sitting for 8 h around doing nothing. We weren’t allowed to unpack the bikes in the customs area. It had to happen outside on the street in the scorching sun with plenty of people being very interested in our work.

Everybody was happy when the bikes were ready again. After 11 h and an crazy ride with Midhat on the back of my bike to fetch engine oil for Daniel we were off on African roads on our bikes! The fun lasted for about 1 km until we ran into a police check point, but everything was fine. We guess the officer wanted to show off with his (bad) English skills.

We read a lot about the terrible Khartoum traffic. But honestly, after two weeks in Istanbul Khartoum traffic feels like a walk in the park, except maybe for the massive potholes in the street.

Today we met an Canadian traveler, Grant, on his Africa Twin totally by accident during the registration with the police. He started in Cape Town and drives north. We will ride out of Khartoum together, since he is heading for Egypt and we want to do a tour along the Nile to see some of the pyramids here. After this we will finally meet David (www.motorrad-tour.info) who is right now waiting for his ferry in Aswan.

Europe-Asia

Lazy days in Istanbul

26. August 2014 Christopher 3 Kommentare

The next days until Sunday the 24^th of August we spent at Daniels Grandparents house in Altunizade/Istanbul. We took it easy since it was very hot and humid. We had a lot of the very good Turkish cuisine. We are pretty much eating all the time. I have no idea how Turkish people stay skinny. The eating sessions were interrupted by visits to the local (air conditioned) shopping mall to use their free wifi and organize the next big step of our journey, the shipment to Sudan.

The bikes parked the grand parents house

We got some beer at the swiss supermarket Migros, one of the few places selling alcohol here, which is quite funny since alcohol is pretty much the only thing they don’t sell at Migros in Switzerland.

We used the time at the house to do some maintenance work on the bikes. Daniels clutch was acting up on the way in which was most likely do to overheating in the heavy traffic and my speedometer decided to stop working since Greece. It’s not a big deal. I can drive without it, since my GPS is showing me the speed as well and no one seems to care about the speed limits here anyway. A bit more annoying is the lack of the trip distance which I use to guess the fuel level of my bike. Unfortunately, the all mighty Honda engineers did not consider a fuel indicator or reserve light as significant for the Africa Twin. A short operation in the garden delivered a broken speedometer gear in the front wheel as source of the malfunction. I ordered a replacement in Germany and have it shipped to Sudan (thanks Vanessa!).

Over the group Turkish Riders Support (http://turkeyridersupport.wordpress.com/), a very helpful initiative by motorbike enthusiasts here, we established contact to a workshop near our location to get our off road tires mounted and Daniels exhaust pipe welded. The workshop named Motorcat located in Kateköy, right behind the Fenebace stadium, is run by Yilmaz Aydemir, who won the Turkish motorbike championship in the 1000cc class on his Suzuki GSXR in 2009. They were extremely nice and helpful and got everything done well while they offered us very nice Turkish breakfast and a constant supply of tee. All day long people dropped in for a chat or small repairs and we had a great time talking to them. If you ever need motorbike support in Istanbul make sure to contact Yilmaz and his guys (N 40°59’09.1’’ E 29°02’18.2’’ Tel: 0261 5502998).

The new tires on the bike look super rad :). Though, they are still a bit slippery on the smooth Istanbul roads which should be o.k. after the first 100 km. Just control the accelerator hand in curves.

In the evening Daniels aunt Suzy invited us to diner at a magnificent place down at the Bosporus were we enjoyed a delicious dinner (way too much, of course). Thanks Suzy!

Europe

Autoput

22. August 2014 Christopher 3 Kommentare

This is going to be a long one. But first things first.

We were gently woken in Malta to the sound of a marching band, at 6:30 h in the morning. I was not amused and Daniel recalls some complaints coming out of my tent. Additionally, Malta turned out to be rather cold with around 4°C in the morning. But at least no rain anymore.

The cold was forgotten as the thermometer climbed to 35°C in the Karawangen Tunnel. We blasted within 3 h through Slovenia along the great country side and on the perfect highway. We entered Croatia and got some good distance on the infamous Autoput done. This transit highway from Turkey to western Europe was known for the many deadly car crashes by drivers falling asleep. Falling asleep comes easy on this monotonous and strait road.

Our boredom was soon over when Daniels engine stopped running in the middle of nowhere. We parked the bikes on the side way, put on the signal wests and looked what we can do. There was enough fuel in the tank and the electric was working. We could not find an apparent reason why the bike would not fire up anymore.

Within minutes a guy stopped on the other side of the highway, came over and offered to call the service which would bring Daniel and his bike to a workshop. They were working with the ADAC, so we accepted. A few minutes later a tow truck stopped again on the other side. The guy come over. Language barrier apart, he seemed to be the right guy. We loaded the bike on the truck and were ready to go when two cars with a trailer stopped on our side. They turned out to be the guys we called. Some loud words in Croatian were exchanged and the bike unloaded again… We are still on the autoput with no shades and a scorching sun. Fair enough, load the bike on the trailer. Wasn’t easy since it was only designed to carry cars but it worked out. Probably not approved by German TÜV standard.

Daniel drove with them to the workshop in Slavonski Brod and I followed on my bike. Arriving there the bike was disassembled with in no time and they looked for the fault. In the end it turned out to be a rotten pressure tube from the fuel pump which lead to not enough fuel pressure with an almost empty tank. Easy fix and the bike was running again J At this point we were super tiered and were offered to spent the night in an empty apartment they had in that workshop. Great! The guys were nice and friendly, all in all a surprising pleasant experience, apart from the money, of course… Nice side story. At the same workshop a Slovenian family was waiting for their VW Golf to be fixed. The Croatian guys organized an entire replacement engine that night, installed it and got the car running, it was Sunday. Imagine this in Germany!

Preparation

the last preparation entry?

11. August 2014 Christopher Schreibe einen Kommentar

They say the hardest part when doing a long distance travel is leaving. We start to realise why. Not only do you leave your friends and loved once, but also the comfort and security of a home. Additionally, over the last week we faced all kinds of issues when preparing the bikes . Somehow every potently easy task turned out to be difficult due to thinks like stuff not fitting and the necessity of brute force or super tight screws that needed power tools to be removed. The Frankfurt dialect offers the fitting term for this condition with “scheiss gefuddel”. Luckily, Daniels Grandpa has a very well equipped workshop and we made use of that!

Successfully drilled screw from the front brake

And, on the upside we do know the bikes in and out by now.

Daniel and his brother Timur installed a very cool technical gizmo on Daniels bike. Its called a Pi and is basically a small computer collecting data. Daniels Pi collects with two thermometers the engine and air temperature, logs our current GPS position, measures the battery voltage and, with a small camera pointing in driving direction, takes every 15 min a photo. The installation was far from plug and play but they managed to get the Pi going.

We returned to Frankfurt on Saturday night, very tiered. Starting our journey on Sunday was out of the question. I had some weird vibration in my front wheel and used the calm Sunday to disassemble the front wheel and check for potential reasons. Since I don’t have access to a proper garage in Frankfurt I did the working on the street. After working for one week in a garage with perfect weather it of course rained. Plus, temperatures close to 30°C with almost 100 % humidity. Well, neverminde, training for the tropics and the vibration issue is gone as well.

The umbrella is rather handy. Maybe we should take it along.

So we hope to leave tomorrow morning! Our first day will lead us to Stuttgart where we want to meet with David, a fellow traveller who will go the same way as we do on his BMW F650GS (the 800cc version, I don’t claim to understand the BMW model naming logic) and we hope to meet again along the way in Africa. The night we want to spend at our common friend Bennys place in Stuttgart. The stop after that will be Freiburg and from there we will leave Germany direction south east.

That’s the status for now. Oh almost forgot, the Sudan visa are ready and waiting for us in Freiburg.

Dribbdebach Touring

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Lazy days in Istanbul

Autoput

the last preparation entry?

Touring dribbdebach since 2014

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Touring dribbdebach since 2014