The Benin border formalities were a breeze......so much so that we mistakenly didn't even get a tourist visa at Immigration on the way in! We'd been riding around the dusty border town zipping in and out of Nigeria and Benin (there is no sign of an actual border, let alone some sort of barrier) just trying to find both Immigration and Customs when we finally found what we thought was the Benin Immigration office. They stamped our passports but when I queried them on the validity of the visa (there were no dates written down) an Immigration Officer just replied, "Don't [View Full Entry]

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Referring to the title - well, you could first of all get yourself and your mode of transportation to somewhere in Nigeria where you can fix it.....lets try the capital city of Abuja. After spending the night in Ekom I got up on my Birthday before 5am and walked to the bus/taxi stop (they call them Parks here, i.e. Taxi Park) to organise transport to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. Still with no internet access that was our best guess as to where they might have parts or at least parts could be sent to us. Some taxi drivers suggested that [View Full Entry]

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"It's all part of the trip" people say about breaking down.......but why did it have to be in the middle of a two day jungle crossing between Cameroon and Nigeria?....... Flying into Douala on the west coast of Cameroon reminded me of the Apocalypse Now movie - the wooded and thatch huts surrounded by flooded jungle and a dense thick humid air. Not really the type of scene that wants to make you leap out of the plane and jump straight down the throats of bribing French speaking customs officials, but it was going to have to be that way. One [View Full Entry]

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An adventure north of a different kind: this time by public transport. We left the motorbike behind at Jungle Junction in Nairobi. 'Broken down' doesn't feature in the BMW motorbike handbook so we prefer to use the term 'waiting for parts'. Actually, this was the case. The bike had been running terribly for a month and getting progressively worse. I didn't really have my broken toe up resting on the couch as much as I was proscribed, finding it far more interesting to figure out why the bike wasn't running as it should be. Luckily I was able to swap parts [View Full Entry]

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EAST COAST IS THE MOST Well, not exactly the east coast but more like East Africa that has an abundant supply of activities for the unsuspecting tourist to spend their hard earned money on! Not that this is a bad thing, it’s just hard to justify spending US$ 400 per day per vehicle to cross through the Ngorogoro Crater National Park for example! Well, this blog begins much further south than the famous National Parks of Tanzania like Ngorogoro Crater N.P and Serengeti N.P so our wallets were bulging for the time being anyway. We found the Tanzanian Immigration officer and [View Full Entry]

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It's great when you have three days of motorbike riding madness in front of you to remember that when the destination is reached you can reap the rewards of cheap fresh seafood and even more refreshing cocktails! Leaving the delights of Malawi was comforted by the fact that the women were even more beautiful in Mozambique flaunting outrageously bright-coloured kangas and matching head-dress....slightly distracting! The roads were a disruptive disaster of zigzags across the 'almost completed' new road dipping in and out of river-fords then back onto dry chokingly dusty dirt roads, the journey broken up by our first flat tyre [View Full Entry]

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We had a quick taste of African-Portuguese crossing northern Mozambique for two days en route to Malawi, our proposed chill-out destination. It was a beautiful ride through Tete region in Mozambique, and trying to speak Portuguese (Mozambique's national language) really wetted my appetite for more of this Latin influenced - almost flirty by nature - country. After spending time in Zimbabwe there seemed to be a more vibrant feel in Mozambique (not surprisingly!) with people dressed-up to go out on a Sunday night - I later discovered Sunday to be the biggest day for Mozambicans to party! After four border-crossings in [View Full Entry]

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Dodging the constant barrage of goats, cows, donkeys, dogs and people on the road was a gentle reminder that we had arrived within the boarders of Botswana. A couple of days of relaxed riding brought us to Maun, a good base for exploring the Okavango Delta, set in the southern region of this 'World wonder'. Trips into the delta on a makoro (dug out canoe) turned out to be ridiculously expensive for our budget, so foot-power was the name of the game on our exploration missions in and around the local area. It's always great to get off the beaten [View Full Entry]

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Walking out of the Quach's Nek border-post I tilted my head against the gale-force winds, to see orange pieces of plastic on the ground...strikingly similar in colour to the bikes indicators. Yep, the wind was strong alright, and had blown the bike over, much to the bemusement of onlookers. Battling against the wind, we rode through the beautiful landscape Lesotho provides to Sehlabatebe National Park. It was a long ride, and tiredness prevailed. After looking up the loose-bouldery track, and ranting that I wasn't Alfie Cox (three times Paris-Dakar motorbike champion that I met in Bulungula), we carried on. In [View Full Entry]

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After a typical late start we headed east along the coast to a campsite in Hermanus which was packed full with redneck Afrikaners getting their Easter fill of barbecued Boerwors (a traditional South African sausage) whilst scouring the 'outsiders' with distaste...well, that's the way it seemed at the time anyway! Maybe it had something to do with turning up late the night before leaving the motorbike running to cool-down whilst setting up the tent? So we entered the Garden Route area of S.A as we rode east towards Mossel Baai, a legendary surf-spot which turned out to be one of [View Full Entry]

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