Gun for Hire and lots of mud

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Geo: 4.8, 35.9667

Day 4, awoke to a magnificent sunrise packed up and negotiated with the National Parks people to enter the park.. dam African parks are expensive..

Faced with no choice, given going back 30kms was not going to happen, we headed off. Now in the past African Parks typically have crap roads and this one was no better. Dave and Miles were now into day 3 of hard riding and starting to fatigue. Dave is 56 years old and really starting to struggle, we had progressively pack more of their stuff into the shorty to lighten the load. After Dave's 4 crash in the first 20kms I offered to take the bike and he could sit in the Shorty and enjoy the rest of the day.

So there Dave and I swapped clothes, dressed and ready for action I climbed aboard the BMW 650GS weighing about 180kgs and gave it a squirt. I have not ridden much since I broken my collarbone and was a bit nervous starting off on a bike I did not know straight in the deep sand.. shit man. I caught up to Mile who was waiting under a tree and off we went.

In a nut shell I have never ridden a track as hard as this before, the next 120kms took 8 hours of riding through deep sand to deep rocks to mud flats to river crossings and was F###ing awesome. I had a couple of crashes, one was embarrassing so we will not discuss the others were legs in the air type stuff, and drank at least 4 ltrs of water without a pee.

The highlight for me was when we had to ride though villages, it was a very strange feeling being so exposed sitting on the bike and kind of exciting at the same time. Kid would try and run up to grab you so give the throttle a squeeze and all was good.

We had now really entered the area where real tribal people lived, half naked men and women with spears all looking at us.. surreal.

We arrive in Omarate at dusk and it was chaos, it had been raining for 2 days prior and it was very muddy, lisa managed to find a chap who spoke English and we arranged to camp out the back of the Police Station. We even had to hire a gun man for security, which cost $50Bir for the night (about $4.50 AUD)

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Comments

[Jimmy Prickles]

Sounds like the old guy was doing it tuff....lol sounds like you stole his bike and the clothes off his back...hehe

[harryabroad]

Hey buster yep i stole everything except his underpants