Christmas Safari 3 - Mozambique & Zimbabwe

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Xpat

Grey Hound
Joined
Feb 24, 2011
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AJS (all models)
Intro

Another year of rat race gone, another Christmas upon me, it was time for another african bushveld shindig (yep, lots of another in this sentence). Previous Christmases I have headed north west to Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, so it was time to check the north-east. I have managed to score a month off so I got ambitious and wanted to loop through Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana backcountry.

Unlike the second Christmas Safari, which went more or less to the plan (OK, I killed the clutch halfway up the Van Zyl’s pass, but in the bigger scheme of things it kind of went OK), this one ended up much more like the 1st one in that the plan went to shit from day one and the trip turned into my usual hotch potch day by day improvisation.

Which was a shame, as I have spent many a night plotting a killer route on the Google Earth, following little bush tracks through the 4 countries, including many dune fields along the Indian ocean coast, and 100s of kms of national park boundaries with the big 5 supposedly roaming freely. The plan was to ride the sand tracks up the Mozambican coast from Maputo to Vilanculos, then head west to Eastern Highlands in Zimbabwe, follow little tracks along the Zim east and northern border to Kariba, cross to Zambia, follow the tracks west along the north shore of Lake Kariba. After Kariba head further west to the southern border of NP Kafue, turn north along the Kafue boundary all the way up to Angolan border and the source of Zambezi. From there follow the little tracks on the western side of Zambezi all the way down to Kasane, Botswana. Then just head back to Joburg on as much dirt as possible travelling Hunter’s road, Kalahari cutlines and Tuli Block. Like so:

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It was a good plan. The only glitch was, it failed to take into account that I have barely ridden a bike since the last Christmas and spent most of the year farting in the chair in my little Sandton office. I haven’t done any sport/exercise for few years now and have tried and failed repeatedly to quit smoking. Which didn’t stop me to plan about 200 km a day of Mozambican sandy coast few days in a row each of them more than an equivalent of a DeWildt loop. And of course I ignored the season - both prior Christmas safaris were done in summer, so what can possibly go wrong?

The above was enough to make the plan questionable even if I would have managed to use the full month for the trip, which I didn’t. After 3 years of trying to chisel the perfect adventure bike out of XT660Z, I have decided to move on and bought KTM 690. So far I have stayed clear off KTMs for adv riding because of their iffy reliability record. But assuming that after 6-7 years or so KTM finally either resolved the issues, or rather - they were known and rectifiable, I bought second hand 2014 690 with Omega rally kit and about 2000 km on the clock:

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After one quick ride I pulled the bike apart to get it ready for the trip and rectify some of those shortcomings, including: new top and bottom tank bolts to prevent the reported collapse of the rear end with luggage on (this one thing is an eternal shame for KTM as the fix is so easy and cheap), Wings pipe that hopefully will not burn my soft bags, Unifilter, rear luggage rack, Mitas E09 Dakar tyres (why KTM sells these bikes with road tyres - Scorpion or some such - is beyond me), and most importantly took the suspension out for set-up by Hilton Hayward (I was unpleasantly surprised what a crap stock WP forks on 2014 are):

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Things never go to plan in Africa, so I gave myself two months head start to sort everything out. I have managed to source all the things on time except for a rear spring that kept being postponed week after week. Which was problem as I needed the rear shock to assemble the bike - the rally kit tanks are held in place by the top tank bolts that I couldn’t put back in place without rear shock.  For once it wasn’t Africa’s fault, but Dutchmen’s. For some reason (some kind of internal company disputes), Dutchies (Hyperpro or Yacugar - I never know who is who in the Dutchland suspension world) failed to deliver ordered springs week after week. They finally arrived to SA on Friday before my planned departure, but then got lost somewhere in the DHL bowels. Eventually Hilton located it in the airport, where I fetched it on Monday evening and Hilton installed the spring on Tuesday. I then immediately proceeded to procrastinate on the assembly and packing for next 5 days (it was really exceptionally hot during the day this year - sigh of things to come), so I have lost effectively 9 days thanks to the late spring delivery and my lazy ass and lack of mechanical proves.

So no, I didn’t manage to ride the planned loop, not even half of it, due to fatigue and lack of time. But I still managed to ride lots of nice tracks that seem to be rarely (if at all) frequented by bikers (or even 4x4s), and confirmed that these countries offer fantastic riding opportunities for  people willing to get off the beaten track - much more than SA and Namibia combined as most of the land is communal and freely accessible. So this trip ended up being initial exploration for the future more focused ventures into this part of the world.

Here are some teasers to whet the appetite - of course, ridding solo, most of the pics will be the bike pictures. So if you don't like 690, you might as well stop reading now:

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I will add here the GPS tracks as I plough through the report:

GPS track for the planned coastal ride from Marracuene/Macaneta to Vilanculos (unfortunatelly download works only on Firefox - Google Drive error that hasn't been resolved for 5 years now. I will try to find other solution later): https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B9kOx7wDkTe_Y3JrSXA1SEV1MGs
 
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