Africa Friendship Safari '09

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Leo

Grey Hound
WD Supporter
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
5,158
Reaction score
345
Location
Brakpan, South Africa
Bike
BMW R1200GS HP2
“Nag ou Grote” (Good Night Chap). These words sparked us into a laughing frenzy as we could see this was clearly going to be the last one for the night. We had been fishing and snorkeling all day while not leaving the cold ones far behind. Some of us had dived into the white caned stuff along with some Fanta passion, but as Roger Federer clinched his Wimbledon title, our barman ran out of clean classed and poured the last double into one of those small goblet glasses. This along with the ice left very little space for some passion and would clearly strike the final blow to an already fairly unstable person. As we say in Afrikaans: This would be a “sitter”. As per usual I am getting ahead of my story, so let me start at the beginning.

Sat 27 Jun 09, a date long anticipated eventually arrived and marked the start of the AFS. During the planning phase we sat down and deliberated a name for our trip and after must discussions it was decided top stick to the name Africa Friendship Safari, as this was the name I used for previous trips that ventured into southern Africa and seeing that I organized those trips I had no objections against us using the name here. After all we were friends, we were making new friends and life was sweet.

The four of us fltr: Antonie, Excalibur, Basil and Leo
AFS.jpg


Harties dam was smoking from the early morning cold
AFSL6.jpg


Excalibur in full flight
AFSL10.jpg


Basil in full flight
AFSL11.jpg


..and Antonie in full flight
AFSL12.jpg


We met at a very cold Engen in Harties at 7 AM, during my ride to Harties I saw -4.5 twice on the trip computer. Yes Africa is not for sissies but fortunately we were dressed to withstand the extreme cold – at least some of us, other were riding with GS gloves, but thanks for heated grips. From Harties our route took us NW towards the Martins Drift border post and although conditions were slightly warmer the temperature never got above 9 degrees during the entire day. Our destination for the day was the Tati River Lodge in Francistown, but if we made good progress we were going to push it to the Elephant Rock Lodge near Nata. Unfortunately several Suff Africans were also heading for Botswana and we spend the best part of two hours trying to get thought the officialdom before we finally could celebrate being out of SA with a cold one at the Kwanokeng Lodge.

As with all trips the first night is generally a night where you go big or you go home and we certainly upheld the tradition. Fillet steak in Botswana costs 45 pula per kilo, way to expensive for the locals, hence most butcheries have ample supplies of this delicacy and we went so overboard with the fillet we had to have some for breakfast the following morning.

Fillet for supper
AFS3.jpg


Certainly the spirit of being on an African Adventure had gotten hold of us and although we were nursing slight flue symptoms from the B&C, our spirits were unstoppable.  From Nata the road, or at least the black stripe indicated on the GPS as a road vaguely resembled the tarred version we know here in South Africa and our progress was slow to put it mildly. We had about 300 km’s to cover and my initial thought that this was going to be boring soon changed into “Are we ever going to get through this”.

An X3 with no spare wheel

AFS8.jpg


…what do you do, you continue till the tyre disintegrates, then continue on the rim, till the rim is so worn out, the shock mounting touches the ground, then you STOP, 150 km’s from the nearest town and elephants all around
AFS9.jpg


Getting rid of thermal underwear in Nata
AFSL7.jpg


Interesting pedestrians
AFSL8.jpg



After about 150 km’s of constant dodging in and out, around and through potholes the road finally became a bit better but then the huge piles of elephant dung indicated that we were in for even more surprises. Mother nature did not disappoint and we passed at least 36 elephants either as lone bulls or as herds before we eventually arrived at the Kazangulu ferry crossing in Kasane.

Pick your line – yea we also thought to the left on the gravel was best
AFS7.jpg


Basil tempting fate – seconds later this elephant mock charged, leaving Basil scurrying for the accelerator
AFS6.jpg


Breakfast in a very cold Francistown
AFS5.jpg


It was Leopoard cold – there was just a disturbance in the grass
AFS4.jpg


Km after km of trucks lines the road to the ferry where according to truckers they sometimes spend up to 3 days just to get across the Zambezi. Bikes are showed to the front of the queue and as they are fitted on the side of the ferry were cars cannot go, the initial unhappiness of the cagers soon makes way for friendliness once they notice we are not jumping the queue.

Rows of trucks waiting to cross the Zambezi
AFSL13.jpg


Excalibur on the Zambezi
AFS10.jpg


Our spirits soon took a tumble as we were send from pillar to post, one office to the next, pay this and pay that and eventually after 3.5 hours we were finally cleared to leave the border post. Less than an hour later our tents were erected in the Waterfront Campsite and we were ready to hit the town.

Our first cold Mozi for the night
AFS11.jpg


Livingstone has undergone major changes since my last visit and the regular SA fast food chains all have franchises in town. We opted to treat ourselves to the local Ocean Basket, seated on the veranda pouring B from our gifkanne while Sipho was trying to figure out how the lot of us were getting pissed from drinking just coke.
 
Top