Noobs in Nam

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

JAmBer

Race Dog
Joined
Jun 4, 2008
Messages
843
Reaction score
2
Location
Pinelands, Cape Town
Bike
BMW F650GS / Dakar
No Experience? No Problem!
2009-09-16%20at%2017-09-10.jpg


The plan was to head all the way north, to Van Zyl's pass just south of the Angolan border. Then we'd work our way back down along the west coast. In 15 days. The trip was almost two years in the making and during that time, a dozen people expressed interest in joining. But when it came to crunch time, only four committed. Representing South Africa are myself and Hugo, with Mark and Alex flying-in from America.

2010-04-04%20at%2017-19-37.jpg


The night before the big departure we had to cram everything onto our bikes. Needless to say, some things had to stay behind. Fortunately, since we were all packing together, loads could be distributed.

2009-09-08%20at%2022-57-41.jpg



The next morning spirits were high and we were eager to depart, but Carolyn managed to get us to stand still long enough to take a picture. Carolyn is You-Go's wife. He's second from the right. Alex is on the left, Mark's between 'em and I'm the idiot on the right with a Leatt (guess who's the only one to have had a serious accident on a bike).

2009-09-09%20at%2007-35-55.jpg


A bit of background:
Mark's never been offroad on a bike before, but bought a 1970's Honda 550 roadie in California earlier this year. Alex bought a KLR a few months ago to prepare himself, but had less than 10 tanks of riding experience total, of which only 2 days were on dirt. Hugo and myself aren't much better. Although we've had a little more experience offroad, only a couple of hours were in the sand. And we were told to expect plenty sand in Namibia. Also, we were trying to do this trip on a student's budget. It was bound to be interesting. And Namibia didn't dissapoint.

Not being completely reckless, we thought it a good idea to get Mark and Alex accustomed to their bikes before entering big, bad Namibia so we did a little warm-up pre-trip through Baviaans a week earlier.  With disastrous consequences. But that's a whole other story. Let's just say there was some question as to Mark's bike's reliability after it flew off one of the cliffs in the Baviaans. But the bike and rider survived to ride another day and both were ready for Namibia the next week.

 
Top