Zimbabwe - 6 Friends & 6 KTMs in DS heaven.

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Just Blip It!

Race Dog
Joined
Apr 26, 2009
Messages
2,449
Reaction score
89
Location
White River
Bike
KTM 990 Adventure
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A few months ago, my brother Dave invited me to join him for a trip back to our roots, a trip to Zimbabwe with 4 of our close mutual friends, John L, John B, Charl, and Craig, all from Nelspruit and all on KTMs.
I say back to our roots because both Dave and I were born in Zimbabwe and grew up there until we left in 1982 to live in RSA. Although I have been back quite regularly since then on trips to Kariba, Vic Falls and Mana pools, I had never been back to my home town of Chimanimani since leaving, 28 years!

Day1; Hoedspruit to Beitbridge.

All the guys decided to leave Nelspruit on Friday 11th June and come and stay at my place in Hoedspruit, where we would all leave for Zim on the Saturday. It was decided to leave Nelspruit at lunch time so that they could make it to Hoedspruit in time to watch Bafana Bafana play in the first match of the SWC. Safari Club in Hoedspruit was the venue to watch the game, the spirit of the locals in this small bushveld town was astounding, and the beer flowed as Bafana logged up the first goal of the match!

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Early on Saturday morning we all left my place on a route up through Limpopo, we were to be treated to some awesome back roads through rural Limpopo, up through Leydsdorp, Gravelotte, Giyani, Thouyandou and Chipise to name a few towns.

Leaving my place on Saturday morning, Charl 950SE, Dave 950SE, Craig 950SE, John L 950SE, John B 640 Adventure and me 990R Adventure.

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First stop was the ghost town of Leydsdorp, the smallest city in South Africa and once the capital of the Lowveld, was named in honour of President Paul Kruger's secretary of state, Dr William Leyd. Having shot his first lion at the age of twelve, Paul Kruger was a keen hunter and used to visit his hunting house (which can still be seen today) on a regular basis. In fact, he enjoyed it so much, that when he needed to put his signature on a few important documents that were only allowed to be signed in a city, he proclaimed it as such. And thus Leydsdorp was proclaimed an official city on 1 October 1890. However, the history of Leydsdorp started as early as 1870 with the discovery of gold, the extent of which was fully recognised in 1887/8, starting the 2nd gold rush in South Africa. Sadly, just when uncle Paul thought he could maintain state control over the mining through the proclamation of the area as the Selati Goldfields, the sudden and rapid boom ended as quickly as it had started.

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Craigs 950SE at Leydsdorp.

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My Adventure outside the Leydsdorp hotel.

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John L and his 950SE at Leydsdorp.

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John B and his 640 ADV at Leydsdorp.

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[Dave my brother with his 950SE outside Porters Pub at Leydsdorp.

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Charl in front then Dave and John L in Leydsdorp main street.

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Leydsdorp main street.

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From there it was on some lovely gravel roads cruising 2 at a time side by side 120km/h all the way to Giyani where we stopped for breakfast at the Wimpy. A friendly bustling town where everyone greeted us. Soccer fever was still running high in this town, we ate our breakfast to the sound of wailing vuvuzelas in the distance.

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From Giyani, it was onto Thouyandou and then Chipise and Musina. The riding got a little more challenging, there were more cattle, goats and donkeys to dodge, but the scenery was lush bushveld and many flowing rivers.

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John B and his trusty 640 near Giyani.

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Charl and his 950SE.

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We stopped in Musina at a friend of mine, Henry, who arranged a runner for the Zim side of the border, it is common knowledge that the runners at the border are mostly there to rip off tourists, withholding passports until an exorbitant fee is payed, so to save time and to make sure we got a good trustworthy runner, Henry arranged for Brian to meet us at the Zim border. Henry runs a truck stop and import export business in Musina.
It was also time to say a reluctant goodbye to Charl, he had been invited to join us on the trip, but due to some other commitments could not go, but not wanting to miss out completely he decided to ride with us as far as the border! All our hearts were in our shoes as we bid him goodbye and he started his trip back to Nelspruit. Before he left, he and Dave swapped front wheels as Dave suddenly saw that his font tyre would not last the full trip to Zim and back. Thanks Charl, we definitely missed you on the trip!

Stopped in Musina on Saturday afternoon.



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We arrived at the very busy Beitbridge Border post at 4PM, the SA side was busy, a queue that stretched out the door and down the road! ::)
Lucky for us one of the Customs officials was interested in the bikes and came over to chat, after making friends with him, he promptly took us to the front of the queue, stamped our passports and we were out of there and over the Limpopo to the Zim side to meet with our runner Brian.
Even with our runner it turned out to be a 2 hour wait for everything to be finalized, so after paying our R160 each carbon tax and completing all the paperwork, passports stamped and all for a R100 each "donation" to our runner we finally got through the border after dark.
Our plan was to reach the Lion and Elephant Hotel 82km from Beitbridge, but we were told that it was really rundown ( a fact that we later found to be completely untrue) and that we should rather stay at the Bubi Motel about 2km before the Lion and Elephant.
Now as you know everyone tells you don't travel after dark in Africa, and nothing could be more relevant when referring to this stretch of 82km! Unfortunately we had no choice but to push on slowly along this road with it's wrecked trucks and cars along side the road baring testament to all the accidents on this treacherous section. there were donkeys, cattle, vehicles without lights, vehicles with only high beams, vehicles with only 1 headlight, we came across an accident too. As none of us really ride at night, some of the bikes headlights were either shinning too high or too low, every on coming truck or car would bright us because they think you are a car with one light and they need to see where you are on the road. nearly every vehicle approaching would put there right hand indicator on, I realised this is their way of asking you to do the same, this way they can identify the proximity of the right hand side of your vehicle, once I started responding by putting on my right indicator there was no more brights from the oncoming trucks and buses.  :thumleft:

We arrived at the Bubi Motel at around 8PM, cold tired thirsty and hungry, after quenching our thirsts on a couple of  beers, we ordered Sadza (Zim word for Pap) and stew which went down well, we then order another few rounds to take with to the rooms.

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Lizzy kept them coming! ;D

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..........and so ended an awesome first day of our trip.

More to come................



 
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