ballies
Race Dog
Hluhluwe Getaway
I decided to use a big family gathering as an excuse to drive down to Hluhluwe and explore the surrounding area. I left at 6am on Friday and arrived 6 hours later drenched in Hluhluwe. I hit 2 pockets of rain in the Jozini area and as you know it is not nice to be hit by drops at 120km/h +.
Unfortunately it basically rained the whole weekend and only moved away on Sunday night. Luckily for some unfortunate event we (me and wifie) were forced to leave a day later so we decided to take a ride to Sodwana Bay and False Bay.
In Phinda on our way to Sodwana my KTM just died on me. First a thought it was the alarm system that went bonkers then maybe the fuel something. It became clear to me it was an electronic problem. As an IT specialist that started on ground zero with hardware I remembered that you should first look at the most obvious problems. Is it switched on, is the plug in the wall etc. So I opened the battery cage and there was the culprit, a loose negative wire on the bat. The screw was totally unscrewed and dropped on the engine cover when I opened it. OK, found the problem, fixed it and on we went.
When we arrived in Sodwana we were not allowed to enter because it is a national park. No problem, turned around and headed to the nearest bar. We had a great chicken Peri-Peri at Vis-agie-lodge. An hour later we headed back to Hluhluwe with 3 profound incidents. The first incident was four black youths running away from the road. I obviously suspected something was wrong. As I neared the area on the road were they ran I saw that they had strewn the road with broken glass bottles. I safely passed the shits and gave them a well deserved middle finger. The next incident was a middle aged man trying to decapitate me and my wife with a 750ml beer bottle. The middle finger came in handy again. The last incident was actually from everyone else on the side of the road. The villagers were friendly, they smiled, waved and greeted us with much orange enthusiasm. Thanks for that.
Later the day on the farm we headed to a lookout point from where you can see False Bay (part of St.Lucia). We made a fire and drank various ice cold drink, beer, wine and brandy.
The rest of the trip went on without incident and we arrived safely in Pretoria on Tuesday. Total km traveled was 1400km and I think I will do it again next year.
BeforeI forget. I had the opportunity to take a Honda XR400 for a few rounds. What a nice bike. I think it?s the perfect combination to have - a smaller bike to learn how to ride off road properly and a bigger bike to show what you are capabilities of.
Here are some photos.
[/img]https://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t57/robertbalmer/photo036.jpg
I decided to use a big family gathering as an excuse to drive down to Hluhluwe and explore the surrounding area. I left at 6am on Friday and arrived 6 hours later drenched in Hluhluwe. I hit 2 pockets of rain in the Jozini area and as you know it is not nice to be hit by drops at 120km/h +.
Unfortunately it basically rained the whole weekend and only moved away on Sunday night. Luckily for some unfortunate event we (me and wifie) were forced to leave a day later so we decided to take a ride to Sodwana Bay and False Bay.
In Phinda on our way to Sodwana my KTM just died on me. First a thought it was the alarm system that went bonkers then maybe the fuel something. It became clear to me it was an electronic problem. As an IT specialist that started on ground zero with hardware I remembered that you should first look at the most obvious problems. Is it switched on, is the plug in the wall etc. So I opened the battery cage and there was the culprit, a loose negative wire on the bat. The screw was totally unscrewed and dropped on the engine cover when I opened it. OK, found the problem, fixed it and on we went.
When we arrived in Sodwana we were not allowed to enter because it is a national park. No problem, turned around and headed to the nearest bar. We had a great chicken Peri-Peri at Vis-agie-lodge. An hour later we headed back to Hluhluwe with 3 profound incidents. The first incident was four black youths running away from the road. I obviously suspected something was wrong. As I neared the area on the road were they ran I saw that they had strewn the road with broken glass bottles. I safely passed the shits and gave them a well deserved middle finger. The next incident was a middle aged man trying to decapitate me and my wife with a 750ml beer bottle. The middle finger came in handy again. The last incident was actually from everyone else on the side of the road. The villagers were friendly, they smiled, waved and greeted us with much orange enthusiasm. Thanks for that.
Later the day on the farm we headed to a lookout point from where you can see False Bay (part of St.Lucia). We made a fire and drank various ice cold drink, beer, wine and brandy.
The rest of the trip went on without incident and we arrived safely in Pretoria on Tuesday. Total km traveled was 1400km and I think I will do it again next year.
BeforeI forget. I had the opportunity to take a Honda XR400 for a few rounds. What a nice bike. I think it?s the perfect combination to have - a smaller bike to learn how to ride off road properly and a bigger bike to show what you are capabilities of.
Here are some photos.
[/img]https://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t57/robertbalmer/photo036.jpg
