Rides, Reflections and Repairs – Year end bash via Namibia

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LeonDude

Bachelor Dog
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
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Location
Gauteng - Centurion
Bike
Suzuki DR650
<b>Rides, Reflections and Repairs – Year end bash via Namibia by Cave Girl and LeonDude</b>

After months and months of planning, this is the route that we plan on taking. Our schedule is flexible, and we plan on just following our noses more than our GPS’s. The planning route looks a bit rough, because I posted many waypoints to force the gps to go where I wanted it to go. The planned route would be about 4000 kilometers.
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This is the actual route we took on day one.
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<b>Day 1</b>
Coligny to Warrenton

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We leave early in the morning after Slakkie, at whose house we were leaving our car and trailler, made us some departing coffee. With fully loaded bikes we make our way out of the quiet little town.
It takes a bit of time to get use to the fully loaded bikes, but we soon set into a comfortable pace and quickly reach the little town of Ottosdal, where we take a picture of our bikes in front of the church. Taking pictures of my bike in front of churches in the little town became a bit of a hobby with me at some time.
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Then Cave Girl asks if we can turn back to the cemetary because she thought it weird that such a small town should have such a big cemetary.
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The dates in the cemetary explains its size, they go right back to early 1900.
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And angel on a grave.
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We have a coffee in the cemetary and then push on through Wolmaranstad.
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The gravel has a few sandy patches, and we take some time to find our gravel feet.
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Getting off the dirt just before Bloemhof we hit what was to be the first of many stop and go roadworks for this trip.
After some more gravel just South of the Vaal river we stop in Christiana just after 2 o’clock for a lunch and a beer.
The church in Christiana
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This day was to be the first day of only two days that we had a beer with our lunch.
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The rest of the trip we did not drink anything before parking our bikes for the night. The only other time we had a beer with our lunch was at Kenhardt Hotel, where Eeton is a difficult character to get away from.
But back to todays riding, after a nice lunch, served with speed usually unknown in small towns at Lilly’s Grill house and pub, we head out again to Warrenton.
That night we sleep in what feels like a very dangerous campsite and is called Transka campsite, but in the end I don’t think we need to have worried. The ablutions were clean and locked, we were the only campers and were given the key to the ablutions, so we had them all to ourselves. Probably the most dangerous thing around that evening were the two bikers drinking beer on the first night of their long journey.
The campsite
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We spend the evening with the bat detector turned on listening to the echos of the bats and talking about the day past, and the trip that lies ahead.

A note by CG read – “The one thing I have realized is – If I let Leon ride 200 – 300 meters in front of me then I tend to look up better (Higher) and because I can’t actually see his bike’s movements or line I can/do pick my own line and ride my own ride”.



 
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