Two Scotsmen and le Mirage in le Desert Tour

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

A little spring foray to the Richtersveld and beyond. Featuring...

Look Ma, no hands:

Two tyre irons is better than one:

"All you need is an oilman and an unlimited budget":

One dead rabbit:

Don't believe anything they tell you about the desert:

And... the sordid tale of the Rosh Pinah Christmas Market:

More to follow.

Daizy · Nov 28, 2011

Keep it comming........

madmike999 · Nov 28, 2011

interesting!

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

Plan was to head off a week of brotherly love and getting lost in the desert. This'll be mostly pictures...

For, I think, the first time ever, we decided to trailer the bikes up to Springbok. What a great decision. Thanks to Boer from this forum we got hooked up with Johan - eat his awesome steaks at his Tauren restaurant next time you're in Springbok! - and got a safe place to leave the car and trailer. Seriously cool dood: that kind of friendship to total strangers makes this place special, right?

Last stop supplies on a Sunday morning after watching the French outmuscle, and just fail to down the All Blacks. Plan (or lack thereof) was to sleep exactly where we felt like stopping. Which means red meat and a bottle of whiskey. Yeah, try finding whiskey on Sunday in Springbok.

Tar to the border, hook left and stop to buy said whiskey at river bar/backpackers on Orange, and then head off straight into the Richtersveld conservancy area. The riding quickly gets awesome:

Which makes for much happiness:

Lots of weird stones:

And pin up pictures of my girl's beautiful snout:

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

If you turn right at Eksteenfontein:

You can ride into the middle of nowhere and sleep wherever you want:

Which leads to some serious happiness when you've been spending too much time in citylife making other people happy and behaving like a caged animal.

Oh, I don't think I mentioned, this was the shakedown ride of brother-man's new little toy:

...which is annoyingly lovely. Weighs about the same as a 250, seems to have only marginally less power than an R1 and makes my previously delightful ride seem like a carthorse. Not fair. There's a silver lining to every cloud, though, because it's tricky to keep on the road under just about any conditions. The brother says it's suspension settings, but we'll see about that.

But the campsite was spectacularous:

and the braai grid devastatingly effective:

Since neither of us have, amazingly enough, had to use a tire iron for their intended purpose in the last 50,000km we figured something had to be done with them.

Happiness is half a bottle of whiskey and coke and an African night sky:

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

Day dawned like it had to, so we did it like it should be done:

Basically, we just followed our noses around that glorious bit of bike Nirvana otherwise known as the greater Richtersveld, unwinding, and following the smallest tracks we could find on the annoyingly small screen of my Etrex GPS. It's kind of churlish to complain, I suppose, cause it was free from Discovery and those outdoor people, but you know...

There are funny, pretty little flowers that look so different close up:

And of course the space just stretches on and on and on forever.

Do you know how lucky we are to live here?

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

Some people do, cause they even came caravanning:

And on and on and on:

The main road up the centre of the Richtersveld seems extremely dull after you've been trundling around the little tracks and footpaths. But there's no arguing with the beauty.

And just in case you didn't know where you were, welcomed by the donkeys.

MaxThePanda · Nov 28, 2011

We popped in at Kuboes hoping to find a sweet little french restaurant serving, I dunno... medium red fillet and a bottle of cabernet to swish it down with to offset the hardships of sleeping in the dirt, but.. well...

The Kuboes store is a rocking place and you can buy everything you need for a healthy lunch on the road:

We decided the best plan for the night was to whip through and spend a night on the Orange. Actually, that wasn't really the plan, but getting to the Richtersveld park proper seemed like a bit of a rush and since we didn't have a plan we didn't need to change it.

There's some delightful tracks along the banks of the Orange if you head west from Sanddrift, which is what we did.

And you can play in the sand until you find this:

Drink some more of this:

[responsibly of course!]

And wake up to this:

Pure unadulterated misery.

LeonDude · Nov 28, 2011

Lekker man, hoe lus voel ek nou weer vir ry! :thumleft:

Nigel X · Nov 28, 2011

Awesome pics!
Stunning tracks on two fine bikes. What more can you wish for...

hayleyscomet · Nov 28, 2011

Lovely stuff guys .Super photos.

Wayne

Lootch67 · Nov 28, 2011

Sounds like a fantastic trip and the pics are awesome!

Crossed-up · Nov 28, 2011

Great stuff! That's both how and where I like to travel.

terminator1 · Nov 29, 2011

wow! amazing

Doerengone · Nov 29, 2011

Le moerse lekka meander. :thumleft:

White Rhino · Nov 29, 2011

Really very lekker. MTP, I'm considering a similar trip in April next year. Do you have a route that you could share?

Appreciated. :thumleft:

Sprocketbek · Nov 29, 2011

MaxThePanda said:
There are funny, pretty little flowers that look so different close up:

DroseraFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
"Sundew" redirects here. For other uses, see Sundew (disambiguation).
For other uses, see Drosera (disambiguation).
Drosera

Drosera tokaiensis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Core eudicots
Order: Caryophyllales
Family: Droseraceae
Genus: Drosera
L.
Species
See separate list.

Drosera, commonly known as the sundews, comprise one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species.[1] These members of the family Droseraceae lure, capture, and digest insects using stalked mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surface. The insects are used to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the soil in which they grow. Various species, which vary greatly in size and form, can be found growing natively on every continent except Antarctica.[2]

Both the botanical name (from the Greek δρόσος: "drosos" = "dew, dewdrops") as well as the English common name (sundew, derived from Latin ros solis, meaning "dew of the sun") refer to the glistening drops of mucilage at the tip of each tentacle that resemble drops of morning dew.

HB 9 · Nov 29, 2011

Die blom name is grieks, maar mooi bly mooi!

DRAZIL · Nov 29, 2011

freedom at it best,awesome :thumleft:
any more photos

the ant · Nov 29, 2011

:happy1:

Two Scotsmen and le Mirage in le Desert Tour

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terminator1

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