Christmas Safari 2 - 2014 Edition (Bots & Nam)
- Thread starter Xpat
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what a lekker story thanks xpat - you the man
Happyfeet
Pack Dog
Wow! Brilliant RR and pics. Just could not stop reading - and it's almost 2am! And I've gotto work tomorrow.
Thanks for sharing, job well done! You inspire me tremendously, love hearing stories of overcoming the hardships and making it work in spite of difficulty. You da man!!
Thanks for sharing, job well done! You inspire me tremendously, love hearing stories of overcoming the hardships and making it work in spite of difficulty. You da man!!
What an awesome trip - just spent 2 boring days at the office going through the whole RR - thanks Xpat! As you advised we will be doing our first trip into Namibia in April '16 - not nearly as hectic a ride as you did but a first bite of the proverbial apple - thanks for the inspiration :ricky:
In terms of cost what (roughly) did this adventure cost you? (hope I'm not being rude in asking.....)
In terms of cost what (roughly) did this adventure cost you? (hope I'm not being rude in asking.....)
Thanks. No problem asking abou costs, but i really do not know. Im lucky enough not to have to budget tightly for this trips. But it should not be too difficult to estimate fuel costs, accomodation and food.
A year late I have managed to finish a video of the ride through southern Botswana along the Kgalagadi Transfrontier park, covered in the early part of this report (between Tshabong and Charles Hill). Nothing particularly informative, just ridding through the place - if you may be considering ridding the area this may give you general idea what it is like:
[flash=600,400]https://www.youtube.com/v/zONHQ6l1YWk[/flash]
Xpat said:
Awesome vid! thanks for sharing - don't know if I'll be able to maintain that kind of pace in the soft stuff! Amazing what these big bikes are capable of......
WowXpat said:Introduction
Last Christmas (2013) I’ve done an impromptu trip through Botswana and Zimbabwe - documented here: Christmas Safari (https://wilddog.net.za/forum/index.php?topic=151222.0).
Similarly to 2013, I was supposed to work through December 2014 to manage another go-live of a project I’ve been on forever. And as in 2013 the go-live got delayed at the last minute. Annoying as it was - I wanted to be done with the bloody thing, there was an upside: I once again found myself with three weeks off over Christmas to get some proper ride done.
In 2013 I’ve got ambitious and decided to squeeze into 3 weeks Richtersveld, Kaokoland and Damaraland & Okavango delta. Like so:
Then promptly I got lazy and farted away most of the first week at home and as a result ended up doing this:
For 2014 trip I initially decided to go for the original 2013 route - which I considered doable as long as I can get my *** out of bed on the planned departure day. Once the initial excitement wore off, I realized that I may need to do on average over 300 km a day - and that without any day off. Now on tar/dirt highways that wouldn’t be a problem, but I’m not a fan of either of those and intended to spent as much time as possible off the beaten track. So I decided to skip once again Richtersveld and focus on the southern Botswana, which I haven’t ridden yet, followed by Kaokoland & Damaraland which I’ve ridden last time in December 2012, but as I’m sure everybody here would agree, not riding Hoanib and Hoarusib rivers for more than two years makes life not worth living. For the return trip I would cut straight east through Bushmanland in the east of Nam to the northern Bots and then do the usual ride back home via Makgadikgadi. Like so:
I had two weeks to prepare and went on a shopping spree. I normally hate shopping, but the looming trip usually provokes in me the need to increase my odds for survival by heading for fancy outdoor/offroad/hiking/adventure shops and buying mindlessly lots of latest Gucci outdoor crap, most of which I end-up leaving at home. The few items that did end up going with me included:
- New helmet camera: I bought new Drift Ghost S as my old camera - Drift Stealth, was starting to show its age, and these trips are far too few in between to not record them the best way possible.
- Satellite phone: An official admission of me getting old and soft, but I don’t care - after all the lucky breaks I had on the past trips I thought to better have one just in case - and it did come handy. For emergency recovery I subscribed to the Helivac service.
- New helmet: I use open face helmets for the adventure trips, because they are the best for the purpose. On my last two trips I used cheap scooter helmets - one for each trip. They did the job, but by the end of the trip they were worn to the point of moving freely on my head. I found just the right helmet in a trial Airoh TRR helmet, which has very sturdy construction and huge vents at the top to keep you cool. Full Throttle sells them but as usually in SA the problem was availability - in Edenvale they had my size but in black, which kind of defeats the hot weather purpose. The sales guy was very helpful and promised to check in other stores for other colours, and even called back in two days (I don’t think that ever happened to me in SA) - but obviously there was no other colour TRR in SA. I was resigned to go with the old ARC, but happened to stop by in the FT shop in Cresta and sure enough there was my size TRR in the poisonous green on display - makes you wonder how salespeople make living in SA. I would have prefered white, but figured better something than nothing and took it.
- Pepper spray: I don’t suffer from the usual South African anxiety regarding personal safety with other people. I know from experience that outside the major population centers like Joburg, Durban, Mthatha I’m perfectly safe . Especially in sparsely populated places like Botswana and Namibia (or the rest of Africa). I am however extreme coward when it comes to animals. So to get some peace of mind out in the sticks I was keen to get what Americans call bear spray, i.e. a big pepper spray that covers big area and reaches at least 10 meters away - I’m not keen to try to aim narrow stream at the charging lion and wait until its less than 3 meters away. Surprisingly this proved to be a problem in SA - while there are tons of pepper spray for sale, all of them only for personal defence against people with too short reach. After long search I eventually scored in Sandton City of all places something called Home Defence intended for a crowd control, with the range of about 10 meters.
Two days before departure planned for Saturday 13th of December, I went to see Conrad in Offroadcycles to get the bike (Tenere 660) sorted. To avoid any nasty surprises I got new sprockets and chain - they still looked good after about 15000 km, but they have already done two big trips to Nam, Bots and Zim and number of weekend trips to Waterberg via De Wildt, so I decided to err on the safe side. I also got new tyres - T63 front and E09 Dakar for the back.
Lastly I asked Conrad to take the Power Commander out. On the last trip a year I had constant hassles with the fuelling which caused the bike to run as crap for the most of the trip. I believed it was caused by PC5 as it has a reputation for being unreliable. So after the last trip I had the Shimwells guys set-up my standard map (without PC5) properly to adjust for my open airbox and throttle body, but still kept the PC in place to make the bike run smoother (PC maps in more detail than standard ECU). And it seemed work fine throughout the year. But I did not want to have a risk of PC misbehaving again on the trip so I asked Conrad to take the PC out assuming that the bike will automatically revert to the adjusted standard map.
Well that backfired badly. After taking the PC out the bike was running like crap, with no power over 5000rpm. Conrad has the tool to adjust the mixture of the standard XTZ map, so we spent the rest of the day playing with the mixture, with me going repeatedly on quick runs around northern Pretoria to check the performance. We were eventually running ridiculously rich mixture - but the bike was only marginally better. As a last resort I called Shimwells to see if they can do an impromptu Dyno run for me, but they were fully booked for the week and could only accommodate me on Monday - two days after my planned departure. With no other option (except going for the trip with crappy running engine), I had to postpone the departure hoping that the bike will be sorted out on Monday morning allowing me to start the trip the same day.
This was a solo trip and mostly off the beaten track - so I do not have any pictures of riding a difficult section like a champ (which I did a lot of course), or swarms of locals being delighted at seeing me and offering exotic gifts. So get ready for lots of Tenere or tree pictures taken from different angles and locations.
Here are few teasers to whet the appetite:
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Just read through this again. Such an awesome report
It is!
Bots is definitely up next for me.
Provided they haven’t closed off too much for bikes.
- Joined
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- 1,612
- Location
- Kathu (NC)
- Bike
- KTM 1290 Adventure R
can you actually ride in parks like savuti or Makgidikgadi at all?
we did a Bots trip via car last year....did not get the impression that its allowed.
Also...if you plan...try not to sleep over in parks, they charge per day and not per night. Even wildcamping most of the time it worked out to an average R1000 per night for us family of four with bush trailer.
No, you cannot ride in the parks. Makgadikgadi is not a park at least most of the pans.
But there are plenty of routes on the boundaries - like Chobe boundary, Khai village, route between Khai village and Seronga, Hunters road, etc. where you can ride just fine. I have checked with local police and rangers and they had not problem with that.
Martin, can you do most of the good stuff, and most of what you’ve done, without needing to go into parks?
Does it provide the Bots experience not going into the parks?
I want to do this very soon.
I want to do the proper stuff, bordering on a little bit dangerous kind of thing.
Yes, all my rides were outside parks and I have bumped into many elephants and couple of lions as well.
However word of caution - Botswana is different level to anything else in Southern Africa. Namibia is pretty, but nowhere close to Bots in terms of toughness of riding (brutal sand in a bush, not easy open riverbeds) and remoteness of many of the tracks especially in the northern parts (delta, chobe boundary, western parts along Nam border (Khaudum NP). Heatstroke is massive risk, and in some tracks if things go wrong it is about 100km of walk in deep sand through big 5 territory. So come prepared.
Here some samples in northern Bots:
And of course this part in the south is a must:
https://wilddog.net.za/threads/simpson-desert-kalahari-edition.236580/
This sounds RIGHT up my alley.
I’m going to chat to you when the time comes, if you don’t mind. Tap into some of your knowledge. Bots has been long outstanding for me.
Thank you!
When would you recommend going, and why? Or rather, which period is out of the question and which range is doable?
Your MOZ routes were incredible by the way, I owe you!
