Fuzzy Muzzy and Martin flatten some dust roads in Zimbabwe

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Well yes, onwards it seemed. When we got there I knew that it was only a quick fix.. it had only been an hour or so. We pulled into the mechanics house and we just kind of looked at each other.. I knew I had been taking a chance and he knew I didn't have a choice. 'So" he said all calm like ' what would you like to do about that chain?" I glanced at the chain and my reply was simple ' Martin said it will make it to JHB and seeing as he punishes chains worse than anyone I know, I trust his judgement and I am gonna take the chance and see how it goes.'..'hmm, he said, well, just don't do any wheelies"  :laughing4: sure.. like I do wheelies on this bike.

"how are the seals' I enquired.. He explained that he has a tool which cleans the seals up and takes all the dust out, he filled up with fork oil and it is good to go.. however it could last the rest of the trip, it could last to around the corner.. 'good luck mate'.. and with that we said our goodbyes eager to just hit the road on what was to be one of our purest offroad rides of the trip. AGATT police can spot me in one photo without my jacket.. my confession is that I was riding without a jacket or upper body protection from the time we left the highlands.. I bought the wrong jacket and it was just too hot. We were riding offroad with almost no traffic around and so I just stayed well within my limits and enjoyed the ride.

We left Harare and headed south.. we were heading for home ! but before I did I made the effort to swing past my childhood home again.. I didn't mention but yesterday we made the effort and time to go swing past my old school etc.. I appreciate martin coming with me to check out these places even though he was dog tired, it was good to have him along, I wanted to try to reconnect. Any connection I had with my childhood in Zim was gone a long time ago, this just confirmed it. I just had to deal with the emotions that came with that. In many ways I wished it was like it used to be.. like I always say, it is what it is.

All smiles.. the bike had a lick and a promise in Harare.



Harare in all it's glory, we didn't stop to check it out, there was nothing that interested us here.



This however.. is what awaits you just outside Harare

 
for once I am not going to ramble on about a mornings ride.. for those who think there is no lekker dirt in Zim.. just go back to day one of this ride report and start reading.. then hit this page and check out these photo's.. this was our morning

My recommendation for shot of the day.. fark it was nice riding.





We only say a handful of people the whole morning.. this okes bike was clapped out beyond belief











EVERY river was bone dry !!




 
For the last few days we simply had no route planned, between the crappy map and the GPS we just sucked our thumb and looked for dirt.. and we hit pay dirt, loads of it. If you look for it you will find it, there is almost no need to ride tar in Zim. I am not sure if I have mentioned it before in this thread but the average Zimbo ( read local oke ) has **** all idea what the difference is between 2km and 20km, this would lead to us getting 'lost' quite a few times because a local will say, go 2km and at the T junction turn right and ride for 20km, then you will find town X and then you have 60km till you get to Y.. in reality you will go 200m and hit the T Junction, instantly you are sure you messed up the directions but you turn right anyway, 2km later you are at town X.. ba ha.. it caught us every time. Rule of thumb.. discount any distances given as references as complete guesses.

At this stage I am pleased with the repairs done to my fork seals.. a whole morning of offroad riding and although I can see they are starting to weep again, they are not pissing oil all over my wheels, breaks and boots. I was also fairly happy with my chain, it was clanking around and complaining a bit but nothing too serious. I did feel at times I was being too hard on the chain, I needed to feather it a bit, but with roads like this.. holy moly you just could'nt help yourself but have a little fun every now and again.

As long as we hit somewhere around Masvingo we would be in good hands as there was a little tourism around that area... lakes, hotels and the Great Zim ruins.. sorry.. great Zim monument as it is called now.




 
sooooooooooooooooo
i started reading this an hour or two ago ............. and now i am waiting for the next page  ........DOOOOOOOOOD hurry up

wow , thank you for sharing , awesome adventure you guys have had here
:thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft:
 
Thanks for sharing !  Definitely on my bucket list,  SOON .....  Just need to find a riding buddy.  :pot:
I would love it if you can post some of the GPS tracks.
 
I confess I lost my GPS.. I was flipping the **** out for 4 days, I know I had it, I just forgot where I put it.. I finally found it at work today.  :laughing4: getting old !! I was very relieved because there is no way I can afford to replace it and it is not insured.

I can post the tracks here, and probably will for all to see. But before I do let me encourage okes to take the ride like we did. Just go and wing it. It seems odd to do it with no planning but I promise you will find the best raods that way. Our tracks may look unplanned.. because they are, I can read the PM's already on how we could have streamlined our routes etc but remember for most of the time we were away we were officially lost, we were just in denial  :laughing4:, I actually can't wait to overlay them on google earth, we did basically the same loop for 3 days just with slight variations.. riding heaven and my best tour to date. I will go as far as saying it was even better than our Africa Trip because we did so much more offroad..

I will also post some stats on the bikes, fuel usage, cost etc at the end with wrap up.
 
:thumleft:
Looking forward to those stats.
Man, what a ride!!!

Your cousins know how to live it up in zim!

:ricky:
 
I must say, I'm looking forward to the wrap-up with bike & fuel stats, and especially things like: "next time, we're taking a small axe", or "next time we're not taking the 2k2 ohm resistors", etc.

Well done, Murray & Martin! I think an 'unplanned' route is definitely more fun - not completely unplanned,  just have a handful of "must-see" attractions, and wing it. Pretty much like you guys have done :)
 
On our way to Masvingo we took quite a few dirt roads that crossed through main roads and generally South, we were not concerned with taking  the most direct route, we were obsessed with not doing long tar stretches. No matter which way you try to pluck the chicken at some point however you will have to, the secret is to be completely stuffed from riding dirt so that when you hit tar you want to kiss it..  :laughing4:

The day, like almost every day in Zim was just getting better and better.

 
We knew our intention was to find our way around lake Mutiriwki through the Mutiriwki National Park.. the lake itself has a beautiful road that runs all around it,






however the lake was quite low and a few recent fires had messed up the view so we headed for The Great Zimbabwe Monument, when I was  kid I knew it as the Zim ruins before the country was named after it.

I admit I didn't expect much, almost everything that is nationally controlled you kind of naturally expect the worst, but before we proceeded down to the monument we passed through the Great Zimbabwe hotel. Things at the hotel were very quiet, so quiet that all of the chairs around tables where you would expect to see tourists gathering and enjoying a few drinks, we infact, all tilted up and leaning against the tables.. there was not a soul in sight. A friendly gentleman came to us and welcomed us to the hotel expecting us to be guests there. I do not necessarily prefer camping, but we were on a budget, so to be fair if a room is over the figure I have in my head.. then camping it is. The figure in my head varies depending on how absolutely stuffed I am  :lol8:

After some chit chat he directed us down to the Zim ruins where he said we could get camping at a very reasonable rate  :thumleft:

I was even more surprised when we got to the accommodation section of the park.. it was very nice, well kept, lawns mowed, clean, swept and everything looked in good condition.

You have the option of a lodge ( which is beautiful - 2 bedrooms, a lounge, kitchen, furniture & DSTV ) you also have your own bathroom and shower  :thumleft: ) or if you are on a slightly tighter budget you can have a rondavel which is a small circular room with 2 beds in it, abutions are as per a camping site - all outside ) or if you are on our budget find a braai place and set up tent.. all options are good.. the weather was good and we were in early enough, it seemed silly not to up set up tent. there was only one other black couple camping.. they seemed to be more like local lovers than tourists.

The Great Zim hotel







 


Now this is how you collect firewood !! we setup camp for the night and decided to frequent the bar at the great Zim Hotel we passed a while back for a beer or 2. The barman used to be a tour guide so while we were enjoying our beers we got a verbal guided tour of the ruins.





We decided to enjoy camping and made a massive bonfire, early tomorrow morning we would enjoy the ruins and seek out more of those lovely roads
 


This is where you negotiate and pay for your accommodation for the evening, you can see the kind of accommodation you can get there.

The following morning we enjoyed the ruins by sunrise.. and a glimpse of.. wait for it, at least 6 tourists. Our 1st spotting of this extinct animal.

Breakfast was .. interesting

 
The morning was great - up early - breakfast ( well kind of ) - pack up - pay $15 and go enjoy romping around the ruins











 
Well that was nice, but enough prancing around.. we hit the tar road out of there and got some good ( well as good as it gets ) information on some dirt roads leading South. It was the usual.. ride 5km of tar and turn off at the 2nd road left, follow the tar for 20km and it becomes dirt.. more like ride 2km along the tar, turn left and hit dirt road after 200m.. the directions were so bad we doubled back 2 times just to make sure.. but by 10am.. ish, we were on the pay dirt. I knew it was our last day of enjoying Zim so we took it easy and really enjoyed every min of it, I loved riding these roads, they are DS riding heaven - I may have said that a few times on this ride.







 
We found some very decent roads from Masvingo going South.. at long last, Martin had his 1st off and not just a fall over, sadly I missed it by about 30 seconds, I was taking it really easy down the side of a mountain, the road was a little steep so I had decided to just take it slow, seeing as I was taking it so slow I stopped and took a photo or 2.. when I got to the bottom I stopped and waited for Martin to catch up.. he was taking quite a while  :3some: when he caught up he was full of war stories  :imaposer:







Heading to the end of the road as far as the tour was concerned, I was still nursing my chain every 100km or so, my fork seals were weeping but behaving.. oh, and the roads looked like this



until finally we reached out destination.. our old friend, where it all started a few days prior. The Lion & Elephant. I headed straight for the campsite but I knew Martin had a trick up his sleeve, not to be a ***** but it was a hard days riding, it was a long day and a dusty day, we had been up since early and over the last 10 odd days we had not taken much time to rest.. maybe one or 2 extra hours in the morning on some days, but mainly we had been riding every day, hard, on gravel and till dusk every day.. we were well and truly stuffed.



The thought of setting up a tent to Martin was torture.. so we treated ourselves to a $62 room for the evening, we parked the bikes and Martin collapsed on a bed. I was determined to stay up so I made a cuppa coffee and enjoyed the sunset, went for a shower and got into some clean clothes.. I may have put my head down for 10 min just to have a power nap, then I would wake Martin up for supper.

It was the last thing I remember.. we both slept right through to the alarm at 5am.,

 
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