Living the Dream Solo Around the World Trip

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On the Equator at Nanyuki
 

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All Yamaha's from all over the world. The German on a 250 then the Slovenian couple on their 660 Tenere's and my XT660R
 

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So bly jy is veilig terug in SA. Wat n wonderlike reis. Die beddens so onder die
sterre hemel lyk hemel op aarde. Enige probleem gehad met goggas(muskiete ens) ?
In amerika bv is dit blackflies. Hoe gaan dit met skouers ?
 
NoRush said:
So bly jy is veilig terug in SA. Wat n wonderlike reis. Die beddens so onder die
sterre hemel lyk hemel op aarde. Enige probleem gehad met goggas(muskiete ens) ?
In amerika bv is dit blackflies. Hoe gaan dit met skouers ?
Geen probleem met goggas in die woestyn gehad nie, ek glo daar is nie enige daar nie dit is te droog. Miskiete so hier en daar laer af. Die skouer is weer piek fyn sonder Dokters behandeling. Ek het net besluit om nie daaraan te dink nie toe kom dit reg. The power of the mind. Groete
 
Baie mooi fotos Schalk!
Jong toe die man hierbo meld van die goggas kon ek nie help om te dink aan die skerpioene in Lodwar en Turkana area nie. Daar is te veel en natuurlikbdie massiewe groot camel spiders. Ek het daar gewerk vir n ruk lank terug so ons het hulle heel af en toe gewaar. Verskeie groot tipe insekte. In die skeur vallei het die muskiete ons mal gemaak asook langs die Nyl in Juba Sudan.

Wat ek jou wou vra is of jy nie op Egiptiese cobras afgekom het in Sudan en verder Noord nie? Ek was verstom oor die menigde cobras langs die Wit Nyl vernaam in Suid Sudan by Juba. Groot en baie aktief snags maar darem en gelukkig nooit n insident gehad van slangbyt. Malaria x 10 wel!

Groete!

Sent from my SM-J110F using Tapatalk
 
Hillman said:
Baie mooi fotos Schalk!
Jong toe die man hierbo meld van die goggas kon ek nie help om te dink aan die skerpioene in Lodwar en Turkana area nie. Daar is te veel en natuurlikbdie massiewe groot camel spiders. Ek het daar gewerk vir n ruk lank terug so ons het hulle heel af en toe gewaar. Verskeie groot tipe insekte. In die skeur vallei het die muskiete ons mal gemaak asook langs die Nyl in Juba Sudan.

Wat ek jou wou vra is of jy nie op Egiptiese cobras afgekom het in Sudan en verder Noord nie? Ek was verstom oor die menigde cobras langs die Wit Nyl vernaam in Suid Sudan by Juba. Groot en baie aktief snags maar darem en gelukkig nooit n insident gehad van slangbyt. Malaria x 10 wel!

Groete!
Sent from my SM-J110F using Tapatalk

Ek was seker te moeg om die slange in die nag te sien. Ek het op 'n plaas groot geword en daarom nie bang vir slange nie. Ek hou nie daar van om slange dood te maak nie want hulle is deel van die natuur maar het hulle gewoonlik net dood gemaak as hulle in die huis in kom. Miskiete was so 'n bietjie in Nairobi en Jinja in Uganda. Ek het geen skerpioene of Spinnekoppe gesien nie. Miskien verkeerde tyd van die jaar.
 
Uganda
The next day I did the 140km from the town of Eldoret in Kenya to the Malaba border post in order to enter Uganda. As usual I crossed both borders no problem although I had to pay for the Visa. Hennie du Toit from the SA Embassy in Egypt gave me the amount that I would have to pay at the Uganda border but when I came there the amount was double. K en betaal is die wet van Transvaal but you cannot afford to sulk over such things you will just make your trip unpleasant for yourself.

Entering Uganda for the first time I did not know what to expect. It was nice tropical scenery with a lot of huge trees partly hanging over the road. Monkeys and baboons were playing around all over. It did not take long to find out that Uganda was going to be one of the worst with their traffic violations. Most of the picky picky’s ride on the side of the road as that part is slightly lower than the rest of the tar road. If you ride in the middle of your lane it is almost as if they want to teach you a lesson and they then just come for you. Now a picky picky only does about 35 kmh but here I try and do 110 kmh. At least there are about a 500mm piece of run off area where the picky pick’s ride so in that sense it is better than other countries but they must have pushed me off to the side from the front at least a 50 times. Being through Africa more than once now I was getting used to it by now. If a string of cars approach from the front then I always watch out for the 2nd in line and as he makes his way to come my way I move off. According to The Sydney Morning Herald an Australian couple Dean 33 and Tanya 34 Griffioen was killed a year ago on a BMW 1200 by an overtaking 4X4 close to Ford Portal. With a bigger bike and the momentum it has it is not always easy to get out of the way that quick.

I made it to the town of Jinja in good time and booked into the Nile River Explorers camp where I pitch my tent. I got the name of the place from the Zapp family. This is what you would do, you normally ask other travellers that you meet on the way where the best places are that they have been to and then you would make notes. You would then do the same for them.

The camp was fantastic and was owned by an ex South African. The camp is quite a bit higher than the Victorian Nile and the view is just spectacular. The Voetspore team normally also camp there when they come through Uganda. I met a lot of traveller and fellow South Africans there as well. There was an overland truck with Australians and Europeans on from Nairobi in Kenya to Cape Town and they were staying a couple of days. Then there was a Doctor Stan Weakley and his wife Anne from East London SA who was traveling in a nicely rigged out Toyota 4X4. Also from Johannesburg there was Wayne Josselsohn also in a 4X4 by himself.  He is an amazing swimmer and swam across the Victoria Nile which is quite a large river and then upstream for about a kilometre. I watch him do that from the top looking down one day with a cold one in the hand and relaxing under the veranda.

I was sitting there one day also on the stoep overlooking the river all by myself when someone hit me on the back from behind. It was Uwe Schmidt with his 1200 BMW. He saw on Face book that I was there and he was camping at the camp site next door. We met outside Jungle Junction in Kenya and then we travelled together for a day before from the Equator. It was a nice surprise to see him again and we had a nice chat and lunch together. The following day I organised a boat trip and he came along and I also got some of the other tourist to come along in order to get the price down. Tourist like us always look for the most economical way to do things. Drinks were included on the trip although Uwe does not drink alcohol. We saw some beautiful birds from the boat as well, the feathered kind of course. There were various King Fishers and Fish Eagles and so on and the bush along the Victoria Nile is just too beautiful. At one place we got out to visit a cave and then again at an island.

Like in Ethiopia they build a dam wall here in order to generate electricity and they then flooded the most beautiful waterfalls which used to be a big tourist attraction before. It is such a pity and I think they could have generated more money through tourism than the money they made out of electricity. In Ethiopia they diverted about 60% of the water which was supposed to go over the Blue Nile falls to their hydroelectric plant and now most off the falls are dry. In Egypt they build the Aswan Dam and they were going to flood their national treasures like the 3000 year old Abu Simbel Temple but fortunately UNESCO came to the rescue and dismantled the whole temple and huge statues and moved it 60 metres up the sandstone cliff from 1964-1968. This was an engineering feat of note. I said in the beginning of my tour that I am not going to be a bad tourist and criticise countries for the way they do things but sometimes it is difficult to keep to my resolution.

The following day I was going to go to Kampala to look up Dr Weakley and his wife and  Wayne Josselsohn who have by now moved on to the Red Cherry camp site. I forgot to give Wayne all my sim cards for the cell phone which I accumulated from up north and he was moving in that direction. Going towards Kampala it was the same story again, vehicles just coming on my side of the road although they can see clearly I was in the middle of my lane.

Entering Kampala it was chaos with thousands of cars and even traffic cops directing the traffic but most of the time the traffic is grit locked. Fortunately I just follow the picky picky’s as they are so seasoned in city crossing by now and going onto the pavement now and then is not a national sin. Someone in Jinja explained to me the route to the Red Chilley campsite and he told me to first find the MTN building and from there it would be easy. I then told a picky picky rider I would pay him to take me to the MTN building in town to which he then agreed to. There were more than one MTN building and it started to rain and the traffic started to irritate me so I decided to push on towards Rwanda as the Red Cherry was also not listed on the GPS. By now it was raining properly with all the traffic still chaotic and I had the GPS set for Rwanda just to get out of town in the right direction. At one place the cars were not moving and a car came and pushed in from left to right in front of me and turned even more right until his front door was pushing against my front wheel. I just held my front brake lever in and I thought if he wants a dent in his door then it is his business. A guy in a car to the left of me started to should at me as well. I told him when he was still in kinder garden I was already riding bikes for many years and they should not blame me for their chaotic traffic and undisciplined drivers. As in so many places in Africa I found if you stand up and not back off they shut up. Somehow I managed to move forward again as the driver of the car with the door against my front wheel turned a bit left and then moved strait again until he was clear of me. At last I started to move out of town with a drizzle still coming down. It was quite a nice road and for the cars coming from the front nothing has changed and I really had to vigilant. I pushed on until sunset and found a cheap hotel 150km before the border to Rwanda. As I was the only guest in the hotel they allowed me to leave my bike in the passage just outside my room. The rate included breakfast but the next morning there were no breakfast and the ladies did not understand me. That’s Africa I suppose. I then did the last 150 km to the border and in a way I was happy to leave a country behind with drivers with no respect for other people’s lives. I was looking forward to Rwanda as I heard so many good things about the country and its people and their President.
 
A lounge couch plus 2 chairs and a bicycle on top of a picky picky and some people want to tell me my bike is overloaded
 

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