Ok day 2 would take me to Van Zyls Rus, this would be new roads for me as last time we only went to Bray. The day before I spent adding oil and I was now out of supply. Plus on the dry sump motors you need to do a rain dance before checking oil level as well. As XT owners would know you need a babies arm just to get to the filler plug and then you need a small funnel otherwise half the oil runs down the side of your frame, wiring harness and radiator. I did not have a funnel ..... I stopped at the filling station in Bray to fill up and try and buy some extra oil. As I was running fully synthetic bike oil I knew my chances would be slim to get something simular so imagine my surprise when the guy came out behind the shelf with the excact same oil I was using ! This would certainly be a good day. I know had spare oil and new roads to explore.
I would take the road up north on the border.
The last bit of road leading to Bray is a bit sandy so I imagined heading west would become more sandy but it turns out it was good gravel, what I would imagine those dirt highways in Namibia will be like. The scenery was nice and I saw plenty of game next to the road especially on the Botswana side. Springboks, Oryx and Giraffe to name a few. Was quite something to see an Oryx in it's natural habitat.
Iphone on maximum zoom
Vorstershoop I almost rode straight past, it was now midday I bought a colddrink and ponder my missing oil.
I had signal and googled XT low oil level, one thing that came up was that the older model Z's had a different crankcase breather catch tank that let some oil passs into the airbox. I knew I had the later design tank but low and behold the breather was full of oil. I opened the cap at the bottom of the drainage pipe and lots of oil run out of it. And this oil you could see spent some time in the motor not like the frame oil which was always looked brand new. It now seemed to me that whatever oil I added would gravity feed into the motor running of the dipstick creating too much pressure in the crankcase and pushing into the airbox via the breather. It seemed no oil was being pumped back into the frame though. I decided that I would rather have a closer look at the hotel later that evening instead of getting sand everywhere.
The track up north from Vostershoop was a nice one, at one point you turn right it looked like a farm road but I followed the GPS and it was indeed correct. Not deep sand just enough to be fun with nice scenery.
I will check later on Google Earth can't recall the name but it was some pan or another. Eventually you get to a 3 way split that leads to Molopo game reserve, Vorstershoop I came from and Mcarthys Rest where I was heading too. This too was really good riding as it had some sand and even a little bit of rocky sections where it climbed out the valley.
And I think this was the road to Alastairpan just after Mcarthys Rest. It is the Kuruman riverbed you cross.
Pretty far west by now still green with some famous red dunes appearing
I was now at Van Zyls and would overnight at the hotel in town. Shower first then to the bar, man that cold beer was good.
