The Wife, the Ex and the Kid

[popipants]

I hate you!!!!

 

[Would I?]

Keep it coming.

Awesome photo's.  :thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft:

You have started something in our household and I fear my wife (Fire Cracker) is hatching a plan!!! Your ride report is keeping her awake at night....... 

 

[cloudgazer]

I hate you!!!!

hahaha. Well said.

I wanna do Nam next year. Will only have 10 days at my disposal, and fear it's nowhere near enough time.

This RR is one of the most inspirational I've ever read.
:thumleft:

 

[mikedabike]

Awesome and I salute all three of you...truly inspirational stuff :thumleft:  :thumleft:  :thumleft:

 

[Maverick (R.I.P.)]

Great as always MJ, well done to the whole family hope I can replicate something similar one day when my laaitie is old enough  :ricky:  :biggrin:

 

[weskus]

You got me hooked on this one, now I only need the family :lamer:

 

[GENERAAL]

You got me hooked on this one, now I only need the family :lamer:

:imaposer: :imaposer:

 

[Frohan Visser]

MJ, weereens 'n stunning trip en 'n baie cool RR!!

Julle het 'n paar baie mooi foto's geneem!!!!!!!!!

Jy is een van die manne op die forum wat baie happy kan wees met 'n vrou wat dit geniet en die "guts" het om saam te gaan op so 'n trip, koop vir haar elke week 'n bos blomme!!!

Ons wag vir die res!!!

Cheers
Frohan

 

[doublediamond]

Dude you are a Legend!!  :notworthy:
Thank you for sharing!

 

[mtbbiker]

Dude you are a Legend!!  :notworthy:
Thank you for sharing!

No I think MJ you AND your family are Legend :thumleft:

 

[Martin-DR650]

Wow! Realy nice ride report!!

Love your bikes and excellent foto's!

What more can I say. . .  :thumleft:

 

[Fire Cracker]

You got me hooked on this one, now I only need the family :lamer:

hey, I can help - we have more kids than we can put on the back of our bikes  ot:  :ricky:

 

[Fire Cracker]

I am loving this RR thanks, but i am getting way too little sleep trying to work out how we can do something like this too   Too many kids so might need a support car to bring the kids but that kind of spoils the whole point of the trip, so maybe just a hubby and i trip  :-\

 

[Andy660]

MJ , Stunnig pics and Ride report.
Respect to your wife and daughter for sharing the trail with you.

 

[Disselboom]

I am loving this RR thanks, but i am getting way too little sleep trying to work out how we can do something like this too   Too many kids so might need a support car to bring the kids but that kind of spoils the whole point of the trip, so maybe just a hubby and i trip  :-\

Let's start a Wilddog babysitters group, trustworthy babysitters are just so hard to find....... :deal:

 

[Kamanya]

I shouldn't have left you at Vioolsdrif!

Stunning!

 

[Scrat]

Stunning RR!!

Yis ma ek verlang nou na Nam..... wag lat ek gou 'n Tafeltjie gat oopmaak!!  :thumleft: :thumleft:

Great Foto's!!

 

[Tweetie]

Absolutely Awsome.  :thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft: I'm very, VERY, jealose of your adventure. Wish I could do the same. Maybe in 3 or 4 years time when both kids can legally ride their own bikes.

Keep the RR coming. Just Awsome

When you are home again, lets put together a small bash  Ha:laughing4: :laughing4:Ha, and view all you folks fodies, and "de-brief" us . We will come from far afield to enjoy your company, listern to your trials & tribulations. THAT IS  A MUST

GOD speed, and may HE bless you with many km's being trouble free.

 

[Metaljockey]

Day 11 Ongongo, Sesfontein, Purros

The next morning we break camp and find our way out. Today we need to do just over 100 km but it may take a while.

Notice that there is nothing but dirt under the trees, goats do that.

The first 20 odd kms is nice fast gravel on the way to Sesfontein.

Some palm leaf art.

Here we fill up with fuel and fill our extra fuel bags too, it will be a while before we can get fuel again. We also stop in at the roadside ‘restaurant’ for some breakfast.  

We have some very tasty vetkoek and some astonishingly tough goat meat.

Just out of town and we take the adventurous route into the mountains.

It quickly becomes clear that only animals still use this route.

At one stage the road is pretty bad going down a hill, getting close to a possible runaway situation again.  

Not wanting to tempt fate I go back to bring the DRZ down too.

It is a very scenic route but it takes a very long time and we are not making any distance to speak of.  

The track also steadily deteriorates, by now we are riding in a rocky river bed.

Lucky for us this is the last part and doesn’t last too long before we rejoin the main route to Purros.

For about a hundred kilometers we ride in between two mountain ranges, wonderful scenery, and I can see Tharina is enjoying it immensely, stopping to take pictures every so often.

Then the road starts alternately following and crossing a riverbed.

As soon as I was through this bull dust section I knew Tharina was going to fall so I turn back and …

This silt is just really crappy stuff to ride. I doubt I’ll ever learn to enjoy it.

When we get to Purros it is late afternoon, so Peanut and I set out immediately to get some firewood for the night.

Tharina goes walkabout too and takes the most amazingly beautiful pictures. I’m not even going to apologise for posting so many.

And then the sunset. You cannot imagine the beauty.

Purros is wild, it lies on the Hoarisib river and the Hoarisib draws a lot of wildlife. The camp site is community run and is spread out on the riverbank. There are only six sites, widely spaced, out of sight of each other.

That night we sleep with the kid’s tent right against ours. You don’t get to sleep late however, these things make one almighty racket from first light.

Because this is such a wilderness area, you take out what you bring in, hence the flattening of cans to go back into our luggage.

We are staying another day so we can spend some time in the area, we should also see some elephant here. We take the bikes and move down river.

The whole place is full of elephant tracks and the track we are on winds in and around trees, so we go dead slow. You’ll be surprised how an elephant can hide within 15m from you without you seeing it.

And before long we find what we were looking for.

An elephant feels pretty damn real when you are on foot.

When he turns sideways, I see the musk leaking. It’s a sign that he may be a little grumpy, but he gives no sign that we annoy him.

Check out the thorn tree blossoms on his forehead.

As we move on our next sighting is a giraffe.

From my viewpoint.

And then he poses for Tharina.

We are on our way into the Hoarisib canyon, where there is surface water.

Lunch break.

And an opportunity to take more pictures of my bike. Pretty, ain’t she?

Going down the canyon you cross and recross the river all the time.

I glance down at the GPS and see this.

Hmmmm. I am not keen on lion, not unless I am in a closed vehicle.
Luckily lions don’t hang in the same place all the time like rhinos for instance. So my theory is that, yes, someone saw them here, but the odds are against us running into lion here.

Then we reach the Poort. This is where we celebrated my birthday on the Goat Meat trip.

Check out the patterns in the rock.

I would have walked past this little bush.

Tharina gets down on her stomach and takes pictures.

Until she gets this.

I would have been oblivious.



The kid loves water crossings (just like her dad) and she makes me ride the deep ones repeatedly.

And finally Tharina gets her Oryx shot. It is (to me) the most beautiful of all the antelope, and Tharina have been wanting to get a picture of one for years.

Hamerkop, translation – ‘hammer head’

This is just the best riding in the best place. I think that the next time I come here I will stay for a couple of days.

On our way out, we have to do a couple of kms in the dry riverbed. It is deep white sand and we keep in the track made by other vehicles. This kind of thing.

As I come around a curve I get what I have been dreading, an elephant coming my way from the front and he’s pretty close.

I’m in a deep track, if I try to jump it I risk going down. Luckily he is still far enough that I can hit the brakes, and start trying to spin my way out of the deep track. The bike makes an almighty racket though and I cannot seem to get any speed up, paddling away. Although I am now slowly putting distance between us, the noise of the bike is upsetting him quite a bit. The next thing Tharina comes flying along in the track standing on the pegs. She doesn’t stop, nor try to leave the track. She passes about 30m to the right of the elephant and he storms off into the bush.
We stop a little way further to watch this guy .

I tell her that she probably took the right option and I didn’t.
“What do you mean? “
“To keep going past that elephant.”
“What elephant?”
??????????????????????   “The ELEPHANT sized elephant right next to the track you  were on!”

How’s that for focus? She passes 30 metres from an elephant with flapping ears and whatnot and the only thing she sees is the next 10m of track.

While we sit there discussing how it is possible that she misses something the size of an elephant, a couple that is doing a round the world trip in their 4x4 pulls up. It appears they were here two weeks ago and saw lion in the canyon, just about where my GPS said they should be. Well, so much for my theory then.

This is what Purros the town looks like.

There is a shop too.

Our camp

My fridge.

Peace.

The showers. Each camp has it’s own.

Time for some maintenance. This trip is just everything I expected of it and more.

This is the donkey that supplies the shower. The staff come and make a fire every afternoon.

Ideal oven for pot bread.

Another day chock full of memories and another sunset.

 

[KTM BIGGER]

Fantastic MJ....