SA Trip August 2021 – Part 3

At the end of Part 2 we were still at Shelly Beach, on the South Coast of Kwazulu Natal. All good things have to come to an end, so early on our last morning we ventured through the “Beach Gate” for one last walk along the beach. Naturally it was still freezing, but always beautiful!

On the way home to Hillcrest we swung by the BMW Motorrad dealership to pick up the brand new oil filler cap. Much to the surprise of us, and our salesman behind the counter, we discovered that it came without the famous o-ring!! We hastily put in a last minute request. Luckily we had opened and inspected it, and thankfully the o-ring could be ordered in from Durban, to be collected the following day.

Suddenly we found ourselves with no fixed plans, other than to make our way home to Kasane anyhow we liked, with nothing but a date in mind. Thus we reverted happily back to our preferred impulsive, nomadic travel style! We had a desire to go to Sodwana Bay up on the north east coast, a place that held a whole string of memories for us throughout the years. From childhood holidays, to honeymoon, family holidays with the boys. Even in later years the younger generation had returned there for holidays and even a wedding anniversary. Tiennie also had a long time bucket list wish to return there with a bike … one day. Since we were sort of just around the corner, in full Biker Mode for the bucket list item, it just seemed like an ideal detour on the way home to Botswana!

We packed up all our bike gear that had been strewn around the house, some of our clothes still mountain smoky, despite the best efforts of the seaside laundromat! I just hoped that a few days of wearing flip-flops by the sea, would have done the trick for my toe. It was fascinating to observe what I had actually done to the blood vessels by steaming/boiling my foot in the fire through thin soled shoes! I decided to do a cinderella style boot fitting the next morning, avoiding any preview of how it would feel like to wear enclosed footwear again, since I would have no choice in the matter whatsoever!

We started to plan our route. As usual, my role as co-navigator is to memorise the upcoming route, so that I can make quick decisions based on visual sign boards. When we got to this point, we suddenly realised that all the old, familiar towns in Kwazulu Natal had been blessed with spectacular and rather gorgeous new Zulu names so we had to do a bit of homework to figure out where we were actually going!

Our first stop was revisiting BMW Motorrad to pick up the o-ring. This is where we started our day off in style, with the first of very many U-turns. We had been experimenting with live tracking during this trip, so we started drawing some very complex and confusing trails for any interested observers! There was plenty of traffic on a very busy highway, so with the need for the skipper to focus on the hideous traffic, I was on navigational duty. I was apparently transmitting the signpost information way too slowly so we kept on missing exits while the gigantic BMW logo loomed impossibly over the cityscape from all angles. We simply could not get to it! Eventually after a few tries, we arrived and collected the precious o-ring. As the new parts were fitted right there in the car park, we met a fellow biker and exchanged engine stories, travel stories, and contact details, as one does! I do love being part of the biker community.

The oil filler cap is a tiny piece of precision German engineering. Having never really registered the existence of, nor particularly cared about it until this trip, when it almost derailed our trip to Clarens, I was now extremely interested in the filler cap! I also mmediately also appreciated its design and aesthetically pleasing lines, blending in perfectly with the fins of the engine’s tappet cover.

Our first assignment after leaving the dealership was to navigate ourselves out of the whole Durban city conglomerate by picking the correct highways and off-ramps. In that environment, missing a highway exit can have very dire consequences. The thought of landing up doing U-turns in the inner city centre instead of of blasting north to freedom on the coastal highway was unpleasant! Having memorised the blackboard like a good student, as well as half a mapful of beautiful new Zulu names, I was able to give a good running commentary as to lane choices and town names, until with much relief we sailed out onto the N2 highway, heading for the north east coast!

As we cruised along on the open highway, we suddenly remembered that we had not refuelled the bike. After a bit of cursing regarding this rookie error, (the traffic and navigational fears had totally taken over and we simply forgot!) The fuel button was hastily consulted on the GPS. It did not really come up with anything close by and there we were barrelling along on a huge empty highway, eating up the kilometres, munching fuel, with no filling stations in near sight! I started to see signs to King Shaka airport. We felt sure that there must be a filling station near an airport, so we wasted a good few more kilometres of our fuel range, on a tour of the massive airport complex and environs, with zero filling stations in sight before giving up, and U-turning back to the highway.

Eventually we resorted to that most horrible biker experience, cutting down on speed to conserve fuel, while the find fuel button was obsessively pressed on the GPS up front. Suddenly, a plausible hit came our way at the next off ramp where we happily paid to exit the highway to the seaside town of E-Mdloti (formerly known as Umdloti). I loved this convenient coastal petrol station with its view of ships out at sea.

Our next navigational mission was really simple: to NOT miss one particular turnoff. This was critical to select the road to Sodwana Bay instead of cruising onwards to Mozambique! One of my worst ever experiences on the bike is when I start to get sleepy and then have to fight to stay awake. It really is a terrible feeling, and the more I try to stay awake the more impossible it becomes. When the Biker Boy up front is instructed to try and talk to keep me awake, he suddenly goes blank under pressure, and can’t think of anything to say!! Sometimes he resorts to singing, which is always funny but does not really work! I can only describe the experience as “microsleeps”. Unfortunately I was hit by one of these awful microscopic lapses of consciousness at a critical moment for my navigational duties, and at the exact moment when I came back online, a signpost announcing “Sodwana Bay” materialised smack bang in front of my eyes as we sped on straight past this:,the one and only critical turnoff, well memorized . I am sure my patron saint of travellers gave me a wake up prod about the vital waypoint, but just a little too spot on as we were already committed to overshooting it. I was happy I had at least been given a sighting of that signpost, as unfortunately the skipper did not for some reason believe me. His GPS had given absolutely no indication of a turnoff to be taken, but I begged him to have a little faith, or at least humour me and turn around as I just knew we were now on the road to Mozambique. With much disbelieving muttering, (I don’t blame him, as the co-navigator was hardly a credible source, having just woken up!) we did the requested U-turn, the signpost was duly seen and located, and as we actually took the turn, the GPS belatedly confirmed its existence. Disaster averted, we were back on track. This GPS lag was responsible for a lot of missed exits and U-turns, but at least we now had confirmation that it was not to be trusted, and realised we (I) had to be more alert in future.

As we passed through Hluhluwe, a bustling African town, the worst nightmare of any motorist or motorcyclist suddenly crossed our path. We were riding along the main road through the town, which had an island running down the centre separating the streams of traffic. A somewhat unsteady person, busy lifting his elbow to down his can of beer, eyes on the sky and facing the opposite direction to our line of travel, simply stepped off the centre island and straight into our path… a massive jolt of adrenaline for us, as we anticipated the coming sickening collision and all its consequences. Thankfully, on the follow through of the beer swigging action, he must have noticed the bike in his peripheral vision, and both parties reacted simultaneously – he smartly reversed his action by stepping back up onto his island while we avoided to the left just as much as was humanly possible given the road conditions.

After that narrow escape, we thanked St Christopher, our guardian angels, lucky stars, and our unknown beer swigger’s instinctive reaction of self preservation. Badly shaken, but grateful to be still on track, we carried on through the beautiful rural and coastal countryside. We started to see fever tree forests as we entered the ISimangaliso wetlands conservation area. Passing through several typical African villages, I noted everything there that an African village should have, only featuring sand dunes and views of coastal lakes to make them a little different!

We finally arrived in Sodwana Bay, and attempted to find our campsite. Based on my rather informal chats with the campsite owner, Archie, I had received a location pin to the Natural Moments Campsite, but no formal directions. One of the perils of using location pins… the pin delivered us geographically quite close to the campsite, so we got to one of the boundary fences, and nowhere near the entrance. It seemed we had turned off one road too early and after getting off the bike to chat to a person’s head that popped over one of the walls, followed by a phone consultation with Archie we got some better instructions, including “look for a cow sign on my gate”. Heavy bike, on a sandy dune-y back street made for fun conditions to get into one of our famous U-turns, but we managed to turn around, and eventually found the fabulous Cow Gate!

Archie himself was waiting patiently with his surfboard ready in the back of his truck. After a brief chat, some admiration of each others’ vehicles, and fascination with the nomadic setup of the bike, our host headed for the beach, and gave us our key to the Cow Gate. He mentioned he was also attending a birthday party later so off he went, and we had the whole place to ourselves. We realised Archie was a kindred spirit, and we instantly loved his campsite. Beautiful indigenous forest vegetation, and so many gorgeous birds. Very similar to our garden at home, just with coastal versions of everything.

Here is a friendly Red Capped Robin Chat, who gave our whole campsite, including the bike a through once over! He reminded us very much of our resident robin chats back home.

The campsite is full of interesting and quirky items. I imagine this boma type gathering place is a very festive spot when the right group of travellers is in camp!

More campsite views…

Beware of all sharp toothed beasties!!

During my explorations around the place, I discovered this rather intriguing feature, which on further inspection according to a sign, turned out to be the “BMB”, or Blonde Moments Brewery (?) One day I still intend to ask Archie what on earth is going on here…

Our camping spot, where I deployed my brand new string of fairy lights!

Camp organised, we ventured beyond the Cow Gate to The Lighthouse Restaurant, a very short walk away on a sandy track. What a wonderful place, which had also been frequented by our kids Zac and Nix on their first wedding anniversary a couple of years back. We spent a good few hours there, it being just our type of place – enjoying our outside table under a giant fever tree wrapped with fairy lights. One Biker Chick in total heaven!

It was of course chilly, not exactly beach weather either here on the northern end of the South African east coast, but it was slightly more tropical than the south coast a couple of days back. It was so beautiful in our coastal forest campsite, so we just sat outside till very late under the full moon. As we observed clouds gathering, we couldn’t decide if it looked like rain or not, so we went with not, and left our camp chairs outside. It proceeded to rain non stop the whole rest of the night, so we did have sodden chairs the next morning, but our amazing First Ascent Lunar tent was, as ever, bone dry inside!

Camp chairs being pretty essential in our lives, I went scavenging and borrowed some interesting random chairs that I found dotted around Archie’s amazing eccentric world, while we put ours out to dry!

We were excited to go down to the beach that morning, so we packed some basics, jumped on the bike and headed through the town out onto the very scenic road to the Sodwana Bay National Park entrance. We knew very well that motorcycles were not permitted inside the park, and Archie had confirmed there would be a place to park the bike outside the park boundary. Our mistake was to initially pull up to the main entrance gate, causing absolute panic and consternation, much arm waving and shouting by the security personnel on duty! I received the predictable corresponding flurry of choice vocab resounding through my head via bluetooth speaker, complete with very polite suggestions regarding our immediate abandonment of this mission to the beach and getting right out of there…. so I jumped off and went on one of my mini diplomatic missions to reassure them that yes, we knew we were not allowed in through their gate they were guarding, with this dangerous illegal motorcycle, but could they kindly direct us to a legal parking spot please. As we eventually very calmly parked the bike in the approved area, a few mini buses were arriving, and unloading a bunch of kids and some very merry adults with cooler boxes and beers, clearly enjoying some little princess’s birthday party in fine style. We felt a bit dubious about this spot for the bike, in the middle of a party zone, but thanks to my new best friends, the gate security guards, we engaged the services of one Sipho – our bike guard. With Sipho reassuringly on duty, we went and got changed out of bike gear and into beach gear. Being wary bikers we never leave our helmets on the bike unattended, so we are used to carrying them around wherever we go.

It was wonderful to enjoy the special Sodwana beach again, after many years. The last time we had been there was when the boys were teenagers. We sat and laughed at so many hilarious memories of that trip, including our usual thing, even way back in 2005 – trying to help internet customers remotely while sitting on a beach, with our old brick semi-smart phones! The weather was very un beachy again, just like that family holiday so many years ago, but the memories make it worthwhile, and it’s always essential to get that ocean fix!

As we wandered happily around on the beach, we noticed a couple of individuals heading down through the dunes and filling up plastic bottles from one of the estuary/tidal streams. To our surprise, one of them was none other than Sipho our bike “guard”!!! We stared to then get a bit anxious about the bike so decided to make our way back. It was pretty windy out there, and by now we had done enough of the beach experience plus we felt uneasy with Sipho blatantly filling his plastic bottles with seawater under our very noses! As we made our way back up through the dunes, he obviously spotted us and put up a heroic sprint to get to the bike juuuuuust a few seconds before us!! Nice one, Sipho….. and the Biker Chick was not her usual over generous self, although she did not have the heart to withhold cash, as it seemed like a pretty impoverished area, and we could see the typical effects of covid times. A very noticeable lack of the tourists and boatloads of divers of days of old.

That afternoon we repeated our stroll down to the Lighthouse Restaurant, with the staff greeting us like long lost buddies! We enjoyed another one of those awesome lazy afternoons that just stretches on effortlessly to evening, in a place with a special atmosphere.

While hanging out at the Lighthouse, we also had a planning session, as we realised we had to leave Sodwana, although we could have happily stayed forever. Therefore, we needed to make some sort of decision regarding the route home, and some upcoming destinations. Firstly in our typical impulsive style, we contacted our dear friend Val who lives at Selati Game Reserve near Hoedspruit, to announce that we would like show up for a visit in a few days’ time. I have to say, our friends are just the best at dealing with our random behaviour! Hotel Val booked for the Monday, we then had to find somewhere reasonably within range to get to on the Sunday, and it had to at least also be a cool place to stay, not just any old place! The nomads do also have their list of requirements when travelling… therefore we settled on Dullstroom. It was over 600km which was a bit far, but the closest nice place en route to Selati. We googled and made a ridiculously cheap booking there, trying to stay on camping budget without actually camping, due to that long distance and dare I mention it…. the weather forecast – yes the arctic was descending again!, With a very cold snap predicted for our route inland, and Dullstroom itself, we knew camping was not an option! The holiday town of Dullstroom, strangely, is notorious for motorcycle thefts so we even called the place that assured us there was some safe place to park bikes, although we were not that convinced. As the way too inexpensive accommodation fee went off my credit card, a few red flags popped up in our minds, but we were still optimistic!

Next morning we left as early as we could, ready for the long haul. Apart from the beastly icy weather forecasts we also received some warnings of potential unrest planned in some parts of KZN. Luckily the so called target zones seemed to be further away from our more rural corner of the province, so we were just positive that our guardian angels were on duty as ever. For the cold, we knew what to do. I was wearing all my thermal gear, and some… so as we left the seaside village, we looked like arctic adventurers, and felt just as ridiculous, but as we had discovered in the Kalahari red dunes route, (on our rookie Bike trip of 2017) if you don’t prepare properly up front for cold, you could end up having to risk it all and do a full dressup from ground zero hiding behind a tree on the side of the road in icy conditions!! I also had to endure wearing boots again, but nothing for it other than deal with it, and make mental notes to never, ever put my foot so close to the inside of a fire ever again!!

As we departed, we did see evidence of heightened police presence and what looked like community guards at town entrances and a couple of traffic circles en route. It was at least reassuring that the communities were prepared this time, and not going to put up with the shock and awe surprise attacks of one horrible month ago.

The forests of fever trees give this area a really unique feel.

It was so ridiculously absolutely freezing as we travelled up north, with the mountains of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) on our right…

This was just not funny, I will spare everyone the details again, but the wind chill factor was unbelievable, and it was way, way colder than the cold we had experienced in Part 2 heading for Clarens. Heated grips up front did not even help, and I despite my warmest winter gloves, had ice blocks for fingers. I eventually resorted to sitting on my hands, but that was no use at all. The thermals and heavy bike gear in these circumstances don’t even help. In this case, there’s nothing else for it, but to get into mental mode, and practice mind over matter techniques to minimise the bite of that cold and to still the involuntary shivering. Luckily our bluetooth comms had not failed once since the breakdown in the previous episode, so we could keep each other motivated and chat all along the way. In these conditions I actually get excited when I see speed limit zones, as I look forward to slowing down to 80 or 60km/h. It sounds crazy, but the associated loss of wind chill feels like being next to a warm, comforting fire!

On this route, heading up into the mountains, crossing into Mpumalanga province, there were once again so many typical African villages, with all the expected features, but this time perched picturesquely on mountain slope terraces. I really wanted to photograph them, but the climatic conditions did not permit! We also went through some spectacularly beautiful, sweeping mountain passes, but I could not bear to risk frostbite for photography. Since I had left the camera charger behind in Kasane, I had only had the pleasure of using a camera for the first few days of our trip, therefore I was restricted to using my phone, which was not possible with gloves on. The combo of the cold plus numbness of exposed fingers did not bode well for either holding the phone without dropping it onto the road, or even being capable of pressing the camera button on the phone, so I eventually gave up.

We reached the junction to Mbabane and the Swazi border, where we had to turn left to remain in South Africa. Here we were up in the clouds and mist with almost zero visibility, and combined with the freezing cold this particular piece of road was quite a challenge. We experienced a sudden influx of crazed drivers coming the other way, there were horrible potholes to be dodged by us on our side, while at the same time expecting the oncoming (mostly invisible) traffic to be dodging their own potholes and coming over onto our side of the road randomly at any time! It was a nerve wracking, but thankfully fairly short section until we got ourselves onto a more normal highway on which we could concentrate on handling the climatic conditions without the insane traffic. As we climbed in altitude, we left that dense mist/fog behind, but it just got colder! Eventually we finally approached Dullstroom – from sea level that morning, to an altitude of 2020m, and in the midst of a very cold snap.

As we very gratefully arrived in town, we were glad we had pre-booked, but on the other hand kept having this feeling that when something seems too good to be true, it probably is!! The first discouraging point was that the GPS failed to lead us to the accommodation, the trail just went completely cold so I jumped off to try and find our elusive accommodation on foot. After a little investigation and asking around, I finally located it …. but.. as I saw it, I took in all the details, kept walking straight on by, did a U-turn and went back to the bike. This is really not normal as I usually am not fussy, but the vibe was all completely wrong, and actually I was also really concerned about the safety and security of the bike. I had to break the news that (according to me) we now had to drag our exhausted frozen bodies around town, seeking somewhere to stay from scratch.

Eventually, in the typical style of desperation, we happened upon a very secure locked gate to Jock’s Cottages. Good sign. Locked electric gate. I remembered a road sign a little way back that had actually had a phone number for those very cottages, so with the usual difficulty of doing a U-turn on a slope, almost on top of a railway line, we found my signpost where we stopped and I phoned the most lovely lady who said if we could just get ourselves back to her gate, she would open it up for us. So happy, we would have paid her almost anything at this point, but it was actually extremely reasonable, for the level of luxury and safety we received, and I would recommend it anytime as a perfect in town Dullstroom self catering venue.

We speedily dropped off the luggage and headed back to town for shopping. As we walked into the small Dullstroom supermarket, the first thing we saw displayed in the “special offer” section, was one of the much envied 1.8 litre giant hip flasks as carried by our kids as biker wine transport !!! Of all the unlikely places to find one … it was most bizarre, but we were delighted, and it went into the shopping basket asap!

Back at our cottage with the provisions, a howling wind came up and the mist came down, so we put on a fire and the electric blanket, closed our curtains on the freezing exterior, then made food and crashed out pretty early as we were absolutely exhausted. The cold and wind chill on top of the long kilometres really takes its toll, but make no mistake we were still very happy bikers, and as I’ve said before, would actually get out and do it all over again immediately!

Next morning we headed out, after a quick drive by of the day before’s rejected accommodation – just to satisfy the Biker Boy’s curiosity, and for me to feel that I had made the right decision! He completely understood my misgivings upon seeing the place, which made me feel better!

We left town, retracing some of our steps from Part 1. Today we only had 296km to do, so we had time to enjoy the surroundings a bit more. It was an interesting ride back through the Abel Erasmus pass, but without the weekend and holiday tripping traffic this time. So perfect to have the pass to ourselves, such spectacular scenery, despite the usual lurking potoholes to be wary of!

Descending through the pass, we arrived in Hoedspruit, and immediately felt that we were in the more tropical Lowvweld area, and out of the bitter cold. We stopped off at the local Spar supermarket, where I hopped off the bike to do a bit of shopping. As I walked back to the bike, I was quite unnerved by the expression on Tiennie’s face, as he was staring up into the skies above me with a look of total horror and disbelief! He appeared to be totally speechless, so I resisted the urge to waste time trying to look, and just kept accelerating, thinking I’d better get to him asap, at the same time wondering what kind of armageddon could be possibly unfolding in the universe behind me – that wonderful imagination of mine was already busy with UFOs and alien invasions, or at the very least crashing airliners! When I arrived safely at the bike with question marks floating wildly around my head, I was told that he was observing the horrifying sight of an aircraft simply dropping out of the sky, and apparently about to crash on top of the very building I was just exiting! All was explained when he realised the plane was just missing the supermarket and at same time noticed the position of the flaps, thus deduced it was most likely on final approach for landing, rather than crashing! It turns out the airport is very close to town. I found the evidence here in a google map. As you see, the Spar mall is situated right on the edge of the runway!

Next we headed out to the Selati Reserve, where Val met us at her gate, and we settled in to our beautiful private cottage, enjoying getting rid of all those layers of heavy, hot bike gear.

Below is a view of our cottage and bike from the pool. The rocks around the pool served as sun loungers for a couple of dassies (rock hyraxes) but they sneaked away to safety under the rocks, and declined to be photographed!

We spent a couple of nights out there, enjoying great companionship and catching up on so much. It was special to be amongst the rocky koppies and the mopane forest.

Here are rivers of fallen mopane leaves… I don’t know of any other tree that does this as spectacularly. This is one of my favourite sights in the bush.

We had our sundowners every evening up in the koppies, at Val’s special lookout spot known as “the Hot Rocks”. It is one of those places where you immediately sense the atmosphere is different…

Here also lies a simple memorial to Keith, a few years gone now, but never forgotten … the perfect place to get together and remember his unique and eccentric, totally irreplaceable life. We raised a couple of glasses to him, and our Zac, and other absent souls…

Special sunset at the Hot Rocks!

As our second night drew to a close , we had to once again reluctantly come up with a plan to proceed homewards. We all three voted unanimously to stay another night, do our covid testing in Hoedspruit, collecting the results in Lephalale, closer to the Botswana border, next day. On the Wednesday morning we efficiently set off quite early-ish (as we thought) to do the tests, and arrived at the lab, roaring up to the door in great style on the bike – exactly ten minutes after the Covid testing station closed down for the day! Big posters up everywhere proclaimed this ruIe, much to our annoyance. I did my usual jump off and negotiate routine with the officials, they took pity on us and very kindly agreed to allow us to be tested. Having luckily salvaged our itinerary plans, we met up with Val for lunch at The 3 Bridges, an interesting old restaurant looking out over the Olifants River.

Back at Selati we three had one last sundowner evening up at the Hot Rocks, just celebrating friendship, and being alive…

Next morning we had to be up bright and early to hit the road to Lephalale, (520km away), where we would collect our covid test results and sleep over in the same Molalatau campsite we had visited on the journey south. I had a massive internal debate about what to wear. Eventually I decided to be courageous and wear only a few layers, with backups readily available. This was definitely the right choice, as the further north we went, the climate changed dramatically. By the time we got to the Ampath lab to get the covid tests, it was actually swelteringly hot! It had been a long and tiring day on the road, but luckily the lab was in a shopping mall, so we took turns looking after bike, while zooming around the mall doing errands: collection of test certificates, food shopping, as well as essential wine supplies for future importation into alcohol-banned Botswana!

Back at the campsite, being mid week, there were no busloads of party animals in sight this time, but we did have a friendly reunion with a permanent resident of the campsite, only too happy to welcome us bikers back to his neighbourhood! Sadly it was just one bike this time, not three, but we looked back with happiness on the exceptional times we had enjoyed with the Biker Kids and all our other friends and family along the way.

Eventually, it was time to cross the Limpopo River, back into our home country!

From there, it was an uneventful ride back home. We really enjoyed the lack of arctic temperatures, and minimal traffic. I so love and appreciate Botswana’s roadside beauty – these acacia blossoms at the end of August, are just fabulous.

As we get further north and closer to home, the “wildlife area” disclaimer signs show up in the lay-byes!

On our return trips, I always say that as soon as we see our first elephant, I feel like we’re officially back home! There they are… welcoming us home 🙂

Our full round trip was 5530 km, and we had the best time, as ever on the bike! It might be uncomfortable at times, and there is always a challenge or two thrown in our way, but we wouldn’t do it any other way!!

Thanks to all who made it this far, for coming along on this trip with us, and watch this space for new adventures in the future!

Map of our Part 2 and 3 Travels – 20th August to 28th August. Back home to Kasane.