KarenWe planned this trip to South Africa amidst covid-style uncertainty as to whether it would even happen! Being a road trip, our itinerary was plagued with obstacles.
Firstly, internal travel restrictions were slapped down in Gauteng, South Africa, being exactly the province we wanted most to visit. Next, riots and unrest broke out in KwaZulu Natal, our following desired destination.
On top of it all, the winter virus wave shut down all interzonal travel for Botswana residents – meaning we could not actually travel from our home covid zone to a few zones further south in order to cross the border. Reports were coming in of very strict adherence by the police, so any ideas of trying to somehow sneak permit-less, were scrapped.
Despite all this ongoing madness, we decided to just remain positive, plan, and pack as if we were going!
Living in a border town can be useful. We looked at our two road borders that were currently open – Namibia and Zamiba, contemplating using neighbouring countries as mega detours to get us to South Africa, but huge distances would add extra time and expense. Hearts set on biking, any ideas about flying out were also summarily abandoned.
To cut a long story short, the stars miraculously aligned for our trip! Botswana government suddenly re-introduced our interzonal movement app just in the nick of time! Next, to get the actual permits. We were advised by our staff (who always know everything) that we should apply one minute after midnight to be the first applications on any given day. Channelling our younger selves, we stayed up till midnight on a work night, and after struggling for about 45 minutes eventually we received the permits on our phones, much to our excitement!
Precious zone travel permits and negative Covid PCR tests in hand, we then had a deadline to get to the border during their respective validity periods. We packed as much winter gear as we could feasibly fit on the bike, well aware that we were heading to extremely cold wintry conditions.
We finally managed to depart from Kasane with the usual stressful performance, trying to cut the office strings on a Friday mid-morning!
Just being on the open road was instantly liberating and soothing to the soul… I know myself and winter biking, so I wore plenty of layers from the get go, and I definitely needed them due to the wind chill factor, even in northern Botswana’s more forgiving winter. We had a good few laughs comparing the two bikers’ personal climate zones. As soon as we had our first stop, the Biker Boy was gasping and literally ripping inner layers out of his jacket, while I was super comfortable and delighted with all my chosen layers. Another benefit of the biking lifestyle- little individual customisable micro-climates!
We stopped over for our lunch at Nata Lodge and then on to Woodlands Stopover just outside Francisown for our overnight stay, happily greeting old friends there and enjoying the peaceful ambience. We used to come here often but being in a different Covid zone changed all that. At our lunch break, 300km into the journey a minor but persistent oil leak showed itself, by splattering a fine mist of oil onto the biker boy’s left leg! The leak was inspected, deemed not too bad and we decided to just live with it.
Next morning we headed for Martin’s Drift border post. Disappointingly, the whole way through Botswana, nobody asked us for our hard won travel permits at all, but to be sure – had we not possessed any, some official would have desired them!! The printed Covid pcr tests, by contrast, were very much in demand on both sides of the border. We excitedly crossed the Limpopo River into South Africa. Despite it being boiling hot and hugely uncomfortable in bike winter gear at midday, our border crossing was a real pleasure – no queues and just some minor health procedures at the SA side, conducted through the window of the Health Authorities’ car!
We immediately headed for Lephalale to Molalatau Campsite where, being a South African public holiday weekend, we had optimistically made our booking a good few months back. We were most excited, as our precious biker son Joe and daughter in law Irm, were also on the road from Johannesburg, meeting us there for a weekend of family camping and biking! Due to covid lockdowns and border closures, we had not seen them for a year and a half, so we were all ridiculously excited. As we negotiated the partially sandy access road (bike’s nemesis) I was looking out for the usual signposts to locate reception, parking area etc.. suddenly in the middle of the road appeared Joe, enthusiastically waving his parents in towards the campsite. They had already checked us all in and were busy preparing a welcoming campsite for us all. Totally heartwarming!
We had a wonderful reunion with the kids, and as one does when bike camping, much checking and comparing of gear took place! They presented me with a fabulous gift, now my most treasured new biking possession: a 10 metre string of tiny LED fairy lights!!
This campsite is rather scenic, with mountains in the background, and we spotted sable and bushbuck roaming around in the bush right near us. While enjoying our peaceful early evening sundowners, much to our horror we observed the steady arrival of a stream of cars, mini buses and trucks, disgorging crowds of distinctly party animal looking humans, all carrying heavy burdens of branded liquor store bags and giant cooler boxes!! We braced ourselves for the predictable night of loud music and revelry, to be followed probably by some unpleasant confrontations in the early hours of the morning… However, all credit to the venue for catering successfully to all tastes, as that party crowd actually vanished out of sight, and we did not see or hear them ever again. It was a bit of a mystery as to exactly where they went, but they simply walked far, far away from us, and were not seen or heard ever again! A rather surreal, but much appreciated phenomenon.
The kids put up their beautiful fairy lights in a tree, and had provided a gourmet camping dinner as well as an extremely respectable quantity of wine, nicely decanted into their amazing 1.8 litre hip flasks! Knowing we were coming from alcohol banned Botswana, they made sure that the family wine cellar was sorted! We were filled with admiration for these classy wine conveying vessels, and made a mental note to try and procure some of the same…
Gourmet minimalistic dinner, the biker way!
The next morning, we couldn’t wait to hit the road to our next camping destination, 420 km away. En route, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, we had pulled over on the roadside for one of our team navigational discussions, when we were joined by a souped up VW Polo, out of which climbed two incredibly sharply dressed young gentlemen who just wanted to chat to the Botswana bikers. They had a bit of a double take when one of the supposed Botswana brothers turned into a fearsome looking bearded South African biker dude, but they were happy to chat to us all, then had to take the world’s most absurd gangsterish selfie, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, posing next to “their” gigantic BMW bike. It was a very “Kasi Culture” moment. I resisted the urge to selfie back at them, (although now I really wish I had!) and we all got back on the road on our opposite journeys, with many enthusiastic farewells!
We pushed on as we were going all the way to Tzaneen, and the kids had picked some back roads rather than highways. At some point we ended up joining mainstream traffic into Mokpane, which was absolutely horrendous and we all felt we were now qualifiied for Lagos or Nairobi after that… Luckily we passed through there without incident, then Polokwane and its satellite urban traffic zones, until finally we were back on the open roads. Due to our impromptu approach to grocery shopping, we had not really attempted to find any shops en route so had to overshoot our destination and headed into the stunning Magoebasklof Pass to go and find provisions. Beautiful twisty turns, and very scenic..
After shopping, we got to ride all the way back again through the pass – more twists and turns, to gladden any Botswana biker’s heart. So good to get away from the flat terrain of our home!
As we turned off to Mountain Fly Fishing campsite, this great gravel track led to our destination.
Upon arrival at our campsite, we were welcomed enthusiastically by a dog!
The campsite is situated right on a trout dam, and our Biker Boy couldn’t wait to enjoy some fly fishing – having carried his 4 piece 3 weight rod all the way on the bike for many kilometres for this very opportunity!
Each campsite has a private ablution & kitchen area, very thoughtfully laid out.
So very beautiful up in the mountains and ….. absolutely freeeeeeezing!! Thus started our habit of of borrowing extra warm layers from the kids, and a major proximity to blazing campfire addiction!
Next day we had agreed to once again avoid highways, and opted for the much longer, and very scenic route back to Gauteng. We were totally up for the approximately 500km route, which to us by Botswana or Namibia very open type road standards is not too bad, the number of kms just at the upper limits of how far we want to travel in one day. We did not fully comprehend how many hours the number of kilometres was going to take but, looking back, it was still definitely the best choice!
Leaving Limpopo Province behind, we crossed into Mpumulanga, and instantly we started to notice potholes, but the typical lowveld scenery was so beautiful, with all the acacia trees in full blossom!
Climbing through the Abel Erasmus Pass on the R36 was a scenic biking treat, despite those infamous Mpumalanga potholes – and the more mountains the better as far as we were concerned! Not having to worry about handling the bike or the traffic, I enjoyed the trip, and tried to capture a few images of the magnificent scenery, and these amazing stratified rocks along the way.
… next, through the Strijdom Tunnel, and we were over the mountain and down the other side.
We didn’t stop to rest, as we had a goal in mind – a stop over in Dullstroom for lunch at The Poacher, Joe and Irm’s favourite outdoor restaurant! The road had become pretty busy, with some rather badly behaved motorists pulling off unmentionable and un bike-friendly manoeuvres as they randomly dodged the multitude of potholes. Being almost run off the road by one of them was not fun, but we survived this particular stretch, making it to The Poacher for a very well deserved break! A popular place with a great vibe, it was pretty busy, and there were also quite a few fellow bikers there. We started to definitely remember that we were travelling at the tail end of a public holiday long weekend!
After Dullstroom things became a bit crazy as we joined the rest of the long weekend holiday makers on the N4 highway, travelling back into Gauteng. Narrowing down into a toll plaza caused a slowly crawling queue of traffic about 2km long, then a bit further along, a highway police roadblock produced the same effect. This was one of the most exhausting parts of the whole trip thus far, due to the traffic, and as we had been on the road so many hours our bluetooth intercoms simply ran out of battery power, meaning no more chatting!
We were literally riding into the sunset, as we crossed into Gauteng, our third province of the day… the two Honda NCs up ahead us in our family formation! We cruised silently (no idle chit chat!) through night-time streetlit Pretoria, arriving at Tiennie’s mum’s place in the dark. We said goodbye to our two, who still had a bit further to go to Johannesburg, just until our next upcoming weekend date! The kids were ready for work the next day, while we mentally adjusted to our upcoming week in the big city.
To be continued in Part 2..
Map of our Part 1 Travels: 6th August to 9th August, 2021
All routes I know so well after living in Zimbabwe (well Rhodesia) and South Africa, also a 4 year spell at Mafikeng where we spent many a good time crossing into Botswana. Only four years ago we were at the Vic Falls having travelled through Botswana again. My heart will never leave Africa only my body insists it has to stay in France.