SA Trip August 2021 – Part 2

At the end of Part 1, we had just arrived in Pretoria after a family biking/camping weekend en route. Due to covid and lockdowns, we two had not seen a city in a year and a half! Now, having showed up fresh from heavily restricted Botswana, we were let loose with the bike in the urban jungle in our next door country, enjoying the relative freedom of lighter covid restrictions!

Bike was liberated from all those bulky panniers and camping gear, so what better way to get around through the crawling traffic… For a bit of retail therapy, we treated the bike to some brand new shoes. Front tyre received the previous and trusted tyre we’ve used for the past 5 years (Heidenau Scout K60), but it now has a Motoz Tractionator GPS rear tyre, which is a new brand that we are excited to test out on the recommendation of our long distance biker friends Dejon and Kel of To the Back of Beyond fame. The over 23 000 km that they achieved on a Motoz tyre sounds just perfect for us!

Our actual priority here, was to visit and spend a bit of quality time with every single important family member and friend in Pretoria, even if only for a few hours each. With the lack of a weekend for such activities, this was orchestrated with scientific precision, with appointments made in advance. We so appreciated everybody who rearranged their lives to spend a bit of time with us!

Since alcohol was completely banned in Botswana at the time, these two bikers were thrilled silly with the exciting novelty of just going to a shop and buying wine! We had to just make sure to diligently study the limited opening hours to plan for weekends, while also factoring in the space limitations of our minimalistic luggage.

i could not resist this scene of the proverbial kid in a candy store…

At some point during the city riding, our bluetooth intercom system started to give trouble. My speakers randomly lost volume, thus I could speak and be heard, while receiving sound at almost zero volume in return. One way communication was not much fun, so the Biker Boy took everything to pieces and reassembled, in the hopes of a miraculous fix. Amazingly my sound came back, but we were holding thumbs that it would decide to be a permanent fix, as we most certainly had no available funds in our budget for a new kit. Having lost the comms for a while, I suddenly realised just how much it means to me to be able to chat continuously on our trips. In fact I don’t know if I would enjoy it half as much without this function!

Another snag was the ongoing oil leak emanating from the oil filler cap, which had already started about 300km away from home, (Part 1) and was going strong(er) 1000km later! We managed to buy a few o-rings of the required diameter, in the ongoing quest to sort out the leak.

During this time, the weather forecasts for the weekend really started to scare me – our destination being Clarens, right in the mountains on the borders of Lesotho. Normally a pretty cold place in its own right, Clarens was also expecting a freezing extra cold snap! We got into serious winter kit organisation mode, contacting the kids to order/borrow winter clothing in advance… I shopped for extra thermal gear, ready for those icy conditions!

Friday (the 13th) August

The city, although fun for a a short while is not our natural environment, therefore it was with much joy, anticipating our weekend escape, that we hit the road to Sandton to overnight with the kids, aiming for a good early start together the next morning. Sadly, the bluetooth failed again en route, so a quiet and lonesome highway trip was had, until we were “reunited” at Woodmead shopping mall where we had lunch and caught up on one another’s news, thoughts and observations!

As usual in South Africa, we noticed signs of prior unrest and violence, plenty of burned patches on the roads were a sad reminder of the recent riots and looting in that area just a month back, being near the Alexandra township areas that had been affected. As is also usual, our guardian angel ensured that all the stars had aligned for us to travel during a time of peace.

We excitedly took possession of our borrowed scarves and beanies, while serious no nonsense army surplus parkas were somehow fitted onto the other bikes for us, prepping for the upcoming arctic experience!
We took stock of our current snags: bluetooth speakers were yet again dismantled/tweaked back to life, but more annoyingly the new o-ring did not seem to be doing a great job of sealing the oil leak so our left side was yet again sprayed with a fine mist of oil!

An almost disaster struck while trying to conquer the oil leak and o-ring saga: the filler cap itself got damaged due to its plastic made brittle by age. Undaunted, the two boys got busy with some last minute engineering feats. Joe designed and printed parts on his 3D printer. How miraculous, not to say very handy. We two were up next morning early like kids on Christmas day to see what was lying on the bed of the printer! A perfect replica of the oil filler cap was there, ready for installation, as well as a spare on, and some more o-rings!

Just before departure our replica oil filler cap was inserted, and off we went… however… as we passed through the township areas on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the oil leak restarted in earnest, culminating in a blow out of oil, all over us. The heroic bike skipper was somehow managing the amazing feat of keeping the bike upright, in traffic, while containing the flow of oil from inside the engine with his thumb, somewhere near his left shin area!!

As this drama unfolded, I was currently in one of my media blackout situations, and only hearing a faint, tiny little voice though the bluetooth speakers, I was not entirely sure what was going on, but soon figured it out.

Since we were riding last in a three bike formation, it was difficult, if not impossible, to attract Joe’s attention at position No 1, so I we put on an acceleration blast and overtook him, and after a bit of sign language, we all pulled over to a fortuitous highway off-ramp to check out the problem. It’s never much fun doing roadside bike repairs on the edge of a highway with the traffic whizzing past at high speed and decibels, but we are quite used to it by now and manage to somehow stay calm and focused! After appraisal, we realised that the 3D printing material was not resistant enough to the extreme engine temperatures, and despite starting out perfectly, the replica filler cap had eventually just lost its structure due to the heat and parted company from the bike. The guys decided to replace the original broken (but heat resistant) BMW filler cap again, and hope for the best. We re-entered the stream of traffic, feeling uncertain but always optimistic! This time at position No 2 in the formation, for observation purposes!

Luckily we had managed to get out of the built up areas, when our nemesis, the filler cap, summarily blasted itself out and flew off the bike. Riding behind us, Irm saw where it landed so we all stopped again, and she and I did a quick dash back on foot, striding around in the bush, combing an area full of little charred blackened pieces of debris, for a tiny black plastic item. Deep in concentration, walking around like the Stig with my helmet on, I nearly jumped out of my skin as I suddenly heard a few choice unmentionable words blasting through my headspace, and, being geographically quite far removed from the bike and the frustrated biker boy, I just smiled, as I realised our comms had returned in splendid style!

Eventually, Irm’s sharp eyes located the filler cap and we rushed back to the bikes with our prize! Prized, as it had the precious original but worn BMW o-ring attached to it. It seemed the generic o-rings we had bought were slightly too thin, while the 3D printed rings were also incapable of withstanding the engine temperatures. Since the original cap itself was now beyond salvaging, our Plan C took effect. More oil was poured into the engine. Then the second 3D replica filler cap was deployed, along with the worn BMW o-ring, and the offending part was now attached to the engine the old school way with a tie down strap, plus a set of cable ties to prevent it from flying off the bike, should it try to pop again! In the photo below, it’s the small white circular object.

Watching the oil cap like hawks, we rode all the way around the Vaal dam, eventually crossing the Vaal river into the Free State, around Deneysville. This part of the world featured gloomy overcast freezing free state weather and scenery. Rolling beige hills, and the odd windmill to liven up the scene.

Somewhere on the way between Reitz and Fouriesburg, we stopped for refreshments, checking the oil leak (tamed!) and an attempt at thawing ourselves out. We jumped off the bikes in the howling gale, for an attempt at the desperately needed coffee break. Due to being useless and not eating sensible protein based road snacks (such as eggs), I decided in my wisdom to try and access my leftover pizza from the previous day, but as I opened the box, a slice of pizza was ripped clean out by the wind! Wow. It was so cold that I was jumping up and down just to keep warm, while watching the others working hard to manouever coffee from a flask into some cups without it being viciously redirected by the tempest! Eventually we were all just laughing helplessly at our activities!! Joe came to the rescue of my pizza box which seemed to have taken on new life as a sail, not to mention my long hair totally undisciplined and out of control. He loomed up behind me, a reassuringly huge windbreak, and as I focused on picking up that all important slice of pizza, I heard my rescuer’s words in my ear, with his typical humour: “On a scale of Zero to Jean Claude van Damme…. how TOUGH are you??” Well, that just finished us off… The journey, as ever, while biking, is always the main part of the fun and the adventure. Not so much the destination. For us, travelling with the kids in this way added another dimension, and sharing these crazy situations with them, was even more entertaining!

After this event, feeling tougher than even Chuck Norris, having survived that refreshment break, we hit the road again. Sadly our bluetooth decided to vanish once more, so I kept myself busy by memorising the kids’ bike number plates and other mental games, while we experienced some more air silence. We finally reached the small town of Fouriesburg for lunch, at a truly wonderful place, Die Plasstoep. Oh my word, it was so absolutely freezing, we were so happy to get there. What a haven. I was actually shivering uncontrollably, as we warmed ourselves up with cups of coffee, followed by a much needed glass of red wine and hearty Free State meals!
Joe, in trip organiser/tour guide and protective son mode, expressed mild horror at the sight of my extreme reactions to the cold, wondering what he had let the parents in for, but I had to reassure him and everybody else that we deliberately choose to put ourselves out there on the bike, and even in the cold and discomfort, so exposed in extreme conditions makes me feel alive and I absolutely love it! I would do it all over again tomorrow.

For tropical dwellers, the cold is a very different thing, as we are more used to dealing with extreme heat! The wind chill factor on the bike also reduces the feel of the temperature by a few degrees, so as I checked my weather app at lunchtime, I discovered we were “chilling” in 7 degree celsius temperatures, (before the wind chill) with the high being only 8 and a low of 3…

After this, we had a relatively short distance to get to Clarens – another bitterly cold but scenic and lovely ride. We finally arrived at “Bergwoning” where we had two fabulous little huts for our two night stay. We were spoiled with electric blankets, fire places, and the most gorgeous mountain view.

After arrival, while Joe got to work starting a fire asap, we inspected our old school arrangement with the oil filler cap. I am happy to report, the guys had trussed it up so firmly, not a drop of oil had been spilled! Such a great achievement, and we could then relax, and enjoy suitable amounts of coffee and sherry that were required to warm up internally. Irm and I also did some botanical investigations, (so very appreciative for the convenience of apps, we most certainly can not carry all our beloved but bulky reference books on the bike!) and we discovered we were actually in a forest of indigenous Ouhout trees. These are prolific in cold highland areas of South Africa.

One of those great family evenings was had around the constantly roaring fire!! We kept very warm and enjoyed our second last night together. So much laughter and catching up. We had just the best time! Plenty of wine supplies had been packed on all 3 bikes, and once again we experienced hip flask envy, admiring the classy 1.8 litre wine carriers that had come along filled with the essential supplies!

Late that night, just as we went to bed it rained, rained and rained some more… I experienced some sleepless hours, as that imagination of mine started to run wild! I was picturing our heavily loaded bike, having to tackle the muddy, slippery access road uphill, in order to eventually ride out. Quite unnecessary worrying as it turned out, since the second night it did not rain at all, however everything always feels more scary in the early hours of the morning!

Next morning the youngsters went off to buy some dinner ingredients, fill up with fuel and enjoy a few twisty turny mountain roads, while we were very content to stay home and enjoy doing as little as possible! We noticed a few more loads of firewood arrived in their absence, very thoughtful – and necessary!

We spent some of the time re-organising our luggage, and that biker favourite activity: washing some of our clothes. The problem we had not thought of was how to dry the darn things, but intelligently, we hung everything up around our open all day fire, and hoped for the best! That evening, we had to move them to our hut to finish the drying process indoors, next to the fireplace.

Dinner around the campfire was accompanied by the owners’ beautiful dog. Bailey, the Belgian Shepherd, who also graced us with her majestic pedigreed presence for breakfast the next morning!

As that afternoon progressed to evening, it became so incredibly cold that at some point I could not actually feel my feet at all. Consequently, I tried to warm them up very proactively next to the fire, until I was informed randomly by the family that my feet appeared to be actually inside the fire! I tried to ignore their helpful observations as long as possible, until molten rubber shoe soles were a turning point in the foot “warming”/boiling exercise, which had to reluctantly come to an end.

The next morning dawned dry, and oh so frosty! Here we are having morning coffee in the clear mountain air, with the special Ouhout trees in the background.

After packing up and getting ready to depart, I insisted on walking out ahead of the bike, due to the scary uphill slippery road to the gate, after the rain and sleepless hours 2 nights ago. Whether this heroic effort of mine made any difference to the bike, I am not sure, but I felt better doing it that way! I suspect the Biker Boy was just humouring me! We then entered the Golden Gate National Park, riding through on the spectacularly scenic Lichens Pass at an altitude of 1,953m. Almost exactly 1000m higher than home. Magnificent, and need I say, totally arctic!!

Perfect for a heavenly bike riding experience. Just lovely winding scenic road, including a vulture hide, where we were fortunate enough to see several Cape Vultures soaring overhead.

The reason for the arctic temperature, revealed. Drakensberg viewpoint, lots of snow on the mountains! Very Not Botswana, in every way…

Eventually this incredible road had to come to an end, and we sadly parted ways with the kids as we went south, and they headed back to Johannesburg for work next day. It was oh so hard to say goodbye, and we had been quietly dreading this moment, but at least we had made the absolute best of the two short weekends available to us!

We headed for Harrismith, avoiding the tempting but time consuming and very potholed Oliviershoek Pass, labelling that for next time! We made it to a Mugg n Bean to wrap our frozen hands around coffee. I believe we smelled like woodsmoke hobos due to everything being infused by the smoke in our cottage for 2 nights!! From the cafe, we did our research and ordered ahead one beautiful, genuine BMW oil filler cap from the Pinetown BMW Motorrad dealership. To be collected later, further south.

As we left Heather, heading south to my sister in Hillcrest, we received advice from all the locals to avoid the N3 highway like the plague, due to roadworks and traffic delays, and take the old road R103 to Pietermaritzburg. Unfortunately, following the old road, we got lost in Hilton and had to do a couple of unpleasantly difficult bike U turns, with the GPS being spectacularly unhelpful! Patience was wearing thin, when stupendous luck kicked in as I recognized a pub where we used to go and play pool during my university days!! I was therefore immediately able to redirect our travels in the correct direction due to my local knowledge, albeit more than 30 years old! At last… something useful finally came out of my university career! As we rode along on the old rode to Maritzburg, it brought back many memories. Never in those days did I imagine I would be one day doing this route on the back of a motorbike!

We arrived in Pietermaritzburg during the traffic rush and the GPS instantly got confused about relocating the R103. There were of course zero roadsigns showing the R103. When it started to instruct us to do complicated and impossible U turns in peak traffic, and we saw we were being carried helplessly towards the city centre, we unanimously bailed on the idea of finding the unfindable old road and hit the N3 highway as quickly as we could! As we went along we started to have one of those luggage fantasies where we think we can’t see one of our items.. in this case one of Tiennie’s shoes that was strapped on to the tent, appeared to mysteriously not be there anymore. This is when shadow shows combined with imagination turn dangerous, as we suddenly also “noticed” a dangling strap flapping around in the bike’s shadow! Had this strap liberated the shoe from its moorings? Trying to feel 180 degrees behind me to ascertain the existence of a shoe, hampered by many layers of winter gear, and not upset the bike’s balance was already a hopeless task. On top of it all my fumbling efforts were enhanced by a stressful running commentary soundtrack in my headspace regarding extreme unhappiness due to shoe deprivation, not to mention opinions on the actions of the lunatics sharing the peak hour highway with us! I eventually called quits on this exercise, and in the interests of peace of mind we had to find somewhere to stop the bike. Crossing a few lanes of peak hour traffic, a little island in between an on and off ramp was chosen, where we both got off and viewed The Shoe, still tied down to within an inch of its precious life and not going anywhere!! At least we felt better after that and had a good laugh about it!

The highway delivered us efficiently to Hillcrest – with only a few more u turns to get to the correct gate, mostly of course on difficult hills, but finally we reached our destination, Jill and Terry’s warm and cozy haven with a blazing fire and some big glasses of sherry!

As I hastily kicked off my bike boots, I realised that all was not well with the toe that I had boiled in the campfire the night before! It felt like it was ice cold, and had a strange combo of numbness and at the same time some very piercing pain, which I likened to a scorpion sting. Whatever I did, I could not get it to feel better, so good old Dr Google was consulted. I have to confess the first thing I googled was frostbite (such a dramatic Botswana bush kid!) but eventually bypassing all the usual terminal horrors offered up by Dr Google, we all settled on “chillblain“!! How exciting. A never before experienced ailment! Luckily the bike was parked for a couple of days and I could wear flip flops and not bike boots! We were going to the beach after all.

The weather app kindly alerted us that the South Coast was ready to dish up one of the coldest un-beachy snaps of the year, but we were on a beach holiday for 2 nights for Jill’s 50th birthday, and we couldn’t have cared less about the climatic conditions! We swapped the BMW bike for Terry’s BMW car, and the biker boy turned into his rally boy persona, making sure the performance of the BMW was up to standard, and bringing back memories of his own almost same model, same colour, 20 years back… so in memory of our younger days, we zoomed off for our 2 nights at Shelly Beach. As we checked into the Emerald Cove, we were handed “Beach Gate” keys – how perfect! The bikers first however had to do a quick walk to that typical seaside town laundromat that you will find everywhere, to hand in a vast bag containing every spare piece of clothing that we owned, to remove the awful lingering woodsmoke contamination – thanks to our clever open fire drying plan up in the mountains. After that, the four of us exited through the magical Beach Gate in the wall, straight onto the dunes and beach. We wandered around – two of us doing what people from a landlocked country do when they get their ocean fix – splashing around in the sea, never mind the howling wind, flying sand, and sporadic drizzle, until we noticed what looked like a restaurant or at the very least a pub, just a short wade away across an estuary.

Since it was early afternoon, and we had no plans, we settled in to what turned out to be the quite fabulous C-Bali restaurant for a long afternoon/evening of seafood and wine, safely protected from the miserable outdoors, wrapped in our winter woollies, but with our view of the ocean.

By the end of birthday celebration dinner Part 1, many hours later, all we had to do was walk a few hundred metres and cross that estuary stream, back through Beach Gate…

Next day we went to locate a long lost relative, Leandri. Tiennie’s niece, whom he had not seen since she was about six years old, and I’d never actually met! However, we three just have always known were were of the same tribe and like minded best buddies, just separated by a few thousand kilometres! Leandri had been following us all the way on social media, but we never let on that we were right next door to her home town, until we were able to confirm her suspicions and sort of surprise her! It was so good to catch up with her, now all grown up, and mom to a couple of adorable youngsters herself! Never mind the fact that she was actually in the middle of moving and unpacking in her new home, she dropped everything to spend a little time with her Botswana family. I found out later that we were honoured to be the first visitors to set foot on her famous sunrise view patio!

After Leandri set off on her school run, we got down to the serious business of researching the best place to have a 50th birthday lunch. I had been given the responsibility, as the big sister, and this is how organised we were, that the trusting birthday girl was expecting to be picked up and shown a good time, at whatever the Botswana landlubbers decided was the best venue on the South Coast! Thus we had less than an hour to plan, got busy googling, and came up with the Shelly Beach Ski Boat Club! It really spoke to us online, and felt just right.. The 50 year old celebrity was duly collected (just had to wait in a parking lot while biker chick collected massive laundry bag, and biker boy purchased useless giant bag of rock hard avocados from random street vendor) and was duly delivered to the Ski Club in style. Winter wollies mandatory, but it was an inspired choice of venue. Right on the beach, lovely food and service, and we four had the best 50th celebration for my special baby sister!

Map of our Part 2 Travels: 13th August to 19th August, 2021