Thank you all for all the kind words and support following my father’s passing.

I am currently spending some time with my mom in Vanderrbijlpark. I’m happy to report that she is recovering well after the accident.

I’ll be returning to Cape Town this coming Monday for Karlijn and I to complete the final leg of our trip. Really looking forward to cycling the last 500km down the west coast of South Africa.

we’ll update the photo’s again soon

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Since our departure from Windhoek we ventured off the main roads towards Soussousvlei in Namib Desert. As mentioned before, Maarten van Der Harst, Karlijns father joined us for the trip down. As his luck would have it he chose the part of our journey that had been some of the most challenging technichal riding to date( bar Northern Zambia and Northern Malawi). This part of the world had a lot of rain lately and left the dirt roads in quite a state. Sand, rocks hand the worst ’sinkplaat’ roads in the Southern hemisphere made riding quite hard, however the beautiful scenery made up for it all. Just outside Solitaire we had to cross a normally dry river that was flowing knee deep. Place names like Solitaire hints at just how remote these areas are. Namibia only have a population of 1.4 million, and I can assure you that none of them live out there! Luckily we encountered enough water points (wind pumps and streams) to keep us from drying out like Kudu biltong. Maarten, at ….. years of age had no problems keeping up with us, super fast as we are…haha. He did manage to crack his rear bicycle rim in the process though. Luckily only on the last day of his trip. Both Maarten and I ended up on our backs under the thorn trees at Sesriem on the last day of his visit, feeling very green and keeping the toilet door at close range. The cause; possibly one of my gourmet soya meals on the road. Karlijn’s tummy managed to survive the attack and was laboured with keeping the two us from dehidrating.

Soussousvlei is a stunning area with the some of the worlds largest moving dunes.  How fast does a dune need to move to be called a moving dune?? Beats me! Not too fast by the look of things, since there is a permanent parking spot at the foot of dune 45, and all the fotos on every post card for the last umteen years look the same. Maybe someone from the audience can enlighten me on the subject?

After the dunes, Karlijn and I battled on towards Helmiringhausen where the roads improved again. The roads proved to be a bit much for karlijn’s bike’s back rim and we dicovered yesterdy that it also had a crack. The plan was to head for the Fish River canyon but we were forced to head for Keetmanshoop to try and get the wheel sorted. Finding a new 29″ rim proved to be impossible in a town that is positively not the centre of the universe. Luckily a friendly guy called Rocco with an aliminium welder (a welder that can weld aliminium, not made from aliminium…in case you wondered.) help us fix the broken one into a usable state. Fingers crossed.

We’re off again tomorrow and should be crossing into South Africa at Vioolsdrif in about 3 days. Then down the West Coast towards Cape Town. ETA: end of March

Long rural rides, expensive/non existent internet and a busy festive season prevented us from updating sooner. Sorry for those whom have been sitting at the edge of their seats awaiting the next episode of our adventure..

Since our last entry we first made our way to Kigali in Rwanda. Really impressed by this city!   Unlike most other African coutries, Rwandans seem to have curruptionunder control which  together with international aid money has stimulated good economic growth. The roads are asphalt and very well kept. It’s clean; even the people in the slums take pride in what little they have and their compounds are always neatly sweeped. The country certainly pulled itself together since the horrible genocide in 1994 during which almost a million peole perished. They take pride in being Rwandans, not Hutus or Tutsis. They try really hard to forget the tribal turmoil of the past which was mainly engineered by crooked politicians .

After much consideration we decided not to pass through Burundi as we spoke to many people in Rwanda who’s advice was that it was not very safe at the moment with renewed rebel activity. So we decided to take the long way round into Tanzania and to then to Kigoma on Lake Tanganika. The contrast between Rwanda and Tanzania is pretty stark. As soon as you cross the border all the people and villages vanished and is replaced by dense acacia bush. This is a pretty remote part of the country and you can cycle for hours without a sinlge village in sight. The main activities here are refugee camps hosting people from both Burundi and Congo.

Kigoma is set on the shores of Lake Tanganika near the Burundian border. Here met a visionary Burundian guy named Deo. Due to political difficulties he moved from Burundi some 11 years ago and studied in Belgium. He worked on a project which he is now implementing in Kigoma. He started a pilot radio station called KICORA which broadcasts educational programmes aimed at Burundian youngsters living in the surrounding refugee camps. Through listening to the programmes and completing certain exams, people can obtain school certificates and hopefully diplomas etc in the future. It was very inspiring to see how dedicated he is to the programme. Sadly he doesn’t have a website, but you can email him on ‘Bwegu14me@hotmail.com’ for more info on his project.

The MV Liemba, an ex German war ship leaves once a week from Kigoma and makes it’s way over two days down to Mpulungu in Zambia. The hull of the boat is over 100 years old and steam engine has now been replaced by a diesel one. Apparantly it was deliberately sunk by the Germans during the 2nd world war so the allies won’t get their hands on it. It was later brought back to the surface by the English and put to work again as a passenger and trade ship. It still serves many villages down the lake as their only means of getting supplies in from Kigoma.
We took a ‘family cabin’ between Karlijn, Adrian and myself and spent our time reading, sleeping or just peering out over the endless green hills of western Tanzania. It’s amazing to see how small row boats appear in the middle of the night seemingly from nowhere on and off loading anything from pineaples to outboard motors. (Have a look at our photo page..)

Once we got to Zambia 450km of remote dirt road riding lay ahead of us to complete in 4 and a half days! This was to meet up with 2 friends from Jo’burg in Karonga in Northern Malawi. Riaan Booysen and Gerard Dobie flew in from Jo’burg to join us for 3weeks over X-mass and New Years. In true festive spirit we relaxed a lot on the lake in this beautifully laid back country. It’s been great having them along and if you know Riaan, you’ll also know that we’ve been kept very busy both on and of the bike! It is then no surprise that we did our longest (132km) and second longest (123km) days on the bike this week! Sadly they left us again on the 11th of Jan. Thanks for coming guys, it was awesome!

We are currently in Lilongwe, Malawi. A friend of Karlijn’s, Magiel joined us yesterday and will be with us for a week.

We’ll leave in the next couple of days and say goodbye to chilled out Malawi and exchange long chilled drinks and gourmet meals again for luke warm water from a cycling bottle and rice with beans in remote Southern Zambia!