Day 55 – Sand!

For those of you who know a little about offroad biking you will know that the word “sand” strikes fear into the hearts of bikers. And today we found out why. We started the day on 2 kliks of wet sand which frankly was fine. Then a bit of road. Then we had a choice. A lovely new tarmac road due South or the border track between Zim and Bots. No surprise here, we went for the track. Kane and Tony had recc”ed it the day before and said it was fine. 5 kliks later we were floundering in deep sand. Not only that but the road was full of elephant tracks. So we very sensibly called it a day and rerouted back onto the nice tar road. However after 40 mins we had to deviate back to the border track as Kane and the Cruiser were waiting expecting us to appear along the fenceline.

A cup of tea later Gregg, Robin and I had a little jolly to see if this end of the track was as bad as the beginning. And no it was not, it was glorious hard packed mud and gravel. So we foolishly decided to give it a go on the continuation along the Zim border. At first it was fabulous. It is a boundary road and probably 30 metres wide. The surface varied from hard pack crazed mud to shallow sand to gravel. It was wonderful biking. But then after 40k we hit a patch of sand, but blessedly short. Then hard, then sand, then hard then sand. The Kalahari was creeping up on us. For awhile it shrank to a narrow sandy track. Elephant tracks were everywhere. If we had met a breeding herd on this road we would have been toast. Turning was not an option and there was nowhere to hide. The road opened up again. We saw giraffe, a roan antelope at full gallop, impala, bush buck, hartebeest, lechwe, warthogs, and a magnificent herd of eland, with a huge black bull. It was literally a gamedrive on motorbikes. The road carried on for hour after hour. Then the cruiser got stuck in deep sand. It took 30 minutes to dig it out.

We began to get a little concerned about whether we had missed our turning but we had little option but to battle on. An hour later, following a couple of falls from Robin, the second one not too good, the Cruiser got stuck again. Thoroughly stuck. It was also getting late. We did not know whether to continue or retrace our track. Maybe our turning was overgrown and we had missed it. Again after half an hour we extricated the cruiser. We had to manhandle the trailer in deep sand with 3 bikes on it. So far we had covered 150k offroad. We had not seen a soul. We had not seen a vehicle. We had seen no evidence of man whatsoever. We were truly in the wilderness. Where else in the world could you travel this distance and see no other human?

We headed back. It was now getting a little dark. We covered maybe 30k in 40 minutes when Kane stopped to examine an old hidden road in the bush. We had little option but to give it a go. Otherwise we were spending the night out there. 2 of the bikes had run out of fuel. We refuelled. Everyone was shattered.

We gingerly followed this obscure track. The bushes pulled at the handlebars and the arms. Visors were essential. It was dense bush. God only knows what would have happened to us if we had met elephants. There were elephant tracks everywhere. This track carried on for 40ks. It took us well over an hour. Many fell as the sand was treacherous. We passed a waterhole with 3 bull elephants spraying themselves. Fortunately they didn”t object to our presence. And then a road, a tar road. Heaven sent.

70k later we rolled into our lodge hotel in darkness, thankfully not having hit any animals which had lined both sides of this fast road.

Time for a cold beer. One of the best offroading days imaginable. A 400k day with 250k offroad. A day to rival the Sani Pass. J