26
A Motorcycle Diary
EWAN: Only a handful of days more to go and the trip would be over. I was feeling torn, dying to see my kids and yet not wanting the wheels to stop rolling. There was so much more to see in Africa.
We were in Namibia, and now had only one more border to cross. I glanced at Charley as he packed away his passport. Two women wearing huge colourful dresses were watching us and I was reminded of Egypt when we’d seen the smugglers packing their bloomers with boxes of cigarettes. These women were wearing headdresses I hadn’t seen before – they were like headscarves only with a piece of cloth rolled horizontally at the front that looked like a pair of horns.
I spoke to a Namibian policeman who was really interested in the bikes. ‘Do you get many motorcycles coming this way?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Almost never.’ And with that he waved us over the border.
Charley pulled the obligatory wheelie and this time I popped one of my own. The police closed the iron gates behind us and we were into the desert, an ‘elephant crossing’ sign beside the road. I’d heard that the Namibian desert elephants were the tallest in Africa.
We pulled over at a craft centre run by a reverend and his wife. They told us how they visited the Kalahari bushmen villages and exchanged locally made goods, like bracelets and necklaces, for food. They sold the goods in their craft shop; the only problem was there were so few tourists in this part of the country. I bought a bracelet made from fragments of ostrich eggs and we also picked up a couple of woollen hats. It was chilly at night: we were in the desert, it was winter and the temperature could really plummet.
At the craft centre we met a bushman called Ali and asked him if it was possible to spend the night in one of the villages. He said he’d take us to his home.
CHARLEY: I was really excited about seeing it. The bushmen have lived in this part of Africa for more than twenty thousand years and it’s only in the last fifty that their way of life has altered at all.
The village looked like many others we’d seen, small circular huts built from poles and plaster, campfires dotted here and there with people squatting on their heels around them. The bushmen reminded me of the people of Ethiopia; long-limbed with elegant features. Ali took us over to one fire where a group of men were gathered, and introduced us to the chief. It turned out he was also the local medicine man, or shaman. He was tiny, thin-faced with thin arms, small hands and feet. With Ali acting as interpreter we asked if we could camp and the chief said that would be fine. We had just enough time to put our tents up and grab something to eat before they started dancing.
It was dark now, and the firelight played over the faces of the people. We hadn’t realised but it was during these ceremonies that the sick were brought to the chief and using the music and his shamanic powers he would try to heal them. The villagers brought a young man wrapped in a quilt and laid him on the ground. The chief sat over him while another guy in a headdress began the dance. The women were standing around the fire, clapping their hands with flat palms and splayed fingers: it created a hollow sound. They were singing in the traditional way, a sort of wail.
The chief took up the song, making clicking noises, half shrieks and high-pitched grunts while at the same time working his hands over the body of the sick man.
It was incredible to watch how the music grabbed him: as if it was part of him and he was part of it. The dancer got involved too; lying on his belly he put his head under the sick man’s quilt, jerking his body like a snake.
Ali explained that this was elephant dancing and the bushmen had only been doing it for a hundred years. Before that they performed the giraffe dance, the difference being that here the women were standing round the fire, swaying and clapping, whereas historically they’d be sitting while the shaman performed the healing ceremony. We watched him working on the young man who later on, healed or not, was sitting up rather than lying down. I don’t know how sick he’d been when they brought him in but he definitely seemed a lot perkier. The dancing had stopped and things were settling down now and we decided it was time to withdraw gracefully, so we thanked the chief, said our goodnights, and headed off to the tents.
We woke to the sound of a cock crowing and a radio playing. We had a long way to go today, so packing the tents we loaded the bikes and got moving.
We hit hard gravel and I had a rush of excitement as I realised I was only a week away from Ollie. I’d thought about her a lot while Eve was with us in Malawi; now it was just a matter of days until I’d see her.
The land was flat, the road a faint ribbon with nothing but sand and cactus drifting to hills that could have been a mirage on the horizon. Namibia was an enormous country, vast and empty, and we seemed to be the only people on the road.
It was good gravel, dusty and hard with no real sand to speak of, not that it mattered now because since Kenya Ewan had proved he could cope with anything. He was on the pegs, elbows out. One of the real pleasures of the trip had been watching him getting better and better. In Sudan and parts of Ethiopia he’d gritted his teeth and got on with it, but now he was really confident and I could see how much he was enjoying it. God, I’d loved these roads. I’d miss them when this was over: Ethiopia especially had been fantastic and I’d ride there again any time.
We left the dirt behind for a while, though. On good tarmac, we put the hammer down all the way to Grootfontein. The towns in Namibia were very clean, the streets wide and there was a distinctly colonial feel. From Grootfontein we rode to Otjiwarongo then back into the desert, heading west all the time. Eventually we’d come to the Skeleton Coast.
That night we camped in the desert, the landscape huge and empty, baked sand and cactus, and weird looking quiver trees that were all trunk with just a canopy of short branches that stuck up like feathered arrows.
Ewan and I were both having the odd quiet moment now. I was savouring the mornings particularly, rolling up my sleeping bag, packing away the billy cans and stove. For the last three months everything I needed had been on this bike and I was going to enjoy every last moment of the experience.
Stopping for breakfast we met a couple of Dutch people on an organised bike tour. They were riding 650s with no panniers or gear to weigh them down. They told us that so far they’d only been on dirt roads, but their guide was taking them into the Namib so they could get their fill of the dunes. The previous night while camping they’d had a dodgy moment with an elephant. They’d pitched their tent under a tree and through the moonlight saw this big bull wander over to pluck a few juicy leaves from the upper branches. They were in the tent with the mosquito door open as he brushed the flysheet with his trunk.
We were into the desert now with the wind cutting across the plains, the country arid and dusty. The road was edged with dry yellow grass and thinly spaced quiver trees. We crossed bridges spanning waterless riverbeds and climbed into shallow black hills where the sand turned grey. Volcanic rock jutted on all sides, sharp as razors, the landscape almost lunar. Coming down again, we were gliding into basins where the roads were red dirt. We rode across the desert all the way to the sea.
EWAN: Parking the bikes we sat for a few minutes and I thought, my God, that’s the Atlantic. We’d ridden north to south and east to west and now we were on the infamous Skeleton Coast. This was the region the bushmen called ‘The Land God Made in Anger’ and Portuguese sailors referred to as ‘The Gates of Hell’.
I told Charley. ‘From the Road of Bones to the Gates of Hell – do you think there’s something in that?’
‘Something about us you mean?’ He laughed. ‘I don’t know, I’ll look it up.’
‘Look it up where?’
‘I told you at the pyramids: the Charley book of everything. Remember?’ He gave me a hug. ‘It’s been great riding with you, Ewan.’
‘You too, Charley.’
We shook hands.
‘What do you reckon,’ I said. ‘Shall we do it again?’
; ‘I’m up for it. I think I might have another appointment with the Dakar first, though.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve got a couple of things to do myself. But there’s always the Long Way Up.’
‘And the Long Way Across or the Long Way Over, or Under maybe, I don’t know.’
‘We could do South America, India, maybe, or China.’
Charley thought about that. ‘Can you ride a motorbike along the Great Wall d’you reckon?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt it. Anyway, it’s only a few thousand miles: we’d do that in a weekend, wouldn’t we.’
‘I expect it’s got steps too. I’m not sure I could be bothered with steps.’
I looked out to sea once more where the wind was howling and rollers broke against the beach. ‘They named this place for all the ships that have gone down,’ I said. ‘There are serious rocks out there; ships used to plough into them in the fog.’ I gestured across the sand. ‘The sailors that made it ashore starved, mostly.’
‘Hence the skeletons,’ he said. ‘Shall we move on?’
We camped by a quiver tree under a full moon and got one of our better fires going. We were wrapped up against the cold in our bike trousers and fleeces, wearing the hats we’d bought near the border. We ate boil-in-the-bag for the umpteenth time and began to reminisce.
The following morning we were riding south, still on the dirt. Strangely now I didn’t want to leave it. Once we left these roads in Namibia that was it, tarmac all the way to Cape Town. I’d savour it, throw in a couple of punctures maybe to make it last a bit longer.
We met a group of people on an overlander, a big red lorry with seats in the back and a blue canopy stretched over the top. It was full of various nationalities, a few Brits and one Australian who’d watched Long Way Round just before he left. If you jumped an overlander your travelling companions were random; you just showed up at the stop and got aboard. This group was going all the way to Nairobi.
Another desert road; we’d not seen this much desert since Sudan. Around lunchtime we pulled into Solitaire, a tiny spot that exists pretty much solely as a place for people to fill up on petrol before heading back out into the desert. It does have one cafe, though, and it was here that we bumped into Johannes again – a young guy we’d met when we crossed into Namibia. He was from South Africa and had been on the road for a few months.
I was surprised to see him so soon; he was on his own and had been meandering, taking his time as he rode through Uganda and Kenya. He didn’t gauge his trip by distance or time: it would take as long as it took. I asked him when he’d be home and he said he didn’t know. He still had two books to read yet, and a story to write.
He joined us for sandwiches and apple pie at the Café Van Der Lee run by Moose McGregor. Moose is the descendent of a Scotsman and an Irish woman who landed here in 1906. The apple pie was a family recipe that had been handed down for generations and had featured on a BBC food programme. Moose was a big guy (well he would be, wouldn’t he), with a ponytail and goatee beard. White scars laced his forearms as if he’d been in a fight with a lion.
I asked him about it, thinking I’d get some Ian Bruce-type tale about a leopard playing dead in the bush. Instead Moose admitted the scars were burns from the sharp-sided pans he used for apple pie.
Oh well.
Leaving Solitaire, we continued on southwards. The dirt roads of Africa were almost finished with us. I was quite emotional; leaving the dirt would be the first little ending of the trip and I was quite choked when I thought about it. The enormity of it all was beginning to come home to me – how it had been put together, how because of Russ and Dave, Charley and I were able to ride through Africa without worrying about logistics, border crossings, paperwork. It enabled us to really be touched by the country, uncluttered, our hearts and minds were open. If people were then moved by what they read or saw on TV it was because we’d been touched, humbled by the experience.
I would miss the dirt road, can you believe that after Sudan and Ethiopia? As it turned out, however, they weren’t quite finished with us yet: a couple of hundred miles before the border he spotted Betty’s Hill. The dirt roads might be almost over but we could have one final excursion. We had been joined by Dai, our medic, and Julian Broad who had arrived to take photographs. And of course there was Claudio. Five desperadoes and four bikes. We opted to use the 650 Eve had been riding. It was the lightest; the least encumbered with panniers and it wasn’t ours. It did have road tyres, though, which might be a problem.
The aim was to get as far up the hill as possible before we came off. Lots were drawn as to who would go first. Each name was scribbled on a slip of paper. We shuffled them and the names were read out in order: Ewan, Jules, Claudio, Charley and Dai.
Me first then; OK. I set off at a run, up on the pegs, the bike wobbling around on loose shale and stones. I was climbing though, higher and higher, then suddenly I was in a ravine that had been invisible from below. Shifting gear I stalled trying to climb out. Looking down the hill, however, I wasn’t unimpressed with how far I’d got and using my jacket as a marker I rode the bike back and handed it over to Julian.
He beat me, the bastard. I put it down to knowledge accrued while watching me, of course, but patted him on the back anyway. Claudio went next; his strategy was to follow Charley’s advice about always going after the virgins…I mean virgin ground. Off he went, a bus ride from any recognisable line and stalled the bike close to the ravine. He rolled a good distance backwards thus missing both Julian’s and my marker.
Then it was Charley. After pretending to be nervous he roared off, taking a totally different line from anyone else. He rattled up the hill beyond the twin green water towers we’d been using as a marker, then on and on until he was at the very top. For a moment I thought he was going for the next hill as well, but, fist in the air, he wheeled the bike around.
Dai was watching with a sour grin on his face. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Follow that then, shall I?’
CHARLEY: Seventy miles from the South African border Ewan got a puncture. We were riding along having a laugh about Betty’s Hill when his bike started to fishtail. Looking down we saw the rear tyre was almost flat. There was a big hole right on the edge, big enough to require most of a tube of glue and two plugs. We weren’t sure if it would hold but got it pumped up and made it to the border. Our last crossing on two wheels – I couldn’t quite believe it.
The immigration office was next to a covered bridge that looked like something from Sleepy Hollow. We had our passports stamped for the final time, shook hands and got back on the bikes. ‘You all set, Ewan?’ I called.
He nodded. ‘Are you?’
‘I suppose.’
‘The last leg, Charley.’
I was grinning now. ‘Only until the next time.’
I pulled my last border wheelie, the biggest of the trip so far. The wheel came down sideways, wobbled a bit but I held it. Then we were in South Africa and the next stop was the lodge and Ollie, Doone and Kinvara. Yeehaw!
Apart from dying to see them I had no idea what I was feeling. We would have covered almost fifteen thousand miles by the time we finished, a convoy of riders following us into Cape Town. I’d miss my bike, my tent, my sleeping bag. I’d miss the African skies and talking to all my family on the phone while watching the most wonderful sunsets. I’d miss riding with Ewan. It had been three years since we’d rode the first time; would it be another three until we set off again? I’d get withdrawal symptoms, I knew I would, just like the last time. I’d wake up and expect to see Ewan, only it would be Ollie beside me.
That night we stayed at a small motel where we were the only guests apart from this one guy who’d been there a week. I think he got a bit of a shock when he came in and there we were lounging around in motorcycle gear. We got chatting and discovered he worked in adult education, training the teachers who taught the adults in the poorer areas of the Western Cape. He told us that much had changed in South Africa since the days of
apartheid but even now there were still pockets of racism. The real divide between the people, however, was economic.
He couldn’t quite believe that we’d ridden all the way through Africa. He said that many South Africans didn’t travel the continent. They’d been told – taught even in some cases – that Africa really was a dark continent full of violence and murder. It was the same story we’d heard from the scaremongers back in Britain. Apparently when South Africans went on holiday it was usually to Europe or America, rarely their own continent. It’s crazy the things people are told, and it was driven home a little later when we were stopped by the Western Cape traffic police and they said the same thing. The truth is, all that is bullshit. Africa’s no Mecca for machete wielding mercenaries, it’s a continent full of people who just want normal everyday things like a home and somewhere for their children to go to school. In all the time I’d been here I’d not felt threatened once. I realised then how lucky Ewan and I had been to stumble into Russ and Dave; they’d put this whole thing together and because of that we were allowed to ride across Africa and hopefully we’d learned something along the way.
We were up before it got light. It was winter now, and cold. Rain had been forecast and we had three hundred and forty miles to go. Ewan told me he didn’t want the trip to end. He told me he’d miss his boots, the big off-roaders he’d worn the long way down. He’d miss hunting down a campsite and lighting a fire. He’d miss geep and elephants, and camels on the road.
He was concerned about his back tyre, though. The plugs had held so far but now we were in civilisation he thought he ought to get the tyre patched from the inside. We filled up with petrol and the guy serving told us there was a tyre place just up the road. Ewan went ahead while I filled mine and Claudio’s bikes.
Long Way Down Page 31