I Love Heat. South Africa in 16 days on a motorcycle

I love heat, I really do. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's clear – I love light as well, the light of the bright summer sun. African light, it would seem, shines so brightly that it lights you on the inside as well, so you almost hover with joy on the frequency of this unique wave. We also get light and heat; but our “heat” especially the sticky southern heat induces a melancholy state which makes you question the path you have taken. African heat doesn’t stick the shirt to your back; you move through it easily and quickly.

40% of women in South Africa will be raped by the end of their life. A quarter of men on a sample of a hundred thousand participated in rape. Life isn’t valued too highly either: there are 34 murders per 100,000 people. So what is the first thing you think of when going to Africa: lions, Apartheid, Bartolomeu Dias, Tarzan? Or are you thinking about how to stay alive?

I’m walking through the streets of lovely Cape Town. South Africa, all things considered, is a “first world” country. Moving away a few blocks, the nostrils are attacked by the strong smell of urine which does not subside until you’re back in the city centre. I had just come out of the District Six museum. It tells the harrowing story of the suffering of black people under the Apartheid. We will come back to this subject at least once at a later point. The museum is a memory of a whole neighbourhood: District Six. It was home to black and coloured immigrants up until the mid-60s, when the government decreed that District Six would become a “whites only” residential area. The neighbourhood was demolished in a very short time and the black population was moved to the outskirts – townships, favelas, where they lived in cobbled shack on the other side of human dignity.

The museum is located in a part of the city where the smell of urine makes your nose twitch. As I am walking towards the centre a young white man approaches me. I had noticed him earlier, wandering barefoot in his tattered clothes, occasionally tripping over his trouser legs, and shouting incomprehensibly at drivers, pedestrians, everyone. A heavy sour smell follows him like an aura. He starts saying something about a theatre and as we were passing by a supermarket he says: “Hey, buy me some food, I’m starving. I’m a mechanic, you know, but my father wanted to kill me…” His thoughts trailed off. We go into the store. He starts frantically piling boxes of cookies, corn flakes, muesli, he can’t carry all the bulky boxes so he’s stacking them at the register. He goes for more. I keep calm but tense in this madness. The black cashier lady understands the situation and tells him: “You have enough. What are you going to do with all this muesli? Stop taking advantage of this kind man…” Before she could finish the sentence, he leapt to the register and started banging on the counter with his fists: “That’s mine! That’s mine, I’ll kill you, bitch…” This unexpected torrent of violence completely shocked me. Without thinking -, and hopefully inconspicuously – not to escalate the situation, I drew closer to the cashier. Another woman in this small shop, who wasn’t on the front line, already had a phone next to hear ear and was speaking to someone. And what did the cashier do? As the man wouldn’t stop screaming and taking things off the counter, she shouted back at him: “You think I’m afraid of you, you dirty shit!? Do you really think that I’m afraid of you…?” After that things got quiet, the crisis over.

Wine Road

James B. is a descendant of very wealthy immigrants “of British extract”, as they say here. The area around Cape Town was first settled by the Dutch in the 17th century. The Dutch East India Co. desperately needed a port for restocking ships on their way to the East Indies, modern Indonesia, where the Dutch traded spices. The round trip lasted a year. The natural port in the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope, in the dangerous seas of the Indian Ocean and the Southern Atlantic grew quickly from a food and water restocking station into a port town and eventually into modern Cape Town.

That is how the Dutch started colonizing South Africa. Naturally, it was at the expense of the African tribes that they encountered here: Zulu, Xhosa, Bantu. The perpetual fight for survival and harsh weather conditions made the descendants of these first settlers into hard and ruthless people. They were mostly farmers, peasants and that is how they got their name, after the Dutch word boer meaning farmer. They were as ruthless as the native tribes, for both waged a war for survival for several centuries. These farmers essentially became a new African tribe with simple ethical principles rooted in the simple formula “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Then, one day at the end of the 18th century, the British Navy appeared and invaded Cape Town, renaming the mostly undefined area into Cape Colony. The Dutch and the early settlers who had abandoned the Cape and settled north of the Cape of Good Hope started calling themselves Boers. They waged two bloody wars against the British, the last one being at the start of the 20th century.

Today, the white population can be separated in two groups: the distinction between the Boers and the English has been replaced by the term Afrikaner, some of which speak Afrikaans (a form of Old Dutch) and others who speak English. In fact, there are 11 official languages in South Africa.

James B.! His family owns the Hartenberg Estate, a 200 acre winery with its own vineyards established in 1625, not as a winery, but as a farm north of Cape Town.

Hartenberg Estate is located on a wine road only and hour’s drive from Cape Town. I punched in the address, Bottlery Rd., into the nav system and set off for a lunch and wine tasting scheduled at noon. There was almost no traffic on that Thursday morning, especially as I moved away from the city, so the boring ride gave me a chance to observe the fenced off townships along the side of the road. South Africa is a land of fences. There are all kinds but the most frequent ones are wire and electrified, or tall and spiked.

Something wasn’t right! After a turn the road became narrower and littered with trash. Along the road are shacks built form whatever was lying around. I had entered a township. I had learned with time that the navigation system is always correct, even though it may not seem that way, so I slow down, but continue along the route. Local advice on how to keep your head on your shoulders comes down to two tips: Don’t go walking after sunset. You never enter a township! After a few bends I come to a cul-de-sac with a sign saying “Bottlery Road”. I hadn’t changed the name of the town when configuring the navigation, so it led me straight here. There are locals sitting on doorsteps of their shacks, on the ground, in the street, everywhere, and they’re all watching me with evident interest. This time no one waves at me or exchanges a pleasantry. Nothing happened and I sped off the way I came. But the suspense almost killed me.

Hartenberg wines are fantastic. Just as I was struggling to describe the sensational 2005 Shiraz, James defined its taste as “peppery and fruity”, and that was spot on…

I had noticed a racial particularity: all South African white people are HUGE! They’re at least two sizes bigger than us; similar to the Scandinavians. It’s an evident evolutionary adaptation to life in a land where even the kittens are bigger, and a good portion of them grow up to be leopards and lions.

The next day we gathered in the summer house of the family on the shores of the Indian Ocean for a braai, or barbecue. While we were enjoying our marinated chicken, the rocks along the shore were covered with penguins catching the sun. Sea lions feed off penguins, and orcas and great white sharks feed of sea lions. The group was goading me into taking a swim, claiming that no Brown was ever eaten by a great white, even though this house has been here for the past 120 years. My trunks stayed dry, however, as the sea temperature was only 16°C.

 

The Cape of Good Hope, which was first sailed around by Bartolomeu Dias, lies only 10km away from my lovely friends’ summer house in the national park.

Saturdays are reserved for visiting the market in the Old Biscuit Factory. Like all markets, the smells, colors and tastes are overwhelming. The locals also visit the market on Saturdays because the vendors prepare their own meals so lunch is prepared in no time and it’s fairly cheap:

Apartheid officially ended in the beginning of the nineties. But on the flatbeds of trucks and pickups speeding around the city there are only black people being carted from one job to the next. White people are seen only in cars, and occasionally on bikes. In this amazing food fair, and later in a fish restaurant with a bar and an excellent singer, all the people dancing and eating were white. I saw only one black couple. There is one other thing concerning the music in the bar: the white guy was standing with a guitar and microphone and pretending to play and singing. In other words, he was doing absolutely nothing but acting as though he was involved. Everything was in the hands of the talented female black singer. I still haven’t understood what exactly the deal was here and whether it has anything to do with times past. However, it is difficult to answer whether there is still Apartheid in South Africa with a definitive “no”. The money is still in the hands of the white population.

It took me a whole day to traverse these few bends as they appear on the map. I am driving through a whole different part of South Africa which has absolutely nothing in common with Cape Town, not even the language. The people here speak Afrikaans, a bastardized and adapted version of Dutch spoken by the Boers, i.e. the first white colonizers of these parts. Faced with the British invasion, the Boers had withdrawn to the inland where they lived in isolation caused by inaccessible terrain and large distances. Though they claimed to be “bringers of light”, their hearts were filled with darkness. They fueled their arrogant, full-blooded, xenophobic worldview with Old Testament ruthlessness and mysticism of their Christian mission on the Dark Continent. They had heard of the American Revolution, Rousseau, the Jacobin Doctrine, the Enlightenment, how could they not? But they didn’t like what they had heard. They would start calling themselves doppers after the candle snuffer, because they were against the light in Enlightenment. And that was the start of the dark Apartheid republic.

With these heavy thoughts on my mind I almost sped past Ronnies Sex Shop located on Route 62, the South African version of “Route 66”. It’s an old road through the mountains which was replaced by a highway. The atmosphere here is completely different:

The girls who had left their souvenirs are long gone, but Ronnie tells me I’m not the first Croat on a bike to pass through here. There were others before me, he doesn’t remember when. There weren’t many of them but they surely left their mark, he says.

So I left one too!

Tomorrow I am heading to Port Elizabeth, but first I need to take a dirt road over the mountains.

Mechiel L., an Afrikaans biker from Pretoria, called me yesterday, just as the sun was setting and the journey was coming to an end, to tell me that there is an apartment waiting for me in Mossel Bay, with instructions for getting the keys etc. and that I don’t need to look for a hotel. A very kind gesture. With the coordinates punched into the GPS I immediately found the apartment in a skyscraper facing the Indian Ocean. After five minutes of fiddling around with the automatic gate of the whole gated estate (electricity!), I found myself in a huge, luxurious apartment the size of a small school. I was welcomed by the pictures from the TV, and later a phone call. I tried to, even forced myself, to try to enjoy it, but I somehow couldn’t manage it by myself.

Andile Mngxitama, a member of the SA Parliament and “commissar” of the Land and Agricultural Revolution for the Economic Freedom Fighters stated that 40,000 white families own 80% of South African land. South Africa has a population of 53 million. Things aren’t any better in the rest of the world where eight billionaires own as much wealth as three and a half billion poorest people. Take for example George, a small town in the foothills of the mountains I was about to cross, where everything is fenced off. Even in the town centre all of the nice white, of course, residential buildings, private houses, modern neighbourhoods, are fenced off.  Even the hospital, the school and the church are behind a fence. Just like the fences being raised in Europe to fend off immigrants, they only serve to buy some time. In a true clash, they will fall themselves when millions come and stand before them.

A township, one of countless along the Garden Route where all of the resorts and natural beauty is located. A beach on the Indian Ocean not far from Port Elizabeth. 

I got off the asphalt and dived into the African wilderness. I was first accosted by a grumpy baboon, but he disappeared in the bush before I could think of what to do. He appeared again, but I was already speeding off so I snapped him form a safe distance.

Today I traversed 100 km along dusty mountain roads, winding between huge farms and wildlife reserves. Some farms are so large you can spend hours driving along their fence.

After that, the rest of the day and about 600 km were spent riding through Karoo, semi-desert where the road is so straight and your vision unobstructed that it seems you would be able to see tomorrow coming.

Is there a tomorrow? Isn’t the future merely a human fantasy which we are so caught up in that we don’t even know how to think differently? We are not heading towards it, nor is it coming towards us. Is it an “objective” fact, or is it “subjective”? Do we think that the future exists simply because the sun rises the next morning? What does this indifferent astronomical event have to do with us anyway? As if the sun didn’t rise before man walked the Earth. So, what’s the deal? Future, possibly, doesn’t exist. What about the past? Should we believe psychoanalysts who claim that the past lives within us and governs our present? What are we then? Are we the type who experts say should start living in the Now (“Carpe Diem”). Because who lives for the future lets his life slip by and the present is such and such because it cannot be any other way. A better piece of advice may be – Stop dreaming! But what kind of life would we have in the Now without dreams. It’s a huge mess…

And maybe I’m just intoxicated by the lack of oxygen. Here is the situation: here in the east of South Africa the sun is already high in the sky at 6 a.m. Sleeping is over, I quickly pack up and get on my bike. Today’s trip leads me towards the Drakensberg mountain chain, and the final destination is supposed to be the town of Underberg, located next to the border with the Kingdom State of Lesotho, about 700km away from Craddock.

The GS (my bike) is eating away at the kilometres. We are driving on an excellent road, maintaining a constant speed between 120 and 140km/h. The African savannah and blue mountains in the distance. We occasionally happen upon a town or a village with shacks dotted about without any rhyme or reason. Cattle, antelope in reserves, huge mounds, hundreds and thousands of them being dug by funny little meerkats. In Africa, you are never alone on the road. Africa walks the roads, partly because of poor public transit and partly because people can’t afford transportation. So occasionally I stop and photograph the faces of walkers and hitch-hikers.

I’d take someone with me, but that person would have to sit on my bag making them stick out 2 feet above my head, which could make the ride very dangerous.

I take a turn. The asphalt stops and the navigation says there is still 90km to Rhodes, one of the stops on my journey. All right, let’s go, I hadn’t counted on this after yesterday’s long ride on dirt roads. If you are not skilled (and young!), off road can be a hard ordeal. From time to time you get the feeling that the ground, the bike and you on it live co-dependent lives that are mostly synchronized. But sometimes the bike will go along on its own way after being fooled by a change in the surface which can become soft, sandy, muddy, can contain huge rocks, loose fine gravel or can become submerged. You start to lose your balance and the dread that constantly permeates you turns into a wild fear of falling. In other words, off-roading, even in semi-demanding conditions, is manageable for half an hour without getting hit by a psycho-organic syndrome. Anything longer than that and I turn into a survival machine. There is no enjoyment in it, it’s just you, coming up for air whenever there is a chance to do so.

It’s past 1 pm… There isn’t a soul on the road, only fantastic sights upwards from the lowlands, or down from the high ground; or is it plains, so it’s the savannah, everything as it is on the asphalt, except:  “Oh man, I’m done!” A horseman. A black cowboy. He speaks only Afrikaans. We are in the Kwa-Zulu province. Except for the whites, nobody here speaks English.

I had only hoped for a word of encouragement, “you can do it man, there is so little to go”, it’s in that quadrant right there. Because I can see it all anyway in the nav screen in front of me. I know exactly, within a meter, how long it’s going to take if I stay in the saddle. So I keep going and finally – Rhodes.

This town retained a spirit of the past because of the original principles of the Afrikaners who inhabit it (Here we go again). What I didn’t know, and I could have found out if I had done some research, is that the people in Rhodes, and much of its surrounding area consisting of the Drakensberg mountain chain, do not believe that asphalt in any way enhances everyday life. Rhodes is a town build on 18th century dust and has remained the same to this day.

But, after killing myself for two and a half hours to get here, the thing that would psychologically change me was the fact that whatever direction you go in, there is a three and a half hour off road ride and there are at least four mountain passes to cross. “Spend the night here, what do you care?” the white giant from the bar tells me, after seeing the emptiness in my eyes. “People pay money to get here on their endurance bikes and Jeeps.” Oh God, it’s only 3 p.m. What am I supposed to do here? Nothing, I’m going on. The giant saw me out without interest and – I’m in the dust again. An addendum to this episode: When I asked where the toilet was, he told the waitress something in Afrikaans, after which she disappeared and a moment later waved me over showing me the door. She put a box on the floor, so that I, a European midget, could take a leak. If I had stayed in that bar one trip to the toilet longer, my ego would have been scarred for life.

We are going uphill and the GS (the famous BMW trademark, loved by all adventure aficionados, myself included) is hopping like a mountain goat. I had long since turned off traction control and the ABS because there was a serious burning smell coming from the wheels. Before the back wheel jerks me forward, first it skids on the surface, raises a dust cloud, and then bites into the road catapulting me forwards. This happens a hundred times a minute. Going downhill is a different story. You put it into third, maybe even fourth gear, but you’re going too fast, there is a bend down there. With every touch of the break, the GS starts its dance which you can’t follow and – I’m falliiiiing, nope – I got through it.

I do not have an answer to the question what would happen if I crashed the bike or myself. And it haunts me, the fear of falling and fear of oneself. There’s not a fucking soul here. Every now and again I would come across a herd which would treat me like the sun treats human dilemmas such as whether or not there is a future. There’s no phone signal as well, naturally.

An hour passed. We crossed at least three or four mountain creeks.

I’m in for another two and a half hours of toil and enjoyment, at the same time. I’m thinking to myself, as we hop along, that it wasn’t so bad. I could go twice as long, I suppose. The sun is still high and the night is far! But as I stopped to take a photo of another beautiful sight I feel my hands trembling. Fucking off road.

My father in law used to say “Be afraid of the fox, be afraid of the wolf, and you will never go into the forest.” And that’s exactly it. The academic variant of this maxim would be “Audaces fortuna iuvant”. AS it turns out, only a few GS hops further a sign appeared: “Tenahead – The highest mountain hotel in South Africa – 1 kilometre to go.”

We reached 2500 meters above sea level.

We were quickly and deftly accommodated, especially as my tremor presented itself just as the housekeeper appeared in the doorway, hearing the pretentious rumbling of my GS. “Is everything all right, Sir?” he said after his previous question uttered in Afrikaans went unanswered. I’m in heaven, tomorrow’s two and a half hour trip causes no tremors so far. Well, some did manifest themselves upon hearing that it’s going to rain.

There was no rain that morning, and there wouldn’t be any while I was making my way to the asphalt.

All those hundreds of dusty kilometres have emboldened me, so fear gave way to arrogance. I’m going faster than I should, so an hour after setting off I ended up in some bushes by the road. No damage!

European toponyms like Underberg, which is the name of a small town beneath the Drakensberg Massive, may sound quite strange to someone travelling through such non-European scenery. Or the name Little Switzerland? It also denotes a deep nostalgic yearning of the settlers. Even though they caused much suffering to the natives, they themselves were not spared suffering. Not many people moved here on a whim.

The way to Clarens goes through the town of Howick in the Kwa-Zulu-Natal region where Nelson Mandela was last a free man in 1962. In the place where he was arrested and thrown into prison for 27 years there is a phenomenal monument made out of metal bars. His portrait appears only if you stand in the right place.

Nelson Mandela was Ubuntu. To be Ubuntu and to do Ubuntu is an important concept in the collective psychologies of the Zulu, Xhosa and other peoples. It is hard to capture the true meaning of this stance, or rather state. Ubuntu means empathy and kindness towards another human being. To be humane also means Ubuntu.

27 years of imprisonment on Robben Island near Cape Town, where he was isolated from his family, friends and people by a double fence (one made of wire and the other an ocean) never filled Mandela with a need to take revenge or to settle the score when he took power in 1994.  On the contrary, the whites will remember him as an Ubuntu president, just and kind. Mandela was imprisoned as a young man, while both he and the Apartheid were in full force and he was freed when the foundations of those politics started shaking, and he had grown old. He raised his voice against that monstrous regime which by political decree took away the right to a dignified life from one race and gave the other all the rights, enforcing this policy with unrelenting ruthlessness. As the victor he could have, of course, punished and humiliated his and his peoples’ tormentors, taking revenge on them. Instead, he categorically excluded any possibility of revenge by amending the Preamble of the Constitution of South Africa with the words: “We, the people of South Africa; Recognize the injustices of our past; Honor those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.”

The museum of Apartheid in Johannesburg tells a shocking story of monsters and their victims, of the banality of evil and of everything that happens time and again through history and – nothing. It’s as if we are constantly starting over. I feel Bertrand Russel was right when he said, sometime in the fifties, that we humans deserve nothing better than to be wiped out from the face of the Earth (nuclear bombs were a big topic at the time), if thousands of years of civilization lead us no further than the Ku Klux Klan and fascism.

Sorry for this digression, but I was seriously shaken by the experience at the museum.

A photo from the museum.

The rain came down in a torrent. While I was spending hours looking at the exhibition, an Ubuntu security guy ran to my bike, covered my bag in plastic and took my helmet to his guard station so it doesn’t get wet. When I furiously spread my hands thinking that someone had stolen my helmet because I couldn’t be bothered to carry it with me (despite the warnings), the security guy ran over to me and explained the situation. I gave him a tip, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that us Europeans, and us Americans (not so sure about the latter) tend to tense up whenever a poorly dressed stranger approaches us with the words “Hello, my friend.” Trapped in our individualistic states we cannot accept the naiveté of the Ubuntu philosophy where kindness has its own purpose. The first thing we think about when we hear “Hello, my friend” is – what does this guy want, money? Is he going to slit my throat? And after you’ve seen through him, you mumble “fuck off”, actively with words or internally, pretending you can’t see or hear him and as if he didn’t exist, he despondently gives up. Of course he will come up to you if he thinks that he can get a dollar or two. Is there anything wrong with that? You have money, he doesn’t, where’s the problem?

I’m going to Pretoria for a braai. Braai is a barbecue, and they celebrate this food the same as we do. In fact, I’m sleeping over in Pretoria at a friend’s house, an Afrikaner with a Boer pedigree. Summer showers. I have no protection. I didn’t bring any thinking I was going to Africa! I love heat! I’m completely soaked. Still, in this traffic mayhem from Johannesburg to Pretoria, on a terrible highway only 50 kilometres long, I’m driving behind a truck carrying black workers who have no protection whatsoever. Probably workers from some farm. Therefore, they are obviously wet as well. In the forefront is a Jaguar driven by a white man. The black guys are wet and so am I. There is a huge difference between us: this is their life yet I’m wet because I can afford the whim.

My Afrikaner friends tell me that the social scene in South Africa changed in the last twenty years. They are all very successful at what they do but they claim that the middle class has disappeared. There are only two classes remaining: the rich class and the poor class. By losing their privileges, many whites also lost their status. The day after the braai I saw a white panhandler at some intersection. In the suburbs of Pretoria! Wynand R. explains to me that when the government changed, some people left civil service, took the offered severance packages, and failed as businessmen. Black Economic Empowerment is a regulation that states those companies who are competing for government jobs need to have at least 25% black ownership, without it they are immediately disqualified, says Mechiel L. Of course, there are many ways in which these black people can get rich without working, because their asset is the colour of their skin.

Pictured: a cheerful braai:

Nicholas M. is a descendant of the first settlers who came with the Dutch East India Co. in the 17th century. He owns a small diner on a sleepy road in the Northwest of the country. He says that whites cannot rely on a job in civil service because of the pressure of unemployed black workers. They can’t even hope for franchising deals for businesses such as gas stations. The ones that were given out previously have remained but the whites can’t rely on new ones. He considers himself a non-racist because he says hello to everyone and is on good terms with everyone – the colored and the blacks. He feels that the situation is not good because the blacks don’t know how to run the country, that corruption is overwhelming, that not enough money is being invested for the common good, that the roads are in poor condition (which was true in the case of that town not far from my daily destination Kimberly) and that there is a lot of crime. He claims that during the white rule there was less crime and violence.

Pictured: Nicholas Meyer giving advice on a map as how to move forwards.

Pretoria, actually a very well kept city, got its name after one of the voortrekers, Andries

Pretorius. The Voortrekers are first settlers, farmers, i.e. the Boers who withdrew to the inland in the face of the British. It was an incredibly brave endeavour, as only the strongest survived the conquest and colonization of inland South Africa. I traversed the whole way by bike through the mountains, plains, the Karoo. And it was not easy. The first settlers were constantly under attack, especially from the Zulu warriors, and the battles were ruthless. Not to mention wild animals. I had a painfully rough experience going over the mountains on my GS over relatively decent roads. I can’t imagine what it would be like to take this same trip with an ox cart and no roads at all.

To commemorate this unique Voortreker settling endeavour a grandiose monument was erected in Pretoria in the 1930s. A holiday was introduced on December 16th as Day of the Vow celebrating the 1836 battle in which 400 Voortrekers heading north waged a victory over 10,000 Zulus, 3,000 of which had been killed. The battle was fought by a river named Blood River, as it was painted red by the blood of the Zulus. The Voortrekers took a vow to always celebrate that day. The newly formed government of 1994 kept the holiday and the date, but renamed it to Day of Reconciliation. Each race celebrates in its own way: The blacks because it celebrates their strength through tolerance, and the white by keeping its tradition. Is that not Ubuntu?

Pictured: With my South African friend of Boer heritage, in front of the monument.

The reliefs in the mausoleum minutely describe the flow of the battle, the ruthlessness of the Zulu, and the courage and suffering of the Boers.

I continue onwards. Northwest South Africa is a sprawling plain in which the road disappears in a mirage on this hot day.

In some town on the way I stopped to document that dead black reside in no worse conditions than the live ones in shacks. 

Kimberley is a town built in the mid19th century after word spread that a diamond was found here. This caused a stampede of thousands of people hoping to make a quick buck. Diggers from all over the world arrived in Cape Town where they would get off the ships, walk 1000km through rough terrain with very scarce water supply, to arrive at the wasteland that would later become Kimberly and start digging. This is how the Big Hole was created. The Big Hole was only a small hill at first. Thousands of diggers levelled the hill and started digging down until they dug a hole 250m deep and 400m wide. Subterranean waters flooded the mine and the owners, the De Beers family, decided to conserve the state and preserve the location for the future. The digging was continued in other locations.

This colourful journey is nearing its end. I closed the South African loop in two jumps, by travelling from Kimberly to Sutherland (650km), and then the next day from Sutherland to Fransshoek (350km), the capital of wine country located 100km north of the Cape and where I’m writing this. It’s pouring with rain outside, a deluge! I got under the roof just in time. As is about to be seen, next time I’m travelling to Africa, I’m taking an umbrella.
South of Kimberly we enter the Karoo, a vast area with low brush, an occasional hill and a desolate road which takes you straight south without even a single bend. The road is good, I’m going fast. I want to leave enough time to travel the final 200km to Sutherland on a dirt road, off-road style, as there is no asphalt to that place. There is no fuel either, because there are no towns. Only a farm here and there, but you can’t rely on those if you are in need as many have been abandoned.

The road is mostly good. It’s been washed away by the rain in certain places, but with some focus I am able to maintain speeds between 50 and 80km/h. Now what? My headlight has come off! It’s hanging by the cable and is banging on the shock absorber. The truss that supports it is broken. What about that legendary BMW quality? I can’t fix anything. If I see tools or bolts, I just turn my head away, they make me anxious. If I can’t tape it together I call a mechanic. I always carry some duct tape in one of the bags on my bike, and it’s proven to be an ideal tool time and time again. But this time I don’t have any so I continue slowly, the headlight hanging limply on the side like a dead fish. I’m going forwards because I didn’t feel like backtracking 10km to the town I stopped at to refuel. Every conquered kilometer of this road is a victory, so it’s psychologically impossible to start the journey again with the road having a +10 lead on me. There is a grove in the distance. It’s a certain sign of human intervention, so there must be a farm there. Here’s hoping it isn’t abandoned.

A mother and a daughter. The mother is a teacher in the town (+10). They gave me some duct tape, I fixed the headlight, asked them if they needed anything repaired, had coffee and went on my way. Life is good here, they say. They feel safe. They don’t lock their doors, they have no problems with blacks, of which there are hardly any there, mostly coloured. They complain about the policy that rewards every black or coloured newborn with 300 rand (around $20). To the poor that is a lot of money so the birth rate has exploded. This only adds circles to the spiral of poverty and the number of shacks in townships is ever growing.

It’s become overcast in the meantime. In front of me there is a backdrop of a heavy leaden sky in front of which wispy white clouds are cheerfully zipping along. When you see a sky like this at sea, you tie everything up and rush for cover, if you can. In the Karoo it rains a few time a year in the spring. But in the summer… Already there’s a deep roaring sound of thunder in the distance. Spears and arrows of lightning now cover the horizon. It’s dark as if the light was suddenly dimmed. With fear and trepidation I stopped for a bit to tighten the equipment, zipped up my jacket, put my phone inside my suit, closed the visor and uneasily carried on. I don’t think I would have taken cover beneath a tree, even if there had been one. But I would have liked the privilege to make that decision on my own. Instead, a desert as far as the eye can see. While I’m being pounded by the rain, I’m thinking about the Faraday cage. Does it work for bikers or is it only a guarantee for people in cars and planes? Antelopes scared by the thunder, big as calves, are running alongside me in the same direction. No chance to take a photo as the storm is in full swing, I can barely stay in my seat. I’m going maybe 10-20km/h, and the distance to Sutherland has been a steady 60km for the past half hour. And the road? It’s turned into a reddish yellow creek, sometimes a torrent. I’m using both of my feet, now off the footrests, to balance in this mud covered road. The water gullies and mud piles are constantly trying to throw me into the muck.

I should have stayed at the farm! But should I? After parking my bike in the yard, I went for the house. Without the engine running a thick noiseless cover settled on me. Heat. Haze. The air is still. Not a sound comes from the farm house. Complete and deep silence interrupted only by birds’ occasional squawks from the grove. A continuous hum of crickets around me. Is the place abandoned? Then without interrupting this soundless world, barefoot, in a tee shirt and shorts, a beautiful young woman appeared on a patio. We exchange smiles: “Hi, I apologize for intruding but was wondering would you possibly have some duct tape … My head lamp, you know…” And she comes barefoot with me to the bike. As she said: “I think we might have something…”, there’s another woman on the patio… “That’s my mother”, the barefoot blond said to me. The mother is barefoot too. I quickly introduced myself, and by some magic that lives in the unusual encounters in the desert, we are close. Or was it all in my imagination? I weakly tried to resist the invitation to come to the house excusing myself with dirt and dust that I have been covered with. But, actually, I wanted to go inside.

“So you are doing the whole South African loop? How interesting. And all by yourself! That’s brave! Hungry? We have just finished our dinner.”

I thanked her politely, and although hungry (as a matter of fact hunger and insatiability has been an ever present sensation that I’ve been fighting all my life) I said to her that I never ate while driving because that does this and that which effect my riding … Some stupid and confused excuse…

Coffee and biscuits are on the table. We chat about life in the desert. Mother says she feels quite safe; barefoot daughter opposes her by telling me that farmers get killed every day. “We are all connected through Whatsapp groups and our short wave radio is constantly on. So we do know what is going on. I really want to leave this place…”, she says. From a small, windowless adjacent room came radio chatter as if you were in a police car.

“You can stay overnight, if you want. The weather is deteriorating, you know. There might be some rain along the way.” Is it the same magic, I don’t know, but I’ve been expecting this question from the moment I entered the house.

Was it just kindness being exchanged with a traveller or was it accompanied by some cloud of hope? I can’t tell but – whatever it is - I think it all began with the nonchalant manner the barefoot mother asked me into the house. There I stood all dusty, yellowish with crusted dirt on my heavy gear wearing boots… “I can’t possibly enter the house like that”, I say to which the mother just beautifully smiles and showed me in.

“That’s a very kind offer. I can’t stay. Must continue for I am returning the bike on Thursday and there’s still a long way to go.” Our eyes are locked; We look at each other for a immeasurably tiny fraction of time just too long. But I leave...

So here I am now, hopeless, fearing that this storm and the red torrent of dirt are the last memories from this world before the lightning struck me or before I brake my neck.

My optimism is modestly fuelled by a single patch of lighter sky in the west, and I’m keeping my eye on it the whole time. So: road, patch, road, patch…. The patch is becoming brighter, then it’s expanding, further and further. My salvation is on the other side of that patch. I’m also waiting for the wind to change direction because that would mean that the storm has passed over me and that I’m entering an area of different, safe pressure.

Two hours later, at sunset, I enter Sutherland. This town was built around a single street and is virtually the same as the towns in America. People come here for the astronomical observatory and the giant telescope which has great vision of the sky because of the dry climate with minimal noise. Yesterday’s plan of watching the stars was cancelled, as the observatory was closed because of the storm.

In the morning I continue towards Fransshoek. The ride takes me through the Karoo which is now bathed in sunshine and Mathijsfontein, a miniature town consisting of a few houses, a post-office, a bank and a hotel, in the middle of the desert.

The mountains in front of me, the ones just north of Cape Town, are covered in clouds again. It is going to rain. I tighten everything up, clench my teeth and continue on. There is 80km of excellent road to Fransshoek. In the cottage arranged for me by my friends, I found two bottles of an exquisite pinotage. I thought to treat myself on this last day of my bike journey with a wine tasting in one of the countless wineries in the vicinity, but I give it up. The rain is pouring down. I stay in my cottage, next to the fireplace, and have a private wine tasting. There is only 150km left to Cape Town tomorrow.

This is the trip statistics logged by the navigation computer

Total km travelled:                    4,612.5

Max Speed km/h:                            167

Average Speed km/h:                        59

Time travelled (hours):                57:54

Sunrise at:                                      5:56

Sunset at:                                     19:54

Returning the bike to the Bike shop will take some time, because it has some scars. We travelled through all kinds of terrain, a lot happened, and the bike proved to be outstanding. I hope they won’t split hairs but I know I would. Maybe they are better people.

A few general pieces of information on the prices: SA has a VAT rate of 14%, so everything is at least 11% (if the import value is the same) cheaper than in Croatia. The price of unqualified labour in incomparably lower than here. A black servant working in a family has a salary of 160 $ (food and accommodation included). Successful whites have several such assistants. They don’t work on Sundays. They get 3 weeks paid vacation time. The employer does not cover any health or retirement insurance. A younger waiter in a hotel has a salary of around 220$ (3,500 rand). Because of all of this, the prices are 20 – 25% lower, except for the wine which is cheaper both in stores and in bars/restaurants 80-100%. Wines are excellent, couldn’t be better, and the amount of different wines on offer warrants a Bachelor’s degree.

And that’s it. 

As a foot note I can tell you this: Ana and I “celebrated” this New Year’s on Silba (an island off the Croatian coast). An energetic group of women who took over running the island decided to organize parties between Christmas and New Year’s so we went to check it out. On New Year’s Eve it was extremely cold. At 8 p.m. the orchestra on the little square was playing just for us. There wasn’t a soul there, except for the two or three vendors selling fritule and sausages. The music wasn’t doing it for us so we went home and the poor orchestra continued playing to no one in the cold night and the wind that was picking up. I feel that must be the worst feeling for musicians when they play to – no one. This is a time of quantification, not qualification. Therefore, I am extremely pleased that this travel blog has been clicked on, and maybe read by 4000 people in this short time. I sincerely thank you – cheers!