2muppets.com

Updates En-route: 26th February 2008

Posted on February 26th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 09. Niger, 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 26 ^th February 2008

Location: Niamey – Niger.

Distance travelled since last update: 820kms..

Muppets say:  High 30’s. Hot cars, fast girls – welcome to Niamey. No sign of drop tops, linen suits or the Sound Machine though! A rest day in the capital before a charge through to Kano in Nigeria for Dan’s birthday celebrations on the 1^st March.

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Updates En-route: 25th February 2008

Posted on February 25th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 25 ^th February 2008

Location: Goa – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: .

Muppets say: Overnight stop.

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Updates En-route: 23rd February 2008

Posted on February 23rd, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 23rd February 2008

Location: Tombouctou – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 200 kms including dug out canoe crossing !

Muppets say: A pleasant 42 degrees.Cant believe Easyjet do not fly here. It’s a tropical oasis with bar lined streets and vibrant marina. Dan is off with Ulrika getting a foot massage and Kim is preparing my Thai massage table…..if only Carlsberg sponsored Tombouctou !!!

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Updates En-route: 22th February 2008

Posted on February 22nd, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 22 ^th February 2008

Location: Douentza – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 260 kms.

Muppets say: Dehydrated snot Hot!! Taking in a fascinating festival of the Dogon: drums, dancing, random shooting  of blanks from vintage muskets – fantastic! Tomorrow we hit the 200km corrugated trail to Tombouctou. Must remember water this time  J

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Updates En-route: 20th February 2008

Posted on February 20th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 20 ^th February 2008

Location: Djenne’ – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 585 kms.

Muppets say: Hot 35 degrees. Some budget roof top camping alongside the largest mud brick structure in the world – The Djenne’ Mosque. Its getting arid and hot again as we track north east but making good miles.

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Life on the Road 2…

Posted on February 18th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location:

It’s been a bit of time since Jody wrote his “Life on the Road” post, and we thought that an update on our daily routines was in order, to give everybody an idea of the laughs and frustrations that we are experiencing on our journey…

We’ve covered over 7500 kilometres of the predicted 15-20,000 already, so current estimates are already creeping up to the 25,000 km mark. The result of all that mileage is that things are now starting to fall into well established patterns. I’ve finally stopped “losing” my keys (all the while having them hanging from a lanyard around my neck), while Jody seems to at last curtailed his losing streak – a run of “bad luck” that would see him lose; some of our toiletries, his credit card, his new sunglasses, his newly purchased under mattress carpet, a pair of socks, his watch face, and the coup de grace… his wallet containing all his credit cards, his drivers license, all his Senegalese currency, and all his emergency funds drawn in Euros that morning! Fortunately, despite all that he never lost his sense of humour for long, and some of the gibes that we got in about it were priceless!

Riding through what now feels to me to be “Real Africa” continues to be a sensory experience of the best kind. In the preamble on the “An Introduction…” page, I wrote about “subsistence living” and “an African smile”. We’ve seen both in spades, and more often than not it’s the people living in the most basic of conditions that are sporting the biggest smiles! Riding through isolated villages we really worry that we’re intruding in the lives of the people there. The best thing is that most often the opposite is true, we become the attraction to them! To have women and children come out of their homes with beaming smiles, waving, clapping and giving us the “thumbs up!” is such an overwhelming buzz that I get the goosies every time! I feel like a motocross superhero finishing the Dakar! The kick I get when confused faces break into smiles and waving, jumping hospitable greetings is indescribable!

Why don’t I mention the men coming out? Because they’re outside already, chewing the fat under ramshackle lean to’s, and more often than not giving us just as heartfelt a wave!

Of course Jody and I are beaming smiles and waving like madmen back, and I really think that the positive feelings that we have for the place colours our interactions with the people, who respond in such a good way that it reinforces how we feel. Somehow this positive energy even circumvents the language barrier, and personal interactions are full of laughter and fun, even when neither party has any idea of what the other is saying! Let me briefly paraphrase our typical interaction with some locals, please forgive my spelling!

Locals: Bon Jour!
Us: Bon Jour!
Locals: Savais?
Us: Bien Merci ! Savais ?
Locals: babble something incomprehensible to us in French
Me: Pardon, je no comprend pa Francaise
Locals: Englaise?
Us: Oui!
Jody: Afrique Du Sud!
Locals: Ah, Afrique Du Sud ! Bafana Bafana (South African soccer team), Nelson Mandela !!! Followed by hearty handshakes and backslaps all round!
Me: Nouvelle Zealand!
Locals: return blank stare
Me: Noo Vo Ze Land! New Zealand! Nueva Zelandia! (figure I’ll try Spanish!)
Locals: Nigeria?
Me: No! Noo Vo Ze Land! Showing them the New Zealand Kiwi badge on my jacket
Locals: Ahh, Iceland! Gudjohnsen!
Me: Bugger it… Australia!

It hasn’t all been laughs and good times however, and I’d like to emphasise how hard this trip really is – it’s absolutely exhausting. Concentration on the bikes is immense, with every change in road surface being a potential disaster if not monitored closely. Throw in the ubiquitous boys on donkey carts, men on bicycles, men and women on Chinese “Super K” scooters, nutters in old Mercedes 230 and 320 D’s, and even more lethal morons in Toyota pickups, all trying to pass one another at once while avoiding potholes, and you’ve got some idea of how frayed our nerves are at the end of each day riding. Camps and hotels are arrived at hot, sweaty, smelly, and absolutely shattered, knowing we’ve got it all to do again the next day! Thank God the people and places we see make it all worthwhile!

On a trip like this your bike starts talking to you. You hear every nuance of the engine, and worry profusely at any change in the timbre, or mysterious rattles and knocks. We spend vast tracts of time simply staring at the bikes, occasionally venturing a bit closer to inspect some component that we’ve convinced ourselves needed checking. It’s a beautiful thing to so truly deeply love a piece of machinery, and on the multiple daily occasions that one of us says “Man I love my bike!” it’s always met with a knowing nod of approval, or a vigorous “Flat out Bru!” from the other

Recently when Jody’s bike started to backfire badly, progressively getting worse to the point where he needed to ride at very high RPM’s to maintain any power at all, I could see lines of worry etched into his face. I’m very proud of the fella because when we decided to stop, and I went to fetch Cokes, he’d worked out all by himself where the most likely cause of the problem lay. A quick inspection of the bike confirmed he was on the right track – the sparkplug lead had come out slightly! A quick and easy repair job had a very relieved 2muppets back on the road with 2 healthy bikes in no time!

Finally, one thing that Mum always wants to know is what are we eating? Well, lots of meat and chips at this point, and not many veggies… Perhaps unsurprisingly our health has started to deteriorate, and I’m thinking perhaps a trip to the dentist before I left would have been a good idea! I have heard that after Mali beef becomes a lot rarer, and that monkey will start appearing on menus. I’m not sure if this is just a story told to us to scare us, but I’m actually looking forward to some nice simple rice dishes!

I’ll reiterate Jody’s comments and say thank you to everyone posting in the guestbook – keep em coming! If you are reading the site and haven’t said hello hoezit yet, then get off your ass and do it!

Note: Latest pics are in the gallery with more to follow from my camera in a few days.

Cheers,

Dan

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Africa Unfolds…..

Posted on February 18th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

They say that Africa has a heartbeat, for me it became audible as we hit the Senegalese border.

The shift from arid desert to open savanah was immediate, and as dramatic was the change in landscape, too the culture. The Senegalese and Mali people have, to us, opitimized the open hearted, grinning, playful nature of the African people. In all countries that you travel through you are approached by locals, however here you are greeted with a warm handshake and a genuine curiousity in who you are and what you are up to. These conversations almost always end in a fit of laughter and fond farewells. The African trip Dan and I dreamed about has begun to unfold through our goggles, and we are loving it!

As posted previously we took some time off on arrival in Senegal. My folks were only due into Dakar in a few days, and after the sandblasting treatment we received in Mauritania we through it was well deserved. The sea side town of St Louis is home to a famous backpackers hang out called Zebrabar. All manner of overlanders congregate here, and boy were we treated to some interesting folk: a Belgian group were on there way to The Gambia to teach the locals how to build wind mills for power generation, exept they had never built one themselves and were going to source the parts locally?!, an Isle of Man TT sidecar racing lunatic who, after crashing his BMW GS days prior to his trip decided to take a Honda Cub90 (scooter), only to have it set fire beneath him halfway through Mauritania, and a very entertaining pair of german cops overlanding in a huge MAN truck. There definitely is a sense of comraderie that exists amongst overlanders, with bikers (esp. novices like ourselves) getting much appreciated hospitality from the kitted out 4×4 crowd.

After a few chilled days of windsurfing and tanning at Zebrabar we cruised into the bussling Dakar to hook up with the family for some TLC and R&R. Dakar is a bussling mad house but the more time we spent their the more it grew on us, mostly due to the charasmatic Senegalese locals. Whilst the family were with us we we took in a day trip to Gorie Island (a former slave trading station); we serviced the bikes; and generally relaxed and ate like kings! We said our goodbyes on the 9th Feb and Dan & I promptly moved into the lovely but slightly more affordable bungalow alongside the hotel. We spent another 3 days getting the Mali, Nigeria, and Cameroon visas – a delay to our agenda but rather fight beauracracy in pleasant surroundings than at some dodgy border post. We were also treated to a night out in Dakar, consular style – years away from home have tought these boys to make the most of a city….Terry, I know you are reading this, dankie vir die moorse kopseer !!!

On the 13th we packed up, and after collecting the Cameroon visa, made our way out of Dakar – those of you that complain about Jburg traffic live in ignorant bliss, it was one huge computer game dodging people, cars, trucks, goats, potholes, policeman, the works. Around 2 hours later we had made it through to the outskirts and the Senegal I explained earlier began to reappear. As far as the eye could see was flat dry grassland littered with boabab tress, every 20 or so kilometers would be a little mud hut village – each of these villages a picture perfect scene, a women pounding corn, goats resting in the shade of mud huts, kids playing soccer or rolling an old tyre on the dirt pavement, young boys retrieving firewood on donkey carts, and the elder men sitting round a thatch roof gazebo deep in conversation – and through every one of these villages we received fantastic waves and genuine smiles from young to old.

The road from Koalak to Tambacounda was said to get worse with large potholed sections, and it did, just in time for daylight to be fading. The Michelin map indicated accomodation in a small town called Koungheul, so we pressed on only making it into town well after 8pm. By this stage we were extremely weary and in no mood for camping, as we drove up the single street in town things were looking desperate, just road side stalls and tyre repair type shacks, then at the final set of dwellings was a little auberge with airconditioning and a clean (albeit single double) bed. We had a lovely stew in a dimly little eatery making half stilted conversation with 2 local men. In the morning Danno stepped outside to whisper his Valentines sweet nothings to Catherine down the sat phone. At this point I must apologise to all those ladies that sent me the deluge of valentines messages, due to my remote location and commitment issues I did not respond to each personally, but do promise to spread the love when I get back to SA.

The following morning we pushed on through the remaining 130kms of potholes, there is clearly a seperate code of conduct on these sections of road, every man for himself – petrol tankers snaking their way down the road avoiding foot deep holes, with all other traffic simply choosing the next best route. A number of vehicles had fallen victim with upturned trucks and roadside repairs taking place every 15km or so. The border crossing into Mali was an absolute breeze, big smiles and laughs from both sides with the usual “would you like to swop bikes” joke from the locals. 40km into Mali we stopped to pay our respects to a fellow overlanding biker who lost his life on that stretch of road, a boabab tree serving as a tribute from friends and fellow bikers.

Yet another super long day meant we arrived in Kayes after nightfall, and with the help of a policeman and French women were able to find suitable hotel – some of you may be wondering why for tough overland bikers we keep staying in hotels – after 10 hours of dodging pot holes, goats, and deaf old ladies, 10 euros each for a nice shower, soft bed, and ice cold beer on tap is a no brainer….!! The Kayes to Bamako (Mali capital) main route is a huge loop of perfect asphalt, so Dan found a faint little road on the map that cut straight between the 2 cities. We were due some offroad action and felt that we needed to redeem ourselves after the aborted Morocco piste. This decision has been one of the best of the trip to date. The first 100km were pure single track stuff through dry dusty villages, snaking along rivers, crossing sandy fiche fiche sections then open flowing gravel sections. We bought some fuel and food from some locals in a tiny little village and pressed on till late afternoon. The riding and scenery was phenomenal but the temperature was insane, 39 degrees so the weatherman had told on telly the night prior. In that heat you simply cannot get enough liquid into you – Dan and I joked that night as we set up camp and cooked our tuna spag that we had each drunk over 6 litres of liquid since 10am and were still thirsty and in no need to pee anytime soon! Sleeping in the bush listening to the sounds of village music, with moonlight seeping through your tent (sans flysheet) really is special!

As we pushed south through Bafoulabe and Mahina the roads opened up to graded gravel which meant we could open up the throttle and get some of the remaining 220km under our belts. With fast gravel sections comes dust, and lots of it. The new strategy is that each rider gets 10 min out in front of ‘clean air’ then has to drop back to the dust storm….it works extremely well and helps the kms roll by. We stopped for a much need swim in the river by Manantali with the local security guards for the village finding us very amusing. The reason for the security guards is that upstream is a huge dam that is providing hydro-electric power, and by the number of Eskom vans around it is presumably being co-funded/operated by the SA utilities company – if only they could channel some of that power back home ?! (There are rolling power outages in SA for those in the dark, so to speak)

Our offroad escapades came to an end in Kita where we spent the night in some very basic quarters (see gallery), and the following morning we pushed through to Bamako. We have collected our Niger visas today and will be hitting the road tomorror heading north east towards the historic Mali towns of Djenne and Tombouctou. We estimate that we have roughly the same distance as Dakar to Bamako to ride again before we get to the Niger border. Hitting the ‘corner’ in Nigeria is our next big milestone where we can point our noses south and head to cooler climates – but between then and now we have the huge river Niger to look forward to and the last tails of the Sahara to cross. Jack told us Africa is not for sissies, he was right, covering over 7000km to date in these conditions has been extremely tough but I constantly feel proud and privilidged to be a part of this epic adventure!!

Well enough blatherings about our trip log, Dan will shortly add his bit on our everyday life on the road – and trust me each day has plenty of hardships, banter and laughter!

Thanks again for all the supportive messages on the guestbook, sat phone, and emails.

Jody

PS. I hope that fancy new Frenchman is working wonders for the Sharks, and Banshee no punctures yet, the ultra-heavy duty tubes have not been tested but could well come in handy further south!

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Updates En-route: 16th February 2008

Posted on February 16th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 16 th February 2008

Location: Kita – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 396 kms.

Muppets say: Back on the tar roads.

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Updates En-route: 15th February 2008

Posted on February 15th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 15 ^th February 2008

Location: N13 58.745  W10 44.982 – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 350 kms.

Muppets say: 39 degrees in the shade.Taken a 350km off road, long cut through savannah and countless mudhut villages. Bush camping  -  love it, but a fridge would be a bonanza!

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Updates En-route: 14th February 2008

Posted on February 14th, 2008 by 2muppets.
Categories: 08. Mali, 07. Senegal
Post Location: GPS Map

Date: 14 ^th February 2008

Location: Kayes – Mali.

Distance travelled since last update: 416 kms.

Muppets say: Crossed into Mali – first border crossing with no hassles from the authorities!

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