Monday, 22 March 2010 09:43
Africa is one of the greatest countries to explore by motorcycle
When it comes to finding out about all things off-road adventure related its hard to go past the www.advrider.com website. It's a black hole of information showcasing rides people have down from all corners of the globe, trip info, upcoming rides, tech tips, you name it it can be found on this cool site. Recently we were checking out some adventures that people from the other side of the world had embarked on as its always a great way to get inspired about your own. One ride we came across was by a pair known as Pete and Rob. They'd not long returned from an epic Dual Sport ride through Africa visiting Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and after looking through many of their images the one thing that stood out is the incredible sites they saw along the way. And that's what adventures are all about right? Getting off the beaten track and discovering new places, new people, and experiencing things you wouldn't normally experience in your own backyard. Sure we do it because we love riding motorcycles, but all the extra's that come with it is like the icing on the cake.
We contacted Pete to see if he'd mind us showing you guys a selection of their images from their adventure and he was more than happy to share them.
And here's a little background into their adventure.
Pete: "We recently returned from a month long dualsport trip through Uganda, Rwanda, & Burundi. Actually it kinda' turned into a month long "triplesport" trip since we had some mechanical issues and ended up doing the Rwanda/Burundi stretch via motorcycle taxi, public bus, shared taxi, private hire, and matatu... but more on that later. Simply getting from point A to B WITHOUT your bike should qualify as "sport" in Africa.
We knew we wanted to check out this corner of the world on bikes but weren’t exactly sure how to get bikes in Uganda.
Shipping our own bikes from the States looked like a PITA and super pricey. The only place we could find in Africa that rents big dualsports is in South Africa and I’d already done a trip there. Rob and I wanted to do something a bit different this time. Plus the rentals in SA were priced at $3-4k a piece for the month and a big security deposit, a real problem for a couple working stiffs like us. Especially since we figured even a little scratch on a shiny new bike could be a real blow to the security deposit.
Option 2: Arrive with cash, buy bikes in Kampala, and figure it out from there. That would cost less though we’d lose time dealing with logistics. The locals we found on advrider told us the most common bike in Uganda is a 100cc Indian-made Bajaj that cost about $1,200 brand new. So worst case we figured we’d just buy two of those and sell them at the end. The Bajaj was/is a decent option, just not that much fun for ripping around the dirt. Slow on the tarmac too.
So we booked flights in/out of Kampala basically just planning to take a helmet, a pack, and a pair of jeans and go with the bajaj. We reserved some hope that we might find a couple used thumpers for sale in Kampala but we weren’t exactly counting on it.
Then we saw a reference on HUBB about a motorcycle club in Uganda called Uganda Bikers www.ugandabikers.com. It’s a club with a charitable mission that is made up of Ugandans and expats who ride big bikes and do a variety of activities in Uganda supporting HIV awareness and safe driving.
These guys helped us out BIG time. Great guys. Huge thumbs up to Uganda Bikers!
The UB Chairman, Donato Laboke, said he’d arrange a couple bikes for us to hire from the members. He said they wouldn’t necessarily be brand new and shiny, but at least we’d be on something bigger than a toaster, and that sounded like fun to us. The price was fair and Donato seemed like a good dude. So we packed up our “real” riding gear, watched “hotel rwanda” and “last king of scotland” (of course! took a few thousand USD apiece and flew to Kampala.
As it turns out, Donato is awesome. He totally hooked us up, pulled a rabbit out of a hat when things went haywire, and became a great new friend in the process. Same thing for friend and fellow UB member Godfrey Pule, who among other things helped negotiate (via cell phone) our cameras back from an armed soldier who only spoke Luganda. And Deo, the kick-ass macgyver-style field mechanic and part-time bicycle racer who rode out to meet us all over Uganda. And Milton, who we never actually met but who donated one of the bikes, and even lent Deo a second bike to come meet us when we got stuck.
Good thing too because two 6’4” dudes riding around Uganda on 100cc Bajajs would’ve been a total crack up."
Rwanda was great, and we came away with two general observations:
* Genocide: It's hard to imagine that just 15 years ago this country was hacking itself to bits. In a nutshell: there are two tribes in Rwanda: Hutus (85%) and Tutsis (15%). In 1994 some extreme Hutus were looking for a "final solution" to the "Tutsi problem." In a period of three months one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed with bullets, machetes, and blunt farming tools. You see the impact everywhere. The pretty girl selling cell phone cards is missing an arm. The young man is missing a leg. Unusual, dramatic head/face scars while walking around the market. Yet the people are so incredibly friendly. Tutsis and Hutus now live and work together, intermarry, etc... how is that possible? We visited the Genocide Memorial. It is built on top of a grave containing 250,000 human bodies. Rob and I walked through the memorial and barely said two words for an hour and a half. The memorial does an outstanding job of explaing the how and why. Highly recommended. Unfortunately, photos are not allowed.
* Kigali: Kigali is a remarkably clean, modern, friendly, safe, and orderly town by African standards. That surprised us. The contrast to Kampala, which has been stable for much longer, is striking. This is probably because Rwanda is now essentially a Tutsi-run autocracy that pretends to be a democracy for the outside world. There are Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis everywhere. I checked, and in my opinion the wealth can't possibly be explained by the country's published economic stats. We asked a lot of questions while we were there because it was so obvious. We were offered two credible explanations: 1) large scale misappropriation of the foreign aid that poured into Rwanda following the genocide, which continues today, and 2) large-scale illicit trade in natural resources, such as diamonds and gold, coming from rebel groups in the Congo, which is currently embroiled in chaos. I can't say whether these are correct or not, but it would certainly make sense.
Here's a bunch of pics from Pete and Rob's adventure, thanks guys!
The route they took
Pete and Rob before the adventure began
Locals sussing out the boys packing their equipment early morning before riding off
Robs Iphone with photos came in handy when they had to kill time waiting for a bike to be fixed.
Good old hand pump for pumping the fuel
Pete: "Normally I don't like to give stuff out to the kids because it kind of ruins it for the next guy who rolls through town. But in this case we'd just bought a box of cookies, eaten most of them, and there was no point in packing the rest so we handed them out instead. I admit it was kinda' fun. Kids were stoked!!"
But then they never leave you alone!
The boys didn't catch this but Nile Perch like this one can be caught where they stayed at Murchison Farm. They reckon they'll be heading back just to go fishing!
Plenty of time for a beer and meeting the locals
Pete: "Flatted the rear tire on the Africa Twin. Here I should mention that we left kampala without ANY spare rear tubes for either bike, because they weren't available in kampala at the time. We had spare front tubes and slime and patches for the rear and were hoping we'd get through with that."
Pete: "Driving back to town with the bike on the back, this funny dressed guy saw us coming and started rollerblading as fast as he could about 20 yards in front of us. I was like WTF is that guy doing? He grabbed onto the back of the truck and hitched a ride all the way into Fort Portal! We were passing other cars, dodging and weaving... he was doing tricks!"
Pete: "We hung out for like 45 mins. Then just like that the silverback decided he'd had enough of us. He jumped up and the whole clan followed. Incredible to see 350+ pounds of muscle move that fast. We tracked with them for another 15 mins and then headed back the way we came.
These are only a small selection of the photos from Pete and Rob's adventure, the rest are worth checking out 'here'
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