25,000 miles with Luke and Nick

[Powerslave]

Ride safe(ly).

[Fishfund]

This town feels shady.

The next few days are a blur from boderline heat stroke. Coming out of the airport we take the bus into town. I didn't have my camera out and missed some shots of the shandy town. Immage the typical squating homes made out of pallets, scrap tin and garbage. Apparently they tried to clean that all up for the World Cup but didn't quite get the project finished. Reminds me of Detroit moving all the homeless people out of the way for the Super Bowl. By the time I got the camera out, the shanty town was passed.







A nice city worker talked us into getting a cab for the "backerpacker" hunt. Backpackers is their version of a hostel. I'm glad we took the cab because it was so hot and hauling our 80 pounds of gear on our backs would have got old real fast. We found a place called "Cat and Moose" (I don't understand the name either) It was110R per night per person ($17 USA.) Next on the list was food then a well deserved nap. We are staying on Long Street which is a popular area for backpackers and tourists. I usually try to avoid these places because it is very annoying being treated as such. You get whistled at all the time and offered weed/sex etc... a regular basis.



After eating at the "24-7" and taking a nap, we found "Yours Truly." a trendy coffee/juice/art shop with free WiFi.

So the bikes are supposed to be here on the 9th, but when Nick checked his email the delevery date has changed to the 13th. So now we have about a week to kill in Cape Town.



the rest of the day we spent hanging out at the backpackers in the pool and resting.



The next morning we walked to the fishermans wharf. This was a newly developed ritzy part of town, a nautral location for the bmw dealership. We talked to an awesome guy named Shane who said we could unpack our bikes and store our gear right there at their shop. He gave us a contact and let us use their phone to call a man to get our bikes from the airport for us. He's charging us about $100 USD for the service. Sounds halfway decent to me.



On the walk back we found this strange looking tree...


(we checked for snakes first)



breakfast from two angles.



so far the animals are not very intimidating.



The pool tables here are tiny. 6 feet long and the balls are much smaller. The pocket corners are rounded. Here is nick going for a jump shot.


Back to the 24-7 to get something to eat.


I wonder if she recently washed her feet. The day before I saw her running barefoot outside. (The food tasted fine)


So now it comes down to the feature photo. I hate to give a negative view to this town as we have only been here a few days, but I will be happy to leave this place. Mostly because I don't like touristy areas, but also because it feels shady. I trust my gut because that's really all I can do. I trusted it when I met this man today.

Con or Not?...

I was outside of "Yours Truly" lurking some free WiFi facebooking and Tweeting when this Man comes up to me asking for the time. That turned into are you an American? He says good and starts laying down the story. This is the abridged version. He is a Canadian on vacation with his 3 syblings 9,12 and 19. He is the oldest 31 and they all got their passports stolen on a bus. So he needs money 360R ($55 USD) to get bus tickets to go to a village outside of Cape Town to the Canadian Consulate. I am always down to help people and at first the story sounded ok, so I went into a shop to sit down and talk. The more he talked the more the story Mirrored the story of the "Religious Man" from my last motorcycle trip in Mexico. Things were not adding up in my head...

Why did you leave your passport less siblings alone some where?
Why does he know where my backpacker is since he's only been here a few days?
Why is his fair skin not complely sun burned?
Why won't he talk slower and calm down when I ask him to?
Why is he showing aggression to me and mad that I am taking a while to convince?
I pull out my camera and want to take a photo of him. This is another way for me to read him. I hit the record button and ask him to slowly go through his story again. I know if I was telling the truth, I would be ok with that. He gets really mad and tries to block the camera. Saying I am a horrible American. Why won't I help him out. He takes the notes that we had been writing on a napkin and storms out. I will never know the truth to the story. It is impossible to say, but I THINK this guy was a fake.

[lifecycles]

hmmmm, he sounds pretty shady to me. looking forward to seeing some riding pics

[Fishfund]

Originally Posted by lifecycles

hmmmm, he sounds pretty shady to me. looking forward to seeing some riding pics

So am I. We are been sitting in this town for 3 weeks and we are borderline sick of it. It's real frustrating with our bike delays and problems. I'm just trying to stay positive and remember that I am on probably the biggest adventure of my life.

[BigDogAdventures.com]

I finally have caught up with you.
You've covered a lot of ground since you was at my house
and bought my 610 Husky. Where is that old dog anyway.
Hope you are liking your 690.

Just a few people in the world get to experience what you have Luke---I can tell you realize that and are soaking up each moment.

I have a saying posted right above my computer and ponder it each day.

"Enjoy Life Today
Yesterday is Gone
Tomorrow May Never Come"

I try to live my life that way--but you damn sure do.

Here's an old pic of me on the Husky you bought from
me before you submerged it
in that mudhole somewhere in Mexico I think ????

Your friend,
Mark

[Fishfund]

Mark,

It's always good to hear from you. I will never forget the day I risked my life driving through that Ice storm to check out your famous Husky. You probably have never had anyone buy a bike then leave it there for a few weeks before. Thanks for working with my strange schedule. I hope you continue to enjoy your wr250 and getting to ride more often with your son. Keep that smile on your face and you positive outlook on life. It spreads to the people you meet.

-Luke

[Fishfund]

Why are we renting a car ????

The short version of the story is we were told by the shipping company to allow 7 days for the bikes to be shipped. So we gave ourselves some leway. We dropped off the crate 10 days before we were to arrive to Cape Town. Then we get an email saying the bikes will be there on the 9th, then the 13th, so we rented a car to "kill time" which is probably the worst way to say it. It's really impossible to kill time when you are in another country. So this is the story of the road trip. (P.S. when we returned to Cape Town I received an email saying the soonest they may be here is now the 18th)

First of all you drive on the wrong side of the road wrich makes things real interesting. Both Nick and I caught ourselves driving on the incorrect side going towards traffic a few times. It's the hardest when you are turning onto a new road.

passing is allowed with on comming traffic.


We spotted these monkey from the side of the road.


We drove and drove with the plans of entering the country that is surronded by South Africa. It starts with an L, but I don't have internet right now to look it up. Anyway, it was way too far away and we had to be back by the 13th to pick up our motorcycles so we decided to call it a day, find a hotel and plan on heading south to the Elephant National Park in the morning.

.................................................. .................................................. .............

We woke up at 5:00 a.m. and caught the sunrse.



We were tired of Tarmac so we took some gravel roads with the rental on the way to the park. At times we were pushing the rental car pretty hard. It was like driving in the Indian Mounds in Merritt, MI. This is what we saw along the way.


We actually got the picture first try, but I wanted to throw this staged picture in for Adam Y. He is the behind the scenes guy who build the site and does all the graphics for our website.


Nick and I kind of have this game going where we try to get out of the car when your not supposted to. This was the first animal we came across for the game. I hear they kick hard, and this one had little ones with it. This was a wild Ostrich, but you see farmed ones everywhere.




This was lunch at the National Park. 90 Rand, which is about $15 USD. Pretty expensive, infact this whole country is pretty expensive.


Nick is writing the update of the national park as I type this, so I'll skip ahead to the Awesome Bed and Breakfast that we found to stay at that nite. It cost us 125 Rand each ($22 USD) Ironically breakfast doesn't come with as the name would have you believe. That was another $50 Rand ($8 USD) The amenities were quit good though. We got to swim in the pond, take out some kayaks, hit up the homemade zip line and homemade trampoline, and Nick even used the owners office computer to check his email. They were pretty nice people.





We left around noon and headed south twards Port Elizabeth. Nick found a backerpaker in a travel book with free internet for 100 Rand pp.




This guy was funny. He told us that when he is busy he just pees under the table. He puts straw in it so he can be talking to people at the same time and they have no clue. He wasn't joking. He showed us the jug. He answered all our questions about how much money people make here, and why is the country so expensive. etc...We had a good chat and made good enough friends to get photos inside the tent. His shirt has a patch that says "I overcame Anorexia"




You can see we have only been staying at nice places. That is because there are no shady cheap places to stay. It is unfortunate.


My first swim in the Indian Ocean. Nick and I have both swam in 3 oceans now. the 4th is coming up in May. It's going to be cold up there. We were playing a balancing game on a rock with the waves and Nick punched me in the face with his elbow. Bloody nose and bloody boogers for the next few days. (I don't eat bloody boogers)

back to Cape Town to wait for the motorcycles......

[Maloney]

I am in. Sounds like my kind of trip. I sense trouble along the way somewhere though. Stay safe and watch your six.

[Stewart5533]

O Boy............ this one is going to be Rowdy, am in, have fun, ride safe, lets get her going.

[Fishfund]

Did I mention we are doing this with no Carnets?

[Just Paul]

IN as always !

[agplant]

Subscribed looking forward to following along.

[nrader]

After being disappointed with Cape Town and driving for hours and hours we finally got to see something that really made us excited to go to Africa - the wildlife. We drove our micro car to the Addo Elephant Reserve (which was an experience in itself) and drove it around the park. We were a little dissapointed to find out the reserve seemed to be model after Jurasic Park. AKA, there were 10 feet high electric fences surrounding the researve and anywhere someone would be outside of their car; but it was still AWESOME. After driving trough the gate it took us only minutes to start seeing wildlife. Our first spot were these guys.



They weren't the most exciting, and we were on a mission to find the lions so we didn't stick around. We drove to a main watering hole on our search for lions. When we got there we saw probably 100 elephants. We stopped in the middle of the road where they were crossing and watched them walk 2 feet away from our car. We were too excited to take many pictures.








We continued driving looking for lions and came across a fewmore animals.









After driving around for awhile it was time to stop and take a break. That and give the camera some sexy man poses.







Naturally the shirts are going to come off after awhile.



After surviving the South African cougars at the scenic overlook it was time to find those lions.







We must be getting close to the lions.



False alarm.













Now is when things start getting interesting. Luke decides it will be fun to get out of the car to get a picture of a wildboar. He was right, it was fun. The boar started to have a stare down with Luke and give give Luke a snort.



Some of these guys you had to be quick to spot or they would disappear.











Now things get even more interesting. We came up on this gal and Luke suggest I touch her. Me being the responsible guy I am decide to just see how things go just getting close.



Things didn't go well. She gave me the stank eye, yelled at me, and we both hightailed it out of there.



We double backed to some of the places we were told lions might be. We found one last stragaler lurking in the bushes.



We never found any of those lions.

[thomas.tc.young]

if this is your trip without bikes, its gonna be even better once you start riding

I'll follow this closely, and keep posting!!

[kparrott]

Awesome pictures! I'm always wanted to go to Africa. I can't wait for the riding to start!