Cape Town to Pretoria

March 1, 2017

From Cape Town the route followed coastline to Cape Agulhas, the tip of the continent…….
….then to George….
….then mostly on “blue highways” that roughly parallel the shown main road to Johannesburg and Pretoria.

I finally flew out Ushuaia and landed in Buenos Aires in the middle of the night and found a place to hang in the airport till morning.  International airports typically have good “camping” facilities for all the folks waiting on connecting flights.  There’s plenty of electrical outlets and Wi-Fi’s readily available.  I had a couple of days to spend in B.A. and saw a few sights in the city, then it was off to airport camping again to catch a midnight flight to Cape Town, South Africa that was via Qatar in the Middle East.  Twenty-seven hours of flights and airports later I was in C.T.

Carolina from Ushuaia Extreme lined me up with a bike box for the flights as well as a shop in Buenos Aires that had tires I could never seem to find elsewhere.
Flying out of Ushuaia.
Posh hotel in B.A. I could have lived without; nice to do once in a while.
B.A.
Making friends in Buenos Aires.
Eva Perón is well remembered in Argentina.
What happens when you don’t lock your car in B.A.
This is a bar. I didn’t go in but I’m sure Hunter S. Thompson wouldn’t have missed the opportunity.
Anita “camped out” next to me at the airport in B.A. waiting on flights. She’s from Moscow, Russia but now surfs for a living, lives in Panama, and hasn’t been home in years.  She speaks Spanish, Russian and English (well!) that I know of.
Hilton picked me up at the airport in Cape Town and helped me find a hotel.
Cape Town and Table Mountain.

Once in cape Town I went to a sporting goods store and was able to finally replace the Whisperlite stove I lost in Mazatlán, Mexico.  I did see them for sale in S. America but at more than double the price that I paid here.  I left the dinosaur I bought in Quito in the crotch of a tree near Ushuaia where in twenty years I’m sure I’ll be able to find it again.  It was tempormental, inefficient, sooty and needed constant fixing.  I couldn’t even see giving it away to someone.

Then I found a bike shop and got bearings for the headset and bottom bracket.  From there I was off.  At the suggestion of Hilton, my taxi driver, I went a little out of the way to get to the southernmost point of the continent, Cape Agulhas, that was maybe a 150 mile detour.  Headwinds made for slow travel, nothing like Patagonia, but it was the morning of the fifth day that I got there.  Beautiful coast line along the way through  geography called Fynbos, a green and biologically diverse scrubland.  In reading about it, it was not the first time I’ve heard “world’s greatest biodiversity” about a given area.

Another zipper replacement. I could never find zippers in S. America; they’re all in Cape Town.
Near Cape Town

Elim, S.A.  The roofs of the buildings are thatch and made from reeds in the genus Restio.  I’ll have photos in the next plant segment.
One of only 3 African penguin rookeries on the continent.

Lighthouse at Cape Agulhas.  “Agulhas”  is derived from Latin and means needle.  The Portuguese named it not for pointy rocks, but for the compass needle showing no declination at that time.  Today, magnetic north here is about 25º west of true north.
Lighthouse’s fresnel lens.
Ostriches are common both as farm animals and in a wild state.
Camp along route climbing into mountains. The foreground ridge is pine covered but planted long enough ago that they look like they’d always been there. Felt like home.
First mountains after leaving the coast and part of a belt of ranges that roughly follow southern Africa’s east and west coasts.    Collectively, they’re called The Great Escarpment.

After Cape Agulhas, the route trends east and north to George and put me about as close as I’ll get to the antipodal diameter with Logan, Utah.  It’s located to the southeast of George about two thousand miles in the Indian Ocean.  Now every mile I ride will be getting me closer to home- psychologically comforting.  After George I turned inland and began climbing into mountains that lead to the interior and a more deserty rain shadow.  Geographically, the coast is referred to as the Fynbos, inland the Karoo and the separating mountains The Great Escarpment.

I finally changed the bearings in the bottom bracket but found the old ones were in perfect shape.
Short section of dirt road near Heidelberg, S.A.
A bit of Utah landscape once again after descending the coastal mountains into the interior’s rain shadow.  Prickly pair is an invasive here.
New MSR stove- great relief.  A lot easier to use and far better fuel efficiency.
Nice camp
Blue highways.
Got needed water here.
Baboons. Those that I’ve seen have been wild and I was lucky to get this close for a photo. Near Cape Town, however, they’ve habituated well to humans and can open unlocked cars and doors to houses. There are warning signs saying things like “what to do if you’re surrounded by a troop” and “act calm and show confidence”.  This is either a female or a juvenile.  The males look formidable.
Good spot to sleep….
……but I was completely drenched by morning.  From the perch on the rock there was no way to anchor the fly out and away from the tent.  The night started clear, so I wasn’t too worried, but I hastily pitched the tent about midnight in rain and intense thunder & lightning.
Drying out.
Sleeping bag lable I had hoped I would never have to test. Took a good 3 days to dry the bag.
Road side repairs with Simon whom I lent some tools.
Another great camp in Karoo scrub.
The goat’s head, above and below, is alive and well in S. Africa. Unfortunately it found the bike tires before I found it.

Ticks!  None have bitten me yet but I’ve found them crawling on me.
Noupoort, S.A.
The grasslands, or Veld, are extensive and amazing. In the U.S. these habitats are too often converted to agriculture. The thousands of bumps are termite mounds- most building here is masonry.
Border with the Orange Free State and entering a mostly Dutch speaking area.
Crossing the Orange River.
A puff adder that had been hit on the highway.  A viper counterpart to our rattlesnakes, they’re responsible for the vast majority of snake bites in Africa.  They hold their ground when approached but don’t warn like a rattlesnake and often get stepped on.  They say cobras slither off before you see them.  They all make for carefull travel when wheeling the bike through tall grass to a campsite.
Spent two nights here waiting out rain. Kept relatively dry this time.
Tortoise!

Below are a just a handful of the many people I’ve talked to since getting to S.A.  There are many English speakers here though accents are often hard to understand.  Blacks typically speak their tribe’s language as their first language and many are then taught English by bilingual Dutch (Afrikaaner) speakers.   You can imagine the accent.  They can understand me (most of the time) but at first I didn’t realize people were speaking English back.

Lionel & Philba Visagie.
Rachael ran a very nice restaurant in Struisbaai, near Cape Agulhas.
Nose Makeleni had lots of questions.
These guys had an art gallery in Hartenbos- lost their info.
Lionel and Philba Visagie gave me water when I needed it.
Robert and Joy Balcon are safari guides and world travelers that had a load of info on Africa for me.
Matthew Luyanda worked on the road crew and came over to eat lunch with me. He’s from the Xhosa (Cosa) Tribe, the same as Nelson Mandela.
Willie Pienaar has been all over Africa on both a motorcycle and a bicycle. It was a short conversation, but he had valuable info as well and has kept in contact answering more questions.   Check out MyCrazyDad.com for his travels.
These guys were in the town of Noupoort.

There are far fewer long distance cyclists here (I’ve seen one guy from Spain’s Canary Islands since being in South Africa) and many people are curious.  I’ve described where I’ve gone countless times but most people don’t really comprehend the distances.  One guy nodded patiently while I told of Central and South America and then asked where I was going next.  I said on to Pretoria and Zimbabwe but not sure after that.  He said “Zimbabwe? You’re riding your bicycle to Zimbabwe?”.  I’m getting to where I say a lot less until specifically asked.

Soweto, or South West Town, a district of Johannesburg that was in world news quite a bit in the 1970s and 80s.  Near Johannesburg’s gold mines, there was much unrest here in the years leading to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
The hill is gold mine tailings between Soweto and downtown Johannesburg.

I’ve been looking ahead to the route through Asia and would like to cross the Tibetan Plateau from Nepal to Mongolia.  This would be one of the grails of the trip.  Travel is restricted there but the prospect of riding a bike over it that began as impossible has advanced now to just expensive.  Tourists need to be accompanied by a guide.  To do it with just myself would be beyond what I could afford.  I have, however, been in touch with a company in Lhasa and worked out a group rate for 6 people that would be around $3200/person to go from the Nepali-Sino border to the Chinese city of Xining, which is out of the travel restriction zone.  It would take about a month and the price includes hotels and meals.  The accompanying guide amounts to what we would call a sag wagon- no panniers required- good news.  Furthermore, camping is limited, so distances between towns and hotels beyond that which can be covered in a day by bicycle will require riding for part of the time.  The bad news is that it sounds like your riding in the back of a truck.  They gave me a cursory itinerary that was about 2/3 biking / 1/3 riding for a total of about 2000 miles.  That would amount to ~1400 miles biking over a month’s time but with no loads.  This is close to what I’ve been doing over the last year loaded.  So, for all the folks that wanted to ride a leg of the trip, now’s your chance.  For my timeline, it could happen this fall, but it could also be the spring of 2018.  I’ll have to see how Africa and the Middle East go, but I should be able to commit in the next couple of months.  Anybody interested can email me at steven.g.walker@gmail.com for more info.

I’m now in Pretoria checking into embassies for visa info, replacing the drive train on the bike (cluster rings completely shot), and stocking up on Malaria prophylaxis.  In S. Africa, Malaria meds are by prescription, so I had to go to a doctor.  It was very cheap and the doctor, Elizna Britten had a lot of good information.  The meds, however, are not cheap: 4 month’s worth of pills were about $500!

Aggy Modise, Dr Elizna Britten and Sinah Monageng. Aggy and Sinah speak Tshwane.

From here I go to west to Botswana and then north to Victoria Falls.  I’ll hopefully be putting out the next blog somewhere in Zambia.

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Steve

I'm so silly

15 thoughts on “Cape Town to Pretoria”

  1. Hello Steve, John contacted me to let me know about your travels and that you will be coming through Alaska. We live in Palmer, about 40 miles North of Anchorage. Do you have a definite route planned? We have plenty of room and can put you up for however long you would like. I’ve spent about an hour scanning your blog this morning, I am impressed.
    It would be great to see you, let me know. Be safe.

  2. Hi Steve:
    Really interesting! How are your tires (and rims) holding up on the dirt roads? The pictures are show beautiful country and it looks like you continue to meet very kind and generous people.

    I will be watching the weather on this next leg. I hope the road is in decent shape and you can make good time.

    Safe travels!

  3. Hi Steve, Thank for mentioning my parents, Lionel and Philda Visagie.
    Just to update you, my beloved father Lionel Visagie has passed away on 8th July 2017, Saturday.

    Travel safe and thanks for the post.

    Inele Visagie

  4. Hi Steve, so excited to hear your tales of Africa. Hey, that small “deer” could be a dik dik – as I recall from my work in TZ & KY.

    Enjoy the scenery, the animals, and most of all the wonderful people of East Africa!
    -paul

  5. Steve:
    Really interesting! So glad the people you are encountering are so generous. I went to YouTube and saw a video of Victoria Falls. That is really something–a narrow chasm where the earth just split apart. Saw something about the “Boiling Pot (?)” where they find elephants, rhinos, and even people who have gone over the falls. Wow.
    Was wondering about your friend Luis and where he was from originally. Spain or Latin America? The woodwork he does is very nice.
    Safe travels and don’t let your bike out of your sight.!

  6. Hi Steve.
    Neil is in for the Nepal-China border to Xining section. Keep us posted.

    Yesterday, I rode from my house in Providence out towards Mendon (6th south is washed out so it’s only open to bikes!) and met a couple also riding the closed road. They were SO IMPRESSED when i told them I rode ALL THE WAY from Providence. I said, “Well, you should meet my friend Steve….”

    mimi

  7. Hi Steve – Great to read that you are doing so well and on your way to Botswana. Great place – we lived in the north area of Chobe for many, many years. Say hello to the elephants for us! Kasane in the north is a good town to get supplies and you can use the Botswana Pula to pay for goods. Zimbabwe is US$ only, as you will know, and everything is much more expensive….especially in Victoria Falls. They have also now produced their own ‘Bond Note’ as currency (1 to 1 with the dollar) but its not usable outside Zimb. So dont get caught out by having any when you leave Zimb. Zimb is a great country, wonderful people. We spent this past Christmas in Harare with family who work for the US embassy.
    Travel safely and will look forward to reading about your ongoing adventure! Maybe we will bump into you somewhere else….you never know. Perhaps even Botswana! with best regards Robert and Joy Balcon

    1. Thanks folks- I’m in Livingston. I did say hello to the elephants in Botswana- but a little too close to one bull and got a couple of steps worth of false charge.. I kept my distance after that. Thanks for the recommend on taking the route through Botswana and north of Nata- beautiful. Steve

  8. Steve:
    Took a closer look at your last post. Interesting how beautiful South Africa is. Also how the landscapes seem so familiar. I am afraid the snakes, spiders, and ticks would be a real problem for me but you seem to take all that in stride. Wondering in what way are you expose to malaria. Also, I am very curious as to how you are going to navigate through those countries we hear about where there is so much political unrest (i.e, the middle east). But some of the countries in Africa as well. Its all amazing–continued safe travels!

    1. Okay–I think I get it now “the antipodal diameter.” The straight line to Logan you are going up (northwest?) through the sphere. Also, I google mapped the Tibetan plateau and that really looks interesting.
      Take care….

  9. Woohoo, South Africa! Congrats Steve on this incredible travel! I loved the guy who said “you’re riding your bike to Zimbabwe?!”, lol. It is hard to wrap your mind around the distance you have biked. So great to see your post, and see this new area of the world.
    Safe travels!
    Mary

  10. Hi Steve, yippee you are kicking around South Africa now! Unreal, you won’t know how to respond when your life becomes routine again!! Everyday new challenges but you wear them well. I’m glad you got a new stove and that you are half way…more or less. I never knew Soweto was an abbreviation. The coast looks gorgeous and I wish you all the best!! Great hearing from you again. 🙂

  11. Wow! Have been busy with school and have not checked your blog. Glad you are in touch with the person who traveled through Africa. Also, glad to see you got a new stove and the other materials. South Africa looks beautiful. I will take a closer look when I am finished this wave of correcting.
    As always–safe travels.

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