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Tumi, Sthe and Thendo during a trip around SA

As much as it is a cliché, traveling Africa is an adventure,  whichever race you are or country you come from. Each day brings unique challenges that cannot be found anywhere else, but when you are riding right here on this continent, they come in extremes!! These range from astounding wealth to dire poverty, baking desert heat to icy cold mornings, breathtaking natural beauty to the squalor of life in overcrowded shanty towns. But most importantly the diverse and beautiful cultures and the people themselves.

Snow on Maluti Mountains. En route to Katse Dam in Lesotho. August 2009.

(Lesotho on the way to Katse Dam, August 2009. Tumi and Thendo share a bite)

(Taking a break en route Katse Dam in Lesotho, August 2009)

(During our trip around South Africa just after Kokstad, Tumi got into a minor accident and the farmers in the picture where of great assistance and helped us get back on the road again. We will be forever grateful to these fellow South Africans.)
It is with this in mind that in 2009, Thendo, Tumelo and Sithembiso (aka, Sthe) got on our BMW GS1200 motorbikes to see and experience for ourselves what makes this continent such a unique place. We got tired of people marveling and lamenting about Africa’s extremes. We wanted to do it differently. Instead of doing the more travelled Cape to Cairo route and rushing through the countries just to make it back on time, we decided to take our trip bit-by-bit. We have done a couple of trips including Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana not forgetting the trip around South Africa and the infamous Baviaanskloof in the Eastern Cape.

(Entering the Baviaanskloof Reserve, March 2010)

(Lunch in Lake Malawi, 2009)

Wherever we travel we come across the most amazing people and hospitality you'll ever find - from an Afrikaner family who took us into their home when the sun gave up on us in the middle of the Baviaans, this family lives in a house where former president JG Strydom was raised (they had his pictures all over the house) to the hospitality we received in Malawi when our GPS took us on a road that literally turned into a footpath and then a stream, at which point the sun gave up on us again and every place we went to was fully booked!! We ended up camping inside a communal hall.

(Tumi posing next to a picture of JG Strydom one of the architect of Apartheid in a museum like family home in Baviaans . The family were extremely friendly and helpful, to our utter amazement. It might have had something to do with Thendo’s response when we were asked if we spoke Afrikaans to which he replied: “I speak it but I don’t understand it”.
The beauty of traveling in a small group such as ours, a maximum of three, is the flexibility, plans can change as and when necessary without having to call a board meeting. It’s a matter of making suggestions and quickly coming to an agreement (the power of 3). We have had our fun in the local pubs and places we visited and stayed in, we have also had our fair share of trying times with the officials on the borders who treat people as if they are doing you a favor.

(In Malawi 2009. Our GPS lead us to this footpath. instead of a promised connection to the next town).
In December 2011, we will be embarking on another adventure to Tanzania and hopefully Kenya depending on whether Tanzania has enough on offer to keep us entertained while we wait for a team of four friends who are not riders to descend Mount Kilimanjaro after a six day hike. The initial plan was for Tumi and Thendo to ride to Tanzania and climb Kilimanjaro with the rest of the crew but after much debate and planning, we felt we enjoyed riding more and would rather focus on that. So the plan is to meet up with Thendo’s younger brother, Tshilidzi and other friends, Robinson Ramaite, Wiseman Khumalo and Eugene Lottering upon descent. As part of the planning, we have been training for Kili together with them and climbed a few tall mountains in South Africa such as the Drakensberg, Golden Gate, Table Mountain and Lesotho’s Sani pass.

(Eugene Lottering (Msizi), Robinson Ramaite, Wiseman Khumalo, Thendo Ratshitanga and Tshilidzi Ratshitanga commence climbing Monk Cowl mountain in the Drakensberg for an overnight sleep at the Zuluman Cave, September 2011)

This trip is still about adventure, only this time as businessmen we will also actively look to meet other entrepreneurs in the countries we will be visiting, especially Tanzania, and share insights and possible opportunities. We always read about our government visiting all these countries to strengthen economic ties but it never filters down to ordinary entrepreneurs.