An example was a lady selling plastic
buckets of all shapes, colours and siz-
es. Then onto the next shop selling
brooms and brushes and so it went
on.
It was time to head inland towards
Underberg where the famous Sani
Pass is located and heads to the small
nation of Lesotho, a road I had read
about many times and really wanted
to attempt.
We decided to take a lot of
backroads. Not liking to take main
roads it would become a three-day
yet making it more interesting and
taking us through the mountain lands
of the Eastern Cape.
The Drakensburg mountain range
was getting closer and closer as we
approached the town of Underberg.
It was a spectacular view.
The next morning, we unpacked
our panniers leaving just the spares
on board and rode for the South Afri-
can border post.
Ongoing roadworks made the road
a little rough yet manageable on the
Honda, two-up.
I noticed the bike losing power
as we climbed and could only put
it down to the altitude. It was get-
ting harder to maintain momentum
around the tight corners and this led
to us dropping the bike. We were
unharmed but one pannier rack had
been bent.
We continued, dropping the bike
a few more times, it was then that
Marina decided to get off and hitch a
ride with a 4WD. I rode on but as the
bike was really struggling, I decided
to turn back before I destroyed the
clutch.
Meanwhile Marina had jumped
from one 4WD to another and was
also heading back down to the border
post where I picked her up to ride
back to our accommodation. I spent
the evening straightening the rack
but wasn’t that happy with it so found
an engineer in town who put some
heat on it and bent it back into place.
TRAVERSE 97
Good enough for me.
The next day we found accommo-
dation at the foot of the Drakensburg
and decided to stay for three days so
we could trek into the mountains. It
turned into one of the highlights of
our trip, this mountain range reaches
3,400 metres, it was a fantastic walk
which also included the highest wa-
terfalls in Africa, Tugela Falls.
Our next destination was Johan-
nesburg. The ride into the city was
something we thought might be very
chaotic but other than a motorcycle
policeman who stopped us just out of
curiosity, everything went well, even
locating our accommodation in the
largest city in South Africa.
We often found accommodation
on the AirBnB app which was easy to
use even in places you wouldn’t ex-
pect. We had colourful hosts several
times who gave us an insight into the
politics of the country. One host said,
“We don’t like the blacks and they
don’t like us”. Sad to think that after