ONE DREAM, TWO RIDERS
The three beefy blokes on big Oranges parked up under a tree on the road to Hell, looked at Liz’s puny DR650, her meshed soft luggage and said doubtfully, “You MIGHT get through…” The there-and-back dirt road led to an isolated outpost called Die Hel (literally, The Hell) 38km away, via some rugged South African mountains. P›. It was a piece of cake for this late-‘50s, asthmatic and slightly chubby woman. After all, she’d already ridden 5000km in three weeks, traversing not just South Africa, but also its landlocked neighbours, Swaziland and Lesotho, and mostly on dirt.
Our route had taken us through Swaziland (where the king has 11 wives, and ergo, 11 mothers-in-law), Zululand and Lesotho, home to both the Roof of Africa Rally and the highest pub in Africa, via the iconic 2800m Sani Pass, now sadly tamed by Chinese “development” aid. A Wagnerian rainstorm on Sani created the kind of mud only knobbies can master and there was a bit of horizontal action as a result.
We parked the bikes for a tour of Addo Elephant Park, rode through a flash-flooded desert to Cape Aghulas, the southernmost tip of Africa, before scooting into Cape Town beneath the majestic Table Mountain. Going to Hell is just one of those Adventure-biking roads that must be ticked off the list. So is
