Africa - Tgon's Travels

Week 40: Getting the bikes back

Posted on 14/04/2012

On Monday, Charlie arrived at around lunch time and we went for some pizza in ‘The Raft’, a restaurant on the Walvis Bay lagoon, afterwards we walked into town and met four of the other people who shipped their bikes with us. Everyone checked into the hotel where I had been staying so that we could sort out the customs stuff for the bikes.

On Tuesday morning we went to the office to hand over all our documents and were hoping to get the bikes that afternoon, we waited in the hotel all day but nothing actually happened, so we had a BBQ instead. The next day the container was ready to be opened, we all went down and unloaded the bikes. I was the only person who doesn’t have a Carnet de Passage, so I had extra paperwork to do in order to get a temporary import permit. This also included me leaving a 400 Euro deposit, which will be refunded once I leave Namibia with the bike. It was during the unpacking of the container that I realised my digital camera is broken, last weekend when I was on the sand dunes some sand has gotten into the zoom lens and it is now jammed, but we have our bikes back and Charlie is lending me one of his cameras, so overall it was a good day.

We were hoping to leave Walvis Bay on Thursday, but first I needed to do some work on the bike. The clutch lever had been broken during the journey in the container and I have been having some electrical problems since Greece, plus I wanted to do a service on the bike. It took a lot longer than expected to get hold of some oil, an oil filter, a new horn, a replacement clutch lever and some chain lube, so we got back to the hotel at sunset and I did all the work by torch light. Then on Friday we finally left Walvis bay, firstly driving north a little way to see some nicer beaches, then refuelling before heading east. We planned to travel through some mountain passes to end up in southern Namibia to do some camping, but while we were driving Charlie started to have some problems with his BMW F800. We decided to continue east to Windhoek so that he could get it repaired. We are now in Windhoek staying in a hostel called the cardboard box, hopefully the repairs wont take long and we can head south this weekend.

Week 39: Windhoek and Walvis Bay

Posted on 10/04/2012

I arrived in Namibia on the 30th of March and stayed in Windhoek for 4 night before I headed out to Walvis Bay. Windhoek itself is not a great place to spend your time, the streets are wide and clean but they are empty, there doesn’t seem to be any people around even though it is the capital city. Luckily I stayed in a nice guest house with some Germans who are here for work or studies. After four nights I headed west to Walvis Bay, just after I arrived I read my Email and realised that four of the people I shipped the bike with were staying in another guest house just a few minutes walk from where I had stayed in Windhoek. I also found that we weren’t going to get the bikes back on Thursday as I had imagined. So I checked into another guest house here in Walvis Bay and settled in, ready for the rest of the guys to arrive.

While I have been staying here, two girls I had met in Windhoek came here for the Easter weekend and by chance, they had booked into the same place I was staying. At the same time, two guys from the UK checked in too. One of the guys now lives and works in Kenya but had taken four months off to travel around southern Africa, it was good to meet him because he had done the journey I am about to do. Walvis Bay is nice but it is very quiet, I haven’t really enjoyed the coast very much because I have spent time in Ghana, where the weather is warm and the beaches are nicer. On Sunday we went out to Dune 7, an outdoor adventure centre in the desert, people do quad rides and dune surfing.

It seemed expensive to me and the service wasn’t good, we were originally told that we needed to wait an hour, then after that hour they told us to wait 45 minutes. We got our money back and drove north to do some dune boarding for free with a board we had borrowed from our guest house. On Monday morning the English guys and the girls I’d met in Windhoek left Walvis Bay, later that day Charlie arrived. We went for a walk through town and met the rest of the guys by chance at the side of the road. We all headed back to Loubser guest house and spent the afternoon drinking beer and catching up. We should get the bikes back today or maybe tomorrow and then we can explore more of Namibia, I can’t wait.

Africa Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Weeks 37 & 38: Ghana to Namibia

Posted on 01/04/2012

Week 37 started with Charlie leaving to fly to the UK while we are waiting for the bikes to be shipped to Namibia. I decided that I would go back to the Green Turtle Lodge in the West of Ghana, but when I arrived I met Bahar and a couple of English guys, they were planning to leave the Green Turtle the next day. I was planning to fly to Namibia on the Friday and so were they, so I decided to tag along, we headed to Cape coast for a few days. This is when I found out that the container ship had left without our container, so our bikes would be delayed by an extra week. This is when I decided not to fly that week, but to stay in Ghana another week, Bahar and the English guys left on Friday and this is when I met a group of Germans who were headed to Kakum National Park. The next day we headed north to Kakum and went on the canopy walk through the forest.

From Kakum we headed to a place in Ghana I had never been before (even though I had travelled the coast around four times), the village was called Brenu, we stayed there a few days before heading back to the Green Turtle for a few more days. Then headed to another place which was new to me, Busua. We managed to stay in a hotel which was being renovated, so we stayed there for free with the Rastas who owned the place. After spending a night there I decided to head to Takoradi to book my flight to Namibia, since then everything has seemed to move very quickly, I managed to find book a flight for the next day. I spent that night in Cape Coast, then headed to Accra the next day. My flight went through Friday night so I arrived in Windhoek, Namibia at 6am on Saturday morning. Namibia is colder than I expected, but only at night. The main shock is that Windhoek doesn’t feel like Africa, everything is very European, or to be more specific, German. I should be able to collect my bike on Thursday, so I will stay here for a few days before heading to Walvis Bay.

Africa Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 36: The Coast of Ghana

Posted on 20/03/2012

This week the time has flown more quickly than usual, After spending a night in Akosombo we (Me, Charlie and Matt) headed south to Ada Foah, a coastal town east of Accra. We stayed the night in a hotel there called CocoLoco, we were actually thinking of staing a few days, until we realised that the toilet wasn’t working correctly and there was no sink, then Matt woke up in the night to find small beetles crawling over his body. So we decided to leave, Matt headed into Togo, Me and Charlie had a long, hot, tiring ride to Cape Coast on local transport.

When we arrived in Cape Coast we bumped into Parisa’s friend Bahar, we spent a few days there before heading west to Elmina, to a hotel we had visited before called the Stumble Inn. It was here that Charlie realised his flight was a day earlier than he thought, so early the next morning he headed off to Accra to get his flight to the UK. I decided to head to the most relaxing place we have been in Ghana, the Green Turtle Lodge in Akwidaa. I arrived there yesterday and bumped into Bahar again, she had met a couple of guys from England and all three of them had flights home on Friday. They were heading back east so I decided to tag along. We are now in Cape Coast again and the only productive thing I need to do is confirm my flight to Namibia. The only problem is that I just heard that our container (containing our motorbikes) was not loaded onto the ship yesterday, this will mean we will have to wait around an extra week to get the bikes. I am trying to decide whether to stay here in Ghana for some extra time or go to Namibia on Friday as planned… All in all, not an overly stressful week.

Africa Blog Posts, Blog Posts

Week 35: Shipping and the Volta

Posted on 13/03/2012

This week has seen a huge change in our method of travel, from Elmina we drove to Tema to meet the other people who are shipping their bikes. We arrived to meet the seven people and their six bikes (Heidi and Janz with their two diesel Enfields, Max and Marrian on their KTM, Hubert on his bike with sidecar, Charlie on his BMW and me with my Transalp) at the shipping office, we were a little late and they were just leaving the meeting. We soon found out that the bikes needed to be packed in to the container on Thursday, this meant we had to change our plans to celebrate Matt’s birthday in Peki. We stayed a night it a horrible little hotel in the port area and decided we didn’t want to stay there if it was avoidable, so the next day I took my bike for a wash and then headed to Kokrobite beach to meet Parisa and her friend. We spent the the night there but had to drive back to Tema and stay in the crappy hotel again so that we could be at the port for 8am Thursday morning. We arrived at the correct time but sat around for an hour or so before anything started to happen, eventually we were told we could start putting the bikes into the container, that took about an hour as each bike had to be man-handled into position. Then we had to wait another hour or two as they sent someone to buy lashings and someone else went to pick up the customs agent. When the customs agent arrived we were told he was the wrong guy and that someone else would come soon. We went for some lunch and sat waiting around for another hour or so. When the customs agent arrived he wasn’t happy that the bikes were in the container already so the shipping company bribed him and he signed off on the contents. Then we finalised the paperwork and paid £370 each, finally we were free to head up to Peki to meet Matt for his birthday, but on public transport as we no longer have our bikes.

We arrived in Peki and had some drinks to celebrate with Matt, then the next day we went to visit a disappointing waterfall nearby. The next day Parisa left Ghana heading back to Sweden, the rest of us headed north through Hohoe to Wli waterfall. This waterfall is supposedly the highest waterfall in west Africa, we hiked up to the upper falls and relaxed there before hiking back down to visit the lower falls, which is also home to thousands of large bats. After spending a night in Hohoe we headed south again to a monkey sanctuary in Tafi-Atome, went for a walk around in the forest feeding the monkeys and taking pictures. The monkeys are a little timid and although I had seen pictures of them climbing onto peoples shoulders to eat the bananas, we only managed to get them to eat from our outstretched arms.

After we had finished there we got back onto some local transport (Trotro) and headed to the south of Lake Volta, while the minibus was quite full, we were also joined by a goat. I now have around three weeks before I need to be at the port in Namibia to collect the bike, so I am hoping to relax at a nice cheap beach in Ghana for a while before flying down to Namibia, maybe I can even arrange some couch surfing.