The Crossing Day 2
Day two started out at about 8am and I headed out of “town” through a very wide sandy river-bed. The sand wasn’t too loose and the bike got through it without too much difficulty but I was riding at walking pace for about a Km before things firmed up enough to ride faster…
The dreaded loose sand on the track at the start of day 2
Corrugations starting to appear.
Some guinea fowl... There are about a half dozen different species in Africa... These ones are really quite pretty... The locals call them "chubby chickens" and they are apparently quite good eating.
Though it didn’t really improve that much since even though the surface became firm, the dreaded corrugations appeared and I spent the next few hours only managing to move at about 20Kmh max.
And the trouble with the corrugations is that they really shake everything to its limits and beyond, body and bike and luggage etc. Normally Id try to ride fast over corrugations to smooth things out but that simply wasn’t possible on the twisty little road with interspersed creek crossings and stoney out-crops. And another thing you would normally do in sandy conditions is let the air out of the tires to a very low pressure so that the tire “foot-print” gets larger and you get better “float”, better traction, and better bump absorption… But I couldn’t do that either because of the frequent sections of rubble and buried rocks with very sharp edges… I had to keep the tires up at full highway pressure which just seems to accentuate the corrugations. Nothing fell off the bike, and my teeth did stay in my head, but it was very tiring riding and very slow progress.
Nasty corrugations... I couldn't go fast because of the sand, so I had to go slow and just suffer the shaking!
But, because of all the shaking, the GPS power supply was acting up terribly and it kept shutting down through lack of charge… So much so that by the end of the day it just stayed off and I rode along the only significant trail as it headed North. After a few hours though the compact sand gave way to pretty consistent packed rubble. The track was still clear - two good firm wheel lanes through vast fields of “rock scape”. There were patches of tussock grass here and there and some hardy acacia trees scattered about but it was overwhelmingly a landscape of rock… Very much like the extreme South and North of Namibia…. Definitely no water here to survive on if you broke down… And by this time there were not even any goats or cows to be seen, the only livestock to be seen were a few camels here and there.
The land of blasted rock continued for a couple of hours and got ever more treeless while the rate of riding stayed about the same at 10-20 Kmh and the shaking and rattling likewise persisted unabated. And just for fun, the hot desert wind was blowing in a light gale from behind J… And with all my complaining about head-winds youd probably tyhink Id be happy with a tail wind for a change… But sadly not so! You see, about the only time you actually want a head wind is when the bike engine is working very hard and you are moving very slowly. In these situations the engine overheats and any added air flow for cooling is desirable, but the bikes design is set up for airflow from the front and when it comes from behind it doesn’t go to the engine or the radiator. Now I was going very slowly over steep and winding rubble which made for very slow and bumpy riding but the engine wasn’t having to really work like it would in deep sand… nevertheless, with the air temperature at about 40degC and me in 1st or 2nd gear only, the temperature gague on the dash went quickly up to just under the red zone and stayed there constantly as the electric fan tried desperately to pull some air through the radiator against the force of the 50-60 Kmh tail wind. And though the bike performed flawlessly and the temperature never went into the red, I was constantly concerned about it as I rode for 2-3 hours through the moonscape.
Moonscape indeed!
But that wind was actually only a local phenomenon… It’s a “sea breeze” that’s caused by the very hot conditions on very arid land that is located next to a large body of water… Lake Turkana. And after a few hours of riding, the lake finally appeared as I rode up over a ridge… Sapphire blue against the black and brown boulder and rubble landscape… Truly beautiful.
The blue of Lake Turkana appears as I crest a hill.
A hardy tree stands in the rubble landscape... one of the very few.
So, I stopped the bike and took a few pictures, but I didn’t really have long to admire the pretty scenery. For one thing, I was completely dehydrated after spending about four hours working quite hard on the bike in very hot and dry conditions… Id stopped for a drink only one other time and I easily chugged down 750ml of what had been luke-warm and was now downright hot water. The trail (not really a road any more) headed along the side of the lake and I followed along too. But the rubble of the two tire tracks now became loose instead of packed, and that makes all the difference in the world for a bike…
A small village of Turkanas on the shore of the lake... I think they fish for a living?
On into the desert I ride.
Riding on this loose rubble in relatively narrow wheel ruts becomes nigh-on impossible. The bike has no dependable footing for steering and you are reduced to paddling along with your feet down. I was doing this at minimum throttle in first gear for hundreds of meters at a time… And because you are stuck in a wheel rut (no you cant ride in the middle between the ruts… The bike cant climb out of the loose ruts) you have to use the strength of your legs to keep the bike upright. And my loaded bike weighs in at about 300Kg! Needless to say my legs are using all their strength to keep the “beast” upright, and as things progress I get more and more tired and Im huffing and puffing in the heat and pretty soon the bike goes down J Its only the second “topple” over of the whole trip so far… But by the time Im through with this little jaunt there will be dozes and dozens more! L
First topple over... many more to come!
And I don’t really even have the luxury of time to catch my breath before trying to pick the beast back up… Ive transferred the external fuel into the main tank now (so that the weight is lower on the bike), and while the bike is on its side the fuel is leaking out of the tank breather line… Panting and sweating I extricate myself from the rubble and the bike and try to find footing to lift it but the ground just gives way when try and Im sooo exhausted… I give up and have to take a couple of minutes to catch my breath and clear the rubble for a good footing before I manage to get the bike back on its feet… And it seems that the fall has broken one of the side case attachments too… Hmmm… So I spend a few minutes figuring out how to secure it back on the bike with lashings… then another drink and its back to work. About 100m at a time I paddle along in the rubble using all my strength to keep the bike upright till I have to stop and catch my breath for a coup[le of minutes… and then do it again etc. etc.
Wow a huge patch of trees!
But after only an hour or so the road gets a bit firmer and I can move slowly along again without paddling. Then I come to the big settlement on the southern end of the lake and am relieved to find that I can actually buy a cold drink here as well as petrol though its very expensive and is sold by the litre in reused water bottles. I decide to top up the main tank but not fill the external containers since I should now have enough range to make it through… That it turns out was almost a very bad decision!... but we will get to that in due course J
OMG! a car coming in the other direction... I think I only saw two in the whole "crossing".
At this stage Im pretty much on schedule for my progress plan but its only about 1pm and though its really hot I decide to head on and try to get the extra 100km or so to the next planned stop before night… should be able to do it I think. So off I go and the road continues with its assorted rock/gravel/sand terrain. Progress is very slow and rough as expected. After an hour or so the road becomes newly graded… You would think that’s a good thing since it eliminates the deep ruts that give me such problems, but no, it removes every last bit of firmness and Im left wallowing uncontrollably in 5-15cm of loose sand… Again the bike becomes virtually unmanageable, so I end up spending quite a bit of time not on the road at all and riding along over the flats and through the scrub next to the road where the sand is at least somewhat packed and provides far better footing for the bike. But that turns out to bring its own consequences… You see, I had thought that the GPS power supply was only not working due to the vibration and Id left the GPS plugged in overnight to recharge properly while the bike was nice and still. But the vibrations had in fact broken one of the wires to the battery connection and the GPS was no longer charging at all… And that meant that today again the GPS kept shutting down. To the point where I just left it turned off and followed the only available road going North…
Coming toward a small Turkana village.
The Turkana's huts are little domes about 3m in diameter and covered with plastic and fabric.
But somewhere along the way while I was concentrating on riding along next to the road there must have been a turn-off on the other side of the road… and I missed it! In the end it was not a problem because at about 4pm I finally made it completely exhausted and dehydrated into a small village near the lake shore… There was certainly no “shop” in the village and not really much in the way of “buildings” either but I headed over to one of the few solid buildings and found someone who spoke some English. It took me a while to figure things out but I was at a town not marked on either of my maps and that was only about 65Km out instead of the 100Km Id hoped for. But I was completely pooped and I had to rest… This heat made me sooo weak, I could barely muster the strength to walk around.
I found some shade and just lay there in the dust and drank the last bit of my water… I asked about buying water but there was none to be bought and in fact the people I was talking to were waiting for someone to come along to unlock a tank with some rainwater in it… Earlier in the afternoon I had noticed that I was really suffering in the heat… moreso than was normal or than I would have expected. It got to the point that my hands and toes were tingling! I get the hands tingling thing often enough when Ive been holding on to the bike very hard and the road has been very bumpy, but the tingling feet was new… I decided it was likely dehydration and so I stopped and had a drink and then pressed on telling myself that Id be more careful tomorrow and drink more and as soon as I stopped today Id have a good guzzle… but that was not to be it seemed. As I lay there in the dust with quite a headache at the end of the day, parched as I was I had to wait another two hours before I finally got more water (and it was about as hot as a cup of tea!) In the mean time I just lay around panting in the dust beside one of the buildings and when I managed to get enough energy back I investigated the broken GPS problem and found and fixed the broken wire J
A school room in the little village that was not on the map.
Local "urchins"
I was going to spend the night just camped there in the village in my little tent but the head man seemed to insist that if I was to do that he would appoint a bodyguard and I would have to pay for it… there was no way he would let me camp without the attendant. The only alternative he said was if I went about 1Km over to the police base there and camped with them!... And so I put my stuff back on the bike and went over and made some new friends and put my tent up on a different piece of dust. I drank as much water as I could make myself swallow and had some biscuits and nuts for dinner and tried to get to sleep which proved near impossible because it was well above 35degC till long after 10pm… I just lay there sweating water away faster than I could drink it J
Sun sets are pretty nice out in the desert.
