I am so glad that we had changed our itinerary this year from Zambia to Zimbabwe to visit Victoria Falls. This time of year, November, is the end of the dry season in Southern Africa. This year it was even dryer than normal and for this reason the Zambezi River was flowing slow and low.
Looking over to the Zambia side of the falls there were barley a trickle while the Zimbabwe side had a wonderful show of cascading water as you can see in my gallery below.
I have been to Victoria Falls in the past during the rainy season and at that time it would be impossible to take a close picture due to all the mist from the falls.
We had now come to the most northern point in our journey; from here on we would travel west towards the Skeleton Coast before turning straight south and head for Cape Town.
The journey had come to a transition point where we were to say goodbye to the good roads, all sealed and beautiful. After changing to new tires in Namibia we were all ready to face the Namibian gravel roads. Some were more ready than others and I could feel the uncertainty in the group. Most bikers do not like sandy roads and nothing was different in this group. With the exemption of a couple of riders sand would be the challenge in the following couple of weeks.
As I preached to the group my take on this is that the best riders are those that can see their own limitation and let go of pear pressure. As some of you know we have had several accidents on previous Africa Adventures so this time I did my very best reminding the group of past accidents and encourage us to take our time and avoid mishaps as much as we could control that part of the ride. I will tell you in Chapter 4 how that worked or not.
Namibia treated us with some great weather, not to hot and no rain. Our days were filled with adventures, one day we had the good fortune to see desert elephants as a small group made their way through a dried out riverbed. We had the pleasure of visiting the Damara Living Museum learning about their way of living, but most of all we all enjoyed the wide-open landscape of the Namibian dirt roads.
As we made it to the Atlantic Coast the temperature dropped significantly. The cold ocean cooled the air and in Swakopmund we woke to a misty cold morning, not what we had expected after dry and hot riding just days before.
The banner picture for this Chapter 3 was taken at the Geo Cash on the Rhino Road where I in 2002 together with Mike Paul planted a copy of my book, 10 Years on 2 wheels. The idea was that someone would take this book and replace the Geo Cash with another item. Well that has not happened and once again we all signed the book and left it for someone else to collect one day.
Enjoy the pictures from this stretch of the journey and stay tuned for the final chapter 4.
Thanks.
Helge Pedersen
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