Motorcycle Tour Kenya: Offroad Trip Through South Africa

We take our starting photo at the Cape of Good Hope just after sunrise. We will never be this young — or this fresh — again. Kilometer zero. At 9:00 AM, we ride. Our first stop is Joe's Safari Camp near Somerset West for a quick breakfast on the go. Then we hit Chapman's Peak Drive. Cameras out. This is where the first photos happen. By midday, we reach the legendary Garden Route and stop at Mossel Bay for a solid meal. From here on, breakfast and dinner are the only two meals of the day — for 21 days straight. Good news if you packed a few extra pounds. You'll leave them on the road. We roll into George in the late afternoon and end Day One with a proper South African sundowner.

Camp is packed at sunrise. We ride 60 kilometers to Hofmeyr. It's a quiet transit town, but it does the job. We stop for breakfast, fill the tanks, and stock up for a long day. Today's stage covers around 650 kilometers. It's one of the toughest of the first week. We ride federal roads through KwaZulu-Natal. After about 250 kilometers, we reach the border of the Kingdom of Lesotho.

Morning routine: check the map, start the bikes, find coffee. We ride South Africa's back roads into the Kingdom of Swaziland. Most of it is smooth asphalt through mountain scenery. Our goal is Hlane Royal National Park. This park is home to lions, elephants, white rhinos, giraffes, and much more — all wild, all here in Swaziland.

The new day begins with a hangover breakfast — coffee, aspirin, and a cold beer to balance things out. We ease into the ride. Green roads, tropical forests, and a slow warm-up pace. By this point, we've covered more than 3,000 kilometers. We've crossed Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo. Now we head for the border of Zimbabwe.

A new day breaks over Africa. Pack the tents, sip coffee, grab a cookie, and mount up. We ride on- and off-road toward the north-northwest. A stopover at Hwange National Park gives us a chance for a safari — depending on the group's pace and interest. Enduro routes are rare in Zimbabwe. They're just as rare in every country ahead. Know this before you book: this is an enduro expedition. Surprises on and off the road are part of the deal.

Zambia was born in 1964. It has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world and around 740,000 AIDS orphans. English is spoken alongside Bantu languages, which helps us move between ethnic groups and languages like Nsenga, Tumbuka, Ngoni, and Bisa. We won't follow Cecil Rhodes here. We'll leave our own tracks.

We watch the sunrise over Lake Malawi with coffee in hand. The route runs along the western shore of the lake — roughly 30,000 square kilometers of water to our right. We ride toward the Tanzania border at our usual pace: pole pole — Swahili for slowly. While border formalities run their course, we sample whatever the Songwe border river area has to offer.

The sun rises behind Kilimanjaro. We fire up the engines. This is it — the final push. We ride through wide open land toward the Kenyan horizon, passing Mount Longido. Fuel up, eat, and go. The next stop is the Kenya border. After crossing from Tanzania into Kenya, we reach Nairobi. Our last evening together is a good one — cold Tusker beers and Nyama Choma, which is grilled meat, the Kenyan way. Tomorrow, we head home.