The Blog

The Road Less Traveled

Follow our epic trips around the World and through Africa (joining up with some of the Worlds greatest Athletes), as we take on the dangers that lie ahead. Read about our Road trip to Hell, a 10 000km journey, Cape Town to Mozambique to Durban to Lesutho and back, with more collateral damage than one can imagine. I have also documented trips to Indo, Thailand, Holland, The Carribean,  and The middle East’s to name a few.

Keep an eye on this page…

An African Road Trip to Hell and back

Just like a birthday cake, blueberry muffins, and warm apple pie, everything that is good in life, needs a recipe. It just happens to be that our road trip of Zero limits had a recipe of it’s own, a recipe for disaster. We dare you to Taste it!

Ingredients;

1 Fully equipped Land drover Defender.

3 Countries

7000 km of African roads

The Big 5

1 mahusive Whale shark and a 3m Manta Ray

4 Destroyed kites (make sure they are Brand new 2008 model, straight out the box)

(2 of which, after hours or contemplation were deemed totally written off!)

3 Boards MIA (missing in action possibly off the roof while being chased by a African black rhino!)

3 Point Break waves that were stolen straight from the cover of a surf mag,

1 artificial stand-up Barreling wave.

And of course

½ of a functioning brain of 5 Complete Enthusiastic Kiterboarding adrenaline driven nut-heads!

Turn Up the Heat to 35’C and 78% humidity

Add some 6m swell,

And keep it Cooking for 3 weeks!

Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands of Malaria hungry Mosquito’s

And Enjoy!

Directions

Well the first thing we had to do was to come up with a team of 5 guys who are all as crazy and driven as the next, this trip would not be for the light hearted,

With the Car packed to maximum capacity, with nothing but toys, we hit the tarmac at 180% go, the first 1000km would be stacked with hours of brain storming, the story board came out, we needed a plan. This 3week adventure took us 3hours to plan, missing out some fundamentals as you can imagine!

The first stop being the National park, and with a very limited budget found us smuggling 3 crewmembers though the gate, stuffed in a kiddies Spiderman bed sheet cover on the roof of the car, as what looked like Santa Clauses Christmas Sack. Once in, Daan’s only mission was to jump from the roof of the rover, onto a giraffes back… using a kite. Unfortunately we were escorted out the park before he found a suitable giraffe. We crossed the Mozambique border ahead of schedule. We though the capital Maputo would be a good way to kill time, 5 minutes and 3000 Meticas fine later, for what… well we didn’t even know. But what we did know was that civilization sucked, and we need to hit the open road,

Two days and a few nerve cracking, high tensioned kilometers later. We found ourselves standing on the notorious Tofinho point, an incredible grassy hillock outcrop of earth that extends the tropical fertile palm treed forest and mangroves into the clear blue warm Mozambican waters, before dropping steeply onto a razor-sharp rock shelf. With every hollow wave that wrapped around the airy cliff, so the faces of the crew lit up like the red behind of the baboon perched on a rock, which seemed as interested in us as we were the waves! The piercing sound of these waves seemed almost paralytic. After five minutes of bone breaking silence we found ourselves unpacking the car like Six-year olds opening a lucky packet. It was a race to get in the water, Stephan, Jasper and Alex all furiously pumping there kites, whilst myself and Daan waxed our surfboards. We had spent the previous weeks glued to the TV watching possibly every surfing movie ever made, in the hopes that it would somehow rub off on our surfing skill. This was our chance to ride the perfect wave.

The three hours that followed were totally indescribable and somehow so different to each one of us!

We setup camp on a complete desolate beach; with nothing in sight but a ghostly shipwreck. Every wave that smashed the wreck on the reef seemed to release the screams of the empty souls still trapped beneath the rusting decks. Trying to ignore the eerie sounds while preparing our beans and rice. We were unpleasantly surprised by a wondering local wearing nothing, but underpants and raincoat strolling the beach. Unaware of his business we all stood ready with some sort of batting rams in hand, only to discover that his only weapon was a bag full of crawling Crayfish. After an hour of bartering with him in our few words of our broken Spanish, and his Portuguese we traded him a can of beans, a potato, and a R10 note (which we were al convinced he used as toilet paper!) And with a huge smile on his face, threw our beans off the fire and prepare us a crayfish dinner! Bonopatite

We caught onto a rumour of monster swell hitting the coast in the days to follow, so we took a 2days to do some sight seeing (stoking a 9m whale sharks belly… etc… etc…)

In the 2 weeks that followed we managed to do everything we have ever dreamt of,

Alex got to shoot an AK-47 riffle in the hills of Lesotho, Jasper had an epic session on the flow rider (a 4foot artificial barreling wave) in durban. Stefan did what he is best at and stole the hearts of at least 4 different gals, a true traveler. Daan Finally found a river fast enough to surf on, with the only challenge of having a waterfall down stream of us. And I got towed into a few monster waves with a long rope and our Land Rover.

Well all fantasies aside, what advice can we share with you from our experiences? Firstly take a pair of pajamas on a camping trip when you plan on sharing a tent with 3 people. Despite what you see on survivor, spear fishing is not as simple as it may appear! No matter what your mate says, always double check his roof tying methods, it might just save you a board or two.  Lion Cubs… despite being the size of your cat can however inflict serious damage with their teeth. It is in fact not wise to travel on the bonnet of a 4X4, when the driver is a kook and has a chance of hitting the only bush on a vast beach at 60km/h! Read the directions on your Powder fire extinguisher, they really aren’t meant for killing flies in the car, but are effective in taking the smile off the drivers face. Trees, Rocks, and sharp reefs can be hazardous to your kitesurfing gear. Cute kids from rural villages can momentarily turn into little devils at the sight of sweets. If you need help in Lesotho, the police can always be found in the nearest pub, discuss your problem with them over a beer and game of snooker at 9am. And if that doesn’t work, your local farmer will let you shoot his AK-47 anyway.