Au naturel
Over the December period Jim Freeman took the recently introduced BMW R1250GS HP on a 2 500 km sortie to the Sunshine Coast … and he was grateful he is a big fellow!
You know you are in the heart of the Eastern Cape when you see aloes, euphorbia, and bushbuck, and encounter strangers who are friendly even when they are sober. Riding eastwards from Cape Town along the N2 freeway, you enter the province just after the Storm’s River Bridge and are immediately warned not to feed baboons. Wisecracks are permitted only if you are a local.
Although the scenery remains pretty much Garden Route same-same, as someone with Eastern Cape roots, I sit a little straighter in the saddle of the purring BMW R1250GS HP and begin to really think about the week ahead. My destination is Kenton-on-sea but, because this lovely little seaside holiday town between Port Elizabeth and Port Alfred is 900 km from the Mother City, I am covering the distance over two days.
I am not as young as I used to be, and it takes longer to recover from a long slog on a laden adventure bike. From Cape Town to where my old mate Rick Lobb and his wife Marietjie live at Gamtoos River Mouth is a more tolerable 700 km, which means I have just over an hour’s ride from the Eastern Cape border to a frosty Black Label …
Though I had been on the road the best part of seven hours, I felt surprisingly fresh when I alighted in Gamtoos, which is why – the good people from Honda, Triumph, and KTM can say what they will – the Gs-series is so popular with two-wheel thrill-seekers. When it comes to comfort, performance, versatility, and cost-efficiency, no other manufacturer in the genre comes close.
The R1250GS HP ticks just about every box on the page, easily eclipsing its 1 200 cc predecessor that is still commonly regarded as being at the pinnacle of adventure riding. Now, several weeks and over 2 500 km later, I have difficulty in categorising it as a street-bike that is equally comfortable on dirt or an Enduro that treats tar with disdain.
I was still raving about the ride when the Lobbs and I sat down to dinner at Catch of the Day in nearby Jeffrey’s Bay. I am ecstatic to discover there is Red Roman on the menu. Back when the larnies from my Jo’burg high school headed to Plett or the Natal South coast for the December holidays, I would trek down to J-bay to spend a month playing surfing beach bum.
This included being on the beach in the evening when the fishing boats came in and buying a **bos** of dusky pink Romans to braai back at the caravan park. Two bucks would get you four or five decent-sized fish, gutted and scaled. Romans are harder to get these days and consequently much more expensive but, hey, it is not every day you treat yourself to a boyhood memory!
Aloes and euphorbia
Riding on Day Two was a breeze, starting with the incredibly scenic R102 that used to link Jeffrey’s and PE before the N2 took its place 40 years ago. Aloes and euphorbia abound while the thicket lining the road is rife with bushbuck, though these do not show their faces in daylight hours.
It was (rather appropriately) lunchtime on Friday when I pulled up at Stanley’s bush pub outside Kenton. I was met by Jason Friend, previously head ranger at Kariega Game Reserve and currently employed as Zimbabwe country manager by the International Anti-poaching Foundation. We have been close for a good couple of years and he had invited me to stay at Intaka Bird Lodge (www. intakabirdlodge.com) while I learned about a new “volun-tourism” initiative.
Intaka is one of the hidden gems of the Sunshine Coast. Situated 14 km outside Kenton, this three-star lodge set in 60 ha of veld and gardens, does not only provide elegant yet inexpensive accommodation to the public, it is also home to the Sibuya Wildlife Experience (SWE). Paul Marais co-founded SWE in 2017 to promote nature and coastal wilderness conservation in this specific region of the Eastern Cape by enticing (in the main) foreign volunteers to participate in “behind the scenes projects to save endangered and threatened wild- and marine life”.
Programmes range from one to four weeks and cover wildlife tracking and monitoring; rhino-watch / anti-poaching support; nature reserve sustainability; alien plant control and botanical surveys; marine exploration research and surveys; and community engagement. The initiative is staged in conjunction with the neighbouring Sibuya Game Reserve (www.sibuya.co.za) and the river that runs through it.
“We work in small groups – a maximum of eight volunteers at a time – who stay with the SWE team at Intaka. Participants share comfortable twin
bedded en suite rooms with three meals a day,” says Marais. I join the youngsters, mainly European and British, for breakfast with Intaka owners Paul and Retha Bowers or head out with them in game vehicles for sundowners on Sibuya or the banks of the river.
This leaves the days free to explore the area on the BMW and the versatility if the bike is thoroughly tested. The region is criss-crossed with dirt roads that link the main arterial routes (R72, R343, and R67). These are used mainly by farmers and game rangers as shortcuts, so the roadquality is not always great … especially when overnight showers leave the redclay surface alternately gluey and greasy.
Thankfully, the Beemer has riding, braking, and traction modes for almost any eventuality so, while the riding remains challenging, there is no such thing as a no-go area for the bike. Take heed, though, this bike is high, wide, and heavy! You need to be tall and somewhat broad-hipped to get your feet flat on the ground – even at the lowest saddle-height settings – and, on the rain-eroded dirt tracks of the Eastern Cape, being short could be a recipe for disaster.