Categories > Africa

Beep beep beep.  We hear the alarm and wake up in the darkness.  We love this time.  It is the coolest part of the day and we feel able to eat and begin riding.  It's still dark but we hear people walking through the dry bracken as we pack up the tent and prepare to eat breakfast.  A man rides through on a very squeaky bicycle and we smile and wave as he passes.  We wash our peanut butter and banana jam sandwiches down with an instant cafe au lait made from nescafe and powdered milk.  The mangoes we bought yesterday are perfectly ripe and taste a little like pineapples.  Mangoes are a regular in our diet and although we could just pick as many as we can handle right from the trees, we prefer to spend the few pennies and buy them from the locals.  After consulting the map and digesting for a bit, we push Franky to the road and ride.

(more…)

We have recently changed our mode of transportation again. We started out by walking for four months. After that we rode bicycles for two years and now we are riding on mopeds. It was very difficult to give up our beloved bikes but after seeing the map of the African continent and the size of the Sahara, we made our decision. We are not in an endurance race. We only want to experience what the world has to offer us. Morocco is the beginning of Africa for us and it has been very welcoming. We're now on the border of the Sahara. The adventure continues…
 

As you can probably guess by the title, we are no longer riding mopeds. After being stranded in the desert a couple times and getting fed up with hearing the sound of the motors all day, we decided to sell the mopeds. We thought about what would be the next mode of transport for us while we hitched our way down to Dakar, Senegal from Dakhla, Morocco. When we arrived we had discarded the ideas of bigger motors or horse carts. The plan was to build a comfortable machine that we could pedal together. We also wanted it to have the ability to carry enough food and water to get us through long distances. There were many different design possibilities some of which we attempted to build. In the end the parts available to us for the construction dictated the design. The Frankentrike or Franky-T as we call it was born on March 21st, the spring equinox. We are certain that we will have to deal with regular maintenance but we know now that pedalling is the best way for us to travel. We only hope that the inferior African bike parts will surprise us with their durability. Once again, the adventure continues…