A Bike Packers Guide To Afrika Burn
- lukeapteker
- Aug 19, 2019
- 20 min read
Take a trip with myself and Andre as we tackle a 420km cycle from Cape Town through the Karoo to an event that is the epitome of self reliance, Afrika Burn.
INTRODUCTION:
Before I dive into the actual adventure I thought describing why we chose to ride and how we got to that point would provide some interesting context. Lets face it, nothing earth shattering happened here. Just two severely undertrained scatterbrained characters getting on their bicycles and riding a bunch of kilometers to a gathering in the desert. Maybe these ramblings will appeal to you, for those who know me maybe this will make up for my vast inability to tell cohesive stories without getting distracted. But whoever you are, you will hopefully at least feel some sort of inspiration here, to get off your lazy ass and do something unnecessarily difficult every once in a while.
CHAPTER ONE:
Why did we do this.
I never used to be sporty, I skate boarded a lot as a teenager but I would have chosen a whisky over a run any day of the week. I somehow got into marathon running and of course ended up over doing it to the point where I blew my patellar tendon and put an end to my dream of running races like the infamous 80km Puffer.
One of my Physios at the time recommended getting a bicycle. I remember laughing because to me a road cyclist is the same as a mountain biker and they were all annoying twats. Oh how wrong I was. Because I found downhill racing, which ultimately turned into what I love doing now, Enduro.
Basically you ride uphill to your stages and then bomb down over the scariest rocks you can think of, as fast as humanly possible.
Now as much as I enjoyed the thrill of scaring yourself shitless on two wheels, I never got back to that almost meditative bliss I got when running long distances. Then came Andre Botha, and ultimately Bike Packing!
Andre has done some bike touring in India before and suggested a ride out to Kommetjie to go camp for the night, I didn't have the right bike for it so ended up borrowing one, it was a simple retro 1980 something Gary Fisher with a rear pannier rack. Andre came to my house in Sea Point around 4pm, we attached some basic camping gear with some ropes (really badly) and set off towards Cape Point. And here starts with my latest and greatest passion, camping trips with your bicycles!
CHAPTER TWO:
AFRIKA BURN, PREPARATION AND TRAINING.
So the next part of this story is, why ride to Afrika Burn? Now if you haven't been to Afrika Burn it's pretty much the epicenter where people go to escape, there's no cellphone signal, no money, just crazy art installations, loud music, and a whole lot of desert to lose yourself in. Just the drive up there is an event itself because once you hit the notorious R355 after ceres, it's no mans land in terms of just how many tires you will shred getting to the burn.
I also ended up doing Afrika Burn obsessively, not missing one since 2012 and creating bigger and better theme camps each year, by the time 2019 came I was pretty over the novelty of getting shit faced in the desert for a week.
I made the decision to miss the karoo festivities this year. And then Andre Botha sent me a message...
" Luke, you feel like riding to the Burn"?
Yes I do Andre, yes I fucking do.
FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, YOUR RIG.
So I opted to do something a little unorthodox and decided to modify my enduro bike that's absolute last function is to ride 420km over multiple days, intro a bike packing machine.
Meet Gypsy Danger:
This bike is designed with one thing in mind, bombing down hills. Its aggressive geometry, hardy wheels and lengthy front suspension makes sure it can handle the rough stuff when pointed down. But I had other notions in mind, I was to turn this bad boy (or bad girl) into a bike-packing dream machine.
GEAR and LOATHING
When you out in the middle of nowhere with no support and cellphone signal, the gear you carry can make the difference between having the time of your life or ending up a rotting corpse in a ditch in the Karoo somewhere. It's also a bit of an art as there's a fine balance between "do I really need this" and it making your bike heavier and harder to pedal such massive distances each day.
Second order of business... pannier racks!
Panniers are the soul of a touring bike, it sits above your rear wheel and can take most of your gear weight. Now seeing as my bike wasn't designed for this (nothing to mount it on) your typical pannier system wasn't going to work at all.
So with a lot of research and a little ingenuity I found a set of Thule's that mount directly to the frames seats stays, now normally the force goes down onto your axle so it was a bit of a gamble but it ended up looking pretty slick.
Next up was to get a custom frame bag made, the more weight you can keep on the bike itself the better it will handle. I found a guy online named Odon and sent him this really bad sketch of what I wanted.
Now while Odon was making my frame bag I had a few other essential items to tackle. Like where will my water go? If it rains will I have dry clothes to change into? How will I keep the bike from falling over and potentially damaging the racks?
Without going too in depth here are the final additions to the bike to get it burn ready:
And there you have it. My final pack list of all that what was needed to take us where we needed to go. With some last minute random add ons like iodine water purifiers, waterproof blitz and a flint fire striker, we felt like we were ready for anything.
Training
To put it frankly, we are dumb lazy bastards that hardly trained. I think we did one training ride together to Mamre. It was fun but we realized we might be way over our heads.
The Route
The final piece to the puzzle was figuring out which route to go, and where to sleep each night. The obvious way to go to burn would be the fastest. A nice simple 300km route from Cape Town through Ceres taking you only 100km of gravel road directly to the event. Now I'm not entirely sure why, but I had other plans to get us there.
We were worried about the initial stretch of N1 highway, and then the cars and lack of visibility because of the dust on the 100km stretch on the R355 road. We also wanted to see some smaller towns near the Karoo and have a feel for the west coast area. So we decided to plan a route north, very north, into Northern Cape North.
My route planning app Komoot clocked the ride in at around 460km, with half the height of Everest to climb and just shy of 35 hours estimated non stop riding, it was clear this was no easy task, but wow I was so happy we decided to take it.
We were originally going to do it over 3 nights / 4 days (110km a day) but at the last minute decided to do it over 5 days to try get the average milage down.
Andre comes over on the Saturday night for final gear inspections and preparations. I was happy with my setup although what was supposed to be a 29kg bike ended up weighing in at a whopping 35kg, I was not happy about it, but I literally couldn't find one thing to leave behind, I even cut my toothbrush in half to save weight.
Andre on the other hand went into it with a much more gun ho attitude, for good measure he brought an Axe that I helped mount to his frame.
CHAPTER THREE:
DAY 01
REALITY HITS AND OUR VOYAGE BEGINS.
6AM and my alarm goes off, being someone who suffers with chronic insomnia I severely loathe the mornings. My ritual consists of crawling to the kitchen to drink enough red bull until I can get to a coffee to kickstart my mooshy brains into gear.
I drove to Andre where we made final checks at a nearby Caltex and we headed off in the direction of our first stop... Moreesburg. Day one was our longest day at just over a 110km so we had a lot of ground to cover.
At first it didn't feel real, we were laughing and making jokes nervously as I think we both didn't expect us to make it this far. I remember thinking, are we really doing this? Can we actually make it? It still felt like a training ride as we were on tar with Table Mountain still in sight, but onward we peddled, metre by metre putting distance between us and the comforts of home, beds, toilets, electricity and all the other things we take for granted.
It wasn't till on the R27 where we passed Koeberg power station under the insanely loud power lines buzzing overhead where I think we both looked at each other with this "Fuck Yeah" look in our eyes and we started to put some steam into the pace.
Our next hurdle was getting though Atlantis in one piece. Atlantis can be quite a dangerous township as it's unfortunately plagued with crystal meth and crime, as it's easy for offenders to hide in the vast expanse of the dunes and surroundings areas. So with Andre's axe ready for action and a can of mace on my bars, we put foot and hauled ass through the 1km stretch of no mans land.
Lucky enough we only had 2 people notice us, one screaming for money and the other didn't look like he knew what day of the week it was, so we were quite happy for it to have been a non-event. Once we hit Mamre it felt like we were properly outside the boundaries of Cape Town now, and we started to feel more and more like adventures, and decided to make a photo opportunity out of it:
We were honing in on our Day 1 half way point, Darling. For some reason Andre asked me to take a photo of him and the election posters, so I happily obliged.
I think we got a bit over excited because what happened next wasn't the smartest moments of our lives. We were about to hit the gravel road and it was 32 degrees around midday and we were feeling a bit peckish, so we decided to stop at the acclaimed Darling brewery for some lunch.
We decided to drink a bunch of beer and I made the exceptional decision to scoff down 800g of ribs. Let's just say our energy levels matched that of a hung over sloth, and we would need to work harder than an ugly stripper just to get our legs over the bikes again.
But once we hit the end of the tar road and we felt the first sign of earthly gravel beneath our tyres, the fuck yesness of our trip got reignited!
When you hit the dirt a completely different feeling takes over, on the tar you can zone out and become almost autonomous. On the farm roads you have to watch your front wheel closely, you often hit corrugated bumps or patches of thick sand that can throw you off your bike if you are not careful. It also requires harder pedalling to compensate for the added resistance on the tyres, but even with all these things making a hard ride harder, and over coming my self induced food and beer coma, I've never felt more free.
We hit our turn off to our first stop over, a campsite a little outside of Moorreesburg. It was getting a bit late in the day but we got back onto the tar and felt confident to make up for lost time. But the sun was setting fast and there was a rather large hill ahead of us, and we didn't know that getting to the farm was a lot tougher than we anticipated.
It got dark very fast but we came prepared for some night riding, we put the torches on and kept going, and going and going. The road to the campsite was steep and rocky, we were tired, almost 11 hours since we left home and our energy levels were dropping fast. After getting a little lost the farm owner came out with a spot light and guided us to where we can pitch our tents.
Andre started prepping some food in the nearby facility, we made a manly fire with by striking our flint, and after about 10 mins of staring into it like zombies we went to sleep on our first night on the road.
CHAPTER FOUR:
DAY 02
A new dawn, a new day
Even though the second day was by far our shortest leg, we still made sure to get up before sunrise as repacking your bikes take longer than you would think. You need to roll up your tents, sleeping bags, mattresses, strap them to various parts of your bike so that they don't fall off, re-stuff your clothes and food in already overflowing bags, which never packs the same way twice. But I remember sitting on a rock and seeing the sunrise and sipping on some coffee with nothing but a calm sense of bliss that I rarely have in normal life. My legs were hurting but not as much as I thought they would after doing an Argus with a bike that ways 5 times a regular one. We thanked the farmers for letting us stay over, filled our water bottles and made out way towards Citrusdal!
If it's one thing that I noticed straight away on day 2 is that you eat a lot, and I mean a crap load. You burn so many calories pedalling constantly all day that your body just craves sustenance and caffeine. So a sight we got to visit repeatedly is Padstals (Farm stalls). Here we would stuff our face with pies, biltong, coffee and anything else we can get our hands on.
The road to Citrusdal is quite straight forward along the N7 but as you can see in the following pictures just how close the trucks get to you, unsettling is an understatement.
With no gravel options on Day 2 we we lucky to find a dilapidated unused cycle lane meandering next to the highway. It didn't go for too long but it was a welcoming sight to find.
We seemed to be making good progress with as few stops as possible and resisting all temptation to buy all the cheese in the world.
We also didn't quite know where we were staying that night, I phoned a few people in Citrusdal and they said we can just sort it out upon arrival, at our current pace I estimated us getting there around 5pm.
We tend to stop quite often to make coffees and stretch our legs at truck stop over points. But on this stop our gas burner decided to commit suicide on us. It wasn't so important whilst we were still near civilization but I know on day 4 or 5 we needed it badly for our food and water.
I called some shops in Citrusdal and they said they could help us out. So my mind was at ease.
But then this piece of shit of a mountain pass happened.
Meet Piekenierskloofpas, our first mammoth task of climbing our over encumbered bicycles upwards instead of forwards. It was relentless and this is when things started to hurt as we have been on the saddle since 7am. But after what seemed like an eternity of climbing, we got to the top, and what I love about being at the top is you know there is the fun part of bombing down the hill as fast as you can.
I always tend to break away and go as fast as possible on the descents, when about 2 minutes in my phone starts ringing, I knew then it wasn't good news.
Andre told me that he had a puncture, something that was expected on these trips, I asked if he wanted me to ride up to help but he said he can handle it. I started going down again when I got a second call, it wasn't a puncture but Andre's whole tyre got torn to shreds. This was not good, not good at all. I looked at my watch and it was 16:45 and I was 6km way from Citrusdal, I made the decision to go ahead to not only try find a tyre for Andre's bike, but also to get a gas cooker that we so desperately needed! The pressure was on.
I managed to make it to an Agricultural store, where I found a gas cooker, but low and behold there aren't any bicycle shops in the whole of Citrusdal! I called Andre in a panic, he had hitchhiked and got a lift in a passing farmers bakkie and they drove around town asking people where we can find a goddamn tyre.
Luckily someone overheard my frantic phone call and said he works as a hardware store around the corner that might have some old tyres for us but they were closing in under 2 minutes. So I sent Andre a pin, got on my bike and hauled ass to the hardware store.
We found one that could work I fitted the tyre on the back and immediately noticed the thicker width didn't fit in the rear of the frame, it was rubbing against the metal and couldn't move freely, but I had an idea how to solve it.
After all the drama I completely forgot about where we were staying that night, so I called the lady I spoke to earlier and we bribed her to come get us as Andre's bike wasn't ridable. We quickly bought some food at the Spar when she arrived and we chucked the bikes in the back of her bakkie, with me holding on to them so they don't fall out (even though I almost did she was driving like a proper crazy person)
To our surprise our accommodation ended up being this luxury cabin right in the middle of the citrus orchards, we thought we were going to camp but I wasn't going to turn such a good thing down after such a nightmare of a day. And to make things even better, there was a Jacuzzi!
After some beers and much needed food, I exaggerate not when I say we both sat there for 2 hours slowly carving off the tread one piece at a time to get the tyre to fit. We would still need a new tyre as I didn't trust this make shift one so I was hoping we could get a replacement in Clanwilliam.
CHAPTER FIVE:
DAY 03
The hunt for new rubber and leaving it all behind.
Up at the crack of dawn again, even though we packed out bikes the night before, I knew the day ahead of us was daunting. We need to cycle 70km to Clanwilliam, and then STILL have to climb up one of the biggest mountain passes in the region, Pakhuis pass. I was such a big climb that to reach our distance targets we needed to split it into two parts. But I put that at the back of my mind for now, because it was time to pick some oranges!
The ride to Clanwilliam went relatively quickly, but not too long onto the road and we wanted coffee when I tried our new gas burner, and the stupid thing didn't work. We had gone too far to turn back, luckily I saw Clanwilliam has the same store as Citrusdal and I was hoping we could just swop it for a new one, I mean we knew the next two days there won't be any more shops or water points.
Taking about shops look at this pretty one:
At about 4pm we got to Clanwilliam! There wasn't much climbing to get there so our legs weren't feeling too bad, but if there was one thing that was killing me it was my goddamn butt! We were spending around 10 hours a day on the bikes, and even though I was wearing padded shorts underneath, the saddle definitely wasn't turning out to be my best friend.
So first thing on our checklist: Tyre for Andre.
Check.
Second item: New gas stove.
Check (this one worked)
And lastly to build an ass protector:
Now we knew after Clanwilliam we it starts to get wild, you lose cellphone signal, there aren't any cars passing, no shops, and very limited water points. So we went to spar and before the biggest hill of our whole frikkn trip, loaded our bikes up with a crap load of food and water. (over 3kg extra) Another thing is looked like rain was about to hit, this sucks even more because I had little to no faith in the waterproof integrity of my kiddies tent, seeing as that it has no cover! So I bought some ponchos for good measure
And up we went! With the sun once again setting behind us, it started getting quieter and quieter with no cars in sight, I checked my phone and we lost signal waaay earlier than anticipated. Shit just got real.
The one bonus of no cars is you get to ride in the middle of the road.
It got dark almost instantly, the bike torches went on, and we kept climbing and climbing. It was thick with clouds and we could hardly see ahead of us. Without cellphone service it was a guess where the campsite was, I just knew it was about a 2-3 hour ride from Clanwilliam. So we kept pressing forward until we saw what looked like a camp entrance, with not a soul in sight.
Battling fatigue and the freezing temperatures of being so high up, we set up camp, made a fire and cooked some fat steaks to get some protein into our bodies.
Now as I get into bed I noticed the temperature kept plummeting to around the 2 degree mark, Andre had a proper tent and sleeping bag where I thought I was clever to save weight I ended up so cold that I only had one choice...
To pick my tent up and chuck it into the nearby toilets that literally saved me that night.
I also ended up making a new friend, his name was Charles, his favourite food is faces.
CHAPTER SIX:
DAY 04
Into the wild and beyond.
Although my latrine tent combo saved me temperature wise, I kept waking up and not knowing where i was, was such a weird feeling, maybe a combination of exhaustion and altitude was finally getting to me. But what I recall was exiting my cosy chamber to see the campsite for the first time in the light, it was serene and completely empty, just the way I like things.
The routine started setting in and we got a bit faster each time, smash coffee, rig the bike, zoom zoom.
Although zoom zoom we didn't because we still had a lot of this colossal mountain pass to climb! The road was as empty as it was the day before, so onwards we climbed as the sun slowly started tipping over the vast mountain tops.
Up till then we had done a couple mountain passes already, and each one descended into another town but what happened next was so viscerally breathtaking it was faint worthy.
When we peered into the distance we didn't see cars, we didn't see towns or people, we just saw this vast expanse going into what almost seemed like nothing. Even though it was day 4 and our last major climb was literally behind us, this moment is where things truly started for me. So off we galavanted down the backside of that poophole of a hill and into the start of the klein karoo.
We then ventured deeper into the valley when we heard excited screams from the bushes, and out ran a swarm of young children that surrounded us and for some reason were chanting "Mielies". Now I didn't have any Mielies with me, so we opted for a group photo instead.
We then went on our merry way out of the valley to venture off the last tar road we will touch for the next 150km. And yes there was another hill to climb out of, and yes a stray farmer car almost drove into me, maybe I should bring a helmet next time. But hooray gravel!
What we saw next was like an oasis. At the bottom of the pass there was a big green grassy field with a beautiful farm house slap in the middle. We rationed our water to last at least another day but we thought we should take the opportunity to refill what we can and also to chat to some of the locals.
We then got to our original Day 4 camp spot called Enjo farm, but it was much too far from the Burn to get there in time the following day. We stopped for a quick coffee and ended up chatting to the owner, who let us know there was a Bushpub Bar coming up about a 2 hour ride away. This excited us as we both feel we deserved a beer, but also we could refill some more water rations for the final stretch.
Andre ended up getting a flat tyre right after Enjo, it's a bit demoralizing when you are so tired but since I thought we would get a lot more than we did, I was happy to slap a new tube in. Funny enough it was the good tyre not the dodgy one (that was still holding up.)
And in almost a blink of an eye we looked up and the sun crash dived behind the Cederberg mountains and it got pitch black pretty quickly. Trust our luck that it was the new moon, i was looking forward to some natural illumination lighting our way. The road surface also started to deteriorate badly, with large stones, ruts and bumps getting worse the further we got.
After what seemed like an eternity we saw a small light in the distance, and we knew it was our destined bush pub!
It was around 9pm and we knew the more distance we made that night, the less we would have to do the following day. I also knew there was a wind storm predicted to come in and there is nothing worse on this planet than riding a heavy bike in heavy head wind. (Well maybe having herpes and riding in headwind). Kyle also made it clear that we should check our gear for venomous scorpions and snakes, as they have been known to do some damage to humans in the area. I really wasn't feeling good about sleeping in my less than ideal kiddies tent that night.
So off we went into the unknown, only for Andres light to die leaving the two of us following my single glowing beam of hope, going further and further into the desert. Things getting darker and more mystical by the minute.
We didn't really have a plan where to sleep that night, but we also were mindful of our safety so were looking for a tree to camp behind, only thing is there are no trees and it was so dark we couldn't see anything ahead of us. So around midnight we b-lined off the road into the rough sandy desert, to find a random spot to which to set camp.
This was both exciting and frightening, but i loved every second of it.
I don't even remember going to bed that night, It was like i teleported to the morning. Teleported to this...
CHAPTER Seven:
DAY 05
Home stretch!
Over breakfast we both felt like we were agitated, i think the excitement was building up about how far we have come, and we know once we hit the R355 it will be a straight road south to Afrika Burn! With the sun up we could see that we didn't to a very good job of getting off the road, we were probably 10m from it haha, but we still haven't seen a single car so it mattered not.
What mattered now is that it was only about 8km to the proper road, but that 8km was basically a giant sand pit. Our legs were tired, we were under-slept and grumpy, and now slogging through sand. And yet onward we slogged, I don't think anything could have stopped us at this point.
We expected there to be a bunch of cars passing us, but going from the North end of the R355 meant that the masses we coming up from Ceres, so we only had the odd farmer vehicle pass giving us the stink eye.
The wind started picking up a bit but luckily it was more of a side wind than a head wind, so we made do. We kept thinking we saw the venue ahead but it always turned out to be nothing.
One thing that neither of us anticipated was after we saw the sign, we both felt more a feeling of anxiety than excitement. It's almost impossible to explain, you have this profound goal that you have almost achieved, but the closer you get also makes you realize that actually getting to the goal itself was the real adventure, yes so cliche, yes life is a journey, I'm ashamed to even say it, but all i can think of was how god damn amazing the time riding all those miles over all those days. We almost wanted to keep riding. Fuck the party we said! Let's ride home. But we saw the entrance gate, and some partying was indeed in order.
The road getting from the R355 to the Burn itself felt like it was eternal. There was beach sand pits, gear falling off our bikes, and a shitty hill climb or two, but what we had now for the first time was cars driving past us, hooting and cheering out the windows. This feeling gave us the drive we need to get our legs to the official entrance!
Here is a lame little video of our arrival, I hope it gives the feeling justice...
At the gate it was such a weird sensation, we were so used to being by ourselves and in our own company that we got all nervous and awkward being in crowds of people again. But we could hear the music and the rustle of energy a little way off in the distance, and we started getting excited about going all in!
CHAPTER SEVEN:
So now what?
So we made it, we were in the middle of Afrika Burn, Andre went to his camp, I went to find mine, we both had instant separation anxiety and it felt alien to be off our bikes! But how do I wrap this up, how does such an amazing experience draw to a conclusion?
Well for one thing in typical me fashion I downed a bunch of beer and got immediately shit faced, failing to take any more photos but a month or so after the event a dear friend of mine Rio sent me this pic which I think says it all:
Even after so many hours of cycling I still felt more at home on my bike than on my two feet. I recall taking the bike out, stopping, taking a deep breathe and just thinking,
"Sweet baby jesus that was my most incredible life experience to date."
It doesn't sound very profound cycling to what essentially is a just festival gathering, but if you know the spirit of Afrika Burn, the feeling of being out in the open desert and the experience of getting there with no car or assistance, you feel on top of the world.
So all i'm saying is, put yourself into physically challenging situations, you will learn more about yourself than any other way, I guarantee it.
I am 100% cycling up again next year, and I can't wait to do it all over. Join me if you are brave enough.
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