Africa (local)

A journey to the heart of Dark Africa. Bike tour with Marco Duiker, Willem Hoffmans and Marc Dirckx in Ethiopia. From the big rumbling capital Addis Abbeba we go back in time, following small unpaved backroads through mediaevil style villages, leading to the glorious old testament evoking atmosphere of the rock-hewn churches from Lalibela.

Winter time in Austria, where I live is hard. In order to avoid losing all my little power, I have decided to spent some time on the other half of the globe. A long way to go down there. But worth to see.

Crossing the equator by your plane can be shaky. When I met a pilot on the occasion we shared the same train at Heathrow's terminal 5 train, he said: "this are just bumps as on a lousy road".

Today, Namibia is a rather save country in terms of criminal acts. I would say drug free. You have to expect there will be no public transport. Long distance travel mostly made by shuttle services. I used the Welwitchia shuttle service, which I can recommend. Alternatively you may take the desert train, which operates from May through October.

Bicyclist are very rare. On many roads outside the city limits, one may not find a shoulder, what makes bicycling very dangerous. Namibian car drivers are very similar to the Spain car drivers: once they are in motion, it is very hard to stop them.

One thing to know: The high season starts on May. You have to have booked an accommodation in advance. If not you may sleep in your tent (not recommended - can be dangerous because of wildlife animals). You still may find Island whereas German is spoken. Even they have at least two German TV programs: ZDF & Sat1 (without the nagging sex adds at night time).

Es war wieder soweit und es ging alleine mit dem Rad und Zelt ins südliche Afrika. Es fing auch gut an. Aber dann kamen die Hitze und der Gegenwind...

Tour D'Afrique is a four month, 12,000km supported bicycle ride from Cairo, Egypt to Capetown, South Africa. This is an account from the 11th time the ride was held, in 2013.

In the winter of 2010 we cycled Morocco fo the 12th time. This time we pedalled to plage Blanche, the white beach. This video is about dreams and how dreams turn out in reality.

We are shortly going to start an expedition from South Africa to the UK via the African West Coast. We have a challenge: my partner (soon to be wife) has never ridden a bicycle before. But she is confident she'll make it.

Tunisia bike tour in winter. 300 km from Tozeur to Gabes

About 11 years ago we fell in love with the country and the Imazighen, the people of the Tamazight. We fell in love with Morocco. Since then there is a spell resting on us and we have to return when ever we can.Tamazight is in fact the name for the Berber language spoken in the Middle Atlas but it is also widespread used for all the other berber languages. Imazighen 'free men' is the name for the berber people. This film is about one of our bicycle journeys as free men in Morocco through the Anti Atlas, the desert and the coast around Sidi Ifni.

It's been a long time since my last wheel revolutions in Africa. I've been avoiding the Black Continent, beating around the bush, choosing other cycling destinations, but now I can't delay it any more. Despite the headaches with obtaining the visas and nightmares about lions lurking in the tall grass beside the road, I must face the challenge. Besides, it's the last continent where my current touring bike hasn't been yet.

'I stepped out of the plane and out of my comfort zone into the sunshine at Marrakech airport. I was nervous and unsure of what to expect from the first African country I'd visited.

I wasn't ready for the dusty roads and the skinny donkeys pulling those heavy carts. The unrendered buildings, the traffic chaos and potholes, the flat lands leading to the High Atlas mountains. My only comfort was the reassuring feel of the bike that I was riding. I felt every bit like the naive western tourist that I was.'

This is day one of a 17 day cycle tour of the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas mountains in Morocco, taking in the coast between Tiznit and Essaouira along the way....

4 month riding in west Africa. From the maghreb to black africa, cycling through the Sahara desert. Description of the land, birds abd people...

In January of 1999 Eric spent two weeks on a self-supported bicycle tour with five other people in Uganda. This is his story.

In November 2007 we joined David Mozer (founder of Bicycle Africa) and Il Kim (professional student) on a two week bicycle tour through Southwest/Western Cameroon. We encountered steep climbs, exhilarating descents, some brutal roads, and many people calling out, ``du courage!'' throughout the course of the day. We hope you enjoy our journey - we sure did!

In December 2008 Eric rejoined David Mozer (of ibike.org fame), Il Kim (professional student) and other intrepid travellers for two weeks of cycling in the small West African countries of Benin and Togo.

I spent 30 days on this extraordinary island and came back literally reinvigorated by this unique experience and the inspiring encounters made during the trip.

As soon as you leave the biggest towns and you reach the ``brousse'' (French for bush), it feels as if you had traveled through time. Madagascar is a poor country, but the richness of its nature (where it is still preserved) and the hospitality and kindness of its people more than make up for the hardships of road-travel...

Without renting an apartment in Milan, without packing our staff in the boxes in Nuremberg, just before we move from Germany to Italy we decided to take the opportunity to make a holiday between our ex-job and the new one. We made a bike tour for three weeks in Morocco. We chose Morocco for the holiday because of the good experiences Pinar made on her visit in 2002, the well known hospitality of Moroccan people, the suitable weather and the famous Atlas Mountains.

Welcome! We are Maria and Spiros, two slightly adventurous souls, who on January 12th, 2008 will begin a year long journey of a lifetime. The first part of our adventure will begin at the foot of the Pyramids in Giza, where we will embark on the 6th edition of the Tour D'Afrique. Starting in Cairo, Egypt and ending in Cape Town, South Africa, the Tour D'Afrique is a 12,000 km, 120 day cycling race/expedition across the exotic and intriguing African continent. More challenges and adventure are sure to follow as we then continue riding our bikes through Europe and Asia.

Our goal is to raise funds and awareness for WaterCan, a charity providing clean water and sanitation to impoverished communities, and Against Malaria which works to donate bed nets to fight Malaria, a devastating disease that kills over a million people a year.

Trip to Marrakesh. From Marrakesh over the High Atlas to the desert and back. As it was my first real cycling experience on my own I decided to stay on the main roads. There were only 20 km offroad.

3 men, 3 bikes and 3 months - a swing through the mountains, forests and great lakes of east and southern Africa.

Wonderful Maroc!

I started my cycling holidays in Maroc. After traveling a great part of the world and to Maroc two times by bus and one time by hired car. I hoped there was something better to do it, and there was....the bicycle. Since then the cycling-bug got me and I visited more countries on a bicycle.

On my windows webspace the route and the pictures tell the story of a few bicycletrips in Maroc. Enjoy!

South of Tunisia: a interesting country to visit with a bicycle.

The landscape is completely flat. There is nothing at all, nothing but stones. And sand. Although there is nothing to see, the emptiness has its own beauty. There is a quietness coming over me despite the harsh circumstances. All the problems and possibilities of life seem to dissolve in the infinity of the landscape.

From Marrakech, we have cycled across the Atlas into the Sahara. In two intense weeks we learned to know a bit about the many faces of Moroccan society and we were able to explore the extraordinary Atlas-Sahara region.

This is my own personal diary from a solo trip I made by bicycle around Southern Morocco over Christmas and New Year 2005/2006. My bicycle tours invariably seem to turn into wild and woolly adventures involving deserts, mountains, extremes of weather... and fantastic experiences. This trip was meant to be a little less 'epic' in nature, as such all the camping gear was left at home in favour of guesthouses and pensions though I did fill the space to a degree with a lot of cold weather gear and my sleeping bag - fortunately as you'll see! It worked out well, though the terrain and weather proved to be no less extreme than past adventures and events did not quite turn out in accordance with my admittedly very rough pre-trip plan.

This, my second visit to Morocco, only served to strengthen the memories I have of the country as being populated by overwhelmingly hospitable people and blessed with some of the grandest scenery on the planet.

Picture by Mike Hayes, http://www.mikesimagination.net.

Bei der geplanten Tour wollte ich 5 neue, interessante Abschnitte erfahren.Für die Strecke 1 lagen Beschreibungen vor, der Rest ließ sich vor der Tour nicht in Erfahrung bringen.

1. Strecke durchs ``östliche'' Ait Mansour-Tal
2. Pistenverbindung Anti-Atlas (Izerbi) an die Strasse Akka - Bouizarkane
3. Piste Akka - Imitek
4. Piste Tagmoute - Tiguermine
5. Piste Tiguermine - Agadir Tasguent - Souk Tnine Toufelazt usw. zurück zum Flughafen

Der folgende Tag stand natürlich ganz im Zeichen der Besichtigung der alten Stätte. Nach einem längeren Fußmarsch erreichte man den Siq, jene imposante, enge Schlucht, die den Einstieg in die Stadt darstellt. Bis hier hatte man auch den Schock über die knapp 50 DM Eintrittsgeld verdaut... Den ganzen Tag stiefelten wir zu Zweit durch die Ruinenstadt, bei brüllender Hitze bergauf und bergab. Neben dem 8000 Menschen fassenden Amphitheater beeindruckte uns vor allem die Anlage als Ganzes und der gute Erhaltungszustand der Gebäude. Alles machte einen ungemein plastischen Eindruck, der Sandstein schimmerte in vielfältigen Farben. Irgendwann ließen jedoch die Hitze und die Menschenmassen die Aufnahmefähigkeit sinken, so daß wir uns zur Rückkehr entschlossen.

Der folgende Tag diente der Erholung. Die Hitze begann unerträglich zu werden, selbst auf dieser Höhe herrschten schon weit über 30° C im Schatten, wir ruhten uns also aus und bereiteten und mental auf die Bezwingung des Desert-Highways vor, wovor uns allerdings schon ein wenig graute angesichts der dort herrschenden Geschwindigkeiten und Verkehrsdichte.

Hurgada - Sharm-el-Sheikh - wadi Dahab - mt. Sinai - oazis Feiran - Suets - Cairo - Luxor - Quena - Hurgada.

The old riverbeds that cross the mountains of Sinai Peninsula are called ``wadi''. Now the rains are rare, but when they happen these narrow valleys become rivers again. We could see signs of it as the soil was a mixture of sand, stones and thorns, and we had to ride on narrow dry streams of clay that could hold the bicycles. The thorns probably belonged to some poisonous plant as they poisoned our living a lot. One day we had to repair the flat tires at least seven times.

A brilliant site, with several well-described itineraries.

``First, this was not a bicycle tour. It could probably be done by bicycle but I used trains, boats, and buses. And camels, of course. My excuse to put it here that I rented a bicycle in Luxor and rode through the desert to the Valley of the Kings.'' The previous Trento Bike manager, Andreas Caranti, is particularly sympathetic, as he did the same as a young man: his first off-road experience! (And the new manager is the guy on the camel.)

[We] spent about a week touring Tunisia in June 1994. We took road bikes and stayed in hotels. It was nice and sunny, but there was sometimes a stiff north westerly breeze.

The desert is subtle and baffling, with few landmarks and none that appear on any map. For those of us from temperate climes, travelling through such an extraordinary environment can be a mystical experience. It is a disarming vacuum, seemingly benign and very romantic. But come tea time, we come into our own, as temperatures plummet and camel dung camp fires become compulsory. On a clear night, the canopy of stars is awesome and the silence creepy. By 5:00 am, the temperatures are sub-zero.

We spent the first week of March 2004 cycling to, around, and back from Tafraoute at the western end of the Moroccan Anti-Atlas. We had been there before, trekking with Exodus in late 1992.

This time we flew to Agadir and on the following morning took our bikes by minibus to Aït Baha, from where we rode on to Tafraoute. We spent 3 days cycling around - largely on pistes - and then rode to the Col du Kerdous, perched over the coastal plain. An easy descent took us to Tiznit, and we returned to Agadir by taxi.

We stayed in upmarket hotels, booked from England by telephone and confirmed by fax. Route-finding was never much of a problem, but it helps to have some acquaintance with the Arabic script since many signposts on tracks and minor roads have no Latin transliterations. We took a GPS unit with us but could have got by perfectly well without it.

The notes of [8 nights spent] in southern Morocco in November 2000. Includes a narrative and gorgeous pictures.

A nice report, with plenty of photos. Itinéraire:

• Jour 1: Arrivée à Ceuta le matin. Petite journée d'échauffement jusqu'à Martil
• Jour 2: Martil à Oued Laou, par la très jolie route côtière
• Jour 3: Oued Laou à Chefchaouen, en suivant la rivière qui prend sa source à Chaouen
• Jour 4: Repos à Chefchaouen
• Jour 5: Chefchaouen à Zoumi, en plein c?ur des campagnes du Rif
• Jour 6: Zoumi à Karia Ba Mohamed, sortie du Rif
• Jour 7: Karia à Volubilis (ruines romaines très touristiques)
• Jour 8: Volubilis à Meknès
• Jour 9: Repos, visite de Meknès
• Jour 10: Meknès à Tanger en bus
• Jour 11: bateau pour l'Espagne

Eine Atlasüberquerung per Rad.

From the moment we started, we knew this was going to be a holiday with a difference. Maybe it was the envious looks we got from British cyclists on the way to Heathrow, or maybe it was the stares from shocked Spaniards as we did a sudden strip-tease beside the baggage reclaim in Madrid, revealing if not our true colours, then at least our lycra-clad limbs.

The diary of a trip from Marrakech over the Atlas, along the Draa valley to Zagora, then coasting the Sahara to Tata and Akka, over the anti-Atlas to Tiznit.