Alan and Jonna's Edelweiss Motorcycle Tour in South Africa

For our big summer vacation, we decided to go on a fourth tour with Edelweiss Bike Travel, this one two weeks riding in South Africa. We flew Denver to Washington DC, then DC to Johannesburg. Finally, we took a domestic flight down to Cape Town. We had one day to explore Cape Town before the start of the tour and then half a day in Johannesburg before flying out at the end. We actually look less photos on this trip than past trips so the pool was much smaller for selecting which ones to put on the website. I think this also turned out to be less of a riding vacation and more of a cultural exploration, so the focus of the trip was less about motorcycles and roads than some of our past trips.

Here are some of our favorite photos from the motorcycle tour:

1) Starting off with an artsy shot. Cape Town's Table Mountain reflected in the window of the Aerial Cableway building.

2) We took the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain and then hiked around on the trails there. This is the view from the top looking south down the Atlantic coast.

3) Another artsy shot of one of the flowers that was on top of Table Mountain.

4) Just one more step and it is a long way down. The sides of table mountain are about 3000 ft (1085m) above sea level...and highest point is only about 1.5 miles from the coast so it's an impressive sight from below and even more so from this close to the edge looking down.

5) Artsy shot #3: A small tree holding on to dear life on the edge of Table Mountain.

6) We spent our first day playing tourist in Cape Town with our good friend Corinna (She is a German, living in Brussels, with whom we've done two prior Edelweiss tours). After our day hiking on Table Mountain, we returned to downtown Cape Town where we found an outdoor cafe in which to enjoy some lunch and intellectual conversation.

7) The Cape Town waterfront includes a working harbor. The walk along the harbor is part tourist trap but also part nautical exploration. We saw ships from multiple countries docked here, ranging from small fishing boats to large transport ships.

8) For our first day of riding, we headed south out of Cape Town and down to the Cape of Good Hope. At the southern end of the National Park there is the actual cape and these tide pools. While others stood in line for photos at the official sign, we walked out to the tide pools to look at the mussels, crabs, anemones and barnacles.

9) At the Cape Point National Park we saw wild baboons and ostriches but the first wildlife we got pictures of were these penguins at a colony just outside Simon's Town.

10) Alan's BMW 650GS at an overlook alongside the Atlantic near Camps Bay looking north along the coast. This is basically the opposite view to the Table Mountain photo above looking south down the coast.

11) We ended our first riding day with a sunset sailing cruise on Table Bay aboard the Maharani Yacht. This is Alan sitting outside the main cabin while the crew prepared the ship before pulling out of the harbor.

12) The combination of the Atlantic swell and the list of the ship under sail had Jonna looking pretty green almost as soon as we got out into the Bay. She retired to inside the cabin and had this view for most of the sailing trip. However, she wasn't the only one feeling seasick so at least she had company in the cabin.

13) Our Edelweiss guides Marco and Markus enjoying sunset up on the bow of the ship.

Go forward to the second '08 South Africa Trip Photo Page.

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Alan Fleming