A chap called Howard from SA Bike Magazine was at the rally and he was collecting pictures for an article in the magazine, so he wanted all the KTM riders to line up, and then all the BMW riders in a separate picture.

Within no time, we arrived at Todd's Motel, for the much spoken about Giraffe Rally 2011 - actually called the Giraffe Run 2011. Welcomed at the gate by a huge poster confirming we had found the right place (from the main road it was not that obvious).

Today was Friday and we were now going to be staying here for the next two nights, heading off back to South Africa on the Sunday morning early. This was a typical African venue with loads of dust, bush, animals and of course music and beer.

Well after a wonderful dirt road through some of the best riding and most beautiful scenery we had experienced on the trip so far, we reached the tar and were on the outskirts of a small town called Gwanda.(see map picture below for more details).

After stopping at the shop, one of us blasted up ahead and waited for the rest to come riding past, to try and get a picture of the bikes within the beautiful rural setting we had the privilege of riding through. The following distance between bikes was rather large due to the dust and lack of visibility from being too close to each bike, so it was difficult to get a picture of everyone together.

After quite some distance we arrived at a small shop in a village. We needed a break and it was about beer o'clock so we looked to see where we could get a drink. The first shop didn't have anything but told us to go down the road about 300m and there was a small shop there selling beer.

Wow - onto the Dirt after all these many miles of travel for the first time for real! That's always my favourite part of the trip. The most fun part and the part where you get to truly experience real rural Africa for what it is.

This was our hotel in Bulawayo, the Hotel Rio on the outskirts of town. Today were up early, had breakfast and packing to get ready for what promised to be an absolutely amazing ride. We only had about 350km to go to the Todds Motel where we wanted to be for the Giraffe Motobike Rally, but had picked a set of dirt roads just on the outskirts of the Matopos National Park (as bikes are not allowed in the park). Our route was for some 250km through the rural areas. Definitely an off the beaten track route, that not too many people would do.

We arrived in Bulawayo at about 7pm and finally found the hotel at about 8pm. Bulawayo was much bigger than most of us thought and our Hotel Rio was on the outskirts in a subburb somewhere. It had been a long day and given a chance most of us would have just gone to bed as it had been a very long day already getting up at 5am, but one of the guys had some friends here and they had organised to meet up and have an evening on the town in their local pub.

Well what a two days blast we had just been through! A Helicopter flight over the falls, A 101m Bungi jump, A Zambizi river raft booze cruise, an authentic Zimbabwean restaurant lunch and a night on the town. Best fun for a long time!! Now it was time to get back on the bikes and head off to Bulawayo, nursing lack of sleep and a hangover.

The prospect of a brand new, straight out of the box Triple Black R1200GS, Level one BMW off road course, a lap of Wales and a blast down the length of Chile all on the horizon seem a good enough reason to bore everyone stupid so why not start a blog I thought.