Ride Reports

"Breakfast for Simba." The South African guiding us through the Pinda Game Resort at sunset is kidding. A warthog is unsuspectingly strolling towards the lazy lion dozing in the morning sun. The long maned poser does not seem to be interested in the tough meat of bike riders and prefers to ignore us.

"Have a lekker day", says Celia le Roux, the only female Trophy guide, to the others before she opens the throttle. "Lekker" is an Afrikaans word for everything gorgeous: riding a motorbike, food, scenery, people.

At 5:30 am the alarm-clock goes off without mercy – no matter how late it was the night before. And it gets late into the night quite often.

Exactly at 5.30 am we are jolted out of our dreams by the blow of a loud compressor horn – half an hour before the official waking-up time! The perpetrator is still being sought.

Touratech USA will be providing daily updates for the GS Trophy in South Africa. Check out the Blog Page and Photo Gallery each day for updates from the previous day of competition.

It’s happened! The riders of the GS Trophy 2010 take off their helmets at the end of the day and have a big grin on their face. It’s always been fascinating to see how happy a man can be after playing in a little bit of sand and gravel.

"If there’s a lion open the throttle," Tomm Wolf, the German sports director of the Trophy 2010, says in his first briefing of the journalists. "I’m not kidding", he adds, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Outrider Journal just published this story from Jonah Street’s 2007 Dakar Rally experience taken from a previous interview

We just received our first update from the GlobeRiders team on their African adventure. There are tons of good pictures and stories on their website, so check out the GlobeRiders Africa Page to see all the photos and individual updates from each of the team members.