Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tells the story of Charlie Bucket, a poor boy who gets to tour a Chocolate factory after finding a magic Golden Ticket in a chocolate bar. He travels in a magical world where he gets to meet some fascinating people like Willy Wonka, the owner of the Chocolate factory, as well as tiny inhabitants, the Oompa-Loompas. This is a classic tale, yet I was more enthralled hearing the story of the magical travels of Dani and his Golden Ticket in the form of a Ducati Desert-X. It happened like this.
My mate George, at World of Motorcycles in Centurion, phoned me and asked if I wanted to meet a Spanish traveller who had just ridden down through Africa on his Ducati Desert-X. “Damn straight yes”, was my instant retort. Nothing appeals to me more than the idea of getting on a bike and riding off into the wide blue yonder. Not allowing the “buts” to hold sway, but rather the “why the hell not?”, and so it was with Dani Martinez Diaz.
The Travel Bug Bites
Dani got his first bike, a 49 cc Mobylette, when he was 12, and this is where the passion for motorcycles was birthed. Over time, a Honda CBR600 seriously raised the bar, which he raised even higher when he upgraded to a Yamaha R1 in 2004. Dani’s motorcycle journey started to foster an urge to travel. Putting work on hold, he spent 3 months touring Italy on his R1. He had quite a unique, and I must say rather ingenious approach to carrying his luggage. He bought a huge plastic storage bottle and lashed it on the passenger seat. All his goods were stowed inside, out of the weather. To access his kit, he simply unscrewed the large lid. GIVI take note! Full leathers, knee down and wild camping were all in a day’s work. He was forced to abandon his travels as the European winter encroached. Suffice to say the travel bug had now properly bitten!
Dani is an electrician by trade, so this works well for his travel plans. He embarks on a project for clients, makes some loot, then once finished, he gets back on the road again. His 3 months around Italy is a hint of how he chooses to travel. It is not, as many of us do, a whistle-stop trip through an area and then home again. He loves to really get to grips with the region and people who inhabit it. In this way he gets to experience so much more than just the travel element. He truly seems to suck the marrow from the experience.
He then took himself off to Thailand, where he rented a 150 cc scooter and rode the renowned Mae Hong Son Loop, a 600-kilometre motorcycle road trip with 1,864 curves, starting in Chang Mai. Nothing could satiate his craving for two-wheeled adventures. The more he did, the more he wanted to do. The next step was obviously Africa, but now he faced bike issues. Up until this point every adventure had been on tar, but Africa would have more than a fair share “off piste” as the Europeans call it. So, what bike would be best suited? There were two schools of thought. Get an “old” analogue bike in good nick. Simplicity and ease of maintenance were obvious advantages. The Yamaha 660 Tenere was top of that list. Then some advocated new middleweight bikes with known reliability, like the Yamaha T7, Aprilia Toureg or Honda CB500 X. The 660 Yamaha Tenere’s he found were all well worn and expensive. A friend then suggested that Dani take his Ducati Desert X for a spin…and it was game over!
The heart totally overruled the head! “Damn”, Dani thought, “this is my dream bike!” The self-talk that followed went along the lines of “buy what you WANT”, “But it’s so expensive”, “But you only live once, and maybe you won’t have the money in the future”. A visit to Ducati Barcelona and it wasn’t even a fair fight. Dani came, he saw, he bought! There was minimal preparation. Dani planned to really explore the countries along the way so he would feel his way as he went. He set about finishing all his outstanding work and closed his business for the time being.
Across Africa
The 6th of January 2024 was D-Day. Dani left home, headed for Morocco. He made his way down the west coast of North Africa. Difficulty with visa issues saw him skirt Liberia and enter Sierra Leone. This is where he experienced riding a big adventure bike off-road for the first time. He travelled to such remote parts of the country that the locals ran away at the sight of this weird apparition. A white man on a big growling white bike. He wild camped his way through Guinea-Conakry and Ivory Coast, learning that the best greeting was a huge smile. The off-road experience was next level. English was the universal language in all but the small villages that he passed through. He started picking up local phrases, writing them down and using them to connect with the locals.
With his funds running low, he left the Desert-X at a guest house in Morocco and went home to Spain for 4 months to replenish his resources, then it was back to Africa. More exploring West African countries, then back home again for 5 months, this time leaving the bike at a store in Ivory Coast belonging to a Lebanese biker that he met on his travels. In fact, the universal biker brotherhood features in a lot of Dani’s stories. He found local bikers trustworthy and keen to assist a fellow biker on his travels.
Continuing his travels, Dani explored Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. He was apprehensive about visiting Nigeria, having heard a lot of negatives in the surrounding countries. Once again, it was bikers to the rescue. Nigerian bikers took him as a VIP guest to a local bike rally, with over 2000 bikers and festival goers in attendance. From negative rumours, he ended up having an absolute blast, making new friends and being blessed by the local biking community. Around this time, he discovered that the exhaust on the rear cylinder of the Ducati had ruptured and was leaking. Feeling helpless, he put out a message on YouTube asking if anyone could help. Ducati themselves responded in spectacular fashion. Within 48 hours, he received the bits to repair the Desert-X direct from the factory in Italy at no charge. How is that for backing your brand?
After Cameroon, more visa issues messed Dani’s plans. The Congo visa was extortionately expensive, so he bypassed Congo to Cabinda in Angola. Again, he was welcomed by Angolan bikers that he encountered. His visa expired, but he was able to exit Angola to Namibia, then return to complete his tour of the country. Dani met a Belgian travelling on a Honda Transalp 650 in Windhoek. They travelled together down the Caprivi, then into Zambia where they explored the Liuwa Plain National Park in a rented Land Rover. Back on the bikes, they wild camped everywhere, even unknowingly entering Kafue National Park from the north. They soon learned to be quiet around elephants. Switching off the bikes so as not to alarm them.
Riding roads littered with dried elephant track potholes was difficult. A local lodge wanted to charge them 50 Euros to camp at the lodge, so once again they camped wild, literally in lion country. The next night they camped with local fishermen. The park officials got wind of them being in the park with bikes, which is strictly forbidden. Confronting them, the officials confiscated the bikes’ keys. Dani and his buddy showed the officials pictures of the gate where they had entered, let in by the park officials. Reluctantly, they were given their keys back, after which they were taken to a dirt airstrip, given 10L of fuel, and escorted from the park. Once again, this proves that when in doubt, it is better to beg for forgiveness if caught than ask permission and miss out on the adventure of a lifetime.
They then rode to Livingstone, attended another local bike rally weekend, visited Victoria Falls, and got on their way to Botswana. They had lots of contacts made at the rally of Botswana bikers willing to put them up. The first contact was in Maun, on the lower edge of the Okavango Delta. Dani and his Belgian buddy decided to wild camp on the way there. They pulled off the main Kasane Nata road and made their way to the Hunters Road, the cotton soil goat track that runs parallel to the Zimbabwe border, almost all the way from Pandamatenga to Kasane. Almost unrideable in the wet season to anything other than a dirt bike, they set up camp. Significant elephant activity saw them nervously putting up their tents between a lager of bikes.
Dani recalls that it was his most stressful night on all of his travels. The elephant activity all around them was so hectic that Dani found it impossible to sleep and sat up all night feeding the fire in the hope of keeping the ellies at bay. So, it was two tired travellers that rode to Maun the next day, where they spent the night with a new buddy. They cruised to Gaberone and spent some time with another acquaintance from the rally, before riding south across the border into South Africa. And so it was that I met Dani. His motorcycle is resting at World of Motorcycles while he again returns to Spain to top up his travel coffers. He is due back in mid-September. God willing, I will take a ride with him to the lowveld to show him a bit more of our incredible tip of Africa before he continues on his way to Cape Town and who knows where from there.
A Dream Bike
The obvious question to ask Dani was “knowing what you know now, would you choose the Desert-X again?” He laughed and said “Dave, I’m not the biggest guy, and have a dodgy back, so when I fell off, and I probably fell over a hundred times, I had to unpack my bike before being able to pick it up, so something lighter may have been better”, then, gazing wistfully at his well-worn Ducati with over 50,000k’s of African travel under the belt, he added, “but no, I would choose the Desert-X for sure, it is my dream bike”. This almost elicited a lump in my throat when I saw the depth of feeling that the Spaniard has for his battle-scarred Ducati. To the best of his knowledge, it is the first Desert-X to have travelled the length of Africa. I don’t know where else Dani’s lust for adventure travel will take him, but I can say one thing with absolute certainty: his Desert-X is raring to go!
