ROOKIE ROAD TRIP #2

I hope you all enjoyed my previous story and as promised here is the trip to the Numbi Hotel & Garden Suites in Hazyview… This trip came about much sooner than anticipated but with the knowledge that I now had about longer trips I was much more confident and excited for this one, especially since I had been to Hazyview briefly once before with my iron steed.

Gabrielle Pieterse

As luck would have it, the Government decided to make Monday the 1st of November a public holiday for us to vote, which gave us the perfect opportunity to make a long weekend out of it and make our way to Hazyview, knowing full well we would come back Monday afternoon in time to cast our votes.

This trip was much better thought out and planned than the spontaneous run to Fouriesburg Country Inn, we started planning at least a week in advance with a lot of back and fourth trying to decide weather or not to ride or trailer up, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was going to be better to trailer up as we planned to leave directly after I came off work on Friday afternoon, which would be after 16:00. Thankfully we made this decision as when I got home on Friday, we will still had to load the two bikes onto the trailer.

This is a much easier job done by two people instead of one! Thank goodness Ferdie decided to take his Triumph Daytona 955i Superbike this time around because from his first experience with me to Mpumalanga, where he took the Suzuki Katana, and learnt that I really enjoy the long sweeping high-speed bends on those Mpumalanga roads, it wasn’t the easiest of tasks keeping up with me on the Naked Katana. But this time would be different, and the Daytona would finally get a chance to stretch its legs considering since we got it, it hasn’t really been ridden properly.

Loading the bikes went smoothly and not long after we were ready to set off our journey to Hazyview and lo-and-behold we managed to leave during the dreaded South African swear word “load shedding”. It took us forever to get out of Joburg. Once we made it out of Joburg it was smooth sailing from there on even with the roadworks on the way between Witbank and Machadodorp. Because it took us so long to get going, we missed most of the normal Friday afternoon traffic making its way to Nelspruit. The roads were still fairly busy though, and we encountered two big accidents along the way casing some traffic backup and delays. Other than that, the drive was pleasant, and we arrived safely at Numbi Hotel just after 11pm, before curfew (another South African swearword).

Our room at the Numbi Hotel was more like an enormous suite, and although Numbi doesn’t have all the modern fanciness like the Little Pilgrims Boutique Hotel (the sister hotel to Numbi) where we stayed the previous time, it has the most spacious rooms I have seen in an awfully long time when it comes to hotel rooms. Numbi has been around for decades, yet it is still very inviting with its beautifully maintained gardens, sparkling pool, and super friendly, helpful staff members. The reception area is filled wall to wall with artworks of the wilderness, bushveld, and wildlife.

Since we arrived so late we chose to leave the bikes on the trailer till Saturday morning instead of trying to offload them in the dark. We took all our luggage to our suite, sat outside in the cool evening air, and chatted about the routes we wanted to take for the next few days to come.

After a good night’s sleep, we were up early on Saturday morning, it was ridiculously hot and humid already after the rain we got the night before but being like all good bikers that didn’t deter us and off we went to offload the bikes, wipe them down and decide on the final route for the day.