Africa gets the upper hand in ambitious bike trip to Italy

Martin van der Vyver, who went on the adventurous trip of travelling from Boksburg to Italy with his brother Clinton Delport, has decided to fly back to South Africa.

This is after facing so many obstacles trying to travel through Congo.

According to Van der Vyver, on August 23 as he was trying to travel out of Congo to the Gabone border, his GPS led him to a dead end.

“Before that, my bike was low on petrol and I tried to refuel it, but only to find that in the town I was in, which is Djambala, they don’t accept visa cards, exchange foreign currency and they don’t have fuel.

“I continued on my journey and as I was travelling on terrain and harsh road conditions, I stopped in some areas to put up marks that will help me with direction if I get lost. During the journey my fuel became extremely low,” said Van der Vyver.

He said he had to go back to the same town he struggled to get petrol.

“When I entered Djambala I was stopped by police who interrogated and searched me. They asked me why I went on a dead-end road and returned. There was also a communication barrier, but they released me.

“Luckily one of the immigration officers helped me to get fuel. I got full a tank and more petrol for my reserve tank,” he explained.

He mentioned that as he was travelling to his place of accommodation in the Brazzaville, he was stopped again by the military and police.

“Again I was questioned and searched. They even suspected that my bike had hidden cameras, suspecting that my oil-level glass was one of the cameras. I was in the police station for quite some time.

“Thereafter I was released and I returned to my accommodation, so I had to carefully decide whether to come back to South Africa or fly to another country considering that most things in other countries are done in US dollars and it’s not cheap,” explained Martin.

He said he knew that a lot of people had faith in him, so he was sorry to let them down.

“This has been a rough, tough, mentally and physically challenging journey, especially now that I was travelling alone. As soon as I get home, I will be catching a flight to Italy to complete my goal of taking the flag to my chosen destination as I wanted to do in the first place.

“I want to thank everyone who has supported me,” he concluded.

He will be returning to South Africa on September 2.

Also Read: Brothers to bike from Boksburg to Italy for mental health awareness

Also Read: Robbers don’t deter Boksburg biker from pressing on to Italy