Day six - Arrive in Durban, chase pirated ships and check helicopters

This continues the series of my Motorcycle Adventure travels from Durban to Splashy Fen which was the second goal, over a week. Details of the whole trip here.

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I arrived in Durban and was kindly collected from the airport by a good friend of mine Clinton. He is a free lance photographer and specialises in ships and planes. As we arrived he was phoned by the local newspaper and told that a ship that had recently been captured and subsequently freed by Somalian pirates was coming to Durban to dock and let the crew change as they had been held for some months as hostages. The paper wanted pictures.  We immediately went down to Umhlanga beach and lighthouse to see if we could see the ship, as this is a good vantage point for all ships out in the bay before they dock in the harbour.

Umhlanga Lighthouse

Durban harbour and city in the distance

We could not see the ship and decided to go to his office - he works at a helicopter charter company - where we would look on his PC as he had a shipping radar and palcement system there where we would see the location of the ship. We discovered it was too far out, some 8 nautical miles, so could not get any pictures of it.

While there he showed me around the hangers where they repair and service choppers.

Repair workshop hanger

Me outside next to a Robinson R22

We decided to head off for a pint as the end of the work day had come round. I was wondering about whether I could get a chopper flight up to Splashy Fen instead of driving, but soon found it would be a little expensive.

More tours on our list of tour route summaries are available, where we explore these sorts of motorcycle adventure tour routes. Just choose one of our events and reserve yourself a place on one of the future motorcycle adventure safari events.