The Star: January 18, 2024

The Star Thursday January 18 2024
18
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Dream of cycling around
A decade ago, James
Beatty had decided
he did not want to be
someone who worked
9-5 for the rest of his
life. So he packed up
his life and started
travelling across the
world. Reporter
Daniel Alvey finds out
how he does it
‘ONCE YOU learn to ride a
bicycle, you never forget’. This
was the saying author James
Beatty relied on when he set off
with his partner for an 11,000km
ride across Africa.
“I hadn’t owned a bike since I
was 14-years-old,” Beatty said.
His partner McKenzie Barney
was more prepared, having spent
the last five years cycling around
the world.
“I’d never had panniers on a
bike or anything with different
weight when it’s strapped onto
the front forks and back,” Beatty
said.
“It was definitely a learning
curve, she was all fit and ready to
cycle and I was not.”
Beatty, 33, has now released
a book about his six-month
adventure between October 2021
and March 2022 called The Road
South: An adventure
cycling the length of Africa.
Their journey took them
through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe,
Botswana, Namibia, and
finished in Cape Town, South
Africa.
Beatty grew up in Leeston
before moving to Christchurch
for a couple of years.
In 2013, while living in the
city, Beatty said he had two
dreams back-to-back
which kicked off his
global adventure.
“In our early 20s,
we all think: ‘Is this
it?’ You’re doing
the exact same
thing as what
your parents
are doing at
that time.
“You
work a
40-hour
week, you
empty
the
dishwasher,
do
the laundry,
collect a
paycheck,
and pay
the bills,”
Beatty
said. On
the third
morning, he
woke up and told his partner at
the time he was going to travel
the world. A couple of months
later he was off and he has never
looked back.
Over the years that followed,
he has walked the length of New
Zealand, from Mexico to Canada,
through the High Andes, and
over the Himalayas.
Beatty has hitchhiked across
North and South America, Europe,
and Australia.
Before the Covid pandemic,
Beatty would only spend a maximum
of four to six weeks in one
place. During Covid he hunkered
down in Mexico
for months, the longest
he had stopped since
starting his journey.
Early on in the
African journey,
they quickly discovered
traversing
the continent was
proving to be
tricky.
While Egypt is
a common spot
for tourists,
they found
anywhere
beyond the
tourist areas is
somewhat offlimits.
“Day two we
got stopped and
the police said
we had to turn around and go
back to Cairo.”
Then the police escorted them
onto a train to Luxor, a city in
Upper Egypt. Once off the train,
they had a police escort for the
remainder of Egypt constantly
following them at about 10km/h.
“The police were with us the
whole time (on the train).
“For the rest of the time (in
Egypt) we had police behind us
in their vehicles.”
But if they thought
Egypt was interesting
they then rode into
a political coup
in Sudan.
“It was the
day before
my birthday,
and I had
teed up a
call with
mum and
dad back
in New
Zealand
and the
next day
there was
no phone
service.”
It
wasn’t
until later
in the
day they
realised
Prime
Minister Abdalla Hamdok had
been kidnapped and the military
had taken over, knocking out
all connectivity to the outside
world.
“When we cycled into the
capital Khartoum it was like
a ghost town . . . there were
military tanks and humvees
everywhere and just two white
people on bicycles.”
The pair then spent two
weeks in a hotel before flying to
Ethiopia due to the land border
being closed.
That was not the only close
call they had. In northern Kenya
they were targeted by a flying
spear. While cycling a teenager
ran out from behind tree and
threw a spear, which landed
about 30cm from Beatty’s back
tyre.
“I’m sure if he wanted to hit
us he could have, I think it was
more of a scare tactic to get us
out of their land,” Beatty said.
“It was safe to say we didn’t
stop riding for a while after that.”
The pair had mixed
experiences when cycling
through some of the more
remote parts of the continent.
“We were cycling through
villages that hadn’t seen white
people for over 10 years.
“There were teenagers who as
soon they saw us were yelling out
what translated from swahili to
english as ‘white devil’.
HIGHWAY: McKenzie
Barney and James
Beatty on the road in
South Africa.
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