Everyone here in SA is so friendly and helpful.

I've had dozens of offers of meets and beds from bikers all over the place, and the dealer here in Port Elizabeth (Continental Cars) was brilliant.

(Remember pix are here.)They instantly gave me a lift in the workshop so I could work on the bike. They supplied help where needed, drivers to take me around, a loan bike (on which, most embarrassingly, I managed to drain the battery), found a lovely old boy who did a splendid job of repairing an alternator rotor and BOTH stators for the princely sum of about 70 quid, and a total clean of She. And then refused to charge me despite my waving of plastic under their noses.

Nigel took me to Addo Elephant Park on Wednesday, where we saw heffalumps, kudu, warthogs, and zebras, then I was whisked off to the Syndicate Bike Club meet in the evening to drink lots of beer and kick tyres.

So I have a repaired alternator, and have resealed the right-hand cylinder base and fitted new pushrod tube seals. If that doesn't stop the leak I'm stumped. There's nowhere else the oil can be coming from except the breather (there was a modicum of oil in the airbox). So I may just have to put up with it. Es la vida, as they say.

There's a couple of fronts coming in (I can see one out of the window) so my ride down the Garden Route is likely to be a bit wet. In a couple of days I'll be in Cape Town and the start of the Cape-to-Cairo leg.