I recently spoke to biker Skinny van Schalkwyk. In the biker community, Skinny is rather famous. But there are also layers to her personality: apart from geologist Skinny (she has a degree in geology), there is farm girl Skinny, the adventurer Skinny, Skinny the racer, the adventure biker Skinny, Skinny the entrepreneur, the pioneer Skinny, the conservationist Skinny and, of course, Skinny the storyteller.
She has been involved in virtually every aspect of motorcycling. She has raced in the ladies’ regional 600cc class, competed in rallies, and undertaken long-distance adventure rides in South Africa and abroad.
It was Skinny the storyteller’s tales of adventure that attracted me to her. She doesn’t merely ride motorcycles; she turns her adventures into stories and newsletters with compelling photographs and videos. Her writing has a distinctive, irreverent South African humour.
She began writing in 2010 while she was participating in the 600cc races. She initially kept readers informed about the results of these races. At the end of the season, her readers kept nagging her to continue writing stories. She subsequently developed a distinctive public persona around her riding, with TankGirls becoming a platform for motorcycle stories, newsletters, adventures, events, and conservation initiatives.
Not a good start
After a year-long sabbatical from the newsletter, she wrote her first newsletter titled Onderonsie. Directly translated, this means ‘between us’ and refers to a small tiff or scuffle, or a private chat or gathering. In the newsletter, she relays the events of a trip she and her riding buddy and best friend Chikita (Jolandi Mentz) undertook from Skinny’s family farm in Mooinooi to Witkop Pass near Lephalale (formerly Ellisras), in the beautiful Waterberg region of Limpopo.
In this edited version, Skinny tells of the joys and mishaps of that eventful adventure that started on a dry note: their local garage, 7km from the farm in Mooinooi, ran out of fuel.
After this false start, Skinny and Chikita decided to head back to the farm to fetch two full jerrycans, just in case they needed them travelling north.
Back on the farm, Chikita inspected her Suzuki DR650, affectionately known as Nelly. Unfortunately, Nelly’s header pipe was loose. As they didn’t have the right size key, spanner, or screwdriver, they made a quick logistical adjustment: Chikita transferred her luggage to another new DR650 named Potoooooooo after an 18th-century British Thoroughbred. It would be Potoooooooo’s first ride out with the TankGirls.
With everything going seemingly wrong from the start, Chikita and Skinny perhaps should have realised they could be at the threshold of an onderonsie with life. While life tried its very best to warn them off, Skinny admits that listening is not one of her “superpowers”.
On the move
Deaf to the whispers of looming disaster as only true adventure riders can be, the TankGirls were off. They started down the roads less frequented by vehicles with suspension. They kept running into dead ends, riding past manky cows, crossing sewage-filled intersections, and dodging sparks from overloaded Eskom substations.
They finally stopped to ask directions from the GPS at a crossing with the main road leading up to Pilanesberg.
Riding about 500m down this clear, open, straight tar road (made safer by a few speed bumps), they came upon a fresh car wreckage. If they hadn’t stopped minutes earlier for that quick GPS check, who knows.
“You know what? Let’s not tempt fate,” they thought. Running out of daylight, they decided to take the faster, tarred Pilanesberg road.
In Lephalale, they spent the night in an overpriced guesthouse, with kids next door screaming throughout the night. The next day, they were grumpy and more than ready to leave civilisation far behind.
Like before, Witkop Pass showed them all her splendour, awash with deep rivers, water pouring out of mountain crevices, and more rain still looming behind the mountains.
Via long, determined twists, they climbed up and then down Witkop Pass, swimming through Waterberg mountain puddles. They found new friends in old pubs and old friends in new pubs. They snaked over the 18km of the pass in the blink of an eye (if you blink very slowly).
A dodgy river crossing
They scooted a bit further up towards the border to a spot with the name Ons Hoop (our hope). There must have been some sort of tiff, because all that was left of Ons Hoop were a few maize lands with a lone point on the map called ‘Bar Open’.
They dropped in at the pub, where the barman recommended an epic-sounding route. The route had a nice lookout point, where the barman’s brother had a bar at which they could pitch their tent on the lawn for the night.
And so, Chikita and Skinny set out along the recommended route, and this is where the onderonsie got real!
The first river crossing was more than 100m long, with no signage to offer any information on its depth.
Coming along the path, the TankGirls asked a man how deep the river was.
“Not deep,” he said, wading into the river. They stood frozen as they watched him being slowly devoured by the river all the way up to his belt before being spat out on the other side.
Nope! A detour had to be found Not far down the road was a turn-off onto another 100m-long low-water bridge. Skinny got to the middle and saw that the last 10m of the bridge disappeared under angry, foamy water, making waves big enough to scare even renowned surfer Kelly Slater.
Chikita was still behind her, setting up her camera. Skinny gave the underwater driveway one look and decided – nope! As she was working through a 10-point turn on the narrow bridge to get back to safety, moving inches forward and inches back at a time, Skinny heard two fishermen screaming: “Someone stop her!”
Chikita came racing past. Skinny yelled at Chikita that there was no way across.
As Skinny tried to get off her bike, her boot hooked on her luggage. She stumbled backwards, nearly plonking down off the bike into the water towards the shallow side of the bridge. With a quick glance in the direction of ‘the one you should never follow’ (Chikita), Skinny saw the bike being swept out from under Chikita as she rode headlong into the foaming water. The last Skinny saw of Potoooooooo was the bike sinking down over the end of the bridge like a bag of bricks.
A few small air bubbles drifted to the top, with Potoooooooo’s soft screams growing fainter and fainter as he quietly went to sleep at the bottom of the river.
Meanwhile, Chikita was being carried downstream by masses of bubbling water. Stripping off her heavy clothing, Skinny was ready to dive in when one of the fishermen (a man named Elvis) said: “Ma’am, the water is filled with crocodiles and hippos!”
There stood the 50-year-old Skinny in her undergarments and a small fisherman next to her, staring after a white helmet barely bobbing above the water.
In unison they shouted: “Take off your heavy clothes!”
On the river’s edge, a small white bakkie pulled up and three men jumped out. One ran up onto the bridge while the other two jumped around the bakkie in tense disbelief. Skinny’s mind was racing about what to do next when she heard them screaming at each other:
“Phone the ambulance!”
“The ambulance never comes!”
“Then phone the police!”
“They’re useless!”
Chikita started a brave but weak attempt at backstroke, barely keeping her head above water as she took big gulps of air. Elvis and Skinny made their way across the flooded bridge hand-in-hand, down the riverbank, over fences, stepping in thorns, and stumbling through mud.
Chikita slowly inched her way over to the bamboo-covered embankment. When she eventually got near enough to the side, Elvis risked himself getting eaten alive, snatched her up, and dragged her as far away from the water as possible.
Ready for mouth-to-mouth, Elvis loomed over her until she started coughing up brown, slushy water. The colour was just about to return to her cheeks when Elvis told her about the crocodiles.
They sat there in deafening, death-defying silence on the riverbank, streams of nothingness flowing through their minds.
There was just zero activity in that cavity. No guilt, no accusations, no fear, and no comprehension. And so they sat…
Elvis told them that earlier that same month, a Fortuner had also gone down there, and soon after, a Mahindra. As their brains returned to normal function, Chikita and Skinny climbed onto Skinny’s DR, named Brom, who always seemed to hold down the fort – the TankGirls’ unstable, rickety fort.
They rode home two-up on Brom, with a soaking Chikita and no pillion pegs. It was cold, uncomfortable, and life just kept on snorting. To this day, Potoooooooo is still at the bottom of the Mokolo River. Not even the tow- truck company is willing to brave the crocodile-infested waters.
Chikita’s luggage may very well still be dry inside a Nomad Bike bag, but Chikita asks that you please return the 10ℓ of fuel.
