“Africa Is Africa” - Inside Mark Johnston’s Africa Eco Race

Mark Johnston isn’t thinking about the race anymore as he rolls onto the beach at Lac Rose, the holy grail of rally racers around the world..

He’s not thinking about positions, or results, or what went right or wrong………..he’s just riding.

The sand is firm. The ocean sits off to the side. The finish is right there, but after everything that’s come before, it doesn’t feel like a dramatic moment. It feels… quiet, almost surreal.Because getting here wasn’t one big defining moment, it was hundreds of small ones.

Mud. Rain. Endless liaison kilometres. Soft dunes that drained every bit of energy. Navigation calls that didn’t quite go to plan. Stopping for crashes. Starting again. Day after day. By the time you reach Dakar, you’re not arriving at a finish line, you’re arriving at the end of something that’s been slowly wearing you down, and building you up, at the same time.

He doesn’t look like a man who’s just come through all of that. Not broken. Not completely wrecked. Just… calm.

Because Africa doesn’t always leave visible scars, sometimes it just rewires you a little.

 

It Starts Wrong

Rallies starts with excitement, pomp and circumstance, excitement. Clean systems. That buzz of anticipation before all your preparation pays off and you get to test yourself and your machine against the brutal elements.

That’s not how this one started. It started in the rain. Proper, relentless, soaking rain, the kind that turns a bivouac into a swamp and quietly drains morale before anything has even begun. Bikes sinking into mud, gear soaked, people already dealing with problems before the first stage had even started.

Then came the uncertainty.

The prologue was cancelled. Plans shifted. The mountains, covered in snow, became impassable.. Stage one was cancelled. Would the race even happen?

And instead of easing into a race, riders found themselves thrown into an 800-kilometer liaison day just to get to the start of the first proper stage.On the bike, all day, freezing cold and soaking wet.

Riding through the mountain passes of northern Morocco is where it clicks for most people: this isn’t going to be what you expected.

Stage 2 was the first time it actually felt like a race. After all the chaos, the mud, the uncertainty, and that long grind just to get into position, Mark finally got to do what he’d come there for!

There was something almost relieving about it. No more waiting around, no more wondering what was going to change next. Just a roadbook, a direction, and the rhythm of riding returning. It wasn’t perfect, nothing was, but it was the first moment where things started to click into place. Navigation came alive again, decisions had consequence again, and the whole thing shifted from surviving the setup… to actually racing.

Somewhere Along the Way, It Becomes a Blur

Ask Mark to break the race down stage by stage and he can’t. Not properly at least. It’s not that nothing happened,it’s that too much happened.

Days blend into each other. You wake up early, you ride, you navigate, you deal with whatever the terrain or the bike throws at you, and then you do it again the next day. And again.

After a while, it stops feeling like a sequence of stages and starts feeling like one long, continuous effort. Most rally riders will understand this feeling, its almost a form of self flagellating comfort, when the rally finds its rhythm, and you find your routine, a kind of moving existence.

There’s no real pause to reflect. No clean separation between one experience and the next. Just a steady accumulation of fatigue, decisions, and small moments that either go right… or don’t.

When the Dunes Don’t Care About Your Plan

For all the training, all the preparation, all the theory, Mauritania is where things get real.

Mark put it simply:

“I wasn’t quite ready for the dunes… just how f**ing soft they were… and the camel grass.”

You might understand dunes in theory. You might have ridden sand before. But this is something else. Softer. Slower. More draining. Every meter takes effort, impossible to find a flow or rhythm. It’s not just a technical challenge, it’s brutally physical.

“I’d probably want better fitness… just to be able to ride that stuff properly.” Mark muses as we talk about what he could have done differently in his preparations. It is important to understand that Mark trained extensively before the race and is an accomplished sand and dune rider. The level of physical demand that these dunes took was simply next level, ending many a hopeful rider’s dream to see Lac Rose, and in an extreme case, even claiming  a life!!!!

There’s a moment Mark talks about, one of those classic rally situations. A waypoint. Difficult to find. Riders circling, searching, burning time. Nobody quite sure where they are. Some spent 40 minutes looking for it.

The penalty for missing it? 15 minutes. So eventually, he made the call and moved on. This is a concept we discuss a lot and train for in advanced navigation. Knowing when and how to “move on” when you are stuck is a vital skill. Making the best decision you can with the information you have, and accepting the consequences.

What doesn’t show up in results sheets, or even in most stories, is how much of rally is spent dealing with other people’s problems.

Crashes. Mechanical failures. Riders in trouble. Mark saw plenty of it.

Bikes down in awkward places. Riders shaken, sometimes hurt. Moments where everything slows down and the race disappears for a bit, replaced by something more human, and sometimes, more scary. You stop. You check if someone’s okay. You help where you can.

And then, eventually, you get going again.

But one moment stuck with him more than most.

A rider had gone down hard in a fast section, one of those deceptive areas where the terrain looks simple, but hides just enough danger to catch you out. When Mark arrived, the bike was off to the side, and the rider was clearly struggling. Not catastrophic, but serious enough that it snapped everyone out of “race mode” instantly.

There’s no hesitation in those moments. You shut everything off mentally, your time, your position, your plan, and you deal with what’s in front of you.

Checking the rider. Making sure they’re conscious. Getting help organized. Waiting with them so they know they’re not alone. It costs time. It always does. But out there, that doesn’t matter. Because one day, it might be you on the ground.

And then, in between all of that, something completely different breaks through, moments you don’t expect, but end up remembering the most. There are stretches in North Africa where everything just opens up. Endless plains. No obstacles. No tight navigation. Just space and ……. pure speed.

Mark talked about those sections differently, the pitch of his voice changes as he tells me about those moment, like they sit outside the rest of the race.

Flat out across open ground, the bike finally free, engine singing, nothing but horizon ahead. The kind of riding where, for a brief moment, everything feels easy. Effortless. Like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

There are also the quieter moments. Cresting a rise and seeing the landscape unfold in front of you.  Vast, empty, and almost unreal. Light hitting the sand in a way that makes everything glow. No noise except the wind and the bike. 

Those are the moments that reset you. That remind you why you’re there, and then, just as quickly, you’re back in it, racing, fighting for survival.

Mark pulls into a fuel stop. Just another stop in the middle of everything.

A side-by-side rolls up. A guy jumps out, looks at his bike, spots the “Willem Avenant Racing” sticker on his bike.

“Do you know Willem Avenant?”

Mark laughs. “Yeah… I know that f**er.”*

Turns out, the guys is Mike Daas, it’s his first rally. He went on to win his class and the overall SSV  title of Africa Eco Race, and he learned everything from watching Decoding Dakar videos.

That’s rally too. Not just the suffering, but these strange, human moments that connect people together.

“Africa Is Africa”

If there’s one phrase that sums it all up, it’s this:

“Africa is Africa.”

Things don’t always work. Actually, they often don’t. Plans fall apart. Logistics break down. Systems that should be simple become complicated.

Waiting around for hours. No clear structure. Trying to figure out how to get from one place to another. At one point, Mark ends up in what he casually calls a “taxi of death” just to go fetch his bags, only to do it all again later.

Around him, people are frustrated. Angry.

“The Europeans were mega upset… like, how can we pay so much money and not get anything organized?”

But Mark doesn’t get pulled into that. He lives in Africa, he knows the motions. Because once you accept where you are, you stop expecting it to be something else.

When you ask him what he’d change, the answer is surprisingly simple.

“Not much.”

Most things worked. His planning worked. His nutrition worked. His general approach worked.

The gaps were specific.

Fitness for extreme terrain. More preparation for that level of soft sand.

Not a complete rethink, just refinement. That says something important, because rally isn’t about building a perfect system, it's about building one that can survive imperfection. Its about adapting and surviving constantly.

Would He Do It Again?

“Yes, it was just an epic adventure. As hard and difficult as it was at times we got to see and experience some amazing things.”

Not said with regret, just clarity. Because the experience gave him what he needed.

The Africa Eco Race, rally in general,  isn’t polished. It’s not predictable. It’s not controlled. It doesn’t care about your expectations.

But that’s exactly why it matters, because it strips everything down. No shortcuts. No guarantees. No perfect days. Just you, your bike, the terrain, your decisions, and your ability to keep going.

Mark Johnston didn’t have a perfect race, he had a real one.

And somewhere in the mud, the dunes, the soft sand, the long liaisons, the crashes, the strange moments, and the chaos, he found his way to the finish. But maybe more importantly… he found out exactly what he’s capable of.