Tracy and best friend Roo ride into Swakop

A stray dog that jumped into a Canadian traveller’s hammock in Colombia has reached Swakopmund on the back of her motorcycle.Tracy Charles (61), a former flight attendant from Ontario, left Canada in September 2019. She has since ridden just over 100 000 kilometres through about 40 countries on a BMW F700GS.Her dog, Roo, short for Kangaroo, has been with her for five years. The pair entered Namibia from Angola at Santa Clara about two months ago.“Being in Namibia now, I am 100% loving it,” she told Namibian Sun's sister publication Erongo.“Without insulting any of the beautiful countries I’ve ridden through and the wonderful people I’ve met along the way, I feel like I’m back in civilisation.”She cited hot water, toilets, toilet paper, hair conditioner and face lotion.“It sounds crazy, but I’ve gone almost 10 months without many little luxuries that we normally take for granted.”Charles’s husband died of brain cancer 14 years ago. A year later she started travelling again and obtained her scuba-diving and motorcycle licences.When her job was made redundant, her employer offered her early retirement at 53.“I immediately just said, where do I sign? It was a no-brainer for me.”She had watched people travel the world by motorcycle on social media.“You meet people differently when you’re on a motorcycle.”She told her daughter, then at university, that she would sell the house, the car and everything else, and support her until she graduated.“Had she said no, that would have been the end of the idea. But she was like, ‘Hell yeah, mom, go for it.’”The house sold in two to three weeks. Charles rode south through the United States, Mexico and Central America, and spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic stuck in Colombia. Tired of the mountains, she rode to the coast.“I was in this tiny little Caribbean coastal town in Colombia, in a hammock with a glass of wine and my book. And suddenly everything just went flying. And there is this tick-infested little dog on top of me.”Hostel staff chased the dog away, but she kept coming back and followed Charles to restaurants. One night Charles opened her door, machete in hand, expecting a person. The dog ran past her feet and into her bed.“At that moment I thought, okay, you’re coming with me.”The plan was to have her spayed, treated and given to a family in Colombia’s interior.“They badly abused her. I watched what they do to dogs on the coast.”Six months later Charles had fallen in love with the dog.Roo first travelled in a milk crate found by locals. A vet estimated from her teeth that she was five months old. She is now five and a half years old.Roo has appointed herself Charles’s security.“On the motorbike together, you cannot come too close to me. But if she’s on the motorbike by herself, you can come up and pet her.”Crossing borders with a dog is hard, she said. “But I wouldn’t trade a single moment.”From Colombia she rode to Ushuaia and shipped the motorcycle to England. After 90 days in the Schengen area, she had to leave Europe and went to Morocco.She had paid about 800 Canadian dollars in Canada for a rabies titre test, valid for two years. Europe told her she and Roo would need another test done in Morocco to return. She headed down Africa’s west coast instead, “not realising how difficult it was going to be”.Animal cruelty exposedWhile still in South America, in Ecuador, she volunteered at a dog sanctuary.“We would literally kidnap the stray dogs off the street and take them to this rescue and have them fixed.”The sanctuary’s free sterilisation clinics drew owners who could afford to pay, she said.“We kind of attracted the wrong people.”The clinics missed the owners the sanctuary wanted to reach.“We wanted the poor people that just have a dog for security and beat the crap out of it and feed it scraps. They can’t be bothered coming.”Adopt – you won’t regret itCharles saw strays suffer across Mexico, Central and South America, with Mexico the worst. She said giving one a home takes little more than dog food.“This is my opinion,” she said. “Stray dogs have a loyalty to you that breeder dogs don’t. Somewhere in the back of their head, I think that they remember how life was before they were rescued and they will always be grateful to you for that.”Her advice: “Take a stray. You will not regret it.”Navigating troubled shores Charles plans to leave for South Africa in the next few weeks. “I’m a slow traveller, and because I don’t own a home or anything, I can take my time.”The goal is to ride around the world. From South Africa she wants to go up the east coast and ship the motorcycle to Oman for the Middle East.“Politics right now are really, really messing things up,” she said. “With all these wars starting, who knows. I might go back to Canada for a year and stay with my daughter.”PARTNERS IN TRAVEL: Tracy Charles and Roo in Swakopmund. Charles has ridden just over 100 000 kilometres through about 40 countries since leaving Canada in 2019. Photo: Ursula Mater

Tracy and best friend Roo ride into Swakop

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Namibian Sun 2026-10-20

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Tracy and best friend Roo ride into Swakop

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Namibian Sun 2026-10-20

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