Part Five - A bicycle Safari
Hi guys. Yep we're still alive. Older and wiser, but still here. Anyway, theres been a lot of cycling done since we arrived in East Africa.
After all the bad things we'd heard about Air Afrique, our flight was a piece of cake. We got to the airport to find the plane had been cancelled. No worries though, they put us on an Air Ghana flight and Danny managed to get us a free breakfast out of them (pretty good for africa). Had to wait a bit in the Ivory Coast for a connecting flight but otherwise there were no hassles. Arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International airport felling pretty tired, but stoked to be in east A. After spending a while haggling with the taxi drivers we caught a cab into the city. Douglas had told us about a campground called Upper Hill, so we headed there.
Spent a couple of days in Nairobi buying spares, getting ready for the ride south and generally trying not to get mugged. It was a bit of a relief when we finally left also felt pretty good to be back on the bikes again. On our first day heading south we saw game close to the road - Zebra, Thomsons Gazelle and one big Ostrich. The people seemed pretty friendly, waving and saying Jambo when they saw us pass. Started seeing Masai after a while. Very colourful people. Dressed in red robes with heaps of jewellery. Unfortunatly, they were damn hard to photograph as they always wanted money or a cold beer. Danny had to sneak this one in pretending he was taking a shot of Jonny.
The scenery was beautiful, huge old volcanos with long plains between them. Unfortunatly its the rainy season at the moment, so Kilimanjaro was covered in clouds when we went past it. We got some really good views of Mount Meru as we headed down into Arusha.
We decided to take a smaller dirt road from Arusha (Tanzania) to Dodoma . Wed hoped for adventure and we certainly got it. The were storms every day and lightening was flashing across the sky. We stopped at small villages with no electricity and tried to dry our gear near kerosene lamps. We stayed at many small guest houses. One was the Fusa family .
The road had turned to mud and was in terrible condition and there were big puddles everywhere. Just after this photo was taken Jonny hit a particularly big puddle and ended up in water to his neck. His pannier bags bobbed up to the top and everything in his handle bar bag (including camera) got wet and had to be dried in the room that night. Danny however managed to stay above water .
We also saw lot of small animals including snakes, turtles and the usual very colourful lizards .
We decided not to continue on a dirt road to Iringa because of all the damage wed done to the bikes but instead to take the sealed road to Morogoro , then double back to Iringa.
It took a couple of days to get to Morogoro and we saw some fairly impressive examples African tribesmen on the way. These guys wore white plastic sandals, mirror jewellery, and beaded tunics and looked like a cross between a Masai warrior and Gary Glitter. They even rode beside us for large sections of the journey.
We stopped on the edge of Mukumi National Park park the day after Morogoro and then entered the park the following day. You are allowed to cycle through Mikumi and we met others who had done it on bike but we were both nervous when we entered. Mikumi has tree climbing lions for one thing.We didn't see any lions in the end but saw lots of game including giraffe , zebra , antelope and baboons. About half way through we came across two elephant close to the road. We gave them a bit of a fright as they didn't see us coming and luckily they ran away rather than towards us.
About 30kms into the park we passed a lodge, had a break and got our hearts back to the normal rate before cycling back to see the remaining game. We obviously made it to the end, what a buzz though.
We then passed through another National Park (Udzungwa)- no big animals here but monkeys and baboons everywhere. We camped the night in a beautiful campground with Baobob trees everywhere and a river beside it. And best of all it was free. We reached Iringa after a couple of days, it was up a bit of an uphill detour but once there we chilled out and enjoyed the fantastic ice cream at Lulus.
We left Iringa and stopped shortly afterwards at the Ismila Stone Age site. Our self assigned guide was waiting by the main road and ran after us on the 4km downhill to the site. He turned out to be a good guy and when he stopped puffing we went for a walk down into the site and found an abundance of axe heads, stone scrapers and even a couple of spear heads.
We had hoped to find a resthouse at a place called Sao Hill that night but it turned out to be a Pine Plantation 40kms accross . It got dark and the started to pour with rain and we couldnt decide whether to push on or pictch the tent in the wet forest. We elected to push on and finally found a really good resthouse with awesome chicken and chips. It was a good choice to keep going as it poured down all night.
We spent the next few days heading down to the border with Malawi and were just about to cross into Malawi when we had a few problems. At approx 60kms an hour, Jonnys front rack which had been disintergrating slowly finally broke, got stuck in the wheels and wound itself round the front axle 3 times. Jonny nearly lost control of the bike and his pannier fell off and bounced down the road. Jonny was looking very pale and shaky afterwards and we couldnt get his bike working again so we loaded him onto a minivan to Kyela, a town next to the border. Wed had a pretty bad day so we splashed out on an expensive hotel (nearly 5 quid) and had a big meal.
Next day Jonny managed to get his forkes fixed, a hi tech operation which involved hack sawing the end off his old forks and inserting a couple of bits of pipe with one end banged flat over the end of the forks. It seems to work and we cycled off to the border in a hurry after seeing pictures on TV of riots in Dar Es Salaam and thinking they might just spread to the rest of Tanzania.
We cycled along the lake front nursing my front tyre which had a huge split in the side of it. Luckily Doug from Ghana had showed me how to fix a spit with tape and we managed the 250kms to Mzuzu with only a few minor repairs to the tyre. Jonnys cones were in a bad way though and seemed to fall apart at every opportunity.
Nkhata Bay our long dreamed of destination. Great stuff sitting round talking to other backpackers, good food, scuba diving in the lake and to top it all off a 60 inch TV screen with 5 speaker surround sound. We saw quite a few movies in our time there.
After 4 days in Nkhata bay we headed along the lake shore to Lilongwe. It rained a lot as its the wet season here and we got drenched. It was flat and the cycling was fast though. Weve just had a great rest day in Lilongwe and are heading off to Blantyre where we plan to go through the Tete corridor and then into Eastern Zimbabwe. Itll be a mission getting through the Tete corridor before our visas expire as the Mozambique embassy didnt seem to understand a cyclists special needs for a transit visa. Well have to be in Zimbabwe by the 15th , or at least thats one possible translation of the visa which is in Portugese.
Anyway gotto go. Cheers Danny and Jonny.
