Kilimanjaro sunset

This is the last blog that I will be writing from the road.  Tomorrow morning we will be crossing the border into Kenya and who knows what chaos awaits us there as we try to import our bikes.  Apologies for the radio silence, we've been without an internet connection since we left Mayoka Village in Malawi 10 days ago.  Leaving Malawi changed our moods, we had waved Debby and Gary goodbye, and we were now only one country away from the end of our trip and  on a deadline to reach Zanzibar for my dad’s birthday with a lot of ground to cover.  We climbed the final bend before the border and stopped to wave the lake goodbye.  The lake waved back with a massive swarm of lake flies that coalesced into a life from that rose like a dragon from the surface of the water.

Two of the Tenors saying goodbye to the lake

Lake flies doing a dragon-dance and saying goodbye 

Lake Malawi rust bucket

We crossed the border with surprisingly few problems and headed towards Mbeya for the night.  We’ve commented before that while many of Africa’s borders are quite arbitrary, they nonetheless bring about massive changes, and crossing the border into Tanzania was no different.  Suddenly we had traffic, trucks carrying fuel, containers, cows, and loads of stuff, busses with names and elaborate artwork, called “Ramadan Kareem”, “Insh’Allah!” “Allahu Akbar” and “Mash’Allah!”.  The road surface also changed, from the pristine tarmac of Malawi, we were now dodging this melee of traffic whilst avoiding potholes the size of volcanic craters.  Chaos!!!  And the closer we got to Mbeya, the worse it became.  We eventually arrived on the outskirts of Mbeya as the sun set, my relief at having arrived in the city was short-lived as it took another hour to reach our lodging for the night, playing Super-Mario Brothers with the other road users.

We pulled into the Karibuni Centre looking forward to our beds for the night, but alas they were full and so we headed for their campsite.  Through the dark we could see another bike, and so we met another Peter, also from Cape Town and riding an F800 on a 6 month long tour of sub-Saharan Africa.  We ate pizzas and set off to find Mama-Land, the local bar recommended by the watchman.  Mama-Land was everything you expect from a local bar in a medium sized Tanzanian town, it had a warped pool table, distorting speakers playing local clink clink music, and a ½ dozen TVs broadcasting a Nigerian televangelist blabbering away with the volume turned all the way down. 

In the morning we headed out early with the new Peter in tow.  He had warned us about speed traps, and so we stuck to the speed limit to the decimal point, 50 in the villages and 80 everywhere else.  Some villages have speed signs at the beginning and end of the village, but others are guesswork – where does the village start and where does it stop?  One villages runs into another, and pretty soon you are puttering along at 50 the whole way. 50 / 80 speed limits must be the most dangerous in the whole of celestial existence, there world at that speed is hypnotic.   If you’re riding at 140 on those roads you are alert and alive…  But at 50 for hours on end it produces a brain-freeze…

The road dropped down the escarpment and opened up into the valley of the baobabs, more baobabs per square kilometre than you could possible imagine, and they covered everything from the valley floor to the mountaintops.  There was a spark in the air, that night was the world-cup final night, and we were hoping to catch the game.  We came around a corner and in the avenue of baobabs there fluttered a German flag, it fluttered upside down, but we figured that rather than being a sign of distress, it was rather an innocent mistake.  Maybe they would be showing the game?  The Crocodile Camp was perfect after a long day in the saddle, a comfortable room on the banks of a river, baobabs, cold beers, but alas – no reception – no phone, no internet, not television, perfect isolation!  The owner managed to dig out an old short-wave radio for us, and we rigged an aerial with pieces of wire scrounged here and there and managed to find a signal for the BBC World Service – from Brazil!  The game was live, and it couldn’t have been more perfect if it had been on a large flat screen TV in High Definition…  We all huddled around the set and before too long I fell asleep, slinking off to bed well before half time.

Listening to the World Cup final on short-wave

Meeting Peter from Cape Town on an F800

The next morning Pete couldn’t tell me the score – he claims that the radio lost its signal, but I think he also fell asleep.  We only learned about 2 hours later that Germany had won the world cup – fantastic news from the colony!

Our route that day took us into Dar Es Salaam.  All the Zen points that we had managed to gather during the trip up to that point were quickly destroyed.  Humid heat and chaotic traffic go under our jackets, into our gloves, and up our noses.  By the time we made it to the ferry port we had lost the third Peter in the chaos, and after 30 seconds at the ferry terminal I had lost my temper.  We were told that it would cost about $800 to get our bikes and ourselves to Zanzibar by ferry, and that we would have to wait a day for the pleasure.  I quickly learned that every ferry operator in the whole of Dar Es Salaam is owned by the same person, and run by the same Ferry-Mafia, and so with a huf and a puf, a stamp of my feet, we told them all to shove it and jumped on our bikes with middle fingers raised.  Early on in the trip we agreed ‘no wheelies’ – we needed to make it to our destination in one piece, and wheelies might look cool, but on a loaded bike they can go badly wrong.  Panic Mechanic Pleitz obviously needed to blow off some steam after our encounter, and as I glanced in my mirror I saw his front wheel come up and he danced past me on his rear wheel. 

After an emergency call to Pete’s dad we ended up at the Slipway where the owner, Nichola, is an old friend of Pete’s dad and quickly sorted us out with a serviced apartment for the night.  He also happened to own Coastal Aviation and the next morning we found ourselves booked on a flight for Zanzibar, avoiding the ferry mafia entirely.  We managed find a place for the bikes – a huge thank you to Sean and Salome for providing a nice safe corner for them to sleep in.

Zanzibar was a treat, a gorgeous house on the beach, good food, swimming pool and my girls.  Its the best feeling in the world when your daughter runs up to you and jumps into your arms after not seeing you for 4 weeks!  We spent a few days with my family and celebrated my dad’s 70^th birthday with a snorkelling trip to a coral reef.  That evening we told my brothers tales of how their father had braved rain, sand, mountains and sun on our run up from Cape Town to Sossusvlei. 

We're all so normal

70th birthday breakfast - Birthday boy taking a pic with his birthday pressie

Zanzibar - not too shabby

Beachcombing

Pete and I left the family on Zanzibar to continue our journey, the clock was ticking and the border procedures were looming over us.  We have to import the bikes into Kenya, a process that is bound to cause us trouble.  We flew back to Dar, picked up the bikes and headed north along the coast to Peponi, a beach camp just south of Tanga on the northern Tanzanian coast.  What an awesome place!  Mangroves, dhows and lots and lots of pristine beach.  As we pulled in at the gate I recognised the registration of the vehicle that had signed in before us, our old friend Peter who we had last seen lost in the traffic fumes in Dar, we exchanged stories and helped him plan his route up to Nairobi. 

Peponi

Pangani Sunrise

Paradise

Panic Mechanic Pleitz seemed to know everyone in Peponi.  We had no sooner kicked our side stands down than a beautiful young woman hobble-bounded across to us with the help of a crutch, this was Rebekka from Arusha, local motocross champion and who once competed against Pleitzy in an enduro and lapped him!  She was there with her dad, Per, who once had flown over Pete’s head on a jump, while Pete was racing and Per was just taking it easy because he was injured.  But the spooky one was that evening when Pete got a Facebook message from someone saying “Are you in Tanzania?  Because I think I’m sitting next to you…” – an old friend from school who he hadn’t seen in 20 years!

Today we left Peponi and covered 400km to Moshi, the road was fantastic, and we managed to recover some of our Zen, it winds past the Usambara mountains which look incredible, and will have to be explored one day soon – by foot, but mountain bike or by motorcycle – it doesn’t matter – but they need to be explored!

Our destination for today was Kaliwa lodge, belonging to Bianca and Thilo – old friends from when we first arrived in Nairobi.  We couldn’t have chosen a better spot for our last night of African Horizons.  This lodge is nestled on the slopes of Killimanjaro and has a spectacular view of Africa’s highest mountain, seen through the lense of a valley of trees.  The sun has just set on the mountain, my battery is about to die, my beer is finished, and tomorrow we tackle Namanga – wish us luck, we’re going to need it!

Kili from Kaliwa