Update Arusha, Tanzania: May 19, 2011

We’ve been on a boat up Lake Malawi and now well into Tanzania without internet or phone connection. I’m writing this in a dumpy little motel (reminds me of the old motels along Route 66 or old 99 in the Southwest of USA). We are about 400 km short of Arusha, Tanzania.

Dom's Blog - good writer, funny, informative....A couple of days ago we were in Iringa and tested the shortcut to Dodoma – 250 km of dirt (read rocky) road. We went about 40 km up the road from the Iringa Airport and then Pat decided it was too hard on the bikes to do it all and besides, once in Dodoma, we would likely have about 850 km more of the same to Kigali, Rwanda. Anyway, we turned around and are one day short now of Arusha on tarmac – very nice tarmac – a ribbon of road that maybe the Chinese are financing. It is new and in a couple of places so far still under construction. Pat took a spill today in a little village. There are lots of buses and trucks and every mile or so another village with a series of 2 to 5 big bumps across the road to make everyone slow down to protect the pedestrians. The place where Pat dropped the bike was particularly bad with deformation of the blacktop by the heat generated by the braking big vehicles and it was wet from light rain and bang; he and Chris and the bike are all fine after a little bike fixing on the side of the road. I didn’t get a picture of Pat down – for the second time. The first was in sand where we were heading toward a lodge on the beach in Monkey Bay the night before the boat. 

Anyway, it looks like we will get to Arusha tomorrow afternoon and find a place to stay – Tanzania is so cheap that we aren’t bothering to put up the tent here. Arusha is the city from which we will try to go on a 4 day safari into the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro Crater. After that, we will go on north to Nairobi where we will try and get the last Visa (for Sudan) and stop at the Jungle Junction for a little rest up, maintenance on the bike and new tires for both bikes – we’ll need good tires when we head up to Ethiopia on the worst road in Africa (about 400 km) – actually, I think it is probably similar to the shortcut to Dodoma. We will do it in one or two days and then it should be smooth tarmac from there on – except for the few hundred kms sidetrack to the Ethiopian hewn rock Churches.

For sure we will have internet in Nairobi and maybe in Arusha too (except for the days and nights in the bush on safari).  Maybe not much contact again until Nairobi.

Malawi was a nice trip – 3 days on a boat is a little more than enough though. The Captain of the Ilawa is a very nice man; he was very helpful with loading and unloading our bikes and made sure we had a safe place to spend the rest of the night when we ended the trip at 10:30 pm. He’s an “old man of 60” (he told me) and has been running the boat for 33 years.
We spent the first night in Columba (sp) near the top of Lake Malawi after leaving the boat in a VERY modest African “guest house” – out house with a hole in the ground, outdoor shower in a box, cold water from a faucet in the back yard, a small windowless room with just enough room for a rope under the mattress bed and too thin mattress with a holey mosquito net. It wasn’t a great night’s sleep, but kinda fun. Cost about $3.

In Monkey Bay (southern end of Lake Malawi where we started the boat ride), Dom and Daryll and Angela decided they wouldn’t take the boat. So, we have finally split up – just me and Pat and Chris on our own again. We are moving much faster with just the three of us – generally get on the road by 7 at the latest and we are moving nicely even though no shortcuts. I hope they all make it, but I think they move too cautiously and too slowly in traffic to be safe. The biggest danger in my opinion comes from buses and other drivers overtaking you from behind. A couple of Australian guys on ATVs lost their mate I think in Tanzania from just such a situation – a guy passed the rear ATV and cut in behind the front ATV, pushing the guy in the middle off the road – dead! In any event, it won’t be that kind of thing that gets us – we love passing people.
We came through a Tanzanian National Park this morning about 6:30 to 7:30 and saw lots of animals – giraffes, elephants, zebra, and something with horns that looked kinda like big deer. No lions, but we were warned not to get out of our cars! People here about speak Swahili and English – mostly as a distant second language. Some guys at a stop today for a coke enjoyed my “Mafrican Safarini” on the jacket, but three times now, I’ve been asked if I speak Swahili or just talked to as though I probably do! Some other guys asked me if I was Muslim because of the greeting on the top of the jacket. Getting the embroidery was worth doing. We are staying in a motel owned by a Muslim guy – no beer for sale and they wouldn’t let the three of us share a room….

We will see where we actually go from Nairobi depending on how long it takes to get the Sudanese Visa. If that is only a day or two, then we will likely go over to Uganda and Rwanda before coming back to Nairobi and then heading north for Ethiopia. I’m hoping that Jaki has set up a meeting with his family in Kampala – I likely have something from him when I get to internet to send this.

I’m not going to go see the gorillas in Rwanda or Uganda or go climb Kilimanjaro – too much walking. My foot is still improving, but not back to normal yet. I think it will get there though. It doesn’t hurt much now to walk on it, but it is still sore and bruised and the big toe still doesn’t work quite right.

We’ve been well over a week without phone or internet contact and I doubt that access to internet will get much better until we get to Europe. We are now pretty much resigned to taking a ferry from Alexandria to Italy and coming home on schedule in early August – if it all works out smoothly from here on. But, maybe Libya will pull itself together and we can get to Europe with a little excitement at the end.

Current Reflections:

This trip is a once in a lifetime kind of thing. It is a bit difficult physically (more so when you’ve run over your own foot!), but eminently doable – so far. However, it is also a bit of a strain on the spirit in that there is soooo much poverty about and such a long long way for most of the people you see along the way to better themselves (no one else is going to do it for them), that is seems hopeless. I watch guys pushing their overloaded with bags of charcoal bicycles along the roads and think that it must be impossible for them to be thinking, “Next year and the year after that, I’ll have achieved enough success in this business that I will have more means and the prospects on the horizon will be improved.”

There are men of all ages pushing charcoal (or bags of maize or enormous loads of pieces of wood or containers of kerosene for cooking, or …) up long hills along long roads to nowhere. And, there are women carrying enormous loads of just about anything on their heads along the same roads while toting a baby on their backs. Too many children and idle young men sit beside the roads watching the trucks and buses –and very occasional motorbike – go by; they often wave and smile.
When we stop and talk to people – beginning to be more difficult as we get further north as English gets more and more limited – they are all friendly and curious and helpful – even the cops and soldiers at road blocks have been pleasant to a man/woman, so far.

But, I’m only half way up Africa and I’m tired.

We’re just getting into serious Muslim country with more and more Mosques and dress that demonstrate the unfolding change in the religious landscape from wholly Christian to mixed. Already, we had one motel owner refuse to let us all sleep in the same room – for religious reasons. It will get more interesting as we proceed north.