REST DAY IN IRINGA

Rest day in Iringa.... Finally! It has been a long and hard 7 days stretch on the bikes. This also marks the end of stage 4 of Tour D'Afrique 2010. 4 more to go...


We have completed the longest ride on dirt of the TDA, covering almost 700 km without stepping on tar, except for a few kilometers as we crossed the capital city Dongola, where the main streets were paved. What an awesome ride it has been! I am not sure if the exhaustion feeling is gonna clear before the excitement fades about how intense these past 7 riding days have been. All I can say is, we are all tired but happy. Happy to have discovered a part of Tanzania completely untapped by tourism and yet so beautiful and so real. We have had an overdose of great landscapes, of baobab trees, of lush vegetation and of "Mzungu" screaming children...

Riding on dirt is twice as hard as on pavement as a rule of thumb. You spend at least twice the energy when tackling dirt, but when it is very technical and full of soft sand, this is even more. So the last 700 km have put our already tired bodies through new levels of strain. I could see yesterday as we all made it to the finish line at the Danish school in Iringa that this 24 hour rest was more than needed.

As I was riding yesterday, I thought about my unexpected knee problems and I came to realise that there is a rational explanation behind this. It did not make sense to me that I got a tendonitis after riding almost 10 weeks. By now, the knees are well trained and should not give any problems, but the fact is that after riding 6000 km we are all super fit. Normally if you push too hard while practising any sport, your heart rate shoots up and it forces you to slow down acting as a security valve. But if I think about the day when I hurt my knees, I could hardly believe myself how fast I was going. I was really flying over these hills on a technical terrain and this for over a hundred kilometers.... By now, I am really fit and I can push my riding so hard over such a long distance that other body parts are now giving up before my heart rate would slow me down. I will have to keep it mind over the remaining 5700 km. Our bodies have gone through massive changes in a relatively short time, from weight loss to fitness gain. It is important to listen to it more and to make sure that it remains in a good shape if we want to make it to Cape Town.
Talking of weight loss, today I had a funny thought. I found a small coffee shop run by an English woman here in Iringa who made real espressos. She also stocked some European magazines and just about every one of them had something about how to lose weight on their front cover... He he... My biggest problem is to regain weight right now.... I wonder how big a market there would be for a magazine who would advertise "gain 10 kgs in 6 weeks" on its front page.... I already know 60 people who would buy it...

There are many things Africa is short of, and one of them is a decent bicycle shop. Since Cairo, we have not encountered one... There are simply no bicycle shops on the continent (except for South Africa). What I mean with bicycle shop is like the ones we are used to in Europe where you can get spares, tubes, water bottles and so on. Firstly African bicycles are all single speed bicycles and all imported from China or India. so the so called bicycle shops here only stock very basic parts that don't fit our highly sophisticated machines... Even such a simple thing such as a water bottle is simply impossible to find. Nairobi was the only city we came across that had a shop which stocked some spares and the 15 water bottles they had on the shelves were sold within a few minutes of opening to the few TDA riders who made it there first...

So I have organised for some extra tubes and spares like cycling gloves, helmet padding and so on to be shipped to me to Iringa via DHL. I have been really looking forward for this as I have no more tubes, my last spare one is already severely patched, my gloves are so worn out that I am getting blisters on my fingers and my helmet padding is also in such a bad shape that the helmet is starting to cut through my skin. So I organised for my office in South Africa to send me all these items to Iringa via DHL. We have a rest day here, so it would give me plenty of time to get the parcel.... Except that I was thinking too rational, too European may be... Of course here things work differently. When I went to collect my parcel at the local DHL office, the hard reality of African bureaucracy and inefficiency hit me. Let me describe a bit this "office" where it is an absolute shame for a company like DHL to have their name painted on the front door. A dirty room completely empty with one run down desk and a woman sitting behind it in the corner. One shelve behind her had exactly one parcel on it and it definitely did not look like it could be mine as it was completely flat.The woman did not even bother respond to my "jumbo" greeting and kept on looking at the floor as if somebody had just passed away. As I became more insistent about getting attention, she finally gave me that look which did not make me feel any welcome.... I had a shipment number on my cellphone which I proudly showed her... She looked at it and just replied "Not here!" and went back into her "watch the floor" motion...

By then my sense of humour had completely vanished and I exploded shouting at her "Well find it if it is not here, you are DHL, you are supposed to deliver this packet to me!" She got a bit of a fright and stood up. She shouted back "Not here; come back tomorrow!" I could not believe what I was witnessing here. What a pathetic service. Anyway by then the woman got a bit agitated and pulled out a dirty file from her desk drawer. It contained hundreds of handwritten telephone numbers. Since they were randomly written, it took her more than 5 minutes to find the one of her own head office in Dar es Salaam. After several attempts she just shouted at me again "Telephone not working, come back tomorrow..."

By then I realised that this was not gonna get anywhere and I took over. I called South Africa from my cell phone, asked Antigone, the PA at Junk Mail head office to trace the packet from there. Within minutes, we managed to find it lying at the customs in Dar Es Salaam because there are import duties in Tanzania on bicycle spares... Customs said I needed to come in personally with my passport to do the duty declaration and pay them... Well, that was the end of me hoping to get this parcel. Dar es salaam is a full driving day from here and there is no ways I am gonna get this packet. So I will have to use my broken gloves and live on one patched spare tube for a while. Next big city is the capital of Malawi, so I asked Antigone to repurchase everything in SA once again and send me a new parcel to Malawi. Such is life, and compared to the many challenges I have already overcome to get here, this DHL story is just adding fun to the adventure. That's how I am taking things now: "Hakuna matata" ...

Iringa is definitely not the prettiest city I have been in, but it is a rest day and on rest days, you do two things, you wash and clean everything you own and you eat as much as you can. For me, there is one more task, I do a big blog update and try to do a bit of "city reportage" showing you guys some of these places you would never come across otherwise. Iringa is a major commercial center for this region and is therefore buzzing with life. Merchants of all kind of goodies are filling up the busy streets. We are now 400 km north of the Malawian border. Since we are back on pavement, it will mean two things; more traffic, much more actually as we are going to get on a major road linking north to south and longer stages in terms of distance.

After 7 days of very hard riding and 700 km on the dirt we finally get back on pavement. It was time, our bodies and bikes are in need of a rest

                                                    Jos and a Tanzanian rider at a coke stop

                                                     Jos investigating about the meat prices

Even the butcher has an Obama poster. We have seen Obama posters and bags since Ethiopia. He seems to be more populare here than in the US...

                                                            Knut and Hilda fixing a flat

        The 20 km time trial climb on the dirt after last night's rain did not do any good to our bikes.

                                           Daniel after he finished his 20 km time trial section.

                             Simon at camp before the start of the time trial, fixing a slow puncture

                                                                Eric at camp fixing .... a flat....

                                             Frans preparing for the time trial, which he won

                                                                Jos fixing... a puncture...

  Camp yesterday was in a great setting. I did my internet connection using my toilet seat as a table....

                              The afternoon section was very hilly again yesterday, but so beautiful

The morning part of the ride was flat but had a lot of thick sand making it hard to ride. Here, the TDA lunch truck passing us

                                                 Anke at a coke stop enjoying the local sofa...

              The city of Iringa, not really a world beauty, but this is where we will spend our rest day

This dam produces hydroelectic power and is well guarded. We were warned not to take any pictures of the dam as they apparently can shoot you if you proceed...

         Typical mud house from this region of central Tanzania surrouded by beautiful baobab trees.

                                            TDA riders look tiny as they pass by these giant trees
                           
Most people here use bicycles and it makes it easy to meet them. Some, like this young fellow ride with us for a few kilometers before dropping back. With our high tech bikes, we are much faster on such terrain

                    A nice flat portion with endless baobab trees along the road. What a great ride!

                     This guy is making flip flops out of used truck tyres. I bough a pair for 1 Euro

                                                         Delivering bananas the hard way...

This is a typical bicycle spare shop, we have seen plenty of these all along our way, but unfortunately, none of these spares fit our bikes, not even the tubes

                                                                   Got a virus? Call these guys...

                                                                    Broom delivery

              We have excatly the same mushrooms growing in our backyard in Finland.....Cantarelles

                                               The fruit and vegies covered market of Iri

                     Small dry sardines are sold by mountain high piles here at the Iringa covered market

                                    All fish are sold dry here, probably the safest way to keep it

ONE OF THE MOST DIFFUCULT DAYS....

Dear Readers,
I am (meaning now Jaana) in South of Spain in the seminar and there is "not really a access" to the Internet here except for me to do this blog, I am so grateful to Paul, the owner of this place giving me a possibility the sneak in his office every evening to get a Internet connection to update this blog. So a special thanks to Paul, letting me carry on doing the blog that has become quite important to some and for others just a good night story before sleep, but I think for all of us who are reading this, it is a way of travelling through Africa and following the remarkable journey of Gerald and his friends. Thank you also for all your supporting messages...

Hi guys, tonight's text will be short.


I had the most difficult day of the tour so far and I need to recover, so not much time to compose here. I woke up this morning with a strong pain in both knees. Tendinitis... The thing you want to avoid at any price. I knew I was in trouble as even getting out of bed was hurting. So, not much choice but to get on with it and try not to damage the knees further. I rode too hard yesterday, and this morning I am paying the price. A bit stupid of me, we were told that there were hotel rooms at the camp, so I pushed real hard to get there early as there is always a limited supply of rooms. I got a room, but it ended up being worst than my tent. It was so hot in there I could not fall asleep and the mosquito net hanging over my bed had so many holes in it, that it actually did a great job at retaining the mozzies inside after they had taken their share of my blood. The shower did not have hot water and it spilled water all over except inside the shower itself.... The toilet was a real flush toilet except that it kept on flushing all the time... Ultra luxury, they had a TV in the room with 2 channels tuned. A local one in Swahili and a Chinese one... Hum... The Chinese again...

Anyway, back on the road I was hurting badly and unfortunately there is nothing much you can do with knee pain when you need to cycle 95 km on a sandy dirt road.The best strategy was to ride slowly at high cadence which I did. Andre and Michelle, two South African riders saw me in pain and stopped as they passed me. Andre pulled some Voltaren pills out of his camelback and gave them to me. It was nice to see how concern the other riders of TDA were and how they tried to help. The Voltaren pills did help a bit and I could cycle a bit faster later that day. But as you know about Murphy's law, bad news often happen is series, I also had my worst puncture day ever! I had a total of 6 punctures today, yes 6. Imagine that up to now, I only had 2 and that was over 6000 km. I managed to get 6 in 45 km this afternoon. I only realised that it was not bad luck, but some of the worst thorns ever on the route when I finally made it to camp after a 10 hours ride... Needless to say, I was last by far. I was surprised to see how many people were fixing tubes and tyres at camp, until I heard that just about every rider had had similar experiences. Some even run out of patches and had to push their bikes to camp.... He he, so at least, that made me feel a bit better. It was not bad luck, but simply super thorn territory here. I am using special tubes that have a green slime inside them that is supposed to seal any puncture... Well, the manufacturers should come and test these tubes here in central Tanzania. I have never seen anything like that. My tubes just spilled that green stuff out and could not help these super thorns... So I run out of tubes, and had no choice but start patching them. Not easy under this heat and sand. I had to use plenty of saliva to spot the numerous holes and soon my tubes looked like they had been hit by a chicken box infection...

It was a relief to see the finish line flag, after such a challenging day. I was exhausted and even dehydrated as I run out of water since I did not expect to be on the road for so long.

Well, at least mission accomplished, I managed to preserve my EFI status and I think that I also managed to keep my knees in a stable condition. I have been lying inside my tent and I put some cream on them. I hope the night will do them good. We still have 2 hard off road days before we will enjoy a full day rest in Iringa.
 

                                                                     Charcoal sellers

                                                      A 100% wood self made push bike

                                  Lots of thick sand on this road, making it really hard on the legs.

                 Another way to use leg power is for pumping water. This is for irrigating the wineyard

                             Did you know that they make wine here inTanzania?... Well, now you do...

                                                Great landscapes again today as we head south

a typical house in this region of Tanzania, made of mud walls; The roof is covered with soil on which plants grow, a perfect way to insulate from the heat.

I was intrigued by the blue writing on this small hut, so I investigated... It is actually a paid toilet... 100 shillings (10 US cents) for access. Quite funny that somebody has started such a business in the middle of deep rural Tanzania...

       Watermelon seller along the national road we are using. I bought one, but it was not very good

  Typical small villlage along the main road between Arusha and Iringa. None of them have electricity and it means hot Pepsis for us...

                                       TDA riders at one of the hot Pepsi stops along the road

At the lunch truck some women had gathered around our crowd as it is always the case. I used the opportunity to take a few close shots of some of them

     This young and happy fellow was walking around camp tonight, I thought he was quite photogenic

                                                                    Rainbow over TDA camp!

DODOMA????????

Guys, here is a good quiz question, everybody knows of course that the capital city of Australia is Canberra and that Canada's is Ottawa, but who can name me the capital of Tanzania without hesitation?....


Well, no it is not Dar Es Salaam..... It is.... DODOMA..... and that's where from I am writing these lines tonight. This is probably one of the most inaccessible capital in the world. Only one paved road leads into Dodoma and that is the road going east/west between Dodoma and Dar Es Salaam. Since we came from Arusha in the north, we had to ride 450 km on a tiny dirt road to get here. Really cool actually. Dodoma is nothing spectacular in itself, it is a medium size town that has been chosen as capital simply because of its geographical situation it seems. It is exactly in the middle of Tanzania. But a few kilometers before entering the capital we were still struggling on thick sand and gravel.

What a ride! The last four days have been the most spectacular of the tour as far as I am concerned. It has been really hard, particularly yesterday. Even mountain bikers took a toll. It was the most technical ride we did up to now and I believe will do in the entire tour. Yesterday's 100 km ride was a "toughie". It had everything of a hard day, plenty of climbing, with steep, and difficult road surface. Some of the downhills were so technical, that many had to walk sections of them. When the dirt road was not made of rolling stones and deep holes, it was thick sand... It did not stop, every meter of that 100 K was a hard push. it took me 8 hours to ride this stage and many riders only made it to camp as the night was falling. We had started at 7h30 AM, so you can imagine... Even our trucks suffered, the dinner truck bike rack broke and it resulted in the truck only making it to camp very late. So we all tried to kill time hiding under trees waiting in our filthy cycling outfits for our luggage and tents to arrive.

The mood was nevertheless very good as everybody agreed that the efforts were definitely worth it. We all felt privileged to ride through such amazing countryside. The funny thing is, this is a national road leading straight to the capital, and yet there is hardly any traffic on it. It was so pleasant to ride on it, as I rode some of it on my own, I could hear all the sounds coming from the forest, so many birds, and the distant scream of the monkeys covered by the frogs calling for mates. At some point this road was so bad that it was easier to ride in the bush using the animal paths. But it was fun and I will sign for more any time!

Tanzania is actually the country where we cover the most distance on unpaved roads, about 600 km in total but it shrinking every year as more pavement is being laid. I have never seen so many baobab trees in my life, Tanzania is big time baobab country. They are amazing trees defying time. Some of them can live up to 3000 years...
They make the landscape of central Tanzania. Here you can see baobab trees in the middle of a sunflower field, something quite unique. I am so impressed by Tanzania, and by its people. They are so nice. We are getting so many "jumbo" everywhere we go. The kids have also been a pleasant surprise. In the remote areas we have traversed, it seems that all children are going to school. We saw them walking on the road dressed in clean uniforms on their way to school. Tanzanian children are a bit shy and wait for you to greed them with a loud "Jumbo" and then they immediately shout back "Jumbo Jumbo" and laugh. We also hear " Mzungu Mzungu" from the younger ones who are so exited to see some white persons on bicycles in this remote region.
Camp last night was really funny. It felt a bit like Ethiopia as we were invaded by kids. But it was very different. No need to put up defensive ropes around camp, these children were well behaved, fairly shy and seemed to be amazed by the Tour D'Afrique caravane... I would be too it TDA had to pull into my backyard one day...
We are on a 7 days non stop stage here, so 3 more to go before we reach Iringa. There we will be back on tar and will enjoy a rest day. We are definitely gonna need it. This long unpaved stretch is claiming its toll on old bodies like mine. I have pains in my back, in my arms and even my knees are sore. These long days on technical dirt roads are so demanding. You work plenty more than on a normal ride. I even have a small saddle sore, can you believe it, after 6000 km you can still get some from the hammering of the corrugated surface. I have organised for a DHL parcel to reach me in Iringa. It is coming from South Africa. I am getting extra tubes and a new pair of gloves. mine are so destroyed, they look like rags hanging on my forearms. I am also getting new padding for the inside of my helmet, same problem as my gloves.

Anyway after such a hard day, it was a perfect opportunity for the members of the locker 9 brotherhood to hold a special meeting.... Yes, on the initiative of Gabriele, we have created this brotherhood were some of the older riders who deserve a bit of luxury are stuffing locker 9 in the dinner truck with all kind of pleasurable goods. There is plenty of wine, spirit, chocolate and cigars in locker 9.... By the way, other TDA riders, if you are reading this, don't get any funny ideas... Locker 9 is well protected and the key holder is Josh... So you will have to kill him first... and given the fair size of Jos.. I would advise you to get your own locker.... Of course each rider only has one locker so I cannot go into details and tell you how we got locker 9... But this brotherhood has added a new dimension to this tour. Since we passed the equator, we have upgraded ourselves to business class. Last night, we enjoyed Cuban cigars, South African red wine and port with dark chocolate under a magnificent African sky... And this is just the beginning, more international supplies are on their way, thanks to wives and new sectional riders joining soon...

We had our first brotherhood evening in Kenya when Maria Pia, Gabriele's girl friend freshly arrived from Switzerland brought some magnificent Italian salami and two types of well aged Swiss cheeses. They went down like mother's milk with Chilean wine... Oh, and we also have a proper set of wine glass in locker 9, yeah there is no way we will drink wine out of coffee mugs!...

The road was so rough that our dinner truck broke down. So the TDA staff went for plan B, they got the cooking equipment from it and brought them to camp on the Landcruiser. Now, that's what I call an "open kitchen"...

The dirt road was so bad that we used some of the small paths in the bush going more or less in the same direction as the "road"... It was a lot of fun and a much smoother ride, excpet for the fact that Jos and I got lost.. but let's not talk about that....

The last two days have taken us through some of the most scenic places I have ever riden through and all that on a small quiet dirt national road going straight into the heart of Tanzania... Unbelievable.....

      Sunflowers and baobabs, side by side, these have been the scenes of the last two days of riding.

The dirts road has been very hard to ride on with plenty of thick sand or lose rocks for the last 350 km, but it has blessed us with such amazing landscapes that we did not mind the physical challenge.

The last time, I held my bike up in the air like that was in front of the pyramids in Cairo, today we are passing the 6000 kilometers mark and I therefore choose this baobab to mark the physical half way point in this crazy race.

                       Endless undisturbed Tanzanian bush. We are so privileged to ride through this....

                  Not the easiest road surface to ride through, but plenty of fun for the mountain bikers

Make no mistake, even if these guys are posing for my camera and are dressed in western clothes, these are real bow hunters on their way to kill some small antilope for their lunch.

       Caroline, the TDA nurse giving a hand at the open bush kitchen in front of the amused local kids.

                             Can you still see my tent, it is behind the 50 new friends, I have just made...

I made the mistake to give 3 candies to 3 little boys who sat next to me while I was putting up my tent... He he... within minutes the word was out that a "Mzungu" was handing out candies... and this is the result....

                                                  Sunhil greasing his chain after this dusty stage

                 Frans and Tim assesing the damage on their mean machines after this very tough day

At TDA, one thing you learn quickly is to wash yourself on one 750 ml water bottle, here Tony even seems to enjoy it....

In Africa, the number one method of communication still is radio, especially in such remote areas. As you can see, these radios are not the most modern, neither are they in best shape, but they do the job...

Lynn about to put her tent up with a ready crowd of local facinated children who have probably never seen so many Mzungus in one load...

These kids are so cute, they are well behaved and took turns in looking at their own picture on my camera instead of pushing each other and fighting for grabbing it like in Ethiopia.

          In Africa when you make a self portrait, you can be sure there are a few kids joining in as well.

                 The cattle looks good here, you can see that there is plenty of delicious grass available

TDA riders recovering under the shade of an umbrella tree after one of the toughest stage of the tour. The dinner truck has broken down on the road. All our luggage and tents are in it, so patience is the best medicene, even if you are tired, smelly and sweaty...

Since we have crossed the eqautor, we have started this "brotherhood of locker 9". We have upgraded ourselves to VIP level and are now enjoying cigars, red wine, port, chocolate and even biltong after dinner....

After 4 hard days of riding over 450 km on dirt roads, we finaly reached the capital city of Tanzania..... DODOMA

                                                       School boys in their uniform

                                                                      Charcoal seller

Charcaol is big business here. The locals produce it in their backyard and sell it along the road in these giant bags

             Tanzanians are very friendly, they always greet us as we pass them on the road and smile plenty

                                     Sun flower is widely planted here for producing cooking oil

                        TDA rider passing on the dirt road with a typical Tanzanian early morning skyline

                      This region has plenty of wetlands adding to the beauty of the landscapes.

                                      A very enjoyable flat section before some more climbing...

                                             Gisi, the female tour leader is also 4 th overall

I am not sure if such a sign would be allowed anywhere in Europe but here at least the message is loud and clear.... (picture is from the street in Dodoma)