IT IS OVER!

This is it, this will be my last and final posting on this blog, so let me first thank each one of you who have read and followed my African ride. Thank you for the many messages of support and encouragement. I can now tell you that they were times when I seriously considered if it was worth going on riding, feeling sick, tired and at the worst pissing blood. But knowing that you guys were out there following me and cheering for me often gave me that extra courage one needs to ignore the pain signals your body sends you and to keep riding. keeping this blog updated was a challenge I enjoyed tremendously and I tried all along to do it as soon as I would reach camp, sometimes starting to write in my dirty cycling shorts in order to share it with you guys while it was "hot". They were many technical challenges too, especially in Sudan and Ethiopia where access to electricity was just as short as to clean water and Tanzania were I sometimes had to walk a few kilometers with my computer in order to find a weak cell phone signal on top of a hill in order to connect to Internet. Another challenge was to keep all these equipment running in the dust and the heat of the Sudanese desert, the humidity of the equator, the shocks of thousands of km of corrugated roads in the truck, the leaks in my tent in Botswana and so on... Eventually it was gonna be a smart virus that would give me the most trouble and destroy my computer....  Anyway as a token of consolation, my blog won the honorary price of "best TDA 2010 blog", a nice confirmation that our efforts to keep this blog going despite the many challenges have been appreciated.

I have done it, I have made it EFI to Cape Town, 12 000 km on my bicycle without ever getting on the truck or missing a single inch. Out of the 60 who started in Cairo,12 of us have achieved this. It is something, I am particularly really proud of, especially given the fact that I am the oldest EFI of the group and given all the physical troubles I went through, it makes this performance even more enjoyable afterwards. I am also the first French citizen ever to join the EFI club since the creation of the Tour D Afrique 8 years ago.

I am not going to bore you with long and  philosophical conclusions about this tour, it is impossible anyway to wrap it up in just a few words, but here are a few impressions I would like to share with you.

Tour d Afrique makes you look older but feel younger, it is also very stressful. It is like a 4 months long marathon. You need a holiday after this and a lazy one. Jumping back into a "normal" life is my next challenge. I started immediately yesterday afternoon by throwing away the one and only set of clothes I have been wearing since January and dressed myself from toes to top at one of the waterfront shops.  I also went for a hair cut and shaved. The images of all the places we went through are now starting to roll in my mind and for the first time this morning I started talking about this race using past verbs.

Africa is an amazing continent, it is poor, disorganised, corrupted, but yet so friendly, so full of delicious surprises and again as I have stressed so often in this blog, people have very little but they still share it. Africa loves singing, Africa loves dancing, Africa lives on the hope of better days and it often gives you the impression that it accepts its faith a bit too easily, "God willing" as you hear so often. Riding across Africa is not easy, there are still plenty of barriers against cyclists: a bicycle is still far too often seen as the method of transport for the poor and African drivers have very little respect for cyclists, making it difficult for us. I had to jump off the road at numerous occasions to save my life. The real danger in Africa is not the last few free roaming lions or poisonous snakes as many still believe, but simply bad drivers.

I was forced to witness the rapid expansion of China in the continent, building roads and infrastructures in most places we passed. I was also surprised by the strong influence of South Africa, especially south of the Equator. South African companies are opening retail outlets all over. I am more optimistic about that one than about the Chinese presence...

Africa did not disappoint me, it scared me, it made me laugh, it gave me joy, it made me dream, it also taught me new things about life and even about myself.

To conclude, here are a few logistical numbers,

Number of kilometers ridden on my bike 12 035 (including extra kilometers when getting lost)

Number of punctures: 10 (from which 6 took place the same day in Tanzania)

Total budget for this trip: about 15 000 euro

Total of bribes paid: 1 (5 dollars to a chef in Malawi to skip the one hour queue at a restaurant and get my T-bone within 5 minutes, it is amazing what an hungry stomach can make you do...)

Weight lost: 10 kg (out of 72) at the worst in Ethiopia. I have now regained most of it

Number of Cokes (and Pepsi) drunk. estimated 250 to 300

Most water drunk during one ride: 12 liters (worst day in Sudan)

Fall of my bicycle: only once in Dinder park Sudan, not bad for such a long trip.

Stolen things: 0 yes, nothing was stolen from me during this trip!

Toughest country: Ethiopia

Most exotic country: Ethiopia

Best T-bone: Namibia (Felix Unite camp)

Most exotic food: Sudan and Ethiopia

Highest temperature during a ride: 45 degrees Celsius (Sudan)

Lowest temperature during a ride: 7 degrees Celsius (South Africa, Springbok)

Cheapest meal: Ethiopia (2 dollars including drinks)

Best fruit juices: Ethiopia

Friendliest people: Malawi

Biggest danger: Traffic riding into Nairobi

The question most asked to us: "Where are you go?" (Every Ethiopian kid)

Longest day: 207 km in Botswana, but longest saddle time was 10 hours in Ethiopia

Best money ever invested: 50 cents for a bucket of fresh water in Zambia to wash myself

Most beautiful part of the trip: Tanzania, between Arusha and Iringa, 700 km of pure beauty!

Worst day of the tour: a 130 km long stage in Ethiopia that took us to an altitude of 3100 meters and where I was sick as a dog with fever, stomach bug and bladder infection.

Highlights of the tour. An Ethiopian nurse giving me her lunch in Addis and seeing Table mountain appearing in the horizon had both water filling my eyes.

12 000 km on my bicycle and 120 days since I took a similar shot in front of the pyramids...

Finally, we are gonna get our lives back..

The locker 9 club tired but happy...

Last group photo with the beautiful Table mountain in the background

The male race winners from left to right, Stuart (1st) Tim (3rd) and Jethro (2nd)

The female race winners from left to right Juliana (2nd), Gisi (1st) and Jen (3rd)

Me passing the finish banner. I bought it for 2100 USD at the found raising auction dinner that evening, adding 21 bicycles to the 120 already donated. I reached a whooping total of 141 bikes, an all time record for the TDA charity...

The official arrival ceremony at the Waterfront included speeches, medals and flag carriers for each country represented. It felt like the Olympics...      

                               Me receiving my EFI medal from the deputy mayor of Cape Town

                         Hardy and myself in the VIP tent celebrating our hard earned EFI medals

      The members of the famous locker 9 brotherhood as they look in normal life at the gala dinner party.
      From left to right, Éric, me, David, Gabriele, Jos and Peter

BOTSWANA

Botswana is flat.... It is the complete opposite of Ethiopia. It is flat and empty, no people. The road are straight and just disappear in the far distance. The country is a giant game park crossed by a few roads and you can ride your bicycle for hours without meeting anybody on the road, a complete novelty to us after crossing heavily populated regions of Africa. There are plenty of wild animals here if you judge by the amount of elephant droppings on the road. Some riders were lucky and saw elephants crossing the road in front of them. We had one yesterday trumpeting at us, probably to warn others that humans were near by, but we could not see him in the thick bush that bordered the road.

Getting in Botswana was good fun as we used the famous Kazungula ferry to cross the Zambezi river. The Kazungula ferry is nothing more than a metal barge that can transport one truck at a time across the Zambezi. It takes about 10 minutes, and is good fun given the very basic condition of the barge making its way slowly across these crocodile infested waters... It is also a famous since it is the only place in the world where 4 countries meet. In the middle of the river, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe all come together.

Once you enter Botswana, you start with cleaning your shoes and tires, by dipping them into a big pool of dirty water that contains some chemicals strong enough to kill the germs of the foot and mouth disease. Then, it is straight ahead for kilometers and kilometers. Pretty boring, and worst, it is even windy... The distances we are covering here are impressive, even in TDA terms. On most days in Botswana we are riding between 160 and 200 km. I am now writing this posting from Main and we have already covered 700 km in 5 days.

So, this means that we are back in peloton riding which I am enjoying, I have to say. By now, we are a lot more experienced in group riding and I am amazed at how efficient peloton riding is. Single riders have no chance against a well organised peloton. It is also the best defence against the wind. We take turns of 5 km each in front and by doing so, we have been able to reach average speeds well above 30 km per hour even in head winds. Not bad. This efficiency has meant that we have had to find ways to kill time as we have been making it to camp early. So yesterday for example, we decided to have a stop at 103 km (out of 185) and spent 3 hours at a beautiful lodge where we stuffed ourselves with delicious cheese burgers and relaxed in their magnificent swimming pool.

That is one thing Botswana is not short off, lodges... They specialize in high end lodges with the most exclusive levels of service. So, we were very glad that Planet Baobab let day visitors to enjoy their magnificent infrastructures. After spending 3 hours in this small paradise, we decided to hit the road again and cover the last 82 km. Unfortunately, we had a remake of our day 2 experience. (the day I almost lost my EFI due to a long stop for a comfortable lunch at a Red Sea resort and had to face a sand storm).

While Jos, Andre and myself were having our cheese burgers by the pool, the weather had turned nasty and the strong tail wind we had enjoyed during the morning had now turned into a headwind with a worrying thick black line growing on the horizon. Within an hour and a half we hit this black line.... It was like entering the gates of hell. In a typical African thunderstorm style, we hit a curtain of rain... It was pouring so heavily that it hurt like it was hailing. Lightening started to crack over our heads and the wind was so strong that we were almost thrown off our bicycles. The temperature had dropped by at least 20 degrees and it was so dark, it felt like night had taken over.

You could not see anything and there was nowhere to hide. We were in the middle of an open endless field with short bush and grass. Lightening was now banging right over our heads ans it felt like our last moments had arrived...Suddenly on the left hand side of the road, a small miracle.... One of the TDA vehicle was there! I had forgotten that last night at the rider meeting they had mentioned that due to the very long distance of the stage, they would have one vehicle parked at kilometer 150 for refreshments. We jumped inside and once we realised we were safe, we could not stop laughing at this experience. It was raining so hard that even the Land Cruiser of the TDA was leaking water from every corner. In less than 15 minutes, the rain stopped and as if nothing had happened the sun reappeared. We got back on our bicycles and pushed even harder now that we had lost a good 15 minutes. By the time we made it to camp, we were dry, except for our cycling shoes. Wao, what a storm and we had ridden straight into it.

Timing was actually perfect, we had ridden the 185 km at an average speed slightly above 30 km per hour, enjoyed a 3 hours break at a magnificent lodge, eaten cheese burgers and made it to camp before dark. The storm riding was gonna be yet another one of these moment that you never forget.

That evening at camp, we set a bigger than average locker 9 club meeting, inviting a few special guests of honor and enjoyed a 2,5 kg piece of Swiss cheese matured 36 months in cellar and specially delivered by Gabriel's brother who have joined us for this section of the tour...We make a point of inviting a different guest of honor almost each evening. In this way we get to know each rider in a different way than just on the bike. Tonight we invited Lanie. Lanie is amazing. She is the oldest woman rider, she is of Chinese origin, but lives in Canada. At the beginning of this tour, everybody smiled politely at her. She was the only rider who did not use cleats on her shoes and seemed very unprepared and unfit. But Lanie proved to be a tough cookie as they say in the US. She just got stronger and stronger. She is now not only finishing each and every stage but cycles at such a consistent pace that if you stop too long for a coke, Lanie already passes you. Impressed by her tenacity and very quiet approach to life, we decided that tonight Lanie was gonna be the guest of honor of the locker 9 brotherhood. She was delighted and probably touched by the gesture, I had never had a chance to speak with her for more than a minute, so it was nice to hear more about her.

The atmosphere was colonial, the air was hot and humid, and the South African red wine went down our throats like mother's milk... A beautiful red sky added a hint of African flavour to this magical experience. TDA is very much what you make out of it and we are making sure we get the maximum, we race on the day and we enjoy beautiful Swiss cheese and South African wine in the evening. We are gentlemen racers, probably like the early tour de France riders who would stop in a local bar for lunch, have a glass of wine and get back on their bikes.... What a great times these must have been... Well, since we are not racing seriously, we can afford to spend 3 hours at a road side lodge and drink wine each night... And, by the way, make no mistake, tomorrow morning at 6h00 we will be on the road pushing a good pace, sharing the work riding in an organised peloton and having fun racing.

The coming week is a tough one. This is the one when we do over 900 km in 5 days... Yes.... Each stage will be minimum 160 km and one is 207 km, the longest of the tour.Of course we are now very fit and it does not seem too difficult, but it is still a lot of hours on the saddle and much depends on the wind.207 km in a headwind can become a day of hell...
It is incredible how the past 3 months have trained us to long distance riding. I remember suffering of cramps and general fatigue after 90 km on day one. Yesterday at kilometer 160, I was pushing my relay turn at 35 km per hour feeling absolutely fine and not even breathing heavily... That is the difference, we might be tired, but we are so much fitter and flat Botswana is a good place to evaluate this progress.Before this tour, I would have never been able to push such speeds even on much shorter distances.

 

                                                           Hot dogs for lunch! Yeah!
                           
                                    In Botswana, we have to clean our shoe soles and our bike
                                    tires in these giant dips against the foot and mouth disease

                                        Another very basic bush camp in the middle of nowhere.
                                        Elephants were spotted just 100 meters from camp...

                                                           Sundown on the Chobe river

                            Late afternoon boat cruise on the Chobe river for the TDA participants

                        The Chobe river flows into the Zambezi, just a few kilometers downstream

                          
                                    TDA riders stepping off the Kasangula ferry into Botswana

                           The Kasangula ferry is the only way to cross the Zambezi river between
                           Botswana and Zambia. There is a huge queue of trucks especially since
                           Zimbabwe introduced very heavy prices for using its roads

                             The most simple form of transport on these crocodile infested waters...

                                            One of the TDA trucks joining us on the crossing

                                  Me during the 15 minutes long crossing at the point where the 4
                                  countries meet. Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Botswana

                                       The biggest note the world has ever seen, a 100 trillion
                                       Zimbabwean dollars... It is worth a few cents...

                                                                  A nice spot for lunch

                     Botswana is completely flat and the roads straight for hundreds of kilometers
                     with windy conditions. Peloton riding is essential

                                The famous "Locker 9 club meetings" are becoming highly popular,
                                especially at bush camps where there is nothing else to do. Here
                                we are sampling some 36 month old Swiss cheese brought by
                                Gabriel's brother who joined us for the current section. We might
                                be in the middle of nowhere, but we are able to lift our spirits with such delicacies...

                             We had 185 km to ride today and at kilometer 103, this opportunity
                             of jumping into the pool of this road side lodge could not be turned
                             down. Eventually 3 hours later, Jos, Andre and myself carried on and
                             did the last 82 km in a record braking time despite a huge thunderstorm
                             unleashing hell on us

                                 Planet Baobab is the name of this wonderful lodge where we also
                                 enjoyed plenty of cold drinks and delicious cheese burgers...

                                 This giant Antbear is a landmark here in Botswana along the road
                                 between Nata and Maun

BIKE DONATION IN LUSAKA

Today we donated a further 28 bikes here in Lusaka bringing the total to 56 bikes donated in Zambia. If anywhere, it feels like Zambia is one of the places where these bikes are most needed. A very charismatic woman named "Loveness" told us that in her community, they use the bikes to visit AIDS orphans and follow up on them. They also visit AIDS patients to keep them up to date with the intake of medicines and make sure they don't stop. Previously, they could only visit an average of 6 households per day on foot, now this is five to ten times more thanks to the bicycles donated...


The bicycles are built locally by a company called Zambikes. These bikes are really nice. Zambike also produces a bamboo frame bicycle, quite amazing actually.
 

                                   We donated a total of 56 bikes in Zambia and here are the
                                    representatives of the associations to whom the bicycles went

                                       This woman named "Loveness" gave us a very emotional
                                       speach explaining us how the bikes donated make a huge
                                       difference in her comunity

                                     Bill and Dr Margareth talking about the great work done
                                     by the Okanagan health care foundation

                              The shopping mall next to my hotel in Lusaka, just like in South Africa

AFRICA IS NOT EASY...

We were told that once you pass the equator, things start to improve, camps and food get better, conditions are nicer and you should look forward for this part of the trip... Well, who ever told this obviously did not ride north east Zambia... The last 5 days have been rather depressing. The only thing that has changed is the length of the stages, we have even done 200 km one day, but as for comfort, we have gone back to Ethiopia levels with one horrible camp after another. It has almost become a standard joke amongst us, how does TDA manage to find such horrible camp sites... I suppose we are all very tired and 3 months of camping across Africa going from shit hole to shit hole makes you depressed, or is it the the Lariam?.. They say Lariam (the anti malaria pills we take) makes you depress... Well, I am usually a very positive person, but right now, I am depressed. I need civilisation... urgently.... please... A burger on a clean plate with chips and no flies on it...


We have just done something between 700 and 800 km of hard core mountainous humid, super hot road across some boring country side (except for yesterday) with thinly populated areas. Thanks God, it is thinly populated because the few inhabitants here are either drunk or looking so poor and dirty that it adds to the depression feeling... I guess, we were all thinking that the worst was over a bit too early. 5 days in north east Zambia is a good reminder that crossing Africa on a bicycle is not a walk in the park...

Zambia is poor, very poor.It makes more than half of its foreign income on only one commodity: copper. So Zambia depends on the price of copper. Right now, copper is expensive and the country's empty coffers can be refilled slowly but it would need a lot more that that to take it out of its current poverty levels. There also seems to be a high level of alcoholism here as we have seen plenty of drunk people (mostly men). So far the places we have stopped at, along the great eastern highway (that is just the name of the road, don't get too exited...) have been dirty and messy. Nothing is being maintained, buildings are left to fall apart and people live in conditions that feel like middle ages to us. Just about every coke stop we have done in the last five days sums it up, dirty and smelly places, kids wearing filthy rags and drunk young men sitting in the shade of a tree drinking local home made beer. Not a very positive picture, I am afraid. We have also met plenty of nice Zambians of course, but it has been a bit of a shock to many of us how dirty and filthy everything is here. They have some of the highest infant mortality rate in the world and I am not surprised.

Camps have also been really depressing since we entered Zambia, hot humid and full of bugs. No commodities of course, no water, no toilets; so we have been looking for village water pumps to at least wash and get a sense of dignity back. This has been the highlight of the day, when we have poured this could bucket of water over our heads, giving us a fresh and clean feeling. But of course it is under the scrutiny of entire swamps of children and if you like privacy, you will be frustrated... The other thing is that you are permanently attacked by flies, mosquitoes, ants and spiders. Your nerves eventually start to give up and you hate being here. You cannot imagine how lucky you are when reading this in a sealed room with no flies on your face and ants climbing up your ankles. By now, many riders have very strange insect bites all over their bodies. Gabriele has been beaten by a spider on his stomach and it looks pretty bad, but there is not much one can do about it. We all have bites that are struggling to heal in this humid environment. Even a simple mosquito bite can turn into a nasty infection, so camp looks like a war hospital with many people walking with bandages on their ankles, arms and other strange body parts...

                                       Tony celebrating his 50 th birthday after the 200 km ride,
                                       the longest of the tour so far

                              Our amused public after we used the village water pump for shower

                                                               Young kid pumping water

                                    When I said that there is not such a word as privacy in Africa,
                                    you can see what I mean... Wherever we go, there are always
                                    children and people to observe what the Muzungus are doing...

                                 A very upset Tony, late on the evening of his 50 th cleaning up his
                                 tent from the 50 smelly dried fishes... It was like a scene out of an
                                Asterix comic book as he started throwing the fishes at other tents...
                                But who the hell put these fishes in his tent?....

                                                             Hardi and Eric at a coke stop

                                         Building maintenance is not really a priority in Zambia....

                                    Young local cyclist intrigued by our colourful bikes and gears

                                                            Jos and Gabriel buying food

                                      In rural Zambia, the shops are very basic and the buildings
                                      run down, we also found Zambia a lot more dirty than Malawi
                           
                                               Anti corruption billboard next to the border post

                                           Eric buying a coke from a typical small road side shop.
                                           (dirty and smelly)

                           The 28 bikes we are donating here in this very remote part of the country

                                      The bike hand over cermony was delayed and started late
                                      as the truck delivering the bikes from Lusaka broke down

                                      Believe or not, but this is a shop in the middle of nowhere
                                     along the great Eastern Hihgway which we are following all
                                     the way to Lusaka. It is stocked with clothes, alcohol and biscuits

                                                              Tony... still smelling .... fish

                                 Tony wanted to show me that he had reconciliated with fish and
                                 posed in front of this horribly smelly drying fishes outside a shop...
                                It might have reminded him of his tent... he he...

                                      Zambians are using straw to produce mùany things as you
                                      can see here. The police check point after the Luawnga
                                      river bridge has become a mini shopping center along both
                                      sides of the road

                                                 Dried smoked fish from the Luanwga river

                                    Most riders took a cold drink brake at the police check point
                                   after crossing the Luanwga river bridge. Plenty of activity
                                   going on here

                                    Police check points are commun all accross Africa, we have
                                    passed hundreds of them since Cairo. They never stop us on the bikes.
                           
                                    The Luanwga river and the beautiful hanging bridge that we
                                    have just used for crossing

                                 As I was taking a shot of the river, this young fellow appeared out
                                of nowhere and made his way to this blog...

                                 Fishing boat on the Luanga river. I took this shot from the bridge

                                                                            Luanwga river

                               We were told that it is absolutely forbidden to take pictures of this
                               bridge, so I had to get one...

                                                      The Luanwga river from the bridge

                                          The Luanwga river makes its way in the middle of this
                                          very mountainous area, just like us...

                                      This morning as we started our ride we had this amazing
                                      view of mountains bathed by sunshine and valleys filled
                                      with morning fog...

                                        Gabriele, pushing an early morning good pace for this
                                        150 km long stage which includes 2100 meters of climbing...

                                Men sitting under shade and drinking the local home brewed beer,
                                a very commun feature here in Zambia...
                                We have seen a lot of drunk Zambians...

                                  Family eating maize and a pumpkin leave mash (the green dish).
                                  I tried it and it was good

                                  In rural Zambia everybody still lives in such small traditional huts

                                  On the road we met this friendly young man from Mozambique.
                                  He had already travelled 50 km from the border to sell his goat
                                  loaded on his bike...

                          He he, another typical African story... We stopped at this restaurant
                          impressed by the large offer advertised on the board.... The T-bone,
                          the chicken and the beef were finished, the eggs were not ready and
                          the only saussage looked so bad we decided to order what was left, the chips...

                                   The bikes we donated are made here in Zambia by a company
                                   called Zambikes. These bikes are very solid and seem to be of a
                                    very good quality.