Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud...

Tanzania has been the most fun place to ride. We were a bit nervous about this extended off road section after our experiences in Sudan, but riding on the dark red hard packed earth surrounded by dense green forests has been wonderful. The route we have taken has certainly been a road less travelled as we saw very few vehicles over the last 6 days, and those that we did see tended to be stuck in the mud, going nowhere fast.

MUD.. and more mud.  We took time to visit Ypres!

As fate would have it, as soon as we turned off the tarmac the rain began. Loosened by the downpours, our wheels kicked up the gritty red sand which would flick into our faces, on our backs and to all parts of our bikes. Quickly the dots of spray would become solid patches of grime, caking our clothes. Finally the heavy mud guards which Thijis has been carrying half the length of Africa came into their own as his shirt remained perfectly Daz white - we can’t say the same for ours!

After two days with bouts of torrential rain the road was completely destroyed in parts. At times the mud was so deep that our wheels would become clumped with it, doubling in size - we’d lift them up to carry them through. Not knowing how long these sections would go on for we shuddered at the prospect of walking 119 km carrying our bikes. But quickly we’d be on the move again, flying along the hard packed dirt, loving the terrain and hurling ourselves through the smaller puddles.

The mud quickly solidified on our bikes, causing all sorts of creaking and groaning, destroying our chains and wearing out our brake pads. We’d wince as we changed gears and our bikes screamed at us to stop the pain we were putting them through.

Jockey wheels and brake pads - the effect of the grit wore our brakes to the nub and sharpened our jockey wheels into deadly ninja stars








Arriving in camp, with the spray of mud thick on us we’d begin the futile exercise of cleaning our clothes, our bikes and ourselves. Each of these tasks required purchasing a bucket of water from an enterprising local (of varying prices from one village to the next depending on the strength of our negotiation skills). It also required some careful analysis of the clouds and bold uninformed conclusions about weather patterns to estimate the window of opportunity for drying (particularly clothes which would otherwise sit in our lockers and become increasingly smelly) before everything would be soaking again. Even if the whole task was achieved (a rarity) within 5 minutes on the road the next day any pretence at cleanliness would be lost as we would become gloriously dirty once again.

Ali claims it's a tanline!

All of this reminded us of riding in England – we are not strangers to the constant drizzle, and enjoyed the freshness in the air that meant we were no longer racing to camp to beat the heat. The less popular road meant that for the majority of the time the surface was relatively smooth (free from the corrugation we experienced in Sudan) and took us through some tiny towns and villages, which we otherwise would have missed, even if they did laugh at our mud splattered faces, whilst they pedalled past in their impossibly clean, white dresses. The challenge of riding off-road was so much fun, bending and weaving, trying to find the smoothest and driest line – perhaps we’ll try mountain biking when we get home…

St. Paddy's Day

Wherever you go in the world, there’s always an Irishman…

As we have settled into the trip and got fitter, we have slowly been staying up later, needing that bit less sleep to recover each night, and having the odd beer. Since Kenya, the group has started looking for excuses to have some celebrations (crossing the equator led to one particularly heavy evening…), and so for St.Patrick’s day, a group of us became honorary Irishmen (under the wing of two genuine paddies on the trip, Phil and Darragh) and decided to spend the day doing challenges as we rode along. The evening before, we came up with a list of dares, with associated points, ranging from getting on a local’s bike (easy) to getting a local to buy you a beer (impossible).

The challenges are set

The list of challenges

The following morning, we begged, borrowed and stole anything we could find that was green, white or orange to try and look the part (this included sticking pieces of green crop in our helmets) and set off on the road.

A leprechaun hides from the camera

If you squint, it looks like an Irish flag...  hmm?

The day was spend cajoling locals to lend us their donkey, swapping clothes, sampling as many varieties of beer as possible, which doesn’t make cycling up hills much fun, and trying to get locals’ phone numbers (Lizzie was worryingly good at this). We even managed to form the base of a 10-man human pyramid. However, the highlight occurred whilst we were in negotiations to borrow a local’s clapped out bicycle, when we heard the roar of a motorbike engine and saw Freek, a Dutch rider on the trip, tear down the road with 500cc of power behind him – his power of persuasion are clearly much better than ours.

A Maasai clothes swap

The centre of the pyramid looking nervous

The coup de grace – Freek swapped his
bike for a motorbike

Ngorongoro Crater

Last week we had a few days off from riding in Arusha, Tanzania (a planned break this time). We took the opportunity to head to Ngorongoro Crater. Not only is Ngorongoro the inspiration for The Lion King, which is in its own right a good enough reason to visit (on the off chance of seeing a cloud shaped like Mufasa) but it is also an incredible game park.

 

The Crater's edge

Due to all the volcanic ash the crater is incredibly lush, enabling it to support a huge number of animals. It has very steep sides which keeps a lot of the animals penned in (although some of them do move in and out using some of the less steep routes). The combined impact of these is that the crater in effect becomes a glorified 35 square mile zoo, where it is relatively easy to spot animals.

A lion couple's domestic

We were lucky enough to see four separate lion prides, rhinos, hippos, elephants, hyenas and all the slightly more common stuff, like zebras, that are really exciting the first time you see one, and far less so after the 7,000th. The crater ground consists of ash rather than soil, meaning that in the main it cannot support tree roots so there are no impala and no giraffes there as they are tree feeders. 

 

A wildebeest domestic

 

Simba and his mates

Whilst staying at a very nice hotel on the rim of the crater, Ali decided to pop the big question to Lizzie, to which she very sensibly said yes. Luckily, having been washing some lycra earlier in the day, her fingernails were clean for the occasion and the ring didn’t look too out of place! This will hopefully give us more conversational material for the long riding days ahead.

Halfway Down

It’s hard to believe that we have now done half the distance of this trip; pedalled through 5 countries and been on our bikes for two months.  Several bouts of diarrhoea and some nasty saddle sores in, we remember days at home when we couldn’t really believe that we were going to start this adventure, let alone contemplate being half way.

So many lessons have been learnt – Lizzie has learnt not to tighten all the screws on her bike (for example those that set the limits for the gear cable) and Ali has fine tuned his tyre changing with 15 punctures.  We know that duct tape can solve nearly everything and that if you don’t have any sensation in your left hand for a few weeks – eventually it will come back; that a tent can often be better than a hotel and that peeing outdoors is often better than in; that Ethiopians have great aim;  that the race to the front of the breakfast queue is the most important race in the day;  that skinny cyclists can eat A LOT; that Saint George beer tastes better than Dashen; that beetroot and diarrhoea don’t mix well; that chocolate can make anything seem better (and that M&M’s keep better in the heat than Snickers); that  it is possible to go from dirty to (averagely) clean in 3 wet wipes and that you don’t need to shower nearly as often as you think you should.

We are looking forward to the second half and know that there are many more lessons to come!

Halfway through the miles, we are also just over halfway towards our fundraising target.  We are so grateful to those who have been supporting us, and helped us raise nearly £6,000 for the three charities that we are fundraising for.  For those of you who are planning on sponsoring us, but have yet to find the time – get on it!  (thanks)

The Sun and the Moon

There is no doubt that our lives have become pretty basic, centred around food, sleep and cycling. This has been matched by the simplicity of our daily routine becoming based around the comings and goings of the sun. This necessity is compounded by the fact that we often camp in the middle of nowhere with no electricity.

A rider sets out at dawn

Whilst the hours of daylight change slightly as we head south, generally it has been getting light at around 6.30am and dark at around 7pm. This means that we eat breakfast at around 6.45am and set off riding straight after. Depending on the quality of the road and the length of the days riding, we tend to get to lunch between 9.30am and 11.30am, arriving at camp between 12.30pm and 3.30pm with dinner at 5.15pm. Whilst at first these times sounded shocking, we have adjusted to this new routine and generally find ourselves looking at our watches less and less, knowing the times of day by the urgency of our hunger! We don’t miss the call to prayer which woke us up throughout Egypt and Sudan, but it seems to be being steadily replaced by cockerels and other contributors to the dawn chorus.

We only cycle during the hours of daylight, so we are always keen to get moving early in the morning, enjoying the ride while the air is cooler and the sun is getting into its stride. On long days, the lowering of the sun in the sky acts as an incentive to pedal faster, lest it fall dark, we get picked up by the crew and our day’s ride is curtailed.

Sunset

Once the sun sets, people tend to slink off to their tents as without electricity there is little to do but talk, and the day’s exertion leaves our capacity to do this severely dented! Although if you’re feeling up to it there is often an amicable debate involving an American going on somewhere around camp. It is noticeable how on rest days, when we have power, we can quickly revert to the ingrained routines and timings of our normal lives (not least because the wi-fi works better late at night when everyone else has gone to bed).

One of the highlights of camping in the middle of nowhere is the night sky. The moon, especially when full, has been fantastically bright - we’ve had the pleasure of seeing it rise, big and yellow on the horizon on a couple of occasions. We often leave the flysheet off our tent and it can appear as if someone is standing above us with a head-torch looking in it is so bright (Tessa did actually ask the moon one night who it was and what it wanted!). And the number of stars we can see is breath-taking. Often by the time we get up in the morning, the moon has set and the first few minutes of our routine, taking down the tent etc., are done in the pitch black, before the light from the sun starts to filter through and another day begins. 

A bright night under the stars

Section 3 Video Up for Palme D'Or

We have had some good feedback on our videos so far - it seems people are enjoying them. If there is anything you'd be keen for us to include in subsequent videos, please let us know i.e. more of our grubby faces, less of our posteriors etc...

This video shows a lot of us not cycling, as due to the election we did quite a lot of not cycling. It's become a bit more of a holiday (although the second half of Ethiopia was still very tough!), but hopefully from Nairobi onwards we will be back on our bikes and bringing you more footage from the road.

Click here to watch it.

Kenya has a new President

We’ve had mixed emotions about being in Kenya at the time of the election.  Caution around security has unfortunately meant that we haven’t ridden our bikes as much as we would have liked (losing 6 riding days in total) and missed out on experiencing much of the country from the saddle.  However the timing has given us a different insight into Kenya, seeing the people at their most politically active and experiencing African democracy first hand.

The voter turn-out was huge, finally tallied at 85%.  In a country of 40million people, many living in very rural communities, that is some achievement.  By way of contrast, the last time we got anywhere close to that in the UK was 84% in 1950; turn-out for the 2010 general election was a resurgent 65%.  Focused on electing their local governor rather than the president, the level of engagement that we witnessed in the remote communities in the north was clearly emblazed across their chests with t-shirts.  We were also interested to see candidates faces plastered on material that women would wrap around as skirts, or headscarves in the more Muslim areas.

It seems that whilst there are a smattering of class issues and political ideologies at play, tribal politics is a key component of Kenyan politics.  To overcome this and form a majority in parliament, two leading coalitions had been formed, each with their own presidential candidate - the Jubilee Alliance supporting Uhuru Kenyatta and CORD backing the present Prime Minister Raila Odinga.  Looking at the results for parliamentarians elected by each province there are very clear strongholds – along party (and more clearly tribal) rather than coalition lines.

We arrived in Nairobi (by bus – boo) as the presidential results were being announced.  To avoid a runoff between the top two candidates, a clear winner required 50% of the vote (accumulating at least 25% in 50% of the provinces, a new election requirement in order to ensure an element of cross tribal support).  After much counting and recounting Kenyatta achieved this with a minute margin; coming in with 50.07%.  His main rival Odinga has made claims of foul play.  With the cloud of the violence that followed the 2007 election still looming large (not least as Kenyatta faces charges before the ICC for inciting this violence) Odinga was clear that he would challenge this result through the courts rather than with violence.

The claims of foul play are an interesting one.  A number of gripes were listed, in our opinion the number of these somewhat dilutes the argument.  However one major concern was that the machines purchased (at significant expense) from Canada to count the votes had failed, allegedly through tampering, requiring much of the counting to take place by hand.  This is a rather odd assertion, and it isn’t immediately clear how this results in being cheated out of victory.  It is interesting to wonder whether there is something in Kenyan (dare we say African?) politics about blame, the inability to admit defeat which leads to pointing the finger (however tenuously) elsewhere.  Or is it actually that the level of corruption and manipulation rife in African politics is beyond a degree we can conceive, and that there is a real chance that this doctoring did take place for the exact purpose of blurring the crispness of results?  We are in no position to judge which (or to what extent both) might be accurate, but the fact that we are unable to distinguish between these two behaviours makes me disappointed for the 85% who voted.

This uncertainty and accusations is not unique to the candidates.  Just to add another layer of complexity, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission have also faced some criticism in how the election was conducted; for the colours of the ballot papers (cream and white being too similar) and importantly dramatic changes in the number of spoiled ballots logged.  Initial estimates were that as much as 6% of ballots were spoiled, which in an election where the winner has a 0.07% margin is significant. This was later reduced to 1%, but was enough to cause consternation amongst both candidates. The ‘spoiling’ has largely been attributed to the complexity of voting for six different sets of candidates at the same time, from presidential down to local governor.  The outcome of these accusations being the undermining of trust in both people and process.

So what of that 85% of Kenyans who fought through the complications and voted?  Taking a taxi out for supper last night we saw hordes of Kenyatta supporters on the street.  Our driver explained that these people had come to collect some money from the winner for voting for him.  We explored this further.  We do not think that this was bribery – that came prior to the election when campaign teams visit the towns and villages with t-shirts, caps, possibly beer, possibly food.  Well, arguably not bribery so much as making voters aware of the candidate and some sense of their kindness and goodwill towards their community.  This gathering was in the expectation of some reward, and sharing in the celebration that their man had gained office.  The expectation was that they would be given maybe 100 shillings each, or some other small denomination, equating to less than a pound.   Whatever it was, whether they had in fact voted for Kenyatta or not, it was enough that hundreds of people felt it was worth gathering for and these are the masses in the population needed to turn 49% into 50.07%.