It has been three very hard days on the bike. We have basically just done three Argus’s (100km) in three days and two of them have been on seriously bad dirt roads. And who said that Tanzania was flat?! Hills on rocky roads are not fun: granny gear up the hills and loose arms, standing, weight backwards and flying on the down hills… your knees become top quality shock absorbers. I had a moment of being completely airborne this afternoon. I felt like I was in a BMX documentary. Sheer brilliance. Completely unintentional. I hit a rocky ledge at pace while flying down a hill… I was at the back. The boys were not in sight. And no vehicles had passed me within the last four hours… I couldn’t help thinking that if I came pipe, it would be me and my bike. Alone. Not fun. But pretty classic!
The day is done now and we are safe and sound. We are staying in a fairly dodgy guest house in a town that makes the map because it has some rock paintings… but for no other reason at all. Kolo. The shops stock tea, sugar, and cellular phone top-up. Priorities seem to be a little different here. There is a pool table. And the men and children lounge in the streets, seemingly doing nothing, seemingly living on a diet of chapatti and chapatti… (pancake like flour and oil). But they have cellphone credit. There doesn’t seem to be too much work and the comments of Africans being lazy flits through the conversation… but I don’t know if I would work if I had nowhere to go and nothing more to live for. These people seem to be content. But we honestly couldnt get any food for lunch. What do these people eat?!
Back to the guesthouse… or more importantly the bug life here. The toilet is your average pit loo, something that we have become accustomed to. What I am not familiar with is the velvet walls created by a zillion mosquitoes. It’s dangerous! No really, as you open the door they swarm out at you, in a sinister attempt to beat all the odds and give you malaria.
We paid R10 for the accommodation and R16 for the food… chicken and rice. Which is yet to grace us with its presence… although I did hear a chicken squawking in a horrific way not too long ago… Dinner is on its way and then bed and then… we get on the bikes again. We have decided to do only 27km tomorrow morning and then rest up a little, so I can manage. Just gotta get thru this, just gotta get thru this… Good night. Bring on that DeepHeat!
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