goodbye kenya, hello tanzania
3.13
I am doing this update a bit after the fact, as I have slacked off on the blog some. I think that where I left off was riding into Nairobi. We stayed in a camp on the edge of town, but in a part known as Karen, which was full of white people, and all of the services that westerners have come to expect. In other words, it was Nirvana for us. We liked having all of the conveniences after having none of them for a few months, except in limited dosages.
Laura, our young Belgian rider, had a bad luck when she stepped into a street and looked the wrong way, and did not see a bus coming. She got hit, suffered her second concussion on this trip, damaged her ribs, and is likely on her way home tonite or tomorrow to Belgium to recover, but should return in a week or two. We are all very bummed for her, but glad that she did not get hurt any worse. I had breakfast with her yesterday, and fortunately her spirits are pretty good, all in all. Jos, a South African who also had a concussion on this trip – he calls it the period where he “los his marbles,” encouraged her to go home as well as he thought she would recover better in familiar settings.
Ted, a Canadian living in Dubai who is a non-practicing lawyer and makes his living as a legal recruiter, left his wallet in a taxi in Nairobi. A pregnant woman living in one of the worst slums in Nairobi found it, discovered his cell phone no, called him, and returned the wallet, including all of his cash that was in it. An amazing story, and Ted was no doubt very generous with her for returning it.
3,14
We left Nairobi and quickly found ourselves riding thru beautiful farm country. We did 160 km that day, and it was a fairly tough day cuz parts of the road were gravel, or very rough pavement. The Chinese (who else?) are building a new highway to the border, and there was road construction to deal with. We found ourselves riding thru the construction projects as if we were inspecting their work – at home they would have ran us off, here they were very welcoming.
(One of the riders told me that the Chinese have signed 100-yr leases with Sudan for farm property to raise crops, and the size of the leased land may exceed France. Apparently, the Chinese are also trying, or leasing land in Ethiopia and Kenya as well. And to date, nary a word by the Chinse on any African human rights issues.)
That day we came across a stretch that had some fresh tar that had been put on the road. Our little group rode slowly along the edge of it, and did not get much on our bikes or on ourselves. But, amazingly enough, apparently many of our riders just rode right thru it – they had tar all over their bikes and themselves. And three of our riders went down on the tar, 2 were fine, another a bit shaken up but ok. When I saw one of the riders that went down and had tar all over him, he told me that I should have seen him before he got cleaned up. We used diesel fuel to clean ourselves and our bikes. And is well!
3.15
Today we crossed the border into Tanzania. Border crossings are always a trip, chaos, black market money changers, bureaucrats, etc, but we managed to get thru. The ride was pretty uneventful, about 17 km into Arusha on a mixed road of good pavement, rough pavement, ok gravel and rough gravel – with more road construction going on, presumably with Chinese help. The visa cost $100 US, and the bill had to be issued after something like 2004 – it is weird that African countries can have the dirtiest, scroungiest currency that you have ever seen, but they like their dollars crisp and new.
Arusha is a gateway city to safaris, and we are taking 3 rest days there. Many riders are going on safari, and a few of us have taken off to Zanzibar. As I was driving to the airport, the taxi driver pointed out a clock tower that showed the halfway mark between Cairo and Capetown, I did not get a pix of it, dang it.
For another blog with some good pix, check out www.wayneandpatrick.org.