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Tanzania

We are now in Kigoma, Tanzania. Ever since we left Jinja in Uganda 11
days ago we have put in many hours in the saddle as we cycled to Fort
Portal below the Ruwenzoris, down across the equator and through Queen
Elizabeth National Park to the border with Rwanda near Kabale, wound
our way through the valleys to the Rwandan capital Kigale, drank loads
of Primus beer, climbed up the hills to Butare before descending
slightly into Burundi and then starting an upward slog (with an
exhilarating descent at the end) to Bujambura on the shore of Lake
Tanganyika. From Bujambura we followed the shoreline south eastwards.
The road was mostly flat and the setting was amazing. The green
mountains hidden in mist on our left with the waters of Lake
Tanganyika on our right. The road wound through villages and towns
full of smiling faces while at other times we were alone in this
tropical paradise. Our overnight spot was Nyanza Lac where we found a
top notch hotel for $15 and it even had hot water. It was actually
too hot!

From Nyanza Lac we headed inland to tackled a massive climb in searing
heat to 1600m and the village of Mabana where we were stamped out of
Burundi (a whole country is less than three days!). From there we had
22km of undulating (okay more like a series of climbs) dirt road to
the Tanzanian border. Along the way we sampled some sosaties from a
local grill. They were not that great. Mine had a chunk of meat, two
chunks of fat, some liver and then a kidney on it. At the border the
dirt track gave way to nice and shiny tar. From here it was 60km to
Kigoma. Relatively easy on a good day but after our climb out of
Burundi and nothing but bread and some animal parts to eat, it was
painful. A few big climbs did not help either. But the mountain
scenery on the border, free of human habitation, was phenomenal and
got us through it. This is a place I want to come back to explore but
I will drive there and then walk! We got to Kigoma somewhat exhausted
and dehydrated. Just before we got to the town, a mini bus screeched
up behind us and Heinz put his head out the window and threw us a
bottle of water. He had caught a lift for the last section. I would
have done the same if I was on a Brompton and 72 years old!

Today we met up with Andy Blake who runs the Helper charity in Kigoma.
I met Andy via email a year or so ago when we were raising money by
doing the Cape Epic mountain bike race. It was great to actually meet
him in person! Great guy! Helper (helpertanzania.com) runs a school
for orphans and disadvantaged children in the Kigoma area. The
curriculum focuses more on problem solving and teaching the children
to think for themselves rather than the official Tanzanian curriculum
of learning by wrote (hope no Goverment officials read this, our visa
may be revoked). The school is ably led by Beryl (a teacher with many
years of experience from England) with support from two young local
teachers, Elisa and James. We spent some time with the children and it
was really inspiring to see the work Andy and his team were doing.
This is not your typical charity, NGO or Aid organization with its
hand outs, its a charity with a different, more effective approach to
things, teach someone to fish rather than give him a fish if you will.
Helper hopes to make a long lasting difference and help eradicate the
problems that Tanzania (and Africa) suffers from. Its small but
something like this should, and with Andy at the helm, will grow and
will make that difference. In addition to the school, Helper also
provides medical, legal and family support in the area.

As mentioned in a previous blog, we are taking the MV Liemba ferry
south on Lake Tanganyika to a place called Kasanga. This is to avoid
a nasty road which is currently a mud pit but also to experience the
ferry. The MV Liemba is German built and 100 years old. Lets hope it
gets us there! Thanks to Andy we have our tickets already. First
class cabins (think first class on an Indian train...)! Heinz also
managed to get a ticket. We depart tomorrow at 4pm and hope to arrive
at 4pm on Friday. We are getting closer and closer to home. Isobella
Im nearly there'! Can't wait to see you!

Burundi

We are now in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi. We had a tough cycle from the border this morning. The climbs were not fun and did not stop until the last 35 km where we were rewarded for our excessive sweating with a massive descent from 2200m to 850m.

What's Burundi like? Well there are loads of hills and its very green. Spectacular scenery really but hard to appreciate when you are grinding away in your easiest gear! Most of the green in agriculture but there is some forest although the lovely blue gum is in abundance in some areas...

The kids are slightly more annoying than in Rwanda but I suppose that's because not many wazungus pass this way especially on a bicycle that does not have a bag of bananas or one or two passengers on the back.

Whenever we stop we end up with the five thousand grouped around us watching us drink a coke. Fascinating stuff I'm sure! Ha! Language has also been amusing. We were expecting French but have been greeted in English, French, Swahili and mixture of all of the above in one sentence. Good night jambo, ca va? We have stuck to French as you tend to get a response. On many occasions we have been joined by the local cyclists. At times we have had five guys cycling next to us on their heavy Chinese steeds with sweat pouring down their faces as they only have one gear. But they have been cheerful and despite the language barrier there has been some confused banter similar to that on a Saturday morning Surrey hills ride with the full gas cycling club.

We have felt safe as well. When you read the foreign office website you feel you shouldn't be but we have not had any issues yet. Although we were passed by some well armed soldiers (RPGs, large caliber machine guns, the works) who gave us a wave and a smile.

What have we been eating? Well we had been eating local. Maize, potatoes, plantain, spinach, rice and a chunk of bone and meat. We have given up trying to order western food when the craving gets intense. Mark had a cheese burger with only burnt cheese on it, no burger pattie. And I have just been served a pizza with baked beans on it with some peppers. Stick with the local stuff! And that includes the beer. Primus is now our favourite probably because it's a massive bottle!

Tomorrow we are heading along Lake Tanganyika to the border with Tanzania. Despite us having a letter from the ambassador in kampala the lads at the border only gave us a three day visa. So our ride through Burundi will be quick. We are also on a deadline to catch a ferry from a place called Kigoma. The road we planned on taking is in a sorry state and now with the wet season turning things to mud it not a good option if we intend to get though with body and bicycle in one piece. So ferry it is on the 25th. We get off at Kasanga and then have 250 km of corrugated piste then some tar and then Malawi.

Ps uploading photos has proved to be next to be impossible. Connections speeds are so slow and computers so dodgy that we have decided to stick to text for now. Apologies!

James

rwanda

Just a quick note to say we are in Kigale, Rwanda. Very different to
your typical African city. We also had coffee with the god of world
cycle touring Heinz Stucke He has been cycling around the world for
50 years now, and having just been to South Sudan, has been to every
country in the world. We feel pathetic in his presence! And for his
latest trip he is riding a Brompton. We are off to find the Genocide
Museum and hopefully later we will catch up with Heinz for a large
Primus beer!

2 fatties back on the bike - Fort Portal 15 Jan 2012

Ok, not quite! We did eat "relatively" well while we were enjoying our
time off in Jinja and Kampala, but I think we are both still a good
few kilos off our normal weight. Despite the availability of pizzas
and cake here and there (if you looked hard), we couldn't entirely
avoid having the more traditional dishes of matoke (mashed up
plantains - a bit like mashed potatoes), rice and beans.

All in all, however, our time off was great. We did some really cool
rafting in Jinja (I don't think any of us were expecting rapids like
that) and a great 3 day trip to Murchison falls national park, which
involved a game drive, a boat cruise to the base of the falls and a
walk up to the top of the falls. The Murchison falls are something
else! The entire Victoria Nile (which must be over 100m wide at some
points before the falls) gets rammed through a 7m wide gap in the
rocks - the power is truly awesome.

I won't go into too much detail about our time up to and including our
stay at Jinja/Kampala as James has a blog all typed out and ready to
go on his flash disk - but thanks to the intermittent and
unpredictable nature of Internet here (there was a power cut at the
time I think) it never got out. We will try and get that up a bit
later today if all goes well. On that topic however - we have tried
uploading photos in Kampala and failed (could just about get them off
the camera), and won't have time tonight before the internet cafe
closes, so we are still not sure when we'll get chance again! We will
do it ASAP though, we promise!

What I can say though, is that the 3 days from Jinja to where we are
now (Fort Portal) were not quite as easy as we were hoping. Well, we
didn't quite expect it to be easy, but we thought that after our chill
out session we would be feeling a bit stronger once we got back on the
bikes. This wasn't the case - I think it may be to do with the never
ending hills in this part of Uganda, which seem to get bigger and
bigger as you approach the Rwenzori mountains, as well as our tight
schedule we have set to try and make up some time (130+km days).

We have passed through some small patches of spectacular, dense
tropical rainforest though which has been great. In fact today we
cycled through part of the Kabile national park, which (according to
Lonely Planet) has the highest concentration of primates in Africa,
including Chimpanzees. Unfortunately we didn't see any cheeky chimps
swinging from the vines, but we did see at least two different species
of monkey, one of which I think was the black and white tailed Colobus
monkey. Oh and we also saw a bird which looked very much like a black
parrot!

We also bumped into a South African guy on his motorbike who works at
a Cobalt Mine about 70km South of Fort Portal - who said we should
pull in for a braai (bbq) and a swim and could even stay in the mine's
guest house for the night. It doesn't quite fit with our schedule (we
should do more then 70km tomorrow) but we may take him up on the braai
and swim!

Right, time to eat - we might be lucky and find somewhere serving
pumpkin, sweet potato, matoke and g-nut (peanut) sauce (yes, it tastes
just like peanut butter!).

Keep checking for the next blog!
Mark

Enjoying things in Uganda

Still no proper blog... Apologies but the last few days have been busy and I thought I had malaria. I hope this suffices! We hit kampala two days ago to organise a visa for Burundi. Not that easy. It took three visits on different days to get a letter addressed to the border to issue us with a visa and the visa fee has more than doubled since we dis our research. Apparently the embassy has ran out of visa stickers hence the letter!Luckily we were able to get out of having to have a letter of invitation from someone on Burundi. Not sure how we would have got that! I think it is because the ambassador took a fancy for Mark! Another tip. On three occasions now the lonely planet's locations for embassies has been wrong! Don't trust it implicitly. Rwanda is easy. We don't need a visa. After a visit to an irish pub in kampala called Bubble O'Learys (which has fake beer taps and sells locally brewed bottled Guinness) we headed to Entebbe to pick up Mark's girlfriend Jo who is out for a week or so. First action packed uganda activity is white water rafting tomorrow. Can't wait. Unfortunately I was man down yesterday. Fever headaches the works. Definite signs of malaria. So I hit the medical centre for tests. Good thing is I don't have Malaria. What I do have is a dodgy bacterial infection! Not cool! Probably from eating those crusty street kebabs! I'm now on strong antibiotics. Should be right as rain soon! Well I hope so, i was treated by a South African doctor after all. Check out Nile river explorers for the rafting. Thereafter we are going to go to Murchison falls.... Such tourists! One day we may get back on the bike! Adios