Tour d' Afrique - Cycling Cairo to Cape Town

This week I feel like a bit of a fraud as I have spent exactly zero hours on my bike since my last blog post.  Mostly I have worked very hard on putting on the kilograms I have lost so far, and have succeeded magnificently.  All crew are granted 7-days leave somewhere during the trip and I choose the Malawi lake to take my break.  I must say I was starting to feel a bit burnt out after 10 weeks of being constantly on call for the group and working through some tough stuff.  I left Mbeya in Tanzania and had my first ‘public transport’ ride, and so began a series of bus rides lasting about 10 hours.  The border crossing was interesting – the bus stops before the border, and there you are unceremoniously dumped.  I was swamped by about 10 men trying to doing money change, and trying to get me to the border post, which turned out to be about a kilometre away. They were really aggressive and unpleasant, and I eventually just screamed at the top of my voice to leave me alone and they were all so shocked they moved away fast.  Then I found a pleasant old man with a taxi who gave me a reasonable rate to get to the next town where I could get the next bus.

I eventually got to Mzuzu after hours of very interesting bussing, where I had to move onto a minibus.  I was shuffled into an already overfull one where I sat in the back seat with my bag on top of me, so I could not see a thing.  As they started squeezing more people into it and were tying the door closed with a piece of wire I had the distinct feeling that I should not be taking this bus, and the feeling was only enhanced when eventually the bus had to be push started to get moving.  It was a pretty hair raising ride with lots of turns and downhills, and at one point we swerved off the road on the wrong side onto a gravel heap.  Not being able to see made me oblivious to what was going on, but the next day I came across a man who said to me: ‘Hello fellow survivor’.  I was a bit lost and asked him what he meant, and he told me that he was sitting in the front seat and witnessed us losing our breaks going downhill, and spoke the driver through the gear changes and the gravel heap!

Spending 6 days in Nkatha Bay was great.  We pretty much did very little.  Much reading and lounging on the deck of our chalet.  Lots of swimming and snorkelling and walking through the little town.  It is a small trading town with friendly people and beautiful scenery. 

The lodges are rustic, the beer (a Green) or stout not always ice cold but the vibe is great.  Had our fair share of Malawi Gin and some of the best fish and rice dishes one can wish for.  Also had a hair cut at a local stylist who, according to the locals can style Muzungu hair.  R15 later, I was very happy and relieved to be able to cope with the heat and not have a mop of hair. 

We decided to take a bus back to Lilongwe which turned out to be an 8 hour ride all along the lake and then cutting inland towards Lilongwe.  Have a new understanding of how many South Africans travel into the platteland.  Bus was probably overloaded by 15 people and space, or rather the lack of it, was quite a story.  Probably had equal numbers of seated and standing passengers.  We fortunately had a seat as we boarded right at the start of the journey.  The bus conductor requested that a passenger do a prayer for a safe journey before we departed.

Although it was a great break, it was great to meet up with the riders again, who seemed to have a fairly uneventful week.  So we left Lilongwe on Wednesday and headed for the Zambian border.  Has spent the last 2 days on my bike and enjoyed getting some good exercise again.  There are a good few kilos to work off again too.