Tarangire National Park, Northern Tanzania.
It's the half way point of the tour and we are treated to a 3 day rest, it is actually the longest break we get on the entire 4 month tour. Wayne and I and another rider Catherine are at Swala Lodge here in Tarangire for the 3 days. Enjoying a touch of luxury, a varied diet, and not having to pack up our tents each morning.
The packing up of the tents is usually followed by attempting to cram everything back into our lockers on the trucks and a hurried breakfast before we tackle the days 100+ kms of riding.
It feels like we have been away and riding for so long, yet strangely it's hard to comprehend we have cycled half of Africa allready.
Kenya seemed to go by in a flash, we were there for 2 weeks and cycled across the tough lava rock desert of Northern Kenya. There had been a lot of rain which added to the toughness of cycling this area, and the support trucks also had a tough time on these roads. At one stage we waded through waist deep water with our bikes alongside one of our trucks bogged and being attempted to be towed out.
Nairobi saw a change of staff from our suppoirt trucks, the 'Indaba staff', Janet, Erol, Ferdie and Peterson who have looked after us for the past 2 months have gone and will be missed for sure. Nairobi also brought a touch of the modern world back to us, supermarkets, shopping malls, milk shakes and cheese burgers!!!
It's funny the things we begin to crave as we cycled across the wilds of Northern Kenya.
With 3 days rest here in Arusha the riders have spread off in all directions, some to climb Kilimanjaro, others on safari, some down to Zanzibar, while a few chose to kick back in Arusha and just rest!
Next is a couple of weeks in Tanzania as we head south to Malawi, we hear the roads are mostly dirt and pretty tough.