Our last night in Tanzania, we cross the border into Malawi tomorow. Tanzania has been fantastic, and the south is so beautiful, rolling hills and lush vegetation. well it does rain a few times every day. So a little damp and a little sore from the many hills it will still be sad to say goodbye.

My bike melt down!

I went to give my bike a quick service on the rest day in Iringa, took the wheels off started to clean it, pretty standard for a rest day. However I noticed something was a little strange with rear hub, it was not free-wheeling which basically means the hub had seized up with all the rain.

I went to our bike mechanic Chris, and after pulling it apart he said that it was wrecked and I should head into Iringa and see if I could find a replacement!

Not so easy in Africa, let alone rural Africa to find anything but single speed bikes or spares!. I eventually found a shop with a couple of old mountain bikes for sale and persuaded the owner to sell me a wheel.

It wasn't perfect and it would only give me half my gears, but at least I would be able to get the bike running. 

I dashed back to camp to see if it would work. 4 hours of working on it and the new wheel was on and the bike running.

I went back into town to pay for the second hand wheel, I brought along my 'seized' wheel and offered it to the shop owner. He looked at me confused and said 'don't you want to fix it?'

I must admit my spirits were rising at this comment.

Suddenly this guy is taking me around the corner and behind a few shops where there are a couple of guys working on bikes. 20 minutes later they had pulled my hub apart and put it back together and all was working!

I returned to camp and put another 4 hours into putting my bike back together, the old wheel back on, running perfectly!

It is amazing what these mechanics work with here in rural Africa and just about every problem gets resolved.

3 days of riding since then and all is holding up quite well!!

amazing!!!!!!