[ ]
From:
Date: 23 Apr 2006
Time: 18:42:40 +0200
Remote Name: 193.220.192.33
I sat out the first riding day out of Iringa to give my foot another day or rest, and also to give Todd chance to finish re-fitting my shocks (they had come back without an internal star nut and he had to cobble something together to refit them). The next two riding days were a mixture of rolling hills and reasonably big climbs ending up at a beautiful camping spot (camping on green grass is such a luxury these days) in the grounds of the Stockholm Hotel just short of the Malawi road junction about 15k short of Mbeya. The next day was another climbing day followed by a nice altitude loss on the way to the Tanzania Malawi border, with occasional glimpses of Lake Malawi to the left of us in the distance. After a straightforward border crossing into Malawi there followed a 15k ride to bush camp which brought back memories of our riding in Ethiopia: small children alongside the road shouting “give me my money”. Like stepping back in time to the first month of the tour. We were once again novelty items, to be stared at and shouted at after the ease of riding through Kenya and Tanzania in relative anonymity. We were now at a much lower altitude, swampy marshland and a high malaria risk with much more humidity than we had been used to, but the roads were good. The first full days riding in Malawi took us to Chitimba Beach where we would have a rest day. A very strong headwind made this a long day even though the terrain was reasonably flat. This was once of the rest days where we were actually quite remote – not close to any towns, nothing to do but relax. Big Mike had arranged that a handful of volunteers would cook breakfast on the rest day (to avoid the usual one hour or more wait as the small local kitchen staffed by a single cook struggled to cope with the demands of 70 hungry people wanting omelettes and toast all at the same time. I had been volunteered and was chief egg-frier and egg-scrambler for the morning, with partners in crime Madeline (French toast) and Irmie (pancakes). I’ve never fried 150 eggs before. Considering it was the first time we had done anything like that, the breakfast was a success. It was just as well everyone had a good feed in the morning because the camp ground kitchen was only serving nachos for the duration of the day and the whole camp starved until supper.