Hello Everyone!
We are now in Lilongwe, Malawi and enjoying the beautiful scenery. Our first day into Malawi was an explosion of humidity and heat as well as immense beauty! We learned a few days ago that Malawi is sometimes called the "Warm Heart of Africa", because of the kindness of the people. All along the roads kids are waving and smiling, shouting "Azungu" (which literally translated from Chichewa is "white person") trying to get our attention. We were a little bit disapointed when kids started shouting what we thought was 'money', turns out the Chichewa greeting for 'hello' is 'moni'. That lifted our spirits! To further exemplify how kindhearted people here are I'll tell a little story of what happened to us yesterday (although I'm sure my mom will kill me for this!) While riding yesterday into a strong headwind in the hot, sticky afternoon Andrew & I decided that we were sick of riding out bikes. We have two support trucks that come with us, but one was gone ahead to scout the campsite, and we knew the other was still at the lunch stop and wouldn't be along for another 2 hours or so, our end result was that we decided to hitchhike. Neither of us having done this before, we were a little short of knowledge about how to hail down a vehicle, and secondly we needed one that would accomoade not only us, but both of our bikes. Fortunately for us, around the next corner was one of many police checkpoints. Just our luck as well, a huge flatbed truck was stopped there. We promptly rolled up, knocked on the drivers window and asked if we could hop in the back. The driver spoke very little english, but quite kindly the police officer offered to be our translator. So here we are in the middle of a Malawian highway asking a cop to translate for us so that we can hitch a ride. Once the driver caught on to what we were doing he immediately smiled and gestured that we should throw our bikes up to one of the other people hitching a ride in the back & then hop up. We told him where we were headed & he promised to drop us off as close as he could to our destination. Half an hour later the truck pulled into a gas station and they helped us unload our bikes & asked us what the heck we were doing riding our bikes across Africa (it is a bit of a crazy endeavour!) so we told them about the TDA & our fundraising & where we were from, what we did back home and so on. It was at this point that the drivers assistant spoke up and in immaculate english started asking us about Canadian unversities. He expressed his desire to us that he one day wanted to go to Canada and go to school. We swapped e-mail adressess and promised to send him whatever info we could about schools back home once we got there. Then we said goodbye and were on our merry way to camp. - Now for my mothers sake (and Andrew's too) let me elaborate on how safe it is to hitch a ride in Africa and how it differs from Canada. Here, very few people can afford vehicles but still need to get places further than walking or biking distance. Most people who have vehicles drive trucks of one sort or another, so the natural thing to do is pull over an offer anyone (& often their multitudes of stuff) a lift, I mean you're going in the same direction anyways. Everyone here hithes rides, mothers with tiny babies slung on their backs, old men with canes, children on their way to and from school...the list goes on. Now, back in Canada, I would likely never hitchhike, because no one in their right mind does it at home, and no one in their right mind picks up a stranger wandering down the side of the road, but the culture here is different, and I really like it. Everyone is your brother or your sister, and it seems that although in extreme poverty (especially here in Malawi) someone would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. Anyhow, this long meanering ramble is to express the kind hearts of people here.
On to the trip; we spent as beautiful day relaxing on Chitimba Beach, on Laka Malawi and were supposed to spend the next 4 days riding along Lake Malawi into Lilongwe, however plans change. The rains have been excessive here this year, and as a result the road we were supposed to take had been partially washed away and a bridge was destroyed, so we stayed inland & got to Lilongwe a day early, so now we get two rest days here instead of one.
In other 'exciting' news, Madonna is here in Lilongwe. We had some greasy paparazzi guy staying at our campsite last night. I've never seen camera lenses so big! I guess she's here to "adopt" another baby, clearly at a great personal cost. I guess money can buy anything these days. So far we haven't seen her, (that being said, we're not really looking to either, we have much better things to do, like wash laundry and oil our bikes).
We're off to Zambia next, and will be back on Canadian soil in 6 weeks; which brings the point that if you are still interested in donating, you still have time! We are continuing to fundraise until we get back home. The easiest way to donate (since you are reading this you are already at a computor) is online at www.tourdafrique.com/donate - please put "In support of Judy Garnier & Andrew McLellan's Fundrasing" in the comments box. Every penny helps and we've been to a couple of bike donation ceremonies and its amazing to hear the stories from local hospitals and aid organizations of the bikes help and what it really means for them! We just passed day 80 of the tour, and despite torrential rains our little tent has managed to stay intact. We had an ant invation of it this morning, it seems overnight a colony of sugar ants (the teeny tiny ones) decided to build a next under our tent, and so this morning we found they had chewed holes through the floor and were invading. We wiped them out with about half a bottle of mosquito spray and patched the holes in true Canadian fashion with seam-sealewr and duct-tape. Mission accomplised!
Judy & Andrew
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Iringa, Tanzania - 6000km
Hello!
Well, what a week we just had! There were ups and downs (perhaps more downs for some people). For starters, some good stuff: We passed the halfway point in terms of distance of the trip a few days ago (On St. Patrick’s Day) and right now in Iringa, Tanzania, we have come approx. 6000km. We looked it up on Google maps and that is about the equivalent of going from Vancouver to Halifax! Crazy! These last seven days of cycling has probably been the most consistently enjoyable days of riding that the two of us have had this trip. Only 1 of the 7 days was pavement and the rest was a combination of dirt, gravel and sand. We didn’t really mind though because that is what our bikes are built for and we have fun doing it. The other thing that made it very enjoyable is that we often only rode half days meaning we took the truck in the morning and read and then cycled the afternoon. We have found that we have a lot more fun this way because (especially on the rough terrain) a 50-60km ride is just the right amount for us, as oppose to a 90-110km ride. There has been a bit of rain recently, but it is quite predictable (late afternoon storms) so it hasn’t caused too many problems. Now for a bit of the negative side…one of the trucks has been consistently breaking down and has been limping through Tanzania getting make-shift repairs along the way. This has led to a few delays on meals and people getting their equipment at camp. Luckily, all our stuff is on the truck that is working fine so we have not felt the brunt of this too badly. The worst part about the week was that one of our fellow riders (a really good guy) had a pretty bad fall on some of the rocky gravel and ended up severely breaking his ulna and also clipping a vein. This was two days ago, and he had to get rushed to Iringa where he had some surgery to clean and repair the vein. Unfortunately, his tour is done and he left to go back home to the United States yesterday for more surgery to repair the break. Up to this point, he had cycled EFI for the whole trip and was an incredibly strong racer. It was a bit of a shock, and we all feel very, very bad for him.
We thought we would take some time to do something a little different on this update and that is to give everyone a bit of a “day in the life of TDA” sort of thing. So, if you are interested, keep reading and you’ll find out about some of our routines and how we are living on the trip.
First of all, here is a typical daily schedule for a riding day:
0600hrs: Wake up
0600hrs-0610hrs: Snooze Time
0610hrs-0645hrs: Dress, pack, put away tent, etc.
0645hrs-0705hrs: Breakfast
0705hrs-0715hrs: Put packs in truck, brush teeth, wash dishes
0715hrs: Start riding
Approx. 1100hrs: Lunch
1145hrs-1500hrs (Approx): Afternoon riding
1500hrs-1600hrs: Set up camp, change, wash
1600hrs-1800hrs: Relax, read, eat soup, socialize, bike maintenance
1800hrs: Rider meeting (briefing on the next day of riding)
1830hrs-1900hrs: Dinner
1900hrs-2000hrs: Get ready for bed
2000hrs: Go to sleep
So, there is a typical day for us! The times vary a bit depending on whether we are riding a full day or half day and what the distances are and road conditions, etc.
Another thing we thought people might be interested in is water usage. Between the two trucks, they can carry 2000L of purified water that we use for drinking and cooking and (sometimes) washing. As a whole group, we go through about 900L a day, which means that they pretty much have to find a water source every two days, which in some of the places we have been, is very difficult. As a result, we are always on some sort of water ration. Either water is ONLY for drinking (and cooking) or we are allowed one 750ml bottle of water to clean with in addition to drinking. We tend to use a lot less than this though because of the great expandable cloths that our good friend gave us. Besides, in our mind, we are always on the highest water restriction because the more water we use, the less there is for the people that actually live here and there isn’t much to go around.
Okay, that is all we are going to update everyone on for the time being. We have 5 days of riding ahead of us before our next rest day in Chitemba Beach, Malawi and it is all paved!
Well, what a week we just had! There were ups and downs (perhaps more downs for some people). For starters, some good stuff: We passed the halfway point in terms of distance of the trip a few days ago (On St. Patrick’s Day) and right now in Iringa, Tanzania, we have come approx. 6000km. We looked it up on Google maps and that is about the equivalent of going from Vancouver to Halifax! Crazy! These last seven days of cycling has probably been the most consistently enjoyable days of riding that the two of us have had this trip. Only 1 of the 7 days was pavement and the rest was a combination of dirt, gravel and sand. We didn’t really mind though because that is what our bikes are built for and we have fun doing it. The other thing that made it very enjoyable is that we often only rode half days meaning we took the truck in the morning and read and then cycled the afternoon. We have found that we have a lot more fun this way because (especially on the rough terrain) a 50-60km ride is just the right amount for us, as oppose to a 90-110km ride. There has been a bit of rain recently, but it is quite predictable (late afternoon storms) so it hasn’t caused too many problems. Now for a bit of the negative side…one of the trucks has been consistently breaking down and has been limping through Tanzania getting make-shift repairs along the way. This has led to a few delays on meals and people getting their equipment at camp. Luckily, all our stuff is on the truck that is working fine so we have not felt the brunt of this too badly. The worst part about the week was that one of our fellow riders (a really good guy) had a pretty bad fall on some of the rocky gravel and ended up severely breaking his ulna and also clipping a vein. This was two days ago, and he had to get rushed to Iringa where he had some surgery to clean and repair the vein. Unfortunately, his tour is done and he left to go back home to the United States yesterday for more surgery to repair the break. Up to this point, he had cycled EFI for the whole trip and was an incredibly strong racer. It was a bit of a shock, and we all feel very, very bad for him.
We thought we would take some time to do something a little different on this update and that is to give everyone a bit of a “day in the life of TDA” sort of thing. So, if you are interested, keep reading and you’ll find out about some of our routines and how we are living on the trip.
First of all, here is a typical daily schedule for a riding day:
0600hrs: Wake up
0600hrs-0610hrs: Snooze Time
0610hrs-0645hrs: Dress, pack, put away tent, etc.
0645hrs-0705hrs: Breakfast
0705hrs-0715hrs: Put packs in truck, brush teeth, wash dishes
0715hrs: Start riding
Approx. 1100hrs: Lunch
1145hrs-1500hrs (Approx): Afternoon riding
1500hrs-1600hrs: Set up camp, change, wash
1600hrs-1800hrs: Relax, read, eat soup, socialize, bike maintenance
1800hrs: Rider meeting (briefing on the next day of riding)
1830hrs-1900hrs: Dinner
1900hrs-2000hrs: Get ready for bed
2000hrs: Go to sleep
So, there is a typical day for us! The times vary a bit depending on whether we are riding a full day or half day and what the distances are and road conditions, etc.
Another thing we thought people might be interested in is water usage. Between the two trucks, they can carry 2000L of purified water that we use for drinking and cooking and (sometimes) washing. As a whole group, we go through about 900L a day, which means that they pretty much have to find a water source every two days, which in some of the places we have been, is very difficult. As a result, we are always on some sort of water ration. Either water is ONLY for drinking (and cooking) or we are allowed one 750ml bottle of water to clean with in addition to drinking. We tend to use a lot less than this though because of the great expandable cloths that our good friend gave us. Besides, in our mind, we are always on the highest water restriction because the more water we use, the less there is for the people that actually live here and there isn’t much to go around.
Okay, that is all we are going to update everyone on for the time being. We have 5 days of riding ahead of us before our next rest day in Chitemba Beach, Malawi and it is all paved!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Pictures
We want to share some more pictures with everyone instead of just a few that we can get on the blog. So, we have created a facebook album which you can click on the link to below. You do not have to be a member of facebook to view it, so it is available to anyone. We are adding a few pictures every once and a while as we are able with the internet connections we encounter. Enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147871&id=120402081&l=36cfb
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147871&id=120402081&l=36cfb
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Arusha, Tanzania - Three Days Off the Bike
Greetings!
We are now in Arusha, Tanzania only 2 days riding from Nairobi. We have reached our offical halfway mark...in days anyways. We have 59 days to go out of 120, so yesterday was the actual halfway. We are currently enjoying three whole days off from riding, which is a special treat as normally we only get one day off every week or so. To update since our last post, we crossed into Tanzania and it is every bit as beautiful as we thought. We are now getting to the part of Africa that looks like the stereotypical "Africa" one might see in a National Geographic. Endless plains filled with grazing herds of zebra (yes we have seen those) as well as a few giraffe off in the distance. I also had a race with an ostrich, he of course won. (actually, there just happened to be an ostrich running in the same direction as me so I tried to keep up...it failed). When we first crossed into Tanzania we could also see the outline of Kilimanjaro in the distance, although we've been told that its a bad season to see it from afar as the air is too moist. What that means is that we've hit the rainy season, so we're keeping our raincoats on standby.
Arusha, the town we are staying in is a huge tourist capital. This is the place where everyone comes to start safaris, so there are what I call tourist shops everywhere, and if can manage to avoid them, hundereds of people on the streets selling anything you could ever want from sunglasses, to wood carvings, handmade sandals, gloabl newspapers and cellphone accessories. They are pretty respectful if you politely say no thank-you though. Every country is a little different. That being said there are a lot of similarities between Kenya and Tanzania, one of the obvious is that the language is the same - Swahili, which very conveniently Andrew took as his second language at university so he has a basic understanding and I am slowly learning a few words. English however is incredibly prominent here, but we will see how it is in some smaller villages as continue south on our journey. As we get further south we have noticed that things have become a lot more westernized. In Nairobi we found a fantastic pizza place (oh how good it was to eat some 'normal' food) and plenty of shopping centres. As well its becoming easier to find access to internet, banks and for the first time since we left, we were actually able to use a credit card to buy groceries! Its the little things in life!
Thats all for now, hopefully internet will continue to be a comodity for the second half of the trip!
Judy & Andrew
We are now in Arusha, Tanzania only 2 days riding from Nairobi. We have reached our offical halfway mark...in days anyways. We have 59 days to go out of 120, so yesterday was the actual halfway. We are currently enjoying three whole days off from riding, which is a special treat as normally we only get one day off every week or so. To update since our last post, we crossed into Tanzania and it is every bit as beautiful as we thought. We are now getting to the part of Africa that looks like the stereotypical "Africa" one might see in a National Geographic. Endless plains filled with grazing herds of zebra (yes we have seen those) as well as a few giraffe off in the distance. I also had a race with an ostrich, he of course won. (actually, there just happened to be an ostrich running in the same direction as me so I tried to keep up...it failed). When we first crossed into Tanzania we could also see the outline of Kilimanjaro in the distance, although we've been told that its a bad season to see it from afar as the air is too moist. What that means is that we've hit the rainy season, so we're keeping our raincoats on standby.
Arusha, the town we are staying in is a huge tourist capital. This is the place where everyone comes to start safaris, so there are what I call tourist shops everywhere, and if can manage to avoid them, hundereds of people on the streets selling anything you could ever want from sunglasses, to wood carvings, handmade sandals, gloabl newspapers and cellphone accessories. They are pretty respectful if you politely say no thank-you though. Every country is a little different. That being said there are a lot of similarities between Kenya and Tanzania, one of the obvious is that the language is the same - Swahili, which very conveniently Andrew took as his second language at university so he has a basic understanding and I am slowly learning a few words. English however is incredibly prominent here, but we will see how it is in some smaller villages as continue south on our journey. As we get further south we have noticed that things have become a lot more westernized. In Nairobi we found a fantastic pizza place (oh how good it was to eat some 'normal' food) and plenty of shopping centres. As well its becoming easier to find access to internet, banks and for the first time since we left, we were actually able to use a credit card to buy groceries! Its the little things in life!
Thats all for now, hopefully internet will continue to be a comodity for the second half of the trip!
Judy & Andrew
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Nairobi - 5000km and counting...
Hello Everyone!
We realize that it has been over a month since our last blog update, but we've been having some blogger troubles with the computors/internet in Ethiopia. Mostly we were unable to actually upload to the site, so many of you probably received our e-mail updates...But now that we are in Kenya, where internet it abundant and works at a reasonable speed the blog is back!
We will also be trying to upload some of our blogs we wrote while in Ethiopia, so watch for those coming soon.
Where to start...So much has happened! First off we crossed into another country (Kenya) and are currently in Nairobi, the capital for a rest day. This city is incredibly modern, and for that matter so is this whole country. The roads are actual roads with sidewalks and curbs, there are fixed prices in stores (no more "tourist prices" for us) and our campsite two days ago had a swimming pool at it. So nice for those 35+ days! There is such a huge contrast between Ethiopia and Kenya, I think there are two big things that make this so; the first being that Kenyans value education more than anything, and boats an 85% literacy rate. (Pretty impresive if you ask me) The second being that Kenyans have so much pride in their country. There is little garbage on the grounds and people are incredibly friendly, more than willing to help if they can. Just this morning Andrew & I were running around trying to find a place that we could scan some documents that we needed to e-mail back home. Where we are staying there are only a few internet cafes and we had a hard time. We eventually walked into a store that sold computors and asked the woman there if she knew of a place where we could accomplish what we needed done. She was like "well lets just do it right now for you guys, you can use my work computor". Then she called another store that did scanning and charged us half of what they were and didn't charge us for the internet time. Incredibly generous and kind. But people in Kenya are like that, so far we have found that like in small towns in Canada people go out of their way to be helpful. A huge contrast to Ethiopia, as well as all the other African countries we have been to.
That being said Kenya hasn't been without hardship and frustration. The first few days in Kenya were on the worst roads we have ever seen. Picture a combination of deep sand and six-inch deep corrugations, intermixed with loose gravel and boulders. The only reason we knew we were on a road was that it was built up 4 feet higher than the surrounding area. As well, we spent a night in "lava rock camp" which I'm pretty sure everyone renamed "Mud Bath Camp" as we got our first big hit of rain there, and man did it pour! Incredible amount of water descended from the heavens and literally slaughtered our campsite. We were in an area that hadn't seen rain in about a year, and it turned into a complete watering hole, filled with inches of H2O. And the winds that whipped and brought the storm in were ferocious! Nearly everyones tents were flat on the ground and we thought for sure that everything inside was going to be soaked. I have to say, we love our tent! After 2 hours of rain beating down and winds blowing there were 2 drops of water inside. We were delighted.
We had some other hartimes when bad news from home made us realise how very fortunate we are. We learned on Feb 15th that a dear friend of ours, Teri Murray had passed away in a tragic car accident. Driving on winter roads from Canmore to Calgary. I think what made it so difficult for us was that we were the ones travelling the globe supposedly doing high-risk things and someone we loved was at home doing a normal thing that we do often. It hit so close to home. The other part of course was being unable to be at home with her friends and family to say our last goodbyes.
On a happier note, although both Andrew and I suffered some scores of illness, we are both now very healthy and back on our bikes. Nothing too serious just local food wreaking havoc on our bodies, there was something that went around our group througout Ethiopia and it seemed that as soon as you got healthy it had mutated in other people and came right back for you. We've belittled and berated whatever it was into submission though and are back in the full swing or riding. In a few days we will be crossing into Tanzania which will mark our official "half-way" through the trip. We have three whole days off from riding in Arusha there, and are looking forward to vegging out a little bit and enjoying our time away from everything!
Thats all for now, we will try posting our previous blogs soon!
Judy & Andrew
We realize that it has been over a month since our last blog update, but we've been having some blogger troubles with the computors/internet in Ethiopia. Mostly we were unable to actually upload to the site, so many of you probably received our e-mail updates...But now that we are in Kenya, where internet it abundant and works at a reasonable speed the blog is back!
We will also be trying to upload some of our blogs we wrote while in Ethiopia, so watch for those coming soon.
Where to start...So much has happened! First off we crossed into another country (Kenya) and are currently in Nairobi, the capital for a rest day. This city is incredibly modern, and for that matter so is this whole country. The roads are actual roads with sidewalks and curbs, there are fixed prices in stores (no more "tourist prices" for us) and our campsite two days ago had a swimming pool at it. So nice for those 35+ days! There is such a huge contrast between Ethiopia and Kenya, I think there are two big things that make this so; the first being that Kenyans value education more than anything, and boats an 85% literacy rate. (Pretty impresive if you ask me) The second being that Kenyans have so much pride in their country. There is little garbage on the grounds and people are incredibly friendly, more than willing to help if they can. Just this morning Andrew & I were running around trying to find a place that we could scan some documents that we needed to e-mail back home. Where we are staying there are only a few internet cafes and we had a hard time. We eventually walked into a store that sold computors and asked the woman there if she knew of a place where we could accomplish what we needed done. She was like "well lets just do it right now for you guys, you can use my work computor". Then she called another store that did scanning and charged us half of what they were and didn't charge us for the internet time. Incredibly generous and kind. But people in Kenya are like that, so far we have found that like in small towns in Canada people go out of their way to be helpful. A huge contrast to Ethiopia, as well as all the other African countries we have been to.
That being said Kenya hasn't been without hardship and frustration. The first few days in Kenya were on the worst roads we have ever seen. Picture a combination of deep sand and six-inch deep corrugations, intermixed with loose gravel and boulders. The only reason we knew we were on a road was that it was built up 4 feet higher than the surrounding area. As well, we spent a night in "lava rock camp" which I'm pretty sure everyone renamed "Mud Bath Camp" as we got our first big hit of rain there, and man did it pour! Incredible amount of water descended from the heavens and literally slaughtered our campsite. We were in an area that hadn't seen rain in about a year, and it turned into a complete watering hole, filled with inches of H2O. And the winds that whipped and brought the storm in were ferocious! Nearly everyones tents were flat on the ground and we thought for sure that everything inside was going to be soaked. I have to say, we love our tent! After 2 hours of rain beating down and winds blowing there were 2 drops of water inside. We were delighted.
We had some other hartimes when bad news from home made us realise how very fortunate we are. We learned on Feb 15th that a dear friend of ours, Teri Murray had passed away in a tragic car accident. Driving on winter roads from Canmore to Calgary. I think what made it so difficult for us was that we were the ones travelling the globe supposedly doing high-risk things and someone we loved was at home doing a normal thing that we do often. It hit so close to home. The other part of course was being unable to be at home with her friends and family to say our last goodbyes.
On a happier note, although both Andrew and I suffered some scores of illness, we are both now very healthy and back on our bikes. Nothing too serious just local food wreaking havoc on our bodies, there was something that went around our group througout Ethiopia and it seemed that as soon as you got healthy it had mutated in other people and came right back for you. We've belittled and berated whatever it was into submission though and are back in the full swing or riding. In a few days we will be crossing into Tanzania which will mark our official "half-way" through the trip. We have three whole days off from riding in Arusha there, and are looking forward to vegging out a little bit and enjoying our time away from everything!
Thats all for now, we will try posting our previous blogs soon!
Judy & Andrew
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