Dar Bikers in Western Tanzania - The Lound of Rakes Tlip (2013)

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Osadabwa

Race Dog
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
539
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271
Location
Nairobi, Kenya
Bike
Honda XR650R
Hey Dogs,

I've received a lot of positive feedback from you fellas since I started posting about my riding in Kenya on the Big Red Pig, so I thought I'd dig back into a few rides I did while in Tanzania a few years back while I was astride my once beloved XR400 (doesn't hold a candle to her more full-featured sister the XR650R). I picked this one because it was an epic tale of woe and wayardness and yielded no end of priceless anecdotes. Lets see if you like it.  :snorting:

We kick off with a teaser:

So we set out for some of Africa's iconic lakes.  We would follow tracks we knew were good, and some from Google Earth we hoped existed.  There were seven of us, and our plan was to ride around Lake Rukwa to Lake Tanganyika and finish up at Lake Nyasa/Malawi if all would go according to plan.

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Above: The route starting in Mbeya and rocking counter-clockwise around L. Rukwa to L. Tanganyika, down to L. Niassa back up to Mbeya

But with us, things rarely go according to plan.  There was insult and injury, sound and fury, and blood, sweat and beers.  Nevertheless, we did see our lakes, and had a hell of an adventure doing it. Be prepared for tse tse fly bites, river mishaps, mishkaki and chips mayayi, Konyagi and Splite and warm Kilimanjaro, a Cobra and other wildlife, a wicked tall suspension bridge, long days of deep bush, broken bikes and broken bones (literally this time), beautiful lakeside sunsets and ugly, dusty faced Dar Bikers.

Karibuni.

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Above: Some food, some riding and a bit of river SCUBA diving

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Above: An erect reptile, deep bush and a busy KTM mechanic

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Above: Ominous words and some lake shore scenery

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Above: A bit of everything you want in an African ride

That's all for now.
 
Countdown was on. Five days to go. The plan had been in the works for months, if you could call it a plan. I'd studied Google Earth for tracks. Bikers from days past had booked tickets. Bikes had been brought up to passable states of readiness (by local standards). All that remained was to change rubber. Faceplant delivered parts and a special compressed pizza, and Mr. Bean brought tyres aplenty for the changing. Mousses are a hellovathing to install on tyres that have been around for several years in the tropics, but it's worth it to have 100% assurance that at least punctures won't be what slows us down...

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Above: A pizza mixta, Mr Bean on the job

The day upon us, we hit the airport bar at noon (well, it was noon somewhere). It was Bean and I plus two bums from early Dar Biker days; PubQuiz - the eternal fountain of useless knowledge and PhatBilly; apparently a slightly plumper version than last time he was around (pun intended); and Mr. Bean's francophone-only buddy FundiPhil coming to ride the tracks at 58 years young. He didn't have a clue what was coming.

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Above: In transit (donation can could just as well had a pic of the average Dar biker on it)

Ajax and GilleMonster were half way to Mbeya with bikes atop trailers, and the rest of us hopped a bird. Somehow or other, we arrived at the airport within 30 minutes of each other (the car and the plane) and managed have a beer in the parking lot before setting off for the lovely and comfortable (if hyper-colonial and stuffily managed) Utengule lodge overlooking the dusty valley below from its coffee estate vantage.

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Above: Mbeya Intnl Airport, Utengule arrival

It took nothing to unload, settle in, open some bottles and relax. Bikes were ready after we installed spanking-new airfilters on the XRs and our bellies were full of boot-tough beef.

Around the table, it was an intellectual's dream:

[PubQuiz, out of the blue] So, anyone know the origin of the term "board meeting"?

[Ajax to PhatBilly] Use your inside voice!

[Bean, GilleMonster and FundiPhil] "Vous, loo, woo" and other French noises.

The sun snuffed itself out on the purple hills in the distance and we stumbled to our racks.

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Above: 5/7ths of the group and a postcard sunset

We would ride come the morn.

Stay tuned, 'cause its gonna get dusty.
 
Coffee morning. Frail, pink light on the distant hills.

[PubQuiz at breakfast]: You know about Napoleon's wife, right?

Eager to go, loading bikes took ages. The venerable XR 600 already down with a puncture in the parking lot. An ill omen. FundiPhil does the change even though it's not his bike. Setting precedent.

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Above: Breakfast puncture repair

It was big dirt past the Mbeya Range. Dusty dirt. Fesh-feshy dirt. The kind that puffs and piles as you ride through it, pulling at your tires. The light was already angry with us it seemed. Long stretches with trees and fields and a handful of humanity. An old brick cattle corral and squeeze chute next to an empty weekly market area looking ghostly and dry, suspiciously smell-free.

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Above: Dusty exodus

Galula church, built almost a century ago by French White Fathers, would have seemed decidedly out of place if it weren't for its run-downedness, which matches the rest of the country. Awful lot of work to just let turn to dust, but that's a common and boring story here. The tracks from Google Earth I made had launched us north, but weren't exciting enough for the boys up to that point. There was grumbling among the troops. We needed a morale boost.

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Above: FundiPhil and the sugarcane, a lone baobab, Galula Cathedral

So we doglegged it left on one of the other options from my digital recon mission. Track was smaller, more inviting. Fast, but narrower. It was choose-your-own-adventure kind of riding in some places. Still dusty. Very dusty. Moon and Mars dusty, also sandy and deep and the bush was thickening. There were few humans to behold apart from the seven of us raising an ungodly racket and atomizing the planet with our tyres.

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Above: In and out of the dust, bottoming out in the Songwe River Valley

All that dust took us to the river I'd seen on Google Earth. I half expected it to be dry, but it wasn't. As usual, Bean took the first baptismal drop without hesitation. Following his success, we took turns crossing without incident until an overeager and winded PhatBilly twists one too many times on the throttle and lurches up the riverbank into the adjacent field, crashing to a stop in the thorn fence and riverine spike-reeds. Observers local and imported found the sight equal parts puzzling and amusing.

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Above: Fording the river

Wet but drying fast, we climbed out of the valley on the escarpment's brushy flanks. High plains up there. Big views. Dry, scatty, scratchy were yonder hills and the sun like a slap in the face. So we stopped for drinks and a bike fix (Ajax's something or other bolt was misaligned). Then later, at the Amani Hotel in Bilajina village, we devoured rice, beans and beef until we were warped and bloated and only really wanted to sleep it off among the bones and chewed up fatty-cartilage joint bits like drunken knights of some cast away plastic-clad order.

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Above: Billy's fall and our beverage stop

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Above: Pay first before service (that means YOU, dusty biker hooligans)

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Above: Mr. Bean's hungry for beans

But instead, we lit fire to the bikes. Another big dirt spread us out wide to avoid choking on one another's dust. Nobody complained and the bikes ate it up. The stony outcroppings and bluffs on the horizon, the lack of people and cars, the wide blue sky's vacuous depth, gold mining camps (formal and otherwise) and bush fires set the scene for the next act and entertained the senses.

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Above: Bikes, buttes and brushfires

GilleMonster'd broken a subframe bolt on the 690 (If you're keeping track, that's 3 mech-issues so far). He had the sense or the luck to stop beneath a beautiful widereaching shadetree to allow us to help or supervise (blue collar/white collar) according to our willingness and abilities. Monster, Bean, Ajax and FundiPhil used chisel, hammer and hacksawblade (yes, Ajax carries all three) to remove the remains of the bolt while PubQuiz and I offered advice from a remote position and PhatBilly putzed around the edges feigning helpfulness.

Two bikes passed in the meantime, carrying who knows what. Then appeared the googly-eyed, skirt- parka- and Wellington-wearing, oversize-helmeted, nutjob biker apparition from the north. Batshit only touches on the crazy here. He was flying towards us on an AG intent on some point in the distance and suddenly slammed on the breaks halfway past as if he'd only just caught sight of us. Disembarking, he mumbled this and that to an uncomprehending FundiPhil, commented sagely on the operation taking place on the 690 and posed for a few photos before vanishing into the dust like a fart in the wind. An odd, but good omen he turned out to be.

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Above: Nutballs and broken bolts, strict division of labour

Because from there on, the road rocked. Deep sand. Thick forest. Nobody at all to be seen or imagined out there. The perfect temperature. The acute afternoon light flashing through the trees like a strobe at a rave, speed taking the place of X in our veins. Good honest riding.

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Above: Afternoon light to Gua

Then, Gua all of a sudden. Our destination for the day. A little village, but a good one, with respectable digs (6 good rooms, concrete floors for the bucket bath and a cramped little storage closet for GilleMonstar to sleep in) and a competent outsourced staff (beers from the hotel, food from some lady acting as impromptu take-out and boiled egg and salt-roasted peanut delivery) that catered for us well above expectations. Cleaned up, and gassed up in advance for the next day, we worked on bikes and bodies as the sun sat and the kids thronged.

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Above: PubQuiz the thorn surgeon, FundiPhil on the bike

Night fell and Thomas (local drunk and considerable pain in the ass) arrived to chat. PhatBilly, perhaps giddy with the day's ride, attempted politeness awhile before asking him to excuse himself (PhatBilly used other language) repeatedly until it became a rally cry for the team: "Rock Off Thomas!" We chowed down on a kilo of salty peanuts, sorted breakfast’s delivery, and devoured a massive rice and bean feast. The next day would be a long one on a small track through the wilderness. And not all of us would make it through unscathed.

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Above: Nightfall and Thomas

Here's 6 minutes of the day's best clips... save one. Chasing Monster in the deepest dust, he suddenly vanishes into a cloud so thick it blocked out the light. I approached in the eerie twilight to find him waving like a lunatic next to the horizontal 690, frantically trying to keep me from ploughing into him. I swore I had the helmet cam going, but alas...

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Above: Mbeya to Gua, day 1's dusty riding and a river crossing

More to come.
 
Boiled eggs and chapati. That could well have been the name of this trip. Couldn’t complain though as it was a big improvement over our usual fare of cold, limp, overly oily fried eggs and four-day-old white bread. Ordinarily you need 5 parts tea for 1 part breakfast just to wash it down, but with the chapati’s greasiness we could be more sparing of the chai.

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Above: Gua morning, bikes in a row, shops open, chai and eggs and chapatti

We set off by 9:30, an incredible feat made possible by the early retirement of the Belgian contingent the night before and their consequent early-morning perkiness. But, in a sort of inevitable way with us, the early gain was promptly followed by delay. Our group tends toward entropy. Mr. Bean led us out on a decent 2 track, rutted and overgrown, but I was chomping at the bit for something twistier so I danced over to a footpath I thought was sure to parallel his awhile and shortcut back onto it. It didn’t though, so I made a 90 degree cut through the bush and caught him up. Problem was, the herd of sheep that was PhatBilly, GilleMonster and FundiPhil had followed me down the errant path but didn’t see my return to course. They went blasting out to whoknowswhere and it took us 30 minutes to regroup.

Back together, again, we lasted 15 minutes before we were separated… again. It was like a Three Stooges flick out there. Ajax pointed us down a track which looked plausible [Boing! Ya knuckleheads!]. Eventually I realized we were going the wrong way so I stopped, turned around and waited [Nyuk nyuk nyuk nyuk!]. And commenced swatting the first of what would be millions of Tsetse flies away from my fleshy exposed bits [Whoo woo woo woo!]. Voracious vampire flies they were, horrible bastards. PhatBilly and GilleMonster came up (the Monster crashing spectacularly into Billy’s tail somehow in the process) followed by Bean and we all turned back… except that Billy and Monster somehow didn’t get the memo. GPS-less they careered into the foliage, each more sure than the other that they knew where they were going. The rest of us killed another half hour slapping at flies and blaming each other for the screwup before the bush puked them back at us again. It was nearly 11:00 and we were only 20km from Gua.

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Above: PhatBilly wet for the first (but not last) time that day and going the wrong way, Ajax cruising along

All that nonsense, but we were rewarded anyway. The tsetses were on the hunt, so we just fled. The track was old but easy to follow, a double-track that somebody – probably a hunting lodge – had recently drug a homemade claw behind to keep the saplings from taking root in the centre but that permitted trees of bone-breaking diameter to remain mere inches from the insides of corners. It was a kind of wicked, fullspeed, do or die dual slalom and I was having a blast. Ajax and I led most of the morning, taking a tyre track each to duel for the lead. The track was rougher than I expected with rocks and ruts producing some very unsuspected rattles and clangs to go with the endless slap and kertwang of tree branches and sapling trunks ricocheting off handlebars and helmet. At one point, I took an utterly graceless swim in a creek crossing, followed by PhatBilly (helmet cam rolling, see below).

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Above: Some of the few pics from the morning… riding was great but tsetse flies were impossible… (see video)

The riding was rough and the flies were insane and I was having a lot of fun, so I didn’t stop. But as I’m driven to document these stupid adventures, I let Ajax go and slammed on the brakes to take snaps of the bikers as they roared past. Now I was at the back, I thought. But I was so preoccupied, swatting and dancing around to keep the flies off of me, I lost count of who had gone past me and couldn’t be sure. I consulted my camera and found that PhatBilly had not checked in, so I went back and found him hunched over his handlebars. Apparently he’d come off on a rutted section and planted himself atop some rocks. Pretty sure he’d snapped a couple of ribs to starboard, he kickstarted the XR 600 and kept on going down the track. Having no options (or is it brains?) makes you brave.

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Above: First of three vids of the day ends with Billy and I taking a drink in the creek

Mid-day had come and gone. We stopped just enough to regroup and consume some dry wors in the mottled hardwood shade. We hadn’'t seen a soul all day. Tracks were few and great to ride. I took the lead and enjoyed a long stretch of effortless, totally-connnected-to-the-bike moments slithering through the trees in 4th. Saw some hartebeest and warthog. Flushed a number of hornbills from their perches. Amazing, hypnotizing riding.

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Above: Excellent double-track through the forest, lots of two-abreast riding with Ajax

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Above: Shadowrider, the boys, PhatBilly at a rest stop “it’s the only position where nothing hurts!”

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Above: Two minutes uncut on the cattle paths chasing Mr. Bean

170 km of fantastic tracks behind us, we emerged in stages from bush to field to big dirt as humanity asserted itself on the forest and the tsetses slowly vanished. We were 30km down the road from Rungwa, our original destination so there was nothing for it but to bomb the smooth dirt-slab down there after a coke and a quick search for roadside accommodation.

A slithery side-story: At the soda-stop, FundiPhil’'s ordinary black leather belt was nicked by one of the little kids thronging around who couldn’t help himself. It was one of the very few incidents of theft we’ve ever experienced, but it left our guest with droopy britches. Half an hour later, as I’m whizzing down the road I skid to a stop 10 feet past a massive Cobra who scared the bajeezus out of me by standing up tall in the road as I approached (no doubt kind of pissed off since Ajax had run him over 2 minutes before, I later learned). Photo-op not to be missed, I get my camera ready to capture one of the guys racing past that most iconic of snakes. Clipping along, FundiPhil sees me in the road gesturing at the snake and slows almost to a crawl, inching closer and closer to the reptile, cool as a cucumber as I gesture with increasing franticness. I’m thinking “this Begian guy has balls!”, but it turned out he thought (inexplicably) that the snake was his belt, magically appeared on the road, and that I was pointing it out for him to pick it up… The perils of riding with 50 somethings with serious prescription specs.

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Above: Wanted poster? No, just a local Hitler-mustachioed politician seeking your vote, and the cobra that would have made a nice belt for FundiPhil

Rungwa. The one little town big enough to make it onto our map, way up on the edge of the game reserve bordering Ruaha National Park, was basically a dump inhabited largely by low capacity individuals. We located the guest house by the smell of the long-drop hole-in-the-floor toilets. The place hadn’'t been improved in at least four years and was just plain shabby. So for once our presence didn’'t bring the property value down.

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Above: Ajax, yours truly and Monster in the dumpy courtyard

We cleaned up, fueled and organized food and drink. The kid who brought the jerry cans of petrol bid us farewell with “Have a nice journalist”. PubQuiz, still pretending to be at work, tried to connect to the internet, unsuccessfully… “What? No Wifi?” PhatBilly was in bed by dusk, floating down a cloudy stream on a pillow of serious pain killers after having asserted that his ribs were throbbing and but like he couldn’'t feel his ass. Over at the bar in the night, Mr Bean and Ajax made a name for themselves over warm Konyagi at a plastic table with a headlamp in a glass for ambiance.

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Above: Evening coming down, PubQuiz pretends to work

Night. Unknown in advance how noisy the grubby little town would be. Rooms adjacent to the street. Full blast Swahili music as I dozed off, feeling pain in the neck, swollen like a tennis ball from the tsetse fly bites. I slept in my clothes. No sheet. Window shutters zip-tied shut. In darkness, the unmistakable sound of someone being chased down the street and a mob of men, voices shouting. Then a woman’s scream amid chants of “Piga! Piga!” (Hit! Hit!!) and sinister empty-headed laughter. Later, a truck. Later still, an immense bus sounded its hell’s carnival horn. Then the dawn.

More to come.
 
Lekker trip and some real excellent storytelling  :thumleft: :thumleft:

Nice collection of scoots as well...!
 
@Herklass, @Rooi Wolf,

It seems like you think this RR is over. Not so. Another one coming your way now.  :snorting:
 
Awake early but on the road late. PhatBilly announced he was calling it quits before breakfast, still in agony from his banged up ribs and perhaps suspiciously worried about the absence of feeling in his arse. The Dar Biker reaction was to accept this setback with composure, not get overly emotional about it, and point his broken carcass back down the road to Mbeya alone. Like some primitive band of roaming hominoids, we instinctively set in motion a plan that benefitted the group’s survival and exiled our wounded elder, stripping him of any useful items in the process and saddling him with worn goods and unnecessary articles. We dumped the ancient XR 600 on him, a bike that had already proven to have little to no braking ability and handled like a tugboat in a sea of molasses. Then Mr Bean enhanced the bike’s sorry state by looting the half decent front tire it wore and swapping it with the bald, cracked, egg-shaped slab of rubber off of his bike. So, after stiffly mounting the steed (kick-start only, mind you) off went Billy on a 300 km ride to Mbeya on the worst bike we had with no map or GPS to guide him, alone. We Dar Bikers are a band of brothers.

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Above: Boiled eggs and chapati again, preparing PhatBilly’s funerary motorbike

As the dust settled, the rest of us went for chapati and tea before lighting up the bikes and launching them at the big dirt from the day before. It was a necessary evil, a small price to pay for the promise of a 150km of small track that lie between us and Inyonga, our next stop. At the bar, the XR400 was slow to start and blew one hellovalot of blue smoke once it got going, but being a Honda, nobody paid it much attention and everybody blamed it on PubQuiz’s inability to work a choke. Afterall, Billy never mentioned it had an issue, so off we went. Assumptions. Omens. Portents of ill winds of bad things to come. Good thing we ain’t superstitious (though everybody who lives in Africa too long is a little ‘stitious).

Retracing steps is anathema to bikers, particularly if it’s big dirt, so we were all basically asleep at the bars when one by one we were snapped awake by a hump created by the recent installation of an enormous culvert that sent us all flying like overweight supercrossers. Then not long afterward, a very unexpected sight: PhatBilly! Broken ribs, rattle trap bike, long solo ride ahead… and he rides the wrong bloody way. I began to wonder if he had a brain injury in addition to broken ribs, but the guys assured me that wasn’t it. Still, as he rode off, again, in the right direction this time, I wondered if he’d make it alone… hell, I wondered how he managed to get his boots buckled alone.

And then:
Q: “Where the hell is PubQuiz?”
A: “Looking for his fuel cap”
Q: “WTF?”
A: <Shrug>
He’d hit the big culvert and the thing had gone “POP!” off into the bush. We spent 15 minutes riding slowly up and down a 100 meter section of road, but gave up. I felt like I was riding with some sort of traveling freakshow.

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Above: PubQuiz’s new fuel cap of plastic bags, inner tube rubber and zip ties; PhatBilly reincarnated on the wrong road to Mbeya

Finally off the big dirt, we were ready to start the day. The track was similar to the previous day; tree-lined doubletrack with sandy dusty sections and a million tsetse flies per square foot. It was excellent and tricky in areas, but I spent the morning lumbering along clobbering roots and repeatedly losing control instead of enjoying myself. It was like my brain was sending messages to my body at the speed of an African internet connection. Reflexes like a drunk’s and no sense of urgency to turn or brake, I rode in a mental fog all morning just trying to keep it on the track.

Not riding worth a damn, I stopped to take photos and to test if the 100% DEET I’d sprayed on myself shielded me from tsetse attack but was distressed to discover that while the tsetses seemed repelled enough, it seemed to positively fascinate the bees! And there were thousands of bees. All along the track, locals had hung traditional tree bark beehives high up on the canopy directly over the track. At one point there was one hung low enough to explore, but it was audibly buzzing, so I gave it a wide berth and let Ajax explore. It gives one pause to blast noisily under these buzzing cylinders, hung with nothing more than a bit of vine, particularly if one recalls the phrase “African Killer Bee”. So, my plan for the day was simply not to stop, and I didn’t much.

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Above: low-hung bee hive in the forest

We rode by sad looking tobacco fields with plucked stems yellowing in their rows. The drying huts – taller versions of mud houses with racks inside to hang tobacco leaves on and a place to light a wood fire – stood smoked-out in the fields, some new and others in utter disrepair. There was a noticeable reduction of trees in the areas around the tobacco fields as most of them were cut for tobacco drying. My idle brain thought it typical: another example of the types of externalities common to a cash crop in Africa that makes raw materials (like tobacco, cotton, pineapples etc) appear cheap and beneficial since they can raise poor farmer incomes but that have irreversible ecological consequences. Everything has a cost.

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Above: bushfire and bikers

Around 1:00, we stopped in a relatively tsetse free patch for our typical bush lunch of droewors and battered cookies from our Giant Loops (imho: GL’s the best GD saddlebag ever made, hands down). The boost of fat and sugar was enough to snap me out of the daze I’d been in. For the rest of the afternoon I was riding high, blasting along side-by-side with Ajax, branches whacking us on all sides, happy as a monkey in a tree. It salvaged my day, and by the time the big dirt came, I was smiling ear to ear. We stopped on the big road for a Passion Fanta (worth the trip all on its own) and blasted it down to Inyonga in 5th gear, punishing ourselves on the potholes and eating eachother’s dust.

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Above: Fantastop and a faded Obama t-shirt

At last, Inyonga. A decent sized town with many guest houses, we did several noisy circumnavigations before settling on accommodation (there was no room at the Hilton). Showered up, we set out for the bar where I sampled my first (and last) Balimi Beer, a regional favorite and high in booze points. As night fell, the bar came alive. First the ungodly sound system crackled to life with local favorites like “Kigoooma!” which had the drunks singing at the tops of their wavery tubercular lungs, and then quiet temporarily fell as they tuned in for the nightly news. Amazing really. Electricity is a new thing out in places like Inyonga, and they’re making good use of it. I juiced up my camera batteries in a shop dedicated to charging cell phones for a little less than $0.50. Not possible 10 years ago.

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Above: Monster checks the map, Ajax thrilled by the speakers, a Balimi in the capital

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Above: Monster checks the map, Ajax thrilled by the speakers, a Balimi in the capital

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Above: Our too-cool-for-school guest house attendant and the bar’s hopping and utterly unoriginal chips mayayi and mishkaki grill

That night, we slept like the dead. Cold air and clean sheets plus a blanket and relative silence did us right.

Once or twice Ajax and Bean awoke in the silence, conscience stirring. Where was PhatBilly, they wondered. I sure hope he’s okay out there all alone… Ha! Just kidding.

More to come
 
Up early. Market not even serving food yet. Found a little tea shop on the street and ordered some extra strong ginger tea to wash down the mandazi that looked for all the world like buffalo scat while the chapatis were cooked and the eggs boiled. Loading up the bikes, I discovered my rear wheel bearings were shot, but nobody wanted to give me the time to change them:

[Ajax]: We’ll do it when it goes.
[Bean]: Or tomorrow.
[FundiPhil]: Oui, oui, cette rearwheelbearing est fooked.
[GilleMonster]: Ha ha!
[PubQuiz]: Can anybody name the only major African river that runs both North and South of the equator? Anybody? Guys? Hey?

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Above: Your narrator at his best, chai and buffalo scat, preparations at the Inyonga Safari Hotel courtyard

Topping up the fuel, the annoying, gangly Thug-Life-T-shirt-wearing knucklehead from the guesthouse wouldn’t stop attempting his lame cool guy routine with us (high as a kite at 9 in the morning). Kept trying to give me a fist bump, mumbling something about Jah and that’s-how-we-do-it-in-Jamaica, then he slapped me on the helmet in a slightly overly emphatic faux-fraternal sort of way. So I says to the guy: “I ain’t Jamaican and neither are you, sporto”, and roosted on his shoes.

The day’s destination: Kipili on Lake Tanganyika. It was a known route through deep bush and a game reserve and everybody was keen to get after it. The first 30km out of Inyonga were fairly well maintained dirt, so we were spreading out to avoid each other’s dust. FundiPhil was ahead of me but kind of dragging ass.

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Above, top: Sign says “Life is a Safari” on one side, then “Death has no escape!” on the other. Bottom: tobacco fields and a drying hut distant

Phil kept looking at his bike, like he didn’t like what he was hearing, then all at once he just raised up his hands and coasted to a stop. The brand-spanking-new “DID” chain had snapped after only 500 km of use. Why, you ask? How is it possible you ask? It was inevitable, I maintain. Mr. Bean had bought the chain at a local shop that peddles authentic Vee Rubber tyres but counterfeit everything else in Dar es Salaam. Nobody buys important parts there. You have to import it all from USA or Europe. It was a rookie move and proof positive that the Belgian has spent too many years in the Dar heat. His brains have gone soft. Too much Konyagi maybe.

Anyway, the chain broke on Mr Bean’s favorite bike and he was suitably punished for his transgression. The chain whipped around the front sprocket and did its best Weed-Whacker™ impression on the engine case, chain-sawing through the protective cover and grinding its way through the transmission fluid reservoir. Plans, it was clear, were about to shift from A to B.

Ajax and Benny Boom Boom can be oblivious when they’re in the lead. Two abreast, they routinely ignore the rule the rest of us follow of waiting for the next person to catch up before carrying on too long. So, while we waited for them to come back, I prepped my bike to fix the wheel bearings. When the guys returned half an hour later, it was unanimously agreed that FundiPhil’s bike was stuffed. No chain, hole in the engine, 100s of kms from anywhere. Not happy to be idle, Ajax and Phil take the tools away from me (I’d been fecklessly whacking at the wheel bearings for some time by then…) and replaced them while the tow rope was being extracted from the very bottom of PubQuiz’s Giant Loop.

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Above: The damage, the bikes waiting, me and my opinion of events all akimbo

The tow underway, Ajax and I sped back to Inyonga to get busy sorting out a salvage plan for the trip. We phoned the Lakeside Lodge to say we’d be late, and then we got PhatBilly on the blower. He was convalescing back at Utengule, milking his bruises to garner sympathy from the staff, but it was time for him to dig deep for the team, drag his numb ass out of the rack and get to work.

Subconsciously, Mr. Bean must have known it was folly to trust the phony Dar-bought chain, because he’d packed a spare and a rear sprocket to match it… although he’d left them both in the car back in Mbeya, 3 days’ ride away. It was therfore up to Billy to fix Mr. Bean’s blunder. So to sum up: An invalid (PhatBilly) who had been injured and subsequently exiled by his “mates” from a trip he’d waited months for and flown intercontinentally to participate in was asked to emerge from his deathbed to save the day by putting chain and sprocket on a Sumbawanga-bound bus addressed to one “Mr. Bean AKA Benny Boom Boom”. Life’s not fair.

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Above: Making plans apparently requires maps, GPS and Kilimanjaro, the KTM towing party

Arrangements arranged, there was nothing left to do but ride. So we rode. Big dirt again, and pot-holy hell. Ajax and I took the lead and did the side-by-side riding thing. There just wasn’t much to see or do, so we just screwed in throttles and burned up kilometers.

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Above: Towing down the dusty road, Ajax waits in the mottled shade

After a very nice descent from somewhere high to somewhere lower, we stop to regroup and chow some dried meats and candies. The two XRs were found to have lost subframe bolts, and PubQuiz’s bike was way down on oil. Hmmm. Anyway, all was going well with the towing operation… until 20 minutes later.

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Above: The Pink Lion bus overtakes, Monster helps Phil with his rope, I pose for a dusty face shot

Mr. Bean testified that evening that he had been cautious, that he’d repeatedly asked FundiPhil if the speed was okay but the old goat kept insisting “Oui oui! Plus rapide! Allez allez, you nana!” and the like (you know how Belgians can be), so he reluctantly obliged. But PubQuiz saw the whole thing. An eye witness to the crime, as it were.

PubQuiz described the scene thus:
“There was a 90 degree bend in the road (dogleg right) followed by a 90 degree bend the other way (dogleg left) with enough potholes in between to break your bones, turn your teeth to powder… bruise your balls, etc etc…”

“Bean arrived at the first turn reasonably enough, you know, decelerating to set up for the corner. But then, ladies and gentlemen, he accelerated! Wholly oblivious, or fiendishly aware, of the fact that his Oulde Pal (in his fifty-eighth, remember), his Oulde Buddy FundiPhil was attached by a rope and a prayer behind. Well this royally fuc… (sorry) messed Phil up, your honor. Fighting the tow rope which, now jerked taught and angled right, threatening to pull FundiPhil off the road, it is no small wonder that, though valiantly fighting, he lost grip with his legs and was sent bouncing like a gazelle on a trampoline. His feet were loose, your honor! He’d lost all hope, please the court! [Swooning, hand to forehead] Oh, Billy! Someone get me water…”

[Later] “But ladies and gentlemen, FundiPhil is one tough sonofabitch… pardon my French. He fought hard, flexing every tendon and muscle to their geriatric breaking point and I swear on Zeus’s anvil he damn near saved his pointy Belgian ass! But wait! Mr Bean had other ideas! Just as Phil was about to regain control, his, “friend” his, “comrade” his, “bon ami” accelerated once again and banked left, jerking the rug out from under him if you will. And down he went like a sack of baguettes!”

After that, the prosecution rested. The defense had no further questions your honor.

All I know is that when I arrived, poor FundiPhil was still on his bum in the bushes off the track, shaking his head and saying “Oh la la! Merde! Puta!” and the like. And only after it was all said and done did anyone stop to think: Hey, if Mr. Bean is the guy who invited FundiPhil to come ride, and it was Bean who put the imitation DID chain on the bike that ultimately broke… why the hell is Mr. Bean not the guy on the receiving end of the towrope and potential launching into bush at speed? Life’s not fair.

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Above: PubQuiz on the road, exhibit A from the trial, a bit of dialogue from the accident scene

Long story short… too late. Let me insert the video:

[flash=700,480]https://www.youtube.com/v/PJsmiKdPhhM[/flash]
Above: Motorbikes being towed at pace on dirt and a techno-backed hodge-podge of photos from my helmetcam

So the day had been a bruiser. From Fundi’s landing spot, we just had a bit more to go before the tall watertower (tenki refu) and the junction leading down to Katavi National Park. The main road was abuzz with construction vehicles, dusty and fast. PubQuiz had valiantly taken Phil’s place on the towed bike and was no doubt reciting the names of Latvian Cities in alphabetical order just to keep from soiling his riding trousers.

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Above: the Tall Tower and the Pink Lion Bus Overtake

Making it to the north gate of the National Park, we were all beat. Ajax and I scouted the pretty rough options for accommodation (we did NOT choose the Hippo Garden), Phil rested his weary bones, and Bean sorted out a pickup to take the bike the next day. Couldn’t guess what PubQuiz and Monster were up to… diddily squat I suspect.

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Above: peanuts in their cones, a warning to bikers, the accommodation not chosen

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Above: R & R at N. Katavi

As dusk fell, we all moved into our new digs alongside a hippo filled river. Water came out of the showerhead, they provided towels and the toilets had seats on them, so we were pretty stoked. The night’s food was edible and the Konyagi plentiful… I gathered the courage to think, maybe things were going to be okay from here on out…

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Above: Nightlife, end of Day 4

More to come
 
First light brought the sounds of hippos in the trees and birds in the river (or maybe the other way around… I always wake up in a bit of a daze). Golden light slicing through the trees at the lowest angle possible gave the scene a wonderful tone. The bush across the river looked properly African and the hippos were doing their thing. For our part, we all milled around scratching our tsetse fly bites and enjoying the cool air.

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Above: Taking notes for this very RR, GilleMonster’s bumpy bitten hand

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Above: Hippos and bikers enjoying the morning

Aside: That river must be seriously chockablock with hippos. While researching our tracks, I zoomed in to the area where we were and found some very high resolution slices amid the typical fuzzy greenish mass. I zoomed in and found that someone, sometime had taken aerial photos of a bend in the river in the dry season absolutely jammed with hippos, clearly not happy, some dead. You could have literally walked across their backs (but I wouldn’t recommend it).

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Above: Screenshots from where we were via Google Earth

The night before, Mr. Bean had worked out transport for the ailing KTM. Nobody was too keen to be towed another 200km, particularly FundiPhil who looked stiff as a board from his fall. All of us assumed the transport solution would be a pickup, but that’s what we get for assuming. In fact, it was a stretched Land Cruiser safari truck with hardwood detailing and a canvas top over steel roll bars. It took some engineering and muscle to get the bike aboard, and it was impossible to squeeze it all the way inside, so we left the handle bars, forks and front wheel jutting out like the taxidermy mount of some exotic orange bird. Classic.

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Above: Transport sorted

Kitted up and fast broken, we embarked upon day five. Mr. Bean lit out early for Sumbawanga to see if PhatBilly had managed to get the chain and sprocket on a bus, FundiPhil was seated comfortably in his personal safari vehicle, and the rest of us blasted off through Katavi National Park at a happy lick over some very uncomfortable terrain. Bloody dusty, big, potholed road it was, but gorgeous in the periphery. Deep forested bush, ghostly white-barked trees interspersed among the miombo… it was lovely.

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Above: Ghostly white-barked trees… PubQuiz and a plume of dust/smoke

Around a corner, I find the guys ahead of me stopped and waving me to slow down. They were scattered across a river bridge all looking into the bush. A herd of several giraffe, some gazelles and a few zebra were wandering lazily around in full view. Despite the stern and utterly, obnoxiously, ridiculously idiotic bureaucratically conceived and officially overbearing prohibition to the contrary, we all took the opportunity to freely view the game and practice our armature photography. Who wouldn’t? It was really cool. We’re so damn lucky to ride bikes here…

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Above: A photo of a giraffe by a sign that prohibits wildlife photography… in a National Park established for the protection of wildlife… TIA.

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Above: Ajax was closest to the giraffe, FundiPhil had the best shots of the croc and zebra

The broken chain kind of relegated us to blasting away the day like BMW riders have to (I know, I’d done it before on a Dakar), but we weren’t too bothered. The big dirt wasn’t the most exciting, but the views up in the dry hills were really nice. We were witness to some very extensive Chinese-led construction going on that made you wonder how much longer the place will look like it does now. Then you start lamenting it. Then you start arguing that no, it’s good for the country etc. Then you wonder if it’s because they found oil, and it’ll be crawling with western mineral rapists, I mean interests. Then you just stop thinking, like a good biker, and keep riding.

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Above: Honda needs oil again… the dry hills and roads above

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Above: Both headlights working... Out the way cows!

We were gaining altitude rapidly. The air was cleaner feeling and things had a greener look to them around Namanyere. We stopped briefly at the junction to Kipili, our destination on Lake Tanganyika, before cruising in to Namanyere for fuel and food. We guessed the pickup with FundiPhil and the KTM in it would be crawling along behind us, so we had plenty of time.

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Above: Namanyere junction, Namanyere town views

For a nowhere town in a neglected region of a poor African country, Namanyere looked pretty damn good. They had stuff. There was fuel in the pumps. There was cold beer in the fridges. They managed to cook up some very fine mishkaki and chips to boot and we were considering hanging out all afternoon until FundiPhil called Ajax to ask “Where the diable êtes-vous, stupid foofoohole?” He was already at the drop off point.

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Above: PubQuiz speechless after a big meal and sugarcane dessert

A break in the middle of the day like that can have one of two effects: a) you feel like napping b) you feel like sharpening the throttles and filleting the bloody roads ahead. From Namanyere, we were feeling decidedly “b”. Part of it, no doubt, was the promise of what lie ahead: cool Lake Tanganyika, a lovely luxurious lodge, clean rooms and a day off to enjoy it all. But it was helped along by the fantastic, steep, tricky descent into Kipili through thick woods. GilleMonster and PubQuiz followed Ajax rapidly down ahead. I could see some emergency-type clench-the-buttcheeks-worthy skid marks approaching a number of corners and could tell somebody was giving it more than they ought (and might have been leaving skidmarks of another type in their shorts). Eventually I found out who it was: GilleMonster was sideways in the road, the 690 looking a bit scuffed but still rolling. No blood to be seen, no broken bones (I think Monster, like the KTM, is made of grade-A aluminum reinforcements and composite materials anyway) so we proceeded apace down the rubbly road.

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Above: Descent from Namanyere

We found Fundi-P at the agreed locale, beer in hand bullshitting away with some Congolese gents he found by accident at a bar. He’d been dropped off about 10km from the lodge in some noname village due to the safari vehicle’s having been hired on the sly, and the driver not being keen to have anybody in the tourism business rat him out to his boss. So, that left a few more kms of towing to be done. Roped up and ready, we set off, the Fundi pulling the Quizmaster this time. I was sure I heard him shouting “Does anybody know the specific gravity of bone marrow….?”

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Above: Osadabwa on approach. Lake Tanganyika in my sights.

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Above: The tow-er, the tow-ee and the Monster

All was going hunky-dory. We’d been numbed by a day of big dirt, and had essentially switched off our brains on the assumption that we’d roll right up to the lodge on the same. Not quite. The towing party and I found ourselves looking up a 100 meter stretch of river rocks strewn straight up a hillside. While FundiPhil and the Quizman sat there ogling the steep rocky slope I decided to go ahead, but only half way up the hill I was struck by a very undeniable and urgent bout of intestinal liberty that had to be sorted out right f-ing now, so I stood the bike and was scrambling through the bush in my boots, loo roll in hand while they sorted out how to climb the hill. My issue resolved <<aaah>> I strolled back to the track and had just thrown a leg over the XR when I caught sight of something. Careening up the track was Ajax (substitute-tower for the weak-kneed Fundi), stones flying, engine raging, dust billowing, legs outrigging with PubQuiz hanging on for dear life on the lifeless KTM behind. They were all over both sides of the track and not slowing down. It was clear they were both fighting gravity with every fiber, so I yanked the bike off to the side, squishing myself between it and a tree, and watched the show. Hilarious. Ajax giving it the stick, PubQuiz paddling along furiously trying to keep balance… proper entertainment.

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Above: Towing the steep grade, Monster going it solo

One by one, Monster and the Fundi rumbled past and I made my way to the lovely Lakeshore Lodge. In the parkinglot, PubQuiz was expostulating to anyone who would listen about old Ajax’s heavy throttle-fisted handling of the towing-on-steep-hillside-of-river-rocks situation. Ajax just smiled like a Hindu cow. Fundi dismounted with a grunt. Monster grunted with a dismount. We all beelined it for the bar.

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Above: More towing, our triumphant if dusty arrival at the Lakeshore Lodge on Lake Tanganyika

I could go into details about the night’s shenanigans. I won’t. Suffice it to say, we were in a celebratory mood enhanced by beer and a very welcomed full-body emersion in the world’s second deepest lake (thanks for that tidbit, PQ). For awhile, we were gentlemen. We enjoyed the scenery very much, commenting sagely on this and that and snapping photos of the fishermen passing in their dugout canoes, etc.

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Above: Ajax’'s exuberant entrance, me and PQ enjoying the refreshment

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Above: Transport boat on L. Tanganyika, sage discussions, tsetse fly bites still itchy

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Above: Monster and Ajax… (Fundi’s camera has a really neato telephoto lens)

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Above: Fishermen on L. Tanganyika at dusk

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Above: Bloody sunset, daintily cross-legged bikers in shorts drinking beer in black and white

Anyway, we were of a passable quality. The other guests and the staff tolerated our enthusiasm well enough and for our part we tried our best to use our inside voices and to keep the subject matter civil. Not saying we succeeded, saying we tried…

To come: Rest day uncovers reality that PhatBilly, while an engineer by trade, cannot be trusted to perform simple bike maintenance on his own…
 
Up, but not at all early. Excellent breakfast of eggs any way but boiled and good, smooth coffee. FundiPhil was up as soon as Ajax arrived, eager to get to work on the KTM.

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Above: AM Repairs and a Kingfisher

At a much more leisurely pace, the rest of us finished our breakfast and morning ablutions and made our way to the parking lot to check on the bikes. Although it was a scheduled rest day, maintenance was also on the agenda. I planned to change oil since PubQuiz's XR had consumed all of my 15w40 and all that is readily available on the road is straight 40 heavyweight oil "for older engines" which, let's face it, is just fine for the XR.

PubQuiz was also checking oil and fiddling around when he made the big discovery for the week: PhatBilly had fitted the airfilter incorrectly. Well, that's saying it charitably, actually. What he'd done was absolutely daft. Back in Mbeya, when the XR riders took time out from beer drinking to install new filters for the ride, Billy had managed somehow to discard the inner screen (which in this case was a plastic aftermarket thingy, not the steel and mesh OEM one) and had "installed" the foam filter without it. Naturally, over the course of 1000 km of extremely rough riding, the structure-less foam filter jounced its way free of the air intake, leaving a gaping chasm that led straight through the carb and down into the cylinder.

All that dust. All those KMs. So THAT's why the bike's been smoking and drinking oil!

Anyway, after Ajax cooled down (someone wisely ordered cold ones), and that big vein on his forehead stopped throbbing (I kept thinking "Flux Capacitor: fluxing") he put his mind and hands to work fabricating an ingenious filter frame out of some discarded plastic bottles found in the junk pile. It was a thing of beauty, really, and slipped right in place.

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Above: Our unofficial sponsors, Ajax explains what happened to his XR, the replacement frame

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Abvoe: The final product with filter installed

FundiPhil and Mr. Bean (back from Sumbawanga with the new chain and sprocket; at least Billy sorted that out okay) spent the better part of the day trying to patch up the KTM's nibbled-out slave cylinder to no avail. Their last ditch effort before knocking off for the day was to mix up some hard-as-hell epoxy and let it sit overnight. We wouldn't know til the next day if it took. So, nothing for it but to hit the lake, have some beers and go for a boat ride.

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Above: Lake Shore Lodge's interiors, PubQuiz wondering why his name isn't in there

At five or so, the boat left for an evening cruise around the lake. It was gorgeous and calm, boats of all sizes moved up and around, transporting people and goods between villages. On one of the islands, I was amazed to see a large village thriving along the shore. Lovely, absolutely lovely. We were lamenting our luck, bike troubles and all, but one of the other guests trumped us: he'd just been mauled by a Cape Buffalo at Katavi a few days before. Had some very wicked bruises and a hell of a tale to share as a result. We kept quiet and sipped our beers for awhile after that.

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Above: Bikers on the evening cruise

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Above: Sights on L. Tanganyika

Back on shore, Ajax and I snuggled down by the fire while dinner was being prepared. We were in for a treat on that score as well. Apparently a Norwegian chef had asked if he could swap his skills at the lodge for free accommodation, and the clever owners said "karibu". Turns out this kid is a whiz in the kitchen, and an experimental cat too; that night we ate L. Tanganyika freshwater muscles in a sort of paella and washed it all down with lovely South African wine. Oh, we do suffer on these trips, yes we do.

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Above: The lodge at night, bikers around a fire

We turned in early, I think; excited for the ride ahead, maybe. I was thinking: "With the two busted bikes, we're going to have to stick to big-trails all the way back to Mbeya."

Wrong.
 
Up on time. Another great breakfast. Ajax had the map out and between bites quizzed the staff about options for getting back to the main Sumbawanga road at Namanyere without retracing our steps. Chris and Louise said they'd had a guest try it on a bike and fail. I'd looked on Google Earth and had found only the sketchiest of potential paths. We were all but resigned to just head back the way we'd come when the tall waiter said: "yes, there's a track from Ninde to Namanyere". And so, typical of most humans, we ignored the preponderance of evidence and went with one guy's opinion because it was what we wanted to hear.

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Above: Chris and Louise at Lake Shore Lodge, their best-dressed-guests

We bid farewell to Chris and Louise (lovely folks, great hosts; thanks for the epoxy and the 5L of fuel!), paid our bill, and lit out for the trail to Ninde, a small fishing village hunkered along a beach south of Kipili. The mid-morning light was that cool-yellow-almost-white particular to cold-season African mornings and the calm lake waters sat like wine in a goblet. The bikes all started with no fuss, and it appeared the KTM's epoxy-job of the day before was going to hold. Everything was going according to plan again!

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Above: Our bill, the day's first few kms

Well, not exactly. Or rather, not for long. The epoxy held for only enough time to get back through Kipili town and south a few clicks. Then it gave to the pressure in the transmission and ejected the clutch fluid into the dust, leaving FundiPhil clutch-less. All agreed that this was no big deal; so long as the track remained relatively open he'd be fine as long as somebody was always ready to get him rolling enough to crank over the engine in 1st gear. So, we put the specter of a bad omen out of our minds and cruised down the road.

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Above: Morning flora and fauna, FundiPhil getting a pushstart

Rolling up and around the contours of the land, the track gave us numerous good looks at the lake and fishing villages below. It was a great way to start the day: blasting an interesting track into unknown territory, saving ourselves from backtracking. Made us wonder aloud why the hell we live in Dar when so many places in Tanzania are so much more attractive. (Answer, of course: money).

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Above: Views from the Kipili-Ninde road

The road danced its way up and over hills among monument-like rocks. Speeds slowly increased as the guys started getting into it. Then the road abruptly ended. Not in a village, not at a crossroads, it just ended. Like the bulldozer got tired and went home. More likely, the contractor ate the money and went home. Beyond the cut, a footpath continued its journey toward Ninde, so we followed it.

The track was fairly wide - like the kind you get where there's bicycle and motorbike traffic - which makes for some fun riding, but I was conscious that one of our party didn't have a clutch to help him ease his way through sticky sections, and the track was doing some pretty sharp turning in relatively rugged terrain. I was sure Ajax and Bean would pull the plug and we'd have to go back.

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Above: Where the big road became a track

But I should have known otherwise. Ajax can't say "no" to a new track. No matter what mechanical, physical, spiritual issues may be plaguing the guys behind, he can't not explore the thing to find out where it ends. And once again, there was a local guy there to egg us on. Standing with his donkey in the track, this kid told us "yeah, sure, there's a track to Namanyere".

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Above: Donkey boy and monkeybikers

And to be fair, all signs were looking positive, really. The track was easy to see and there was even a substantial hand-made bridge over a river to navigate (on hindsight, maybe that river is why the road didn't reach Ninde). The existence of a trail didn't seem to be in question; the question was: did it make sense to continue, seeing as FundiPhil had no clutch. Ajax's answer: yes. And who could say no? It was awesome out there.

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Above: The wooden bridge, proof the track was maintained...?

[flash=700,450]https://www.youtube.com/v/wGGXzwAmVWQ[/flash]
Above: From Lakeshore to the little wooden bridge

Not long after the foot bridge, however, we came to a crossroads. One track clearly continued on to Ninde, the other track led East into the interior, in the direction of Namanyere. The trail was fairly wide at first, but once we'd passed through a couple of fields, it virtually disappeared. It looked like very few had walked it, let alone pushed a wheel on it for years, and it started climbing almost immediately. Needless to say, FundiPhil was struggling. So, at last, Mr. Bean does the right thing and volunteers to ride the ailing bike, giving Fundi his perfectly good 450. Now we were ready to continue. If Mr. Bean had a rough day due to the broken bike, nobody would probably lose sleep over it.

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Above: Committing to the little track in the woods

I was loving it. Those kinds of tracks aren't about ripping around corners or lifting up cumulonimbus clouds of lung-choking dust. They're discovery tracks. The kind that make you feel like an explorer. There's no way to know if it'll take you where you want to go, or whether you'll come across impassible obstacles en route and be forced to turn back. They're like an itch that has to be scratched. We wouldn't turn back unless we had to.

And we were lucking out. The track looked like it would meet up with the scratch I saw on Google Earth, which gave Ajax and I some hope. Of course, what I knew that others didn't know was that in places the gradient exceeded 20% and there were large stretches where I couldn't see any track at all. Still, it gave us something to go by, so we pressed on, across several tricky water crossings and through some beautiful forest.

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Above: Mr bean on foot, Mr Bean on bike: Dr. Dorky and Mr. Ryde

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Above: Ajax and I navigate some water

[flash=700,420]https://www.youtube.com/v/VJeL-BmEImA[/flash]

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Above: A GilleMonster through the forest

To say the track was tough to see is understating it somewhat. Long grass and uniform forest made any hopes of racing through this section impossible, and with the stream crossings and downed trees coming every so often, it didn't pay to carelessly twist the throttle anyway. More than once I connected with a stump or rock that reminded me that all of us were just a twisted knee away from a very difficult rescue.

The slow pace was obviously was a problem for Mr. Bean who could neither idle his bike nor finesse it through technical areas. So, we devised a plan that would ensure that Bean never had to stop riding. Ajax would go ahead with the GPS. At a technical spot, he'd figure out how to get around it and I'd watch him. He'd then continue up the way and I'd show PubQuiz how to cross who would show Mr. Bean. By the time Ajax was arriving to the next rough patch, I was there to see him clean it and we'd start over. It worked fairly well and we made decent progress.

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Above: Ajax in the long grass

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Above: PubQuiz in the long grass

We were ascending quickly. At some point, the track stopped cutting across drainages and began following a ridge which afforded some spectacular views of the forest below through the trees. We didn't stop much, but when we did it was impossible not to be impressed by the remoteness of the place we were in.

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Above: A wicked looking spider lording over a spectacular hillside viewpoint

Occasionally the track would open up a bit where the grass was shorter or the soil more rocky. I'd take the opportunity to try to zip through the trees to catch up Ajax who was plodding ahead staring at the GPS. The track would be an amazing mountain bike trail... if you're fit as hell.

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Above: A rare open meadow and a very purple flower

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Above: Fundi and Monster and Ajax

With our system well tuned and progress being made, we stopped for a biltong break at the other side of a wide river. PubQuiz's bike had drained his oil reservoir, again, and we filled it up using the leaves of a tree for a funnel. On the tree where we'd parked, a Blair Witchy looking tree hieroglyph in the silent forest gave the place a sense of total otherworldliness.

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Above: Posers, hieroglyph, leafy funnel

[flash=700,420]https://www.youtube.com/v/YfdzAYmROHc[/flash]
Progress up to the river... and PubQuiz's baptism in said river

Little did we know that the track was about to get trickier. After the river, the pitch of the trail began to increase and the packed-dirt singletrack gave way to rocks and ruts. We were struggling to clear technical sections fast enough to keep Mr. Bean from killing the bike, so he just blasted ahead, bouncing over the stones like they weren't even there.

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Above: Ajax coming up

We'd cleared many rises, but we finally met our match. The rocky track led to a very rutted climb that simply didn't look like we were going to be able to ride. I was having premonitions of us dragging each bike one at a time up the damn thing, not knowing if it would be just one of many to come. While Ajax and I were walking the steepest sections to see if there was a logical line, the Monster cans up the 690 and just starts riding. But he doesn't come straight at it. Instead he follows the contour a bit, out in the grass away from the trail, curving slowly up until he reached the top. It was a brilliant piece of work and saved our collective ass. One by one we followed his lead.

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Above: PubQuiz finding his hillclimb-line, the Monster ascends from his blazed trail

After the hillclimb, it wasn't long before we saw signs of life. First a few bee hives, then a field, and eventually a house or two. The single track became a double and the speed tripled as a result. We were all filled with a sense of accomplishment, and were being rewarded with a pretty decent return into Namanyere. There were a few muddy spots, some sandy patches and Monster managed to turn the 690's shift pedal into a pretzel on an unseen stump, but otherwise it was smooth sailing from there on. Mr. Bean, being able for the first time all day to see where he was going, exploded into action, flying down the track after Ajax and racing him all the way to town.

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Above: Fundi and the first hut, some mud and a bent shifter

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Above: My favorite photo from the trip: this guy's outfit either belongs in a museum or on a runway

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Above: Roads appear, fields and dust

[flash=700,420]https://www.youtube.com/v/4HH7vrRnEeM[/flash]

Spirits were high over lunch. Nobody expected we'd get into such interesting riding, and once we were in it, we all thought maybe we'd never get out again. It took several hours longer to get from the lake to Namanyere than if we' backtracked, but nobody was disappointed. That track was certain to be a major highlight of the trip.

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Above: Fundi and Bean celebrating in Namanyere

It was after three as we set off from Namanyere. We were behind schedule, so rather than get creative with the GPS, we set a course for Sumbawanga to make up some kms. It was 90 clicks of big dirt, but the sights along the way were lovely. The main road cuts along the top of a high plateau with views of hills hanging on the edges of the horizon on all sides. The road was a mess with construction equipment everywhere. In another two years it'll be just another slab.

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Above: Christianity on display, relics and recent

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Above: Afternoon pastoral scenes

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Above: Moving toward the sunset

We arrived near dusk, showered and filled up on beer and beef.

Plan for the next day: Descend the escarpment in search of the swinging bridge

Definitely stay tuned for that...
 
The day began like all the others: eating eggs. Spoiled from the Lake Shore Lodge, we thought we'd try to do better than hard-boiled. I was in the restaurant first and asked for fried eggs "Soft, don't flip them over". What I got, not surprisingly, was fried eggs durable enough to use for brake pads if they weren't so oily. Next up, Ajax, with his infinitely superior Swahili. The result? Same story: eggs you could play Frisbee with. Finally, Mr. Bean arrives. He's been in TZ so long, he has a special name for eggs sunny-side up: "macho ya ng'ombe" or "eyes of the cow". Result: Success! The eggs arrived absolutely wobbling with liquid yellow yolkiness. Ajax and I were equal parts jealous and impressed, but the first thing Mr. Bean does is ask if the guy can throw them back in the pan a bit longer... Benny Boom-Boom strikes again.

Breaks fasted, bikes loaded, we rode south out of Sumbawanga through an hour or more of construction zone. The previous day's adventure meant that now we needed to make up some time. Our plan was to slide down the escarpment into the Rift and see how far south we could get with the two ailing bikes. We still wanted to reach Lake Nyasa (Malawi) before returning to Mbeya.

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Above: Macho ya ng'ombe, Ajax and Bean on the big road out

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Above: Petrol station, hardware store, human vending machine

None of us relish the big dirt so it was a relief when Ajax pulled us off of it at last. The road down the escarpment was still fairly big, but it was twisty and dusty and afforded some stunning views of the valley below.

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Above: Sugarcane at the turnoff, Mr. Bean takes an easy lefthander

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Above: Dusty riding on the curvy escarpment road

As with other times we've come upon a switchbacked, dusty track descending a 3000 foot hillside, we basically just cruised on down. Easy does it. Nobody was racing. We were all just taking it in. The tricky part of course was to not get complacent and coolly slide your casual-assed self right off the edge somehow. Particularly treacherous were the concrete hairpin sections that have a nice thin layer of gravel on them. They'll take you out if not respected.

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Above: Snapshot from Google Earth (I count maybe 11 hairpins) and some views from thereabouts

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Above: Descending into the semi-arid landscape, PubQuiz as seen from above

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Above: Hey, now my high-beam works!?, Monster navigates a righthander

Stopping high above the valley floor, I could hear the other bikes - engines groaning in the distance. I knew they'd reached the bottom when the revs increased to a far-off scream and Dopplered away. We didn't have any tracks to follow, so we just stuck with the road we were on, even when it took us much farther east than we thought we needed to go. From years of this kind of trip, we know that sometimes you have to go wrong to get right. It was fesh fesh all the way: deep and grabby and completely unearthly.

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Above, some of the dust on the long valley road


< < < STOP > > >

Before you go any further, have a look at this video (it's worth it).

[flash=700,420]https://www.youtube.com/v/181n-S1VXCc[/flash]
Above: The footbridge at the end of the road

So needless to say, that was pretty crazy. Ajax and Bean had been over the Kamsamba Bridge in the past, but the sensation of wobbling across that many uneven planks on a suspension bridge that high and narrow built God knows when was pretty exhilarating. It set us up well for the remainder of the afternoon which, though basically just eating up kilometers on a dirt road had enough scenery and distance from the norm to be memorable.

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Above: The Kamsamba bridge from the other side

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Above: The Kamsamba bridge from the approaching side

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Above: The Monster

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Above: PubQuiz

Spirits high after the bridge crossing and heading in the right direction at last, we were screwing on the throttles and letting the dust fly. Still keen to make time, we spread out along the road and gave it stick. I stopped along the way to take a few shots of the scenery and whatnot, and enjoyed myself plenty while riding, despite the many nasty and invisible potholes and stones along the track.

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Above: Me in the sorghum, a stuck truck

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Above: Salt evaporation system, maybe?, FundiPhil rocking down the track

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Above: My XR400, the perfect African bike (this was before I discovered the XR650R  :snorting:)

The track wasn't the most amazing, but just being out in the bush where the trees are still tall and the people are just getting on with growing crops and such was invigorating, particularly as the afternoon sun took on its copper tone. Snippets of memory from the afternoon: badly painted lorries, leafless white-barked trees standing amid the dried and yellowing foliage of scrubbier species, thatched roofed houses and humble farms, sleepy villages without much to offer, and a funeral parade. Life, basically. Tanzania pura. That feeling of moving through a timeless scene that is best captured, I'm convinced (and I bet I'm not alone here), from behind the bars of a motorcycle.

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Above: White barked trees, thatched houses, ruined churches

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Above: PubQuiz's blue smoking Honda and the late afternoon oil top-up

The afternoon was snuffing itself out as we thundered into Mbozi. As with the approach to Sumbawanga, the construction outside town was in the most dusty and chaotic phase, so as soon as we were clear of it - and the very lively section of tarmac that led into town; a colorful explosion of salespeople and shoppers mingling along the road - we found a place for a drink to regroup. The day had been a success. We'd made good time and were well within reach of Lake Nyasa. It was time to find digs and call it a day.

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Above: Arrival in Mbozi, dusty faces, proof that PubQuiz probably did kill a chicken, and a Starbucks Coffee smallholder farm; now you know where your latte comes from

We located a guest house and ordered a round of beers and arranged chairs and tables out in the open among the resting bikes. It was quiet and lovely, shady and cool. And then, a distant clamor. A high-powered thunderstorm of a sound system was approaching. A moment later a pickup truck stacked with amps and blasting Swahili music rolled into the parking lot of our formerly tranquil watering hole, followed by several cars decorated with streamers, out from which piled a half dozen turquoise-clad bridesmaids and an equal number of much less festively dressed menfolk. It was a wedding party looking for a place to take their photos. And seemingly, in Mbozi, the hotel we'd chosen happened to be a prime spot for such activity.

So there we sat, beers in hand, dust on our faces from the ride, kit scattered about and motorbikes still cooling off from the day as the mob gathered and the show began. The portable DJ parked near enough to ensure that the music could be felt, not simply heard. Kids danced to the beat. The turquoise birds preened and arranged themselves around the bride in a series of stylish poses on the tiny grassy area where the hedges grew along the wallfence. It was good entertainment, but little did we know that audience participation was required. After a while we were asked to join them for a group shot. Only in Tanzania.

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Above: Bikers, beers, boom-boxes and bridesmaids

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Above: Dar Bikers add a bit of exotic flair to a Tanzanian wedding photo

Being incorporated into the wedding photos was a nice reversal of roles. I'm glad our ugly mugs are in an album somewhere in Mbozi and I hope our unaccountable presence there makes for a good story for the bride and groom later.

After the noise abated and the wedding moved on, we tucked into our dinner and relaxed. It was our penultimate day. The trip was winding down. It was almost a melancholy feeling until Ajax received an SMS from PhatBilly that was something to the effect of:

<< Been to the clinic in Dar. I'm all blue and black.
I broke a couple of ribs during the crash.
Got a very badly bruised bum and still can't feel anything there.
A lot of nerves run through that area apparently... >>

That put a smile on everyone's faces. (Ajax in particular.)

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Above: A fish head and a meathead

[flash=700,420]https://www.youtube.com/v/2jNqsJ0rWh8[/flash]
Above: a hodgepodge of fast riding, local color, road art and the wedding party

The plan for the next day: Ride through the cream of the Southern Highlands through fields and forest down to Lake Nyasa and back to Mbeya.

You've come this far, might as well stay tuned for the last day.
 
Osadabwa said:
@Herklass, @Rooi Wolf,

It seems like you think this RR is over. Not so. Another one coming your way now.  :snorting:

:sip: Hell no, never thought it was over, just commenting along the way, throw some more Bro.  :bueller:
 
The Mankonde Hotel had right by us. Heck, they had complimentary toothpaste and toothbrush in the bathrooms as well as a single-use Vaseline-like substance for moisturizing skin (one presumes) plus hot running water. I slept like the dead. In the morning though, I noticed that something was funny about the bathroom... apart from the fact that the toilet and the shower were in the same place, which is pretty common. My special waterfall tiles had been installed upside down. It boggles the damn mind.

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Above: Which side up?

I won’t go into breakfast. Suffice it to say, we had eggs. While masticating, we mapped out a monumental means to meander to Lake Malawi and back to Mbeya, momentarily meeting up at the eminently mystical Mbozi Meteorite and moseying through magnificent moorlands along the way. It was going to be a long day and probably not technically challenging since we were trying to make decent time and wouldn’t try to explore much, but it promised some of the most beautiful scenery and hilly, curvy roads of the trip.

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Above: Caution: Wide Load

Right outside Mbozi, the hills rose up and the richness of the soil became evident. It was a pleasure riding in the cool air up to the Mbozi Meteorite – the triviata of which PubQuiz managed to elucidate details as only he could:

“As any amateur meteorite hunter knows, your meteorites vary in value from $0.50 per gram up to about $50.00 per gram depending on composition and circumstance. The Mbozi is an “iron” meteorite which is worth much more than your “basic / common” ones. So, in theory this puppy is worth more than $0.50 per gram. Now the little brochure they gave us (well, they let us look at, since they only had one copy) said the Mbozi was estimated to weigh about 16 tons. So, there’s 1,000 grams in your standard kilogram, and 1,000 kilograms in a metric ton which works out to be… well a truck load of money, especially for dirt poor Africa.”

He went on: “The most amazing thing about the Mbozi though is the fact that it sits there – all 16 tons of above-average meteorosity – and but yet it is only a Tsh 10,000 ($6.25) fine for damaging or stealing part of the damn thing. It makes you wonder about the logic (or is it ignorance) of the Tanzanian caretakers.”

And he continued: “Interestingly Dr. D. R. Gratham of the Geological Society in 1930 used a hack-saw too [sic] cut out a specimen of about ten centimetres. This little operation took the good doctor ten sweaty-palmed hours. And now the piece is kept at the British Museum in London. Not sure if he paid his Tsh 10,000 fine though…”

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Above: 16 tons of heavenly body… five bikers and a beauty contestant (I’m looking at you, Monster… like a bikini-clad chick at an auto show for Pete’s sake. Leg all draped over the thing, hand caressing its intergalactic ferrous-ness. Damn!)

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Above: Dr. D.R. Gratham’s cut I presume? The view from the Mbozi meteorite

Having checked the Meteorite off of Mr. Bean’s bucket list (he was so excited), we made our way back out onto the roads while the shadows were still coming in longwise. The dirt roads were in good nick, if a bit rocky, and took us quickly up and around the topography affording us ever more attractive views of multicolored fields and patches of forest on the hillsides below.

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Above: Starting off up the hills

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Above: PubQuiz tops up oil… again, some kids in Sunday best, Mr. Bean making dust

The dry season was well underway so many of the crops had already been harvested, leaving behind a stubbly tan- and earth-toned patchwork behind. Some of the vegetable crops though were still in-situ, leaving bright emerald and lime polygons that seemed to have the vibrance and saturation levels turned up to +40. Combine that with the distant hills flirting in and out of view and the multitudes of people on their way to or from church and it was a lovely colorful morning ride.

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Above: Washing and watching

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Above: Horizon and junction

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Above: Picture postcard

Closing in on noon, as we creeped closer to Lake Niasa/Malawi, the ecology changed abruptly from high altitude crops to tropical ones with bananas and cocoa making an appearance. It was clearly an area that sees a lot of rain and was as fertile as any place on Earth. In one section, we passed through a sliver of pristine forest (a rarity) that showed itself to be every bit as impenetrable as the one in Bwindi, but probably hadn’t seen Gorillas in centuries. As I was thinking this, the clouds moved in and give the scene a misty quality, a visible touch of mystery and oldness.

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Above: 180 Degree junction, pristine forest

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Above: Banana views, vegetable plots and bikers

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Above: Maize and bananas and Cocoa oh my!

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Above: Bikers watching bikers looking lost

The sun was ducking the clouds like a prizefighter, but only managed to break into view for part of the trip down to the Lake. We cruised the corners and slid up and down the hills, not stopping much apart from the occasional junction. I took a lot of helmet cam of this area thinking it would capture the colors and bigness of it, but it’s a flop. I won’t waste your time and mine.

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Above: Decent bridge in high potential area

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Above: Taking in the scenery

By three or so, we reached the lakeshore at Matema. It’s the third country I’ve seen Lake Malawi from and I think it’s in contention for most beautiful view. With the tall hills dropping themselves directly into the water and the long beach lining the northern edge, it was definitely worth the effort to see.

Topical Current Event: A quirk of colonial madness has resulted in a funny turf-war here where Malawi claims ownership of the lake right up to the shoreline and Tanzania claims (sensibly) that they should share the lake’s abundance with Malawi and Mozambique – as is the custom everywhere else – stupid former white masters’ maps be damned. If Malawi has their way, Tanzanians washing in the lake will be trespassing. It seems the Warm Heart of Africa has a cold, bitter streak.

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Above: As close as I got to Malawi this trip...–didn'’t want to tick off Malawian immigration

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Above: Dar Bikers at the Matema Lodge

Having pitched up unannounced at the Matema Lakeshore Resort which is not really on the tourist circuit, I was astonished how quickly they managed to throw together some spaghetti bolognaises and that they could offer cold drinks. Quick service plus the long stretch of lovely beach was a big plus for Matema Lodge. I had a look at the rooms though… not exactly the Hyatt if you catch my drift, and a lot less rustic-African-quaintness than similar places usually offer.

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Above: Lake Malawi/Lake Nyasa views from Matema

Leaving Matema felt like the end of the trip. It was getting on to late afternoon and we still had a lot of riding to do to get to Mbeya before dark. Earlier in the journey, I wouldn’t have minded arriving after sunset, but over the course of the 2000 kilometers, both of my 55 W Baja Designs Headlights were dead due to shoddy connections. I didn’t much like the idea of riding blind into Mbeya.

We reluctantly set out and were retracing our steps a bit to get to Tukuyu when Ajax spied a smaller track heading off west that he wanted to explore (could be a shortcut). It was the width of a doubletrack, but surfaced like a decent dirt road, so not exactly a technical challenge but the bunch of us somehow got inspired and really raced through that section, totally heedless of the heavy foot and motorbike traffic along the way. We had a mini rally going through there with the lead places being fought for by Ajax and PubQuiz. While they were occupied with each other, I snatched the lead on an inside corner overtake that was pure brilliance I thought. Of course it was short lived. Then they wasted me on the straights.

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Above: Scenery and spectators for the rally

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Above: An un-registered bovine quadruped captured by my helmet cam’s 1 minute timer

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Above: The very moment before I embarrass PubQuiz and Ajax by snatching the lead on the inside

The little track wasn’t long, but it was memorable. After that, we needed to settle in and make up some kilometers, so we found the main dirt road and aimed for the tar. Inexplicably, at the junction where the dirt met the tar – right where the little triangle of dirt builds up from people turning left and right – there was a Tanzanian dude dressed in pegged jeans and what I suspect he thought was a hip T-shirt, lip synching and dancing while two other dudes filmed him. We rode right through his scene, engines roaring. For all I know we feature in his music video and are playing on Channel O right now. Why the hell didn’t I stop to get a photo? Why didn’t I stop to get an autograph?

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Above: The last of the dirt and the tar ribbon back to Mbeya

Naturally, the last 100 km were the hardest. We were tired and nobody relishes the tar. PubQuiz’s bike was now sucking down oil at a truly ridiculous rate and we were all wondering if it would make it back without melting down. The group dragged itself out into two groups that would blast along, stop, be overtaken by the other group and blast along again. Ajax said when PubQuiz, Bean and I came thundering in tight formation through the late evening light and quiet hills and fields it looked just like the riders of the apocalypse. By that point though, we were more interested in a hot shower and a cold beer than anything else. We had the throttles pegged.

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Above: The area near Tukuyu is truly gorgeous; if you go there, get off the tar awhile and explore.

I was surprised to find that Mbeya, a town I remember from the late 90s as having no ATM machines, was now sprawling and absolutely crawling with traffic. Darkness was upon us and Bean was hell-bent on getting to Utengule as fast as possible, so PubQuiz and I just hugged his tailpipe and prayed as he positively flayed traffic laws and common sense, cutting between lanes of traffic going both ways, ignoring streetlights and playing chicken with oncoming lorries.

It was a relief when we arrived alive. The shower was excellent and the beer tasted gold-plated. We were tired and satisfied from another excellent adventure… and already plotting our next one.

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Above: Me and my trappings, retired for the time being… until the next time

Cheers to the boys for another great ride, and thanks to all you ADVers (and cage-driving lurkers) who followed along.

Keep the rubber side down!
(I’m talking to you, Billy!)

Osadabwa
 
some awesome riding and very interesting narations :thumleft:

you guys sure did have an awesome time :thumleft: :thumleft:
 
Osadabwa said:
@Herklass, @Rooi Wolf,

It seems like you think this RR is over. Not so. Another one coming your way now.  :snorting:

Thank the riding gods that it wasn't over just yet!

Thoroughly enjoyed this read. 
 
:thumleft: :thumleft: :thumleft: thoroughly enjoyable,keep it coming
 
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