Unpaved national highway A104

We expected Africa to have bad roads, and today we cycled on one (though we could have taken an all-paved route through Tanzania).  Traffic was much lighter than expected on the unpaved national highway A104 from Iringa to Dodoma, Tanzania’s capital.  An hour might pass between vehicles passing us, and they passed slowly due to the bone-jarring washboard surface.  I should have suspected how bad it was when people referred to it as “the shortcut”;  implying that driving more than twice as far on paved roads is the preferable way to go.  Though the road descended gradually from 1600m to 800m we rarely exceeded 15 kph, a speed we could have tripled had the road been paved.  At 5 pm we arrived tired and thirsty at Izazi, the first village in 35 km just as I got my third flat tire of the day.  Julie and I are sleeping on thin mattresses in separate rooms with dusty mosquito nets that I hope will protect me from the many spiders on the walls.   The next day we realized that only 12 km further we could have stayed in a larger town with electricity and a choice of three nicer-looking guest houses.

Karashi is a Masai cyclist.

Cyclists hauling big loads near Iringa.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 00:07 and is filed under David's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.