Julie would rather push her bike through an open sewer than ride on a busy highway without a shoulder.

The weather is getting cooler (15-20C) and misty as we reach higher elevations again (Nairobi is at 1600m). We feel like we’re cycling in a state of grace as our abused inner tubes continue to hold air. If they can make it to Nairobi we should be able to find a good quality bike shop. We knew we’d meet California cyclist Bill Mitchell here; who we first met in Mozambique, then again in Malawi. There is also a Chinese cycling couple staying at the same hostel, and Ernani from Italy, who’s been cycling for three years.

We are at a crossroads in Nairobi. The Ethiopian embassy issues visas only for entering Ethiopia via the airport in Addis Ababa, not by land from Kenya. We tried applying for visas at the Sudan embassy, but the receptionist frowned when we turned in our applications along with our US passports. “It would be better if you had a different passport” she said.

The other cyclists here could not find a good bike shop in Nairobi; and after a week of looking we had almost given up hope until we met Cyrus Gitonga. He stopped to admire my Cruzbike downtown in front of the White Rose drycleaners and said that he was a cyclist, too. We asked him “Where’s a good bike shop?” and found out about the Trek bike shop in Karen, 15k away.

Jue Sheng, Bill Martin, D & J, and Zhou Li at Milimani Backpackers.

Update on 9/Oct

Julie bought new bike shoes and gloves, while I now have new high-quality and narrower 26 x 1.5 tires.  Julie replaced both her rims with Alesa double wall rims; and we finally replaced Julie’s front tire (a Tioga City Slicker) with over 13,000 km on it, though it may still be good for a thousand more. Nairobi is the first place this trip that we’ve needed to go to embassies. All through Latin America we were able to get our visas at the border; and also in Africa until now. We are moving on after 10 days in Nairobi without any visas yet, nor onward plane ticket. But we do have a plan. We’ll continue cycling north in Kenya, across the equator to latitude 4° N. Then we’ll take a bus back to Nairobi and fly to Abidjan, Ivory Coast. We’ll take a bus along the coast and a ferry across the Cavally River to Harper, Liberia (also 4° N). Julie and I will bike a few days on the bad Liberian roads to visit Buah, the village Julie lived in for two years, thirty years ago. We’ll cross the border back to Ivory Coast to continue cycling on paved roads heading east to Ghana, then north to Burkina Faso and Mali before turning west to Senegal. We’ll follow the Atlantic coast north from Senegal through Mauritania and Western Sahara, which is now considered to be part of Morocco (at least on the Michelin map). We intend to end our African odyssey in Morocco at the Straits of Gibraltar (plans subject to change).

We noticed that people do seem to be more aggressive in Kenya. I took a photo of the first camel we’ve seen in Africa and the man tending it got angry and demanded payment.

The first camel we've seen in Africa.

I have paid for photos of people, but I would not pay for the camel.  It does bother me that pulling out a camera changes our interaction with others.  I become a tourist who wants something from them, and most people expect to be paid.  Near the remote Maasai boma on the savanna when Julie and I were separated, I asked a girl tending goats for a photo. “Naomba kupiga picha?” I asked in Swahili.  She asked for a thousand shillingi ($.75), the going rate among the Maasai.  I’d negotiated a fee of $.50 with Longkishu (brushing his teeth with a twig) and the girl had agreed to $.30 when two boys approached us.  The older one (maybe 15) carried a spear, and the younger one (maybe13) become aggresive with me.  He seemed to think that he needed to take me to the boma to see his papi, maybe for permission to travel through their territory.  I’d already been there to get directions, but he put his hand on my handlebars to prevent me from leaving.  I wondered what the lad with the spear would do if I pushed the younger one away, and took off.  I tried to be friendly by asking his name.  “Kwa nini?” (why?) he asked as he tried opening my Bikebins, wondering what treasures he might get from me. I got off and slowly walked my bike to a firm patch of ground that I could pedal on, then hopped on the bike and pedalled away as he ran along side, smiling.  I wonder now if negotiating the fee for a photo turned me into a foolish tourist with deep pockets, spending money meaninglessly.

I spent an hour applying a dozen patches to our three flat tubes, before decided to put a new tube on my front tire.  Besides the punctures from thorns, the tubes have abrasion leaks from being pressed between the rim and tire while we pushed the bikes with flats.  I’m worried about Julie’s rear tire which needs a long-stem valve on the tube to reach through the hole on an aero rim.  We have no more spare tubes for that rim.  I hope this tube will make it to Nairobi.  We took a relaxing 37k day to stay here just across the Kenya border after cycling 3,300 km in two months through Tanzania.  We spent an average of $14 a night for lodging; but that split between an average of $20 a night in the tourist areas around Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar and only $10 a night in the rest of Tanzania.  We finally toasted beers to our good fortune and ate our first hot meal in three days.

Fixing a flat in Tinga tinga (yesterday).

“Karibu Tanzania!” (Welcome to Tanzania) was a phrase we heard again and again. David and I loved Tanzania. We were witness to and were treated with an old fashioned politeness that even Kenyans comment is a part of their neighbor’s psyche. Several observations stand out as differences to our experience in Malawi and Mozambique. There was a lot more truck traffic, hauling goods from town to town. More buses took people from place to place. Affordable guesthouses, fancy and not so fancy, were in almost every town, catering to Tanzanians, who generally traveled for business, conferences, or family matters (tourist travel is considered a waste of time…in fact the word for tourist in Swahili means ‘aimless traveler’). We had breakfast more often with locals in our hotels than in any country in Africa thus far. Towns and cities were bustling with business being done. We enjoyed the fastest, cheapest and most available Internet since South America in many of the larger towns. Everywhere that fruits and vegetables could be grown, women in small markets along the road were selling. Although like in Mozambique and Malawi, most people live on very little money per day, Tanzanians seemed more prosperous than their neighbors.

My favorite experience cycling was along the gravel road through the center of the country. While it was one of the worst road surfaces we had been on since southern Bolivia, I very much enjoyed the villages and our conversations with people. It wasn’t an area tourists frequented, so we were treated differently. As Swahili was more widely spoken than English, especially in the villages, we needed to learn words in this language. Both Swahili and English are the national languages. Tanzania’s first president at Independence, Julius Nyerere, established free primary education for all children and mandated Swahili be the language of instruction. English was taught and used in the secondary schools where parents needed to pay fees, so not everyone was able to learn English. Tanzania, like most African countries, is made up of many different tribes with at least as many different languages. Swahili was a trading language developed along the coast between Arab, European, and African traders. Nyerere’s policy made it easier for everyone to communicate in a language already familiar to many and it unified the country. Perhaps because of this, Tanzania has avoided tribal problems that have been common with its neighbors.

It was along this road we came to Bukulu where the guesthouse was unfinished. As it was late in the day, the owner of the guesthouse, Mr. Vincent, brought us home to stay the night with his family. After being fed great food cooked by his wife, Ms. Mary, in the front room, the table was taken out, chairs were pushed to the side and the TV was uncovered. Neighbors came in and took places in the chairs. Young children, perhaps as many as 15, crowded in spaces on the floor or on the laps of their elders. The generator was started. One of Mr. Vincent’s teen-age sons set up the cable and the 8:00 news in Swahili came on. Everyone watched for that half an hour, including very well behaved children who whispered quietly once-in-awhile. After the news, the electricity and generator was turned off, the TV was put away, the table was brought back in and people went home. David and I got ready for bed behind the front room’s curtain, and the teen-age sons and their cousins worked out their algebra problems together in hushed tones at the table around the kerosene lamp as we fell asleep. My mind was brought back pleasantly to my Murray math classes. In the morning we were treated to chapati and a wonderfully spiced tea. Though we expected to pay for our food and accommodation, we were asked not to. Mr. Vincent wanted us to experience true Tanzanian hospitality. We later sent back an enlarged photo of his 92 year-old mother to thank them which hopefully they received. I felt privileged to have been invited to their home.

Another of my favorite Tanzanian experiences was visiting several of the sites of early humans. People and their ancestors have inhabited this area for millions of years. All of us on the planet, all homo sapiens, came out of Africa’s Rift Valley, some believe as little as 70,000 years ago. We saw hundreds of stone tools used by homo erectus as long ago as 200,000 years ago in a site along a river bed. We visited Oldupai Gorge where a cast of footprints cemented in volcanic ash of three hominids was found dating 3.5 million years ago, showing distinctly for the first time that these animals in this era walked erect like today’s humans, different from apes. These lessons in early human history gave me a very real sense that we are all brothers and sisters on this not so very big earth, one that can be circumnavigated by a 53 year old woman on a bicycle in a few years.

The jeep track heads across the savanna towards Longido peak (2629m).

Longkishu brushing his teeth with a twig.

Drinking tea in Tinga Tinga.

We struck camp before dawn and saw zebras crossing the road nearby. Last night monkeys meandered and antelope roamed close to the tent. Julie did not sleep well worrying about lions. She was not convinced by what I’d read: that since it is a rite of passage for Maasai men to kill a lion, almost no lions are left in Kenya; which was confirmed later in the day by Maasai men on a motorcycle. We rode back to the shop in Tinga Tinga for tea and biscuits. The tea cost us 7 cents each, no charge for refills.

We ventured out on the jeep track to Longido and soon became separated. Since the main jeep track becomes rutty with loose sand, many alternate tracks deviate on either side. Julie chose to take an alternate route and that was the last time I saw her for seven hours. I never panicked, though getting separated on the savanna is more serious than getting separated in a shopping mall. I waited for her where the tracks rejoined after half a kilometer. When she did not respond to honks on my loud air horn, I figured she went on ahead and I followed a fresh bike track for 1.4 km. That was the first mistake in a comedy of errors. While I was going back and forth looking for her on the alternate track, she continued on ahead on the main track. I then backtracked six kilometers to Tinga Tinga, hoping she did too, while she continued on towards Longido.

Later I asked a priest driving a pickup if he’d seen Julie and he said she was just 4k ahead and told him to give me the message that she was going on to Longido, which is the same message I’d left in Tinga Tinga. I felt elated that she was okay and we’d soon be reunited. However, after following her tracks for about 8k my heart sunk when her tracks turned around. I assumed that she went back to take a fork in the road that may have been a route to reach the Nairobi highway further south of Longido. I thought I’d continue on to Longido, and head south if I found a track that would intercept that route. I soon turned south on just such a track, but never intercepted a well trodden route. I asked for directions at a remote Maasai boma in this sparsely populated savanna.

After cycling back and forth, uncertain which way to go, I trusted Julie to make it to Longido without me. After rejoining the main route to the north, I spotted the track of someone with bike cleats. It had to be Julie, who is now walking her bike as the road surface is getting worse. We reunited at 3:30 pm, and celebrated by eating our emergency can of tuna while I fixed flat tires on both our bikes. At this point I had cycled 70 km and Julie 40k. The remaining 15k could have been done before dark if we’d been able to ride, but had to get off and push through the loose sand. We ran out of water as the sun set, but our spirits lifted upon seeing the head of a giraffe sticking up above the acacia trees.

As it got dark we could see the distant lights of Longido and headlights moving on the Nairobi Highway. We are both thirsty and exhausted and now have three flat tires. Our tires have picked up hundred of thorns and I’d been pumping up the slow leaks, but now my pump is not working well. Though it’s not wise to push a bike with a flat, just making it to the highway was our single-minded goal. With just a quarter of a km to go, Julie’s rear tire came off the rim and the tube wrapped around the sprockets. Surprisingly, the tube was not destroyed and we made it to the freshly-paved highway; but could not pedal on it because of our flats.

The nearly-full moon rose and we soon came to a highway construction camp where we promptly drank two liters of water each. Though we’d fantasized about drinking cold soda or beer and sleeping in town after eating a well-earned meal; camping with the construction crew and eating a can of sardines was good enough after being told that town was still 20k away. We now have plenty of water, and each other.

Celebrating our reunification with tuna & biscuits.

Julie's track.

A Maasai youth driving cattle down the jeep track.

Candelabra trees near Tinga Tinga.

We started the day with Arusha as our destination, but after cycling 25k on the busy highway chose to turn off on the road that goes between Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru. My map shows that it’s paved all the way to the Nairobi Highway, though more detailed maps we’ve seen locally indicate that it degenerates into a jeep track. Upon arriving at the Maasai village of Tinga Tinga we inquired about lodging at the only shop and were taken to Olpopongi Cultural Village, located 3 km out of town. We knew it would be too expensive for us, having enquired at a travel agency in Moshi and decided that $150 a night is beyond our budget; but that’s where the locals wanted us to stay. I thought maybe we could work something out. However, when we got there, the manager said it would cost us $300 to spend the night; so we politely said good-bye and headed for Ndarakwai Camp, 7 km away. There they wanted to charge us $60 for a campsite, so we turned back one kilometer and stealth-camped just off the road next to zebra and elephant dung. This is the first time we have camped in Africa.

Dry elephant dung on my BikeBins at our stealth camp.

Today is the full moon and the Equinox (Fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring here in the Southern).  At midday we first glimpsed the snows of Kilimanjaro. After checking back in to the Umoja Lutheran Hostel and eating at our favorite vegetarian restaurant, we climbed up to the fourth floor Summit Bar at the Kindoroko Hotel to enjoy a beer while watching the sunset on Kilimanjaro and the moon rise.

Our view of Kili from the Summit Bar three weeks ago.

Compare the snow on Kilimanjaro from the beer label...

...with the receding snowline caused by global warming.

We almost stayed at the Kindoroko Mountain Lodge, recalling that it had an internet cafe from a snack break we took there three weeks ago. We’re willing to pay more for a lodge with internet (they charge 50,000 shillingi or $33);  but they do not have wireless and the internet cafe closes at 5 pm so we would not have much time to use it.  Though tired, we took our chances in this nearby town and found a very nice place, the Angela Inn, that cost only 15,000 ($10), breakfast included.  The difference is that the Angela Inn is not for Wazungu (white people) and the Kindoroko is.   $33 is not too much for us, but 15,000 shillingi is a lot for Tanzanians.  At breakfast we enjoyed a nice conversation with a couple of educators doing research in nearby villages.

The Usambara Mountains outside Korogwe.

I replaced my rear tire in Mombo. I noticed the badly-worn tread and slight bulge with 20k to go and made it to the closest bike shop only by the grace of God. I do carry a spare, but like to save it for emergencies, which this could have become at any minute. The no-name-brand or country-of-origin tire had only lasted for 1400 km. The same (no-brand) tire on the front was only good for 700 km. They were the only 26 inch tires I could find in Arusha that were not knobby 26 x 2.125 tires. I bought a knobby replacement for the front in Tunguu, Zanzibar and one for the rear in Mombo for $4 each. A nice tailwind is making our climb inland easier than it was descending this same road with a headwind. The rain two weeks ago hid our view of the mountains along the road that we can now enjoy.

Harvesting sisal to make rope, twine, & dartboards.

We decided not to go to Mombasa, Kenya. A couple of Finnish guys who were just there said “It’s a shithole”. We also read that the highway from Mombasa to Nairobi is very busy, with trucks hauling loads from the main port to the big city. Thirdly, the road is unpaved from Tanga to the border of Kenya, with uncertain accomodations on the way. So we’ll backtrack all the way to Moshi, then on to Nairobi, and have another chance to see Kilimanjaro.