San Afrisco

The rest day in Maun was a nice one. I missed out on doing the paddle tour of the Okavanga Delta. I was too wiped from the previous day’s ride. I just wanted a day of vegetation, and to get some errands done. When people miss things on the tour, the common thing is to say to them: “Well, you need something to come back for.” I like that. I know that I will come back to Africa some day.
The joy in Maun was that the ATM worked. I took out a large sum, even though we would be in Namibia in a couple of days. I just wanted to be sure that I at least had something to exchange.
The next day I started my ride with Evelijn. We chatted the whole way, keeping our minds off of the repetitive scenery. As we approached lunch, I realized that Eric was on sweep. I started to gripe about him – I have no idea why, but the man hates me. He is always making racist comments about natives to me, he makes fun of my riding, and every day he says to me “Are you going on the truck today? Why aren’t you on the truck today? Wow, you’re not crying today. You should toughen up. You should get in shape!” I’m not the only one he’s said this stuff to. The shitty thing is he’s staff. I’m actually paying him to treat me like shit. After venting to Evelijn, I rode in, made up my sandwich, and as I was eating, Eric turned to me and said “Are you going to get on the truck today?” I told him to f___ off, and we proceeded to gat into a heated discussion. I realized this was ridiculous, jumped on my bike and sped off.
I was so angry, and then I saw the turn-off for the San museum. Eric, the hurtin’ Albertan, disappeared from my thoughts, and I was brought back to first year university, where my big dream was to go into Linguistic Anthropology and study the San people. Said to be the oldest tribe in Africa, the San look incredibly Asian, only with very large bottoms – the kind you could set a drink on. The people’s faces reminded me of Vietnamese people. The museum told that Asian groups moved into Africa and populated the continent from there. Interesting. Everyone I talk to has a different story on what is the currently accepted “Cradle of Humanity”. I would tend to believe Asia over Africa, but then again, I’m just another voice.
John was at the museum, and as we sat about having a cold juice and looking at the corn crickets (absolutely THE ugliest insect on the planet), he turned to me and said: “You know who I can’t stand? Eric. I just had this big argument at lunch with him again because he once again started telling me how shit Americans are.”
Well, at least it wasn’t just me.
I rode the rest of the way with Mara, the Lonely Planet writer for Russia. It’s been fun practicing my Russian with her. I ditched her at the end to go into town and get myself strawberry shortcake though. By the end of the trip, new friendships come second to food. And everything comes second to strawberry shortcake. The funny thing was, coming into town, every building had a solar panel on it. Solar panels are everywhere in Africa, but nothing compares to how many are in Botswana.
At dinner they announced that the time trial the next day would be a World Team time trial. Because there are so many Canadians on the race, we were split into seniors and juniors, and because some countries are so much stronger than the rest (South Africa, and then a tie between Britain and Holland), there would be handicaps. There were a ton of additional tasks that had to be done so that even the slow riders didn’t feel left out.
The next morning was a flurry of entertainment, with people having to swap clothes, sing national anthems, pick wildflowers, race, and take funny pictures. For our group shot we staged an accident. It had a double benefit in that team Canada senior stopped to help us! heh heh. The best picture contest was won by the senior canucks, for a photo titled “Three Asses.” Two donkeys and Ernest’s full moon! (Ernest is our resident 69 year-old, and one of my favourite riders).
The one casualty of the contest was Peter (the young)… he lost his EFI because his drive train seized during the race. The lunch truck passed, but since everyone was riding there was no one to give him a bike. He missed out on 10km of the whole trip. Poor guy.
I rode with him in the afternoon. We played road games to keep our minds off of how boring the ride was. We named every country beginning with every letter in the alphabet, and promptly discovered just how poor our African geography was.
The following day we were to do the 207km. It also ended in the Namibian border. No one was sure if the border had a closing time, though rumours were circulating, since the only maps we had said the border closed at 6pm. I decided to get a room so that I wouldn’t have to deal with my tent or my locker. We would be hitting the road an hour earlier the next day. Imagine riding your bike for 200km starting at 5am. It didn’t even sound pleasant to me.

Planet Baobob

This morning I rode for a bit, but then when the truck passed, I got on. The rash on the inside of my legs is getting larger, and every pedal is agony. We passed three giraffes on the truck, and then where we were meant to have lunch we saw a poached elephant. It’s head was cut off – people buy the skulls for decoration. In Sudan you couldn’t smell the trains of dead camels on the roadside as the desert dessicated them, but here in Botswana the tropical heat encourages life in all odours, and it smelled for kilometers. After lunch I started riding again. It hurt, but the wind was not too bad, and the scenery was something else. As I rode I brushed my hand through the pink, bushy-topped grass. Ahead of me a car was stopped
by an elephant. I kept my distance, but zoomed in with my camera. I dodged the fuzzy caterpillars, lizards and millipedes that covered the road, knowing that the first vehicle through would take them out by the thousands.
I passed the Foot and Mouth checkpoint. We ran our tires through a disinfectant, wiped our shoes off on the chemical mat, and passed through. The truck had to hide the meat on it, as any meat gets confiscated at the checkpoint. In Nata I found the fellows who had done two days in one. They were relaxing by the pool with a beer. We stayed there, swimming and drinking, until dinner time at the camp.
The following morning was meant to be 130km, but I only did 100. Not because I jumped on the truck, but because we stopped at this crazy little place called Planet Baobob. For those who don’t know, Baobobs are typical African trees, and they are also some of the largest in the world. This particular hotel had one in the back about the size of a large mansion.
I got up in the morning and off to an early start with Erin. We did bike yoga on the way – put your ankle on the cross-bar of your bike and push your knee down to open your hips. The arms stretches are easy, though in the freezing cold morning air they burn. Erin and I keep a great pace together. Plus we chat the whole way, so it makes the ride a lot more interesting. When the dinner truck passed she got
on, as she had her duties to attend to, but we got a fair distance before it caught up with us. Afterwards I was passed by tons of bikes. My moral is low. I feel
like everyone is getting stronger and I’m weakening. My mood was switched around by lunch, where instead of the usual – cucumber/tomato/cheese, tuna or egg salad (they go on rotation) – they had prepared omelette sandwiches for us.
We rode the next 10-20km to Planet Baobob, a hotel marked by a 30 foot sculptural termite mound with a planet on top, covered in baobobs. Across the road is a gigantic ardvark. A few of the riders actually missed this.
We stopped for a quick break. The place was styled in 60’s African décor. Archival posters, covers from a famousAfrican magazine, an old Jetson-style screenprint advertizing L’afrique Noire, beautiful carved masks being used as lampshades along the building. We sat in circular cow-hide upholstered basket chairs drinking tea and eating chocolate cake. We looked on the pool with envy and went out to discover the 4000-year-old baobob tree (they grow a meter in diameter for every year). There were hammocks. John and I took them over, and were shortly joined by Simon. That’s where our plan started. If the others could do a double header, surely we could add 30km to our trip. It would mean riding just over 210 tomorrow, but we’re riding into a rest day. Surely we can do that. Both of us had ridden those distances before, and with a tailwind like today? We could probably get it done in 6hours. Surely we could.
Back in the restaurant we were greeted by the sweep. Alex, the nurse, thought it was a great idea. Paul and Eric discouraged it. They kept harping on how there would be no rest stop for us the next day. Or lunch. Or anything. In the end they had no real say. We stayed. The room was a funky little mud hut with two twin beds on either side. There were even towels! There was a little dining table in between
with a water jug and glasses, and on the back wall there was the smooth, rounded mud-shelving, made at the same time as they made the walls of the hut, with tin-plates hand-painted with red flowers. The cabin was just like the ones we had seen with the witch-doctor, though the shower and toilet were en-suite. We swam in our bike shorts, and sat up with some overlanders, drinking cheap wine by the campfire. We snoozed under the baobob, and just had an amazing day away from the crew.
The next morning we started the long trek to Maun. It was meant to be 210km, but by the time we finished it was well beyond that. We got up, had a massive, English-style breakfast, and went to the store 10km away from our hotel. Their only stock consisted of white bread, animal crackers, pop and water. We bought a loaf, a bag of cookies, 12 litres of water and two gingerales. The ride was excruciating. We had a headwind the whole day. There was nothing to see. Field after endless field. Not a single animal.
I was unhappy. John and I started singing tunes from the 90s. Only the baddest of the worst. That made our journey that much easier. My sugar level had fully depleted by the time we got to town. On the road we realized that we had no idea where camp was. We got into the city and saw a white man on a bike. We thought he was one of ours, but were wrong. He had seen our crew up by the Croc Farm Lodge. We
went to all of the lodges in that area. Then I emailed Toronto while John called all of the other lodges in town. He got the right one, we ordered a cab, and within half an hour we were sitting poolside, eating buffet, and shortly thereafter sleeping in our tents. Everyone else stayed up and partied, but I just wanted to be unconscious.

There Is No Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency

What to do with two days off? This was our second and last rest day. Since there was no possibility of rafting, I signed up for kayaking. Peter joined me in that, and it was our guide, two regular tourists and us. I felt bad for the guide. The others on the tour were an overweight Frenchman and his girlfriend who was, let’s just say “very delicate”. For every three of our paddles they took ten. The guide was having a rough go of keeping us together.
We rode past hippos, keeping quiet so that they wouldn’t charge us. Occasionally we slapped the paddle in the water to alert them to our presence. We didn’t want one to accidentally approach us. Birds flew overhead, and we drifted down the Zambezi, between Zambia and Zimbabwe. It turned out the others were only there for the half-day, and so after lunch we were on our own. We rode on and realized that they time the whole trip for relaxed tourists, and so after a few times of our guide catching up to us, getting us to slow down, we chilled out and barely paddled the rest of the way. The closer we got to the falls, the faster the river anyhow. We drifted past elephants grazing. The guide told us of how animals sometimes get caught in the current and get pulled over the falls. He and many others once dragged out a hippo and feasted on it afterwards. We went past the tourist area and he told us that last week, because of the height of the river (it was at the highest point on record in ages), one of the big paddle wheelers came off its moorage (I didn’t quite understand how), and then started drifting down the river. Someone saw it and they jumped in a motorboat and chased it down the river, managing to get it tied onto their boat. Unfortunately the rope snapped and the boat went over the falls.
Our guide also told us stories of Gnami-Gnami, the river god. In the ‘50’s they built a dam, but Gnami-gnami got angry because his wife was on the other side, and so he destroyed the dam to be with her. When they rebuilt the dam years later it lasted, because Gnami-Gnami had rejoined his wife on the other side.
The next morning was very exciting! The start of our penultimate stage. BOTSWANA!
It was an easy day. Only 80km, a few hills, some headwinds, but such a short day that it was barely noticeable. We had to cross on a ferry, and the line-up of trucks was unbelievable. Trucks have to wait for up to a week to get across the border. Fortunately overlanders get priority (they pay dearly for the privilege), and so our trucks flitted past all of the frustrated truckers, the ones who hadn’t gone off to visit their local prostitutes.
As you cross the border you can pick up handfuls of free condoms for customs. It is estimated that around 50% of children in Botswana are born with AIDS. It’s also one of the richest countries and most stable countries in Africa, thanks to their post-colonial discovery of diamonds. Its dollar is doing better than the South African Rand. We were shocked to see streetlights.
Most of us signed up for an evening sea-fari, where we glided down the river watching hippos, kudus, oryxes and many other antelope-like creatures, and then we sat back and watched an elephant bathing and eating, just meters in front of us. The sunset was beautiful, and we went to sleep listening to the sound of elephants, hippos and hyenas. Some brave souls in our group were headed off the next day to do a double-header. 310km! They’re nuts.
The human ones in our group woke up the next morning to a simple 160km ride. It was incredibly beautiful, but they had lied about the tailwinds. I rode the first half alone. A troupe of baboons crossed the road in front of me. No matter how many times this happens, I’ve never gotten jaded to it. It’s so beautiful to see them nudging along their young, slightly resembling school patrollers. To my right I heard a branch snap. An elephant was eating breakfast. That put me on alert for the rest of the day, but until lunch the only animals I saw were vultures. Paul caught up to me at one point. I had to laugh because the night before he had lectured us all on the dangers of elephants. “Do not approach them, do not take any pictures if you happen upon them at the roadside.” Those were his words last night, but this morning he came up to me telling me that he had had a pretty huge adventure. He passed by three elephants, right on the side of the road. He, of course, pulled out his camera, and the minute he got the elephants in the frame, the bull’s ears started to rustle. He knew to get out of there, but it was to late, the elephant, and then mama and kid started to charge him. He was scared, but at the same time was exhilarated by how cool it was, and started trying to take picks over his shoulder. When he almost lost control, he realized what a stupid mistake he was making, put the camera in his pocket, and jetted.
I rode through the tall grasses, looked at the distant acacia trees which converged miles ahead into a forest, and then diverged once again into tall grass fields. When in the grass fields I thought about what great lion territory this was, and when in the acacia trees I thought of what great leopard terrain it was. Millipedes and beetles covered the road, and I would see the occasional flattened snake, though nowhere near the amount I saw in Zambia.
I crossed into fields of millet, ripe red millet on the right, fresh green millet on the left, making everything look like an impressionist painting.
After lunch I joined up with John. We chatted for ages, until we heard a crack on our left. It was a giraffe that we startled. It ran with us for quite a while, feet first and then the waving rebound of its neck.
We stopped for a “coke stop” which have now, thankfully, turned into juice stops. Not the wonderful Ethiopian style juice, but juice in cans. Since we have returned to “civilization” coke comes in far-too-huge bottles (NAmerican size), out of plastic, not glass, and juice is available in cans, not fresh squeezed. I visited with Ernest, and he told me about his third wife, who’s ashes he scattered at Victoria Falls. When he and his ex-girlfriend broke up, they threw a singles dinner. It was a five-course meal, and everyone was set up in couples to make one of the courses together. After a few platonic dates with the woman he was set up with, he realized he was in love with her. “In my relationship with her I could have spent an hour, an afternoon, a month or a year with her and it would never be too much.”
After Zambia there seem to be a lot of complaints about it being too boring here, but I find it to be so beautiful.

Fly Me to the Moon

We went for a174km today. The distances are getting harder not physically but mentally. Zambia is filled with the sight of tall grass and dead corn. Every once in a while we’ll pass a tobacco plantation for interest. So the days are spent with thoughts of home, thoughts of stories, and thoughts of Rob. He left me with a few things to worry about on the last email, and small worries become obsessions which travel into a thousand different outcomes. Good outcomes are breezed over, since negative outcomes mean getting to strategize and think out ways to deal with the negatives. It’s all about killing time. And the pedals turn round and round.
The fact that we are right in the middle of the hump is obvious. People are antsy. Talk about home has already started and there are such mixed emotions everywhere. With this much time on our hands, all we can think about is the things we are inspired to do when we return. People talk about how when you return you are quickly reinstated into the hum-drum of the day-to-day, but it’s not entirely true. Trips like these inspire a billion ideas, and generally you wind up following through with at least one or two. So there is excitement at the idea of getting to start on it.
We reached Choma, a little town with a museum dedicated to the Tonga people. It was very small, but I picked up a few souvenirs and learned about the cultural structure of the tribe. I then found internet and found out that all of my worries were for nothing, and that life back home was indeed going on without me.
In the evening I chatted with Henry, the man who started the TDA. He was from the former Tchekoslovakia, and had worked since he was very young, starting out as a sheppard in Isreal. He co-founded CPAR (an aid organization) with another doctor, his own background being in engineering, and then moved on to other NGOs in Africa and the Middle East. At some point he dabbled in film making, and then started on the idea of making cheap, durable bikes for Africans. He partnered with another man who then backed out when he realized that it wasn’t going to mean instant profit. What did remain of that idea was the promotional strategy they had. They were going to have people ride the bikes across Africa in the world’s longest race. In the end, it morphed into the Tour d’Afrique. Our camp that night was a small dirt road that ran parallel to the highway, but fortunately there weren’t many cars driving through the night.
The next morning we had a short 164 km to get to Livingstone, where we would have two rest days in a row. The ride was awful. the morning was uphill with a headwind. I have a rash on the inside of my thighs which is spreading daily, and the pain from that is increasing. I’ve lost feeling in my right hand. It works mainly as a blunt instrument, but I am having a hard time doing things like using pens. Today my head was filled with thoughts of things that annoy me back home.
After lunch was construction, and where everyone else seemed to have been able to dodge back onto the paved road, people kept stopping me and sending me back onto the alternative road – a dodgy, corrugated, dirt road. It was hell. I got back onto the main roads when the lunch truck passed, but it was hot with countless potholes and another 80km to go. They thought there were water stops, but there weren’t.
People were in agony. Many of us ran out of water, myself included. Everyone got pissed off at the staff when we got in. I was glad that I was only one voice in the many. In the evening most left for the booze cruise, but I was far more interested in seeing the moonlight waterfalls at Victoria Falls. It only happens on the full moon, and they open the falls for three evenings. It was amazing. The falls are also fuller than they have been in a long time. all of the South African were amazed at their power – normally they had only seen them at a trickle. Some people were upset because the flooding meant that there would be no rafting. I was originally, but then I opted to go up in an ultralight to see the falls from above.
At first I started off over the nature reserve, seeing hippos, giraffes and elephants from above. the whole valley was filled with water, and entire islands were sunk. Suddenly the river falls off the edge of the world into a snaking canyon that goes on for ever. The Victoria falls need to be seen from above to admire their true magnificence. The nicest thing about an ultra-light is the sheer
exposure. You have the seat you are in, and a few mechanisms around you, but basically it feels like you are out there flying on your own. I would have loved to have been up there for hours, but 15 minutes seemed like an eternity.
The rest of the day was far more normal. I went to a mall, did internet, had lunch, and then a marching band showed up with American-style cheerleaders, which lead into tribal dancers who had the same feel as American Fancy-Dancers, dressed in their loincloths and sparkly plastic beads. It resulted in dancing and drumming in the
parking lot. I partnered up with Peter for day off food (now that we were hitting more westernized area, this was becoming more easy and restaurant food was becoming more expensive). The rest of the day was filled with pool lounging and chatting.