18/04/19-24/04/18
Country: Tanzania
Distance: 204 km / 127 mi
Elevation: 2,410 m / 7,907 ft
This week started with me throwing (apparently) the worse insult at Dan of the whole trip. He really didn’t let it go. We’d cycled from Longido to the west side of Kilimanjaro. It was a great off-road ride with Africa’s highest peak in full view the whole way. But disaster struck with 12 km to go. Komoot has a really bad habit of routing you on roads that just don’t exist – we’ve actually used it less and less throughout Asia and Africa for this very reason. Yet for some reason we’d used it for this ride and it had gotten us lost.
We ended up having to push the bikes a good 8 km on faint, non-existent tracks through fields. We basically followed a compass direction, before we found finally something that resembled a regularly used track in the dirt. It ended up being a 64 km day, which is 20 km longer than we find comfortable off-road. Dan was tired. I was tired. We were both too hot. And we appeared to be lost. In the savanna. Towards nightfall. I questioned if we were going the right way and Dan scolded me: “You always question my directions! Stop!”. In the heat of the moment I retaliated: “Yeah because you’re sh*t at map reading!”.
Ooops.
My bad.
Of course Dan can read a map. He’s got a great sense of direction and has rarely gotten us lost during this whole trip. It just popped out – and in my defence, we weren’t where we were meant to be at that very moment in time. We got there in the end though, so all’s well that ends well. We made it to the west side of Kilimanjaro and pitched our tent at Simba Farm, just in time to enjoy a beer at sunset, toasting to Dan’s map reading skills. Thankfully we can laugh about that kinda stuff afterwards.
Shade is often hard to find and the afternoon sun is a killer.
We actually had a rest at at Simba Farm, which is a sprawling 7,000 acre farm in the foothills of Kilimanjaro National Park. It’s been owned by the same Dutch family since 1981, and is now managed by the second generation. The family were so welcoming and made us feel right at home. As well as being a working farm, they’ve recently opened several lodges and a campsite on the main grounds. Staying there is a little on the pricey side, with camping costing 20,000 Tanzania shilling (£6.70) per person per night and lodges coming in at $70 per night. But food and drink is very reasonable. As well as enjoying a farm-to-table meal, you can also buy fresh produce they grow themselves. We indulged in a candle-lit dinner of beef medallions, cauliflower cheese, potatoes and greens – with a sunset view of Mount Meru, I might add. Then we bought sausages, eggs, spinach, buns, avocados and more from their farm shop and made some killer sarnies on our day off.
If you ever find yourself on the west side of Kilimanjaro, we implore you to spent a night or two at Simba Farm. It is just magical. It so made us want to become farmers and live in the wilderness somewhere, tending to livestock and crop. Oh, and they have a pool and pet horses.
Then began our loop around Africa’s highest mountain – the famous Kilimanjaro at 5,895 metres. To our surprise, the road around Kili is mostly tarmacked. Of the 155 km loop, only 45 km was dirt track. That. Is. Crazy. Actually the owners of Simba Farm told us that the government is currently tarmacking the road near them, as one of the requested conditions of the newly opened mega chicken farm, which we’d coincidently read about in the paper the week before. If you’re also interested in reading about how God told a guy to bring mass chicken farming to Africa, click here.
Looping Kili was a lovely ride. The west and northwest sides take you along a dirt track through small villages. You get an incredible view of the Tanzanian and Kenyan plains. Ironically not of Kilimanjaro though. We had the best view of Kilimanjaro on our savanna cycle from Longido. It was cloudy throughout the whole loop around, apart from one morning. Then the northeast and east sides are considerably more built-up, but it’s nice to have the tarmac for that final epic descent. No sign of tourists whatsoever, which was strange.
The only view of Kilimanjaro we got while looping around the mountain.
You may notice we’re just looping in the foothills of these Tanzanian mountains? Well that’s because you pretty much have to pay to enter the area of each one, since they’re national parks. A quick Google told us that summiting Kilimanjaro over five days, four nights starts at $1,300. Unlike Nepal, where you pay one national park fee and can stay as long as you please, you pay an entry fee per 24 hours in Tanzania. So for that five day trek, it would be five times $70 per person. These national parks are such moneymakers.
Speaking of cons… Few flight disasters for us this week. Firstly we didn’t take into account time zones and realised we actually landed in Australia on June 6th not 5th. That’s our six day stay to five. Then we’d accidentally bought two checked luggage for £72 on our Air Asia Kuala Lumpur to Sydney flight, rather than required two sports equipment for the bikes. D’oh. When we finally called to fix this problem (we booked the luggage months ago and have been avoiding the issue), we were told that our flight has actually now been cancelled and we’ve been bumped onto the same 11pm flight the following day. Ffs. That’s five days to four now. And we also need to book accommodation in Kuala Lumpur. Then they cheekily wouldn’t change our luggage from baggage to bikes for free! They want us to pay £100+ for the bikes. We’re still mid-argument with Air Asia and the con artists kiwi.com to get this sorted. Hate cheap airlines. You really do get what you pay for.
I suppose it could be worse. We once, while in Indonesia, boarded the wrong flight and flew to Jakarta instead of Lombok. Seriously. Our boarding passes were checked and scanned, and there was a head count and everything. We only realised when we were in the air and the in-flight GPS said we were flying west when we should have been flying east. We thought it was broke so told the air hostess. Nope we were on the wrong flight. She nearly passed out. The kicker was that when we finally got to Lombok — after spending an uncomfortable night on the airport floor — it turned out that our bags had gone to Bali… We had a palaver being reunited with them, too.
And that brings us to the end. Lately the blog seems to end perfectly at the end of us riding around a Tanzanian mountain – and this week is no different. We finished the week rolling down the east side of Kili with our next mountain range in full new: the North Pare Mountains. Then we spent the afternoon in a local bar getting rather drunk in the sun. It only took a few beers. We are such lightweights now.
East Africa Children’s Project
We realised that when people usually raise money for charity they embark on a physically painful challenge. So with that in mind, we are attempting to ride 100 miles on Monday 29th April. To put that into context, our daily average throughout the tour so far is a mere 33 miles. This will be tough. This will break us. Surely that deserves a donation?
Follow our century (struggle) on our Instagram Story on Monday 29th April.