This is our last rest day of the tour. We’re camped on the Orange River which separates Namibia from South Africa. It’s hard to believe that in a week from today, I’ll be waking up with something to do other than getting on my bike and cycling until it hurts.

Namibia has been an unbelievable country in many ways. It has to be one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It’s a rugged and empty country. I’m not going to try to describe it, but I will try to get some pictures up. The best way for you to understand what it’s like would be for you to come and see it for yourself. Namibia has also been unbelievable for how difficult the riding has been. We somehow managed to ride through the Namibian “desert” in what has been the wettest year in Namibia’s recorded history. The rain has turned Namibia’s normally good dirt roads into very challenging, muddy roads. We had one 30 kilometer stretch where we struggled to average more than 10 kilometers per hour because the mud was so thick. That day was followed by a day where we took a road that was clearly marked as closed because there was a river running across it., We ended up having to bush-whack to a railroad bridge. Yesterday was our final day of riding in Namibia and was a little easier because the rains had stopped for a couple days. It was still a very hard day as we covered 172 kilometers. The final 40 kilometers were on pavement but were straight into a stron headwind. I actually ended up riding more slowly on the pavement than on the dirt.

The past couple weeks have been challenging but really good. I love the freedom of just riding a bike without having anything else to worry about. I’m looking forward to moving on to what God has planned for me next, but I’m going to miss this lifestyle. I think it’s safe to say that I’m permanently hooked on cycling.

Here are the pictures:

I completely missed posting something from Botswana. We only had one rest day and the internet was terrible, so it didn’t happen. Here in Windhoek, however, things work very well. The city is actually nicer than most cities I’ve been to anywhere else in the world.

Coming into the Tour d’Afrique, Botswana was one of the countries I was most looking forward to visiting. I’ll be honest, though, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. It’s a very flat country which means that there isn’t actually a whole lot to see. When you ride an average of 160 kms a day for nearly 10 straight days through lanscapes that all look the same, you can get a little bored and fatigued. We had been told that we would have predominantly tail winds, but in truth we probably had more cross winds and head winds than tail winds which made the days even longer and more fatiguing. The promise of wildlife on the road kept us entertained for the first day or two, but then we quickly realized that the wildlife are smarter than we are and stay off the roads in the heat of the day.

Even though this section was a little long and tiring, it did have several highlights. Here are some of the highlights in chronological order:

1: Within the first hour of leaving Livingstone, Zambia, we came across a rather irritated bull elephant. He actually charged several of the riders as they went past. I wasn’t one of those riders, but came on the scene shortly after it happened. There was a big crowd of riders stopped on the side of the road unwilling to go on until the elephant had moved well off the road. I was able to see him shaking a tree about 75 meters off the road, so I decided to ride past and made it through without making him any more angry. Needless to say, I don’t have any pictures of this particular elephant, since stopping to take pictures didn’t seem like a very good idea at the time.

2: On that same day, we crossed the border into Botswana. The border crossing consisted of taking a ferry across the Zambezi river through a point where 4 countries meet (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana. The highlight of the ferry ride, for me, was the stop sign facing the ferry on the other side of the river (I do have a picture of this highlight). I’m not quite sure why it was necessary to tell the ferry to stop when in reached land. A second highlight of the border crossing was the “Welcome to Botswana” sign with a giant elephant terd right beside it.

3: After arriving in Botswana, we camped at a great sight on a river. We were able to take a boat safari on the river and saw a lot of antelope, elephants, hipos, and crocs. I’ve got quite a few pictures from the trip.

4. While I was out on the boat safari, a couple fellow riders decided that it would be funny to swap my tent with another campers tent. A lot of have MSR hubba-hubba that all look the same, and Bob and I happened to be camped right across from each other. When I got back to camp I noticed that my tent begs had all changed positions, and that someone else’s shoes were by my tent. I went over to a group that were sitting and watching me and the told me to sit down and not say anything until Bob came through so that we could see his reaction. When Bob showed up, he paced back and forth between the two tents for about 15 minutes trying to figure out if he’d lost his mind. His initial reaction was to think that someone had stuck all their stuff in his tent, so he proceed to completely unpack my tent and stick all my stuff on the ground. Even though I had to repack everything, it was a really enjoyable prank.

5. A few days ago we had a 40 km team time trial. I rode with three others on “God Save the Queen the Commonwealth Team”. We finished the trial in 67minutes. The Dutch team came in first with a crazy time of 56 minutes followed by the Canadians and Americans at 61 minutes. We ended up placing 6th out of about 10 teams. I think our time might have been slowed somewhat by our singing “God Save the Queen” a couple times as we rode. It didn’t really matter though because we had a pretty good time doing it.

6. An ostrich layed an egg in our camp. She tried to climb up on a guy’s tent to use it as a nest or something. When that failed, she decided to just lay it between his tent and mine. One of the funniest moments on the tour.

7. We rode our longest single day on this section. We covered 207 kms on the ride to the Namibian border. The ride wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be, but we did get hit by a couple good downpours on the way.

8. Our first day riding in Namibia was one of the harder days so far. It was a 162 kms ride. This distance wasn’t really a problem; the problem was that almost the whole ride was done into head winds and cross winds. It was also hard because it came right after the 207 km day. About half way between lunch and camp, we were hit by a crazy thunderstorm with huge winds, some hail, and a lot of rain. About half way through I started laughing out loud to myself. It was one of those situations that was so difficult and rediculous that all you can do about it is laugh. What was most rediculous was that about 2 kilometers to my right there were blue skies, and two kilometers to my left there were blue skies, but I was riding with my head down and my eyes more than half closed straight into rain and hail that was falling sideways. Fortunately I’ve seen Forest Gump, so I’m able to properly identify the different kinds of rain. In this storm we had both the “stinging rain” and the “rain that comes up from the bottom.” I think that storm will likely end up being one of my more memorable and favorite moments on the tour.

That’s it for highlights from the last couple weeks. The next two weeks will include 9 days of dirt riding south through Namibia, and then about 5 days of riding through South Africa to Cape Town. It’s almost done!

Here are some pictures from the past couple weeks:

Country 7 of 10. It’s hard not to place countries on a checklist and just cycle through them looking to cross them off your “to do” list. Many countries in Africa share similarities, but each country seems to have it’s own unique features. Here are some impressions of Zambia so far:

People are very friendly. All the kids like to stand by the road and yell “How are you” as we ride past. Somehow I think that they’ve been misinformed about that phrase and think that it’s a greeting rather than a question because they stand side-by-side and ask the same question even though you’ve already given your response to the group as a whole. It becomes tempting to just tune them out and continue riding without responding at all, but the response you get when you do respond is worthwhile. It sometimes helps to just rythmicly chant “I am fine. . . I am fine. . . I am fine” as you ride. This ensures that you don’t leave anyone out in your response to their greeting. It also takes your mind off the fact that you really aren’t fine b/c you’ve just climbed 1500 meters over the course of a 6 hour 70 km ride.

My second observation is that Zambia is quite lush and quite hilly with fairly exteme changes in climate over a short distance. A couple days ago we started the day in a camp where sleep was a bit of a challenge because it was so hot and humid. We finished the day in a camp where I had to wear my fleece in the evening for the first time since Egypt. Here in Lusaka the weather is actually quite nice.

Thirdly, local cyclists in Zambia seem to follow a different set of rules than everywhere else. They cycle on the opposite side of the road and then change lanes when they see oncoming traffic. At least they usually change lanes. Occasionally they’ll decide to just stay in your lane and come straight at you. I’m not sure why they ride this way, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not safe. I saw a couple kids on a bike nearly get squashed by a truck as it came at them from a around a blind curve.

Finally, Zambia takes the prize for the most unbelievable skies, sunrises, and sunsets on the tour so far. We’ve had good ones every day in the country so far.

Today was a unique and interesting day. A group of us went and visited a bicycle factory called Zambikes. They manufacture high quality, low cost bicycles for the local market as well as some very cool bamboo frame bicycles for export. It was inspiring to see a small company meeting some very real needs as well as producing some very cool products. One of the products was the Zambulance. The Zambulance is a canopied trailor with a matress designed to be pulled behind a bicycle and to transport patients from remote areas to the closest health care facility. I don’t have any pictures of the factory ready to post yet, but I’ll be able to do that from our next stop in Livingstone.

In the next week, we’ll have 3 cycling days and 2 rest days. We’ll be doing about 150 kms per day but will be rewarded with a two day rest stop near Victoria Falls. I’m really looking forward to seeing one of the world’s greatest natural wonders.

Here are some pictures from the last few days:

For the past eight days, we’ve been riding through Tanzania. Tanzania is a beautiful country with great people and has become my favourite country on the tour so far. This section was the best section of riding that we’ve had. About 80% of the riding was on dirt roads, and with it being rainy season here in Tanzania, we’ve had a lot of mud. The riding was definitely not easy, but the road took us straight through a national park, and the scenery more than made up for the hard riding. The people have also been very friendly.

Yesterday was the last day of the 8 day stretch, and we all seem to agree that it was one of the three hardest days we’ve had on the tour. The day started with a lot of rolling hills before lunch then had a 40 kilometer climb just after lunch followed by 15 kilometers down the mountain into Mbeya. I’m pretty sure we climbed more than 2000 meters on the day. What made the day hard wasn’t the amount of climbing but was the condition of the road. The climbs and descents were covered in softball sized, sharp rocks and loose gravel. Because of the rocks you couldn’t get any momentum or speed going either up or down. I had to ride my brakes the whole way down the last 15 kilometers and my arms and wrists were pretty unhappy by the time I got to the bottom.

Eight days of riding on muddy roads has left me with a lot of laundry and work to do on my “rest” day, so I’m going to include more pictures than text in this post. From here on to Namibia, we’ll be on pavement. Tomorrow we ride to the Malawi border, and our next rest day will be three days from now on a beach on Lake Malawi. I’m looking forward it!