Mt Hanang to Arusha: There is no such thing as an easy ride...

The climb up Mt Hanang was a welcome change but had left its mark. After our leisurely lunch, washed down by a cold beer, our thighs groaned as we headed out of town. The prospect of a few days more of the pristine, newly laid Chinese tarmac we were enjoying gave us hope. However, our lack of research dashed these hopes fairly early, as 20km out of town the tarmac gave way to a mixture of newly graded road awaiting its tarmac and a sandy, canyoned temporary road to the side. For the rest of that evening and the following morning we spent our time skipping between the two, trying to avoid roadblocks while picking the easiest path.

We had somewhere in the region of 130 kms to cover before the next rest day, planned on the shores of Lake Burungi on the edge of Tarangire National Park. The road from Katesh hid in the shadows of the Marbadow escarpment, the same fault line which gives rise to Ngorogoro another 100km down the line. The volvanic aetiology gives rise to rich soils on a rolling landscape, for us this meant a fairly populated ride passing through maize fields in their earlier states of growth. Not ideal for camping and it wasn’t until darkness has almost closed in that we found our spot for the night, a grassy field close by the road. Excitingly though it gave our closest encounter yet with a hyena who cackled away the night close by our tent.

Rick doing some herding on way to Lake Burungi

The next day was full of anticipation, we looked forward to a rest day and the prospect of seeing some animals… From days gone by on safari in Tarangire, I had an idea that Lake Burungi might be a good spot to camp; on the edge of the national park and with a source of water, but within comfortable striking distance of the road. The morning was much of the same, the new road petered out leaving slow progress on the temporary, cratered road and we spent most of our time slowly climbing and being dusted by passing lorries. Thankfully however we were rewarded for our efforts by cresting a hill to find a Chinese led workgang putting the finishing touches to a glass-smooth patch of new tarmac! Rick’s Engineer side particularly enjoyed the opportunity to ride through the middle of a construction zone, without a hardhat.

Site Safety: weave between the cones

The good road did us proud and as we approached Lake Burungi the word on the street was that there was a lakeside campsite, not far from the road. Chuffed (and chaffed) after an 85km morning, we broke for lunch in the baking heat at the Burungi turn-off. To cut a long, and slightly disappointing story short, the campsite turned out not be for us. Happy, smiling people that provided us with a cold juice on arrival though they were, unfortunately at $350 dollars per night, they weren’t for us. We had time on our hands after being driven from our lunch spot early by some heavy Tanzanian “Bongo Flavas” pumping out of the local hairdressers, we rethought our plans. It turns out there is only so much one can take of the same album, played at max volume (Tom Francis?).

The new option was a short hop up the road to the Tarangire River, a stones throw from the national park. Tarangire National Park is one of the larger national parks in Tanzania. The National Parks were the inspiration of Julius Nyerere, the first post-colonial President of Tanzania, affectionately referred to as “Mwalimu”, the Teacher. They cover in total over 1/6^th of Tanzania’s land mass. The largest and most well known is the Serengeti, home to the largest mammal migration known to man. Over one million zebra and wilderbeast, along with their predatory counterparts, make the annual journey from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya. The scale of the migration is breath-taking, however to give some idea of the size of the park, one tourist who had just spent 5 days said in the Serengeti for the migration lamented that they had not seen the migration until the last day when they were the sole vehicle following the enormous herd. Despite her radio-linked driver’s best efforts “it was as if they had disappeared into thin air!”. Nyerere, to my mind, deserves much credit here. Not only does Tanzania now have the natural resources preserved which it can earn tourist dollars from, but it set the tone for other African countries and now for the world. Which other countries have learned to preserve their natural eco-systems so well?

The Tarangire ecosystem has recently however pushed out of balance, its separation from other parkland by a tarmac road (therefore not allowing any intermigration), the year round water supply, and the bush and tall grass landscape has promoted the growth of one animal – the elephant. Eating over 100kg per day and having the destructive qualities of a three ton baby, thousands of them roam the park. They mingle between equally impressive thousand year old baobabs to give the park a prehistoric, megalithic feel. The park still does retain other resident mammals, with its fair share of antelope, giraffe, lion and one the greatest densities of leopard.

After a short barter session we were welcomed in to our new home, the Roika Lodge. A series of stilted huts set amongst tall reeds, it was the perfect elephant viewing location as they commuted between night feeding grounds and day time by the river. Our spot was right next to the lodge swimming pool, I’m not entirely sure what our fellow guests felt as we set up our tent and stove and generally made ourselves at home… Being on the edge of the park we were free to travel as we pleased so the next morning we took full advantage of this and ditched our bikes in favour of a walking safari. 

Bit cat print...

As soon as we left the lodge we found tracks, two actually. One looked like an enormous thumbprint, the other a large cat. It wasn’t much longer until we came across one of these animals, the other we luckily avoided. As we turned the bend, having crossed the dry river bed, we came across three tusked beasts slowly munching on some grass about 40 metres away. It’s an incredible and humbling feeling being so much smaller and essentially insignificant in the face of another living animal. Had the elephant had the desire to, it could have tossed us away like a tasteless reed. A Landcruiser came towards us and stopped.

“You know there are elephants there!”

We nodded, smiling.

“They are very dangerous, it is not safe!”

More nodding, and bit of smirking. He drove on shaking his head. After a bit more tracking, we turned home, satisfied that our National Park journey had been worthwhile. 

Friendly Elephants

The other potentially dangerous animal in the park is on a slightly different scale. The Teste fly is much like the common horse fly, however has one nastly sting in the tail. It carries a potentially fatal disease – Sleeping Sickness or trypanosomiasis. One theory on the existence of the Serengeti is that human habitation was prevented by the teste fly and Sleeping Sickness. Luckily Tarangire is thought to be free from the disease, however that did not stop the pain of having tens of them dive bomb me during our afternoon “Cycle Safari”. I was a little confused, Rick cycling next to me was completely fly free! It wasn’t until I looked at my shirt – black and white cheques – that I realised: Tetse’s love black and they love colour change… Safari fashion is clearly not my strong point.

We set of from our rest day with the prospect of a comfortable days cycling, having gone slightly further than we expected two days previously, we had about 100k to cover into Arusha which we thought we may even be able to cover before lunch. Sadly, there is no such thing as an easy days cycling. After an early stop-off to herd some zebra across a road (that’s not a joke), the already brisk headwind stiffened and 100k was not going to be so easy. We had also, over the last couple of days descended another 750 metres or so towards the plains of Tanzania, so the heat had intensified. As we limped into lunch in the midst of a Masai market, we both had drunk well over 4 litres in a hard mornings work. And after a brief rest, in a bid to arrive in good time, we ground our way into Arusha through a heat and dust haze in the early afternoon. We had reached the largest and most developed town since leaving Kigale over two week earlier.

The two cities are tradgically linked by the Rwandan genocide, as Arusha holds the International Criminal Court that has tried many of the perpetrators of the genocide. The town has a rich diplomatic history beyond this, as the site of the Arusha Declaration in 1967, Tanzania’s statement of African Socialism and “Ujamaa” or Brotherhood. There is certainly no stopping Arusha for the moment, as it is the proposed crucial site for the Parliament of the East African Community. For us these crucial stepping stones in its history largely passed us by as we headed towards Masai Camp – a campsite/huge outdoor club at the weekends. Feeling dog-tired after a long month and a tough first of four days, we relaxed and prepared for relaxing and “easy” the trip around Kilimanjaro.