Another day at Fight Club...

Every muscle is aching and the limbs are stiff. Today is unusually cold - it's minus 17 Celsius or about 0 degrees in the old money. The wind-chill on the mountain is taking another 10 to 20 degrees off that. It’s also snowing and the clouds have descended on the misty mountain tops like a dog on a forbidden sofa. Strangely enough through a window, it actually looks like you could walk out in jeans and a long sleeve shirt – until you actually try it that is… Cheeks, noses and tips of ears are all fair game for instant popsicles. As a result, I’m happily sitting indoors today doing some writing instead of being on the mountain.

My aching muscles have nothing to do with the cold though. After 1 gym session, 2 Pilates classes and three days snowboarding in the past few days, I’m feeling pretty good but the muscles unaccustomed of late to so much attention are letting me know about it.  Another Pilates class tonight and a snowboarding lesson tomorrow will be great. I’m enjoying getting back to some focus on fitness and health. 

To misquote one of my favourite movies: "A guy who came to (Colorado) for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After (four months), he was carved out of wood."  Looking forward to that carved out of wood end result by the end of four months of this. J

A quick update on an even quicker 10 weeks...

I'm in Dillon, Colorado as I write this. After 6 months of planning, capped off by 10 weeks living out of a backpack, I've seen lots of the world but am happy to stop here for 4 months of snowboarding and writing.

Spending Christmas day in a Buddhist country was a pleasant change from the commercial feeding frenzy that goes in in Australia for most of November and December.  It was a business day as usual for the Khmer while for us expats a time to catch up quietly with friends in cafes for lunch and evening drinks overlooking the lights of Sisovath Quay.

That pleasantly relaxing Christmas day also made for a nice contrast to the hectic 3 weeks preceding it as I got some dental and medical work done, packed up the apartment, put stuff into storage, spent a day photographing rocks at Angkor Wat and attended a friends engagement to a local khmer lass in Siem Reap.  

26DEC10 was cheap airfare day and a good day to fly to Seatlle where we spent 2 days looking around as a bit of a pause before flying into Denver. Landing at Denver airport at 3pm we did what every tourist would do and took a taxi to a used car dealer. After kicking tyres for about an hour we bought a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee (Jasper the Jeep) for the princely sum of $3,000 and made Jasper’s maiden voyage to a friends place for the night where we picked up about 200kg of pushbikes and snowboarding kit courtesy of ebay shopping from Tanzania. The sheer quantity of ebay-tastic bargain parcels taking up their spare room would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t had my embarrassment gland surgically removed some years ago. Luckily he's a good friend with a very understanding wife.

The next evening involved driving 5 hours through a blizzard, in the dark, stopping only to buy new windscreen wipers so that I could actually see the road instead of driving by braille. There are, it seems, some mighty HIGH passes, BIG mountains and ICY roads in this part of the world so the investment in a full-time 4WD was definitely worth it.  We spent a pleasant 3 nights up at a B&B in Redstone where a friends family gather each year for NYE so with little if any arm-twisting we had a very social time sledding, snowshoe trekking, eating, drinking, laughing and playing games.  

On 01JAN11 we headed off to a lakeside apartment which will be basecamp for the next 4 months. A mighty pleasant spot in a small town amongst 3 snowfields with have a view over the lake to snow capped mountains so all is well with the world.

Best of all the heating is included in the rental so even when it goes down to minus 20 outside (as it occasionally does), indoor is toasty warm.

"Don't drive out here at night" he said to the guys - then proceeded to do just that...

It's 01:45 in the morning here in Tanzania and I'm sitting in a wooden hut in front of the glow of a laptop. I'm covered in mud and sticky with sweat after a 90 minute conference call. It wasn't the conference call that got me in this state.  I was in fact 30 minutes late for this conference call after a 3.5 hour 4WD trip down to the lake that involved roughly 2 hours of de-bogging, winching and digging plus around 1.5 hours driving of actually driving. Conference call was good but the drive was even better. :-)

Today the last charter flight brought in the wet season caretaker so that we can head off on Friday on a 5 day 4WD trip to Dar Es Salaam and eventually Zanzibar for some diving. A couple of hours after Nic got here we had a request to help a women who was in distress during labor and needed a lift down to the medical clinic 20km away by the lake for a helicopter medevac to the nearest hospital. I suggested that Nic go down to the lake to see it before the roads get cut off.

Four hours later at 9pm we'd had dinner and they still weren't back. Pete & I had a bottle of wine under our belt but there's no RBT here and you can't do more than 15km/h anyway so we grabbed the keys to a Landcruiser, the med kit, satphone and a bottle of water. We figured they'd probably got bogged, had a flat or just slid off the road... A great intro to Africa for Nic lol but at least it would convince him of the futility of trying to drive in the wet season. We ended up all the way to Mgambazi down by the lake and that place is dark by night! It's a village of probably 1,000 people but you could scarcely find the glow of a fire at 10 o'clock at night. With nobody around to ask for directions, we got onto the satphone and rang camp. Turns out the vehicle had got bogged on the way down to the lake and decided to go back to camp by another little used track - the logic of leaving a known track for an unknown track that we hadn't used before on a dark and wet night escapes me but either way, that's what they did.


They'd arrived at camp about 20 minutes after we left so two of the guys grabbed the pickup to drive down and let us know. This was nice gesture but no way were they going to catch us and we'd left instructions to come get us if we weren't back by 2330. As it turned out, if they hadn't come for us I would have been back an hour before my conference call (rather than 30 minutes late). Simple stuff but when I had to reverse out of a bog to have another run at it, Valerian (our senior technician) had the landcruiser pickup right up our clacker and proceeded to reverse sideways and get stuck. Long story and 5 or 6 winching/digging attempts later we managed to slip/slide/drive up the by now very chewed up hillside, that the first vehicle had given up on. Just another day of boys own adventure in Africa :-). Can't believe I get paid to do this. Perhaps one day I'll grow up - but I doubt it...


More importantly though, no-one was hurt and although we haven't heard how the mother and baby are doing yet, at least she got to the clinic before sunset, in time to be evacuated to Kigoma by helicopter. Her home is a farm near our camp where in May this year, her husband hanged himself so hopefully her luck has changed and things will be working out well for her in hospital. We'll find out how soon enough via the bush telegraph and are all keen to have things go well for her.

From Machete madness to spotless streets - a complex land...

I look up from my typing every so often to enjoy the most amazing views. The little Toyota Coaster bus swerves from side to side as it hurtles round hairpin bends, with enough g-force to rotate the screen and keyboard on my iPad. A good reminder if I needed one to stop typing and enjoy the view over this land of a thousand hills. I'm looking out on a green valley surrounded by mountain peaks of massive scale, all impossibly lush. It's hard to believe that only 16 years ago the friendly folk farming the terraces of these steep hillsides were busy chopping each other up with panga's and axes. Reconciliation seems genuine here and they are all getting on with life but the scars must run deep. The war crimes tribunal is still running across the border in Tanzania and many of the perpetrators have fled to other surrounding nations yet I can't help but reflect that many of the people I meet, buy my meals from, or just pass in the street are probably guilty of murder or worse. I struggle to understand how people can behave like that, especially en masse. Frankly I don't want to know, but somehow we need to know and understand such things if we are to be able to act before propaganda, fear and power-mongering repeat such acts in the future.

The Rwandan folk are incredibly friendly, which is not so unique in Africa but what is remarkable is how well the whole country seems to run. Unusually for this part of the world, the place is really well organized. The gorilla trekking, guides and management of Volcanoes National Park were truly world class and that seems to be a reflection of the whole country. In Rwanda, streets are clean. Corruption is low to non-existent. Busses run on time. Infrastructure is in good shape. It's an amazing contrast after 6 months in Tanzania. One of the really cool things that I love about the place is probably summed up in why the streets are so noticeably spotless. The leadership decided early on that even if they had no money for infrastructure, one of the things they could achieve at zero cost was to keep the place clean. So, one Sunday of every month, the people from the President on down, including mayors, farmers, business people and kids all get out and pick up rubbish. What a great thing to do!  So simple yet it makes a huge difference to not only the appearance of the place but I'm sure also the culture.

It's been great to have a chance to visit Rwanda, not to mention to enjoy the fresh food and great cafes of Kigali but more adventures await. We're back on a plane again tomorrow back to Tanzania for a bit of a hike to the 'roof of Africa'. Kilimanjaro here we come...

In the hall of the mountain king...

My pulse is racing, I'm sweating profusely, oblivious to the hitherto lung busting altitude and in an altered state of complete euphoria. My face muscles will ache later from the huge fixed grin that has been there virtually nonstop for the past 30 minutes. No, I'm not stoned in the Himalayas. I'm...

Right now I'm sitting on a bus in Rwanda catching up on emails and doing a spot of reading (did I mention how great the iPad is for traveling with?) and I still have that huge smile but now it's from my memories of yesterday. We're on the bus back to Kigali after visiting the Susa family in northern Rwanda. The Susa family are no ordinary Rwandan family. They are the largest clan of mountain gorillas in the region a visit with them is quite an experience. Its difficult to describe how emotional an experience it is. I mean, really, they are just big apes right and we've all seen them on television many times. But somehow being in the wild alongside these massive (really massive) but gentle and friendly primates is a very moving experience. It's a rare treat to see them at all, let alone see 20 in as many metres and get within arms length of them. Between the three of us we rattled off 1,000 photos and short videos in an all too short 60 minutes.

If you'd like to see a few of those 1,000+ photos then here is the place to go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW7E4Fijxww

It's been a day to remember and one where we were definitely 'living in the flow'. Everything fell into place far better than we could have planned it. Even the torrential tropical thunderstorm held off until we were back in our hotel. The day started at dawn when our hired car picked us up from the hotel to take us up the mountain to check in at the ranger station at 0630 for a well organized briefing and cuppa before the trek. We'd been told by friends to ask to visit the Susa family because they are the biggest, most active and interesting, hence are the best experience for the hour that you get. The Susa group however live the highest up the mountain - often around the 4,000m mark which puts them 4 solid hours trek through the jungle. There is no formal mechanism for applying to get into this group and the guides just pick the people who look fittest and most experienced for the long hike. We figured out that our worn hiking boots and an air of prepared quiet confidence would help us get into that group but in the absence of any other guidance we were sweating on getting picked for this group. Really, really wanted to visit this family. I'm sure we would have had a great time with any family but everyone raves about Mr Susa and his clan. Unbeknownst to us until later that morning, it's the drivers who recommend people to the park guides. The selection had been made 30 minutes before we had agonized over cup re how to wangle a way into the Susa group. So while we were looking around at the many unfit, ill prepared, overweight or jeans with muffin top youngsters and eyeing off our competition amongst the the fit and well equipped, the drivers were in a huddle with the head ranger round the back. Now, we hadn't told our driver that we wanted to see the Susa family so when Fabian grabbed us quietly by the arms and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I believe you would like to see the Susa family" we were gobsmacked but wasted no time with our equally conspiratorial and barely restrained nods. He then lead us away to where we joined a Canadian/Aussie couple and waited for three people to make up the eight. We still don't know how Fabian knew we wanted to see the Susa's but never felt the need to ask him. Needless to say we did later feel the need to tip him generously.

By this point we had all the proof we cared for that we were in the flow but just in case we were in any doubt, we found out at the pre-trek briefing that once a year the gorillas come down the mountain to eat the fresh bamboo shoots. Apparently the shoots are alcoholic so not only is it their happy, active time of year but they are only an hours hike from the nearest vehicle parking area. We came prepared for 8 hours of hard hiking above 3,000m but in the end after a 40 minute drive and 60 minutes rapid climb from 2,500m to 3,200m that left us gasping in the thin air, we were in the jungle and gasping with joy at the sheer magnificence of these 300kg mammals. Stuart was the first to see a gorilla hidden in the dense undergrowth and Lynne snapped a great shot of his face with an expression that clearly said "WOW" and then it was my turn to walk past this dark hairy mass in the lush undergrowth. We could have watched transfixed for ages as the gorilla just 2m away ignored us and continued eating but Dee, our guide was in radio contact with the trackers and had other ideas. With another minute hiking under the trees, scrambling between vines and bamboo, brushing past stinging nettles and slipping on leaf covered lichen, we emerged into a clearing where 20 gorillas were playing, feeding, grooming, lazing, picking their nose, scratching and generally just doing their thing. They seemed barely interested in us and certainly unfazed. Fromtheir perspective I guess we were just another daily visit and an event that the young ones have never known life without. The big Silverback kept a lazy eye on us to make sure we weren't overstepping our welcome but he was clearly king of the roost and not at all concerned by us. This park borders Uganda and the Congo and where we visit is in the area where Diane Fossey did her research and conservation until she was murdered but her work has gone on with only a couple of years break during the genocide. Its a slick well oiled machine now and a credit to the Rwandan people not to mention a life saver for the last of the mountain gorillas.

We were treated to all sorts of antics as he gorillas went about their day, largely ignoring our presence other than our quiet conversation and regular "wow"s the main noise was from the guide who has a few words of gorilla which he calls out to them to let them know we are coming or to reassure them. You are supposed to stay at least 7m away but it is ok if they come to you. Most of the time we were only 2 or 3m from the nearest and when one of the young males did a mock charge to within a meter it was very cool. Behind us we watched a male build a nest by progressively breaking branches in a cluster of small trees until he had a platform about 3 meters in the air. His raw strength was amazing, as was his casual air as he effortlessly knitted them together. After about 20 minutes of lying in it and posing for the cameras he either got bored and rolled to the edge or decided to come down. I'm still not sure which but with a mighty crash he rolled off and somersaulted backwards, landing with q thud on the grass where we had been standing two minutes earlier. A bit of a shake of his head and he was off into the midst of the grooming, sleeping, playing, scratching clan to feed on the young shoots. We could have watched them for days.

All in all, yesterday was one of my top ten lifetime experiences and a contender for number one (if i could ever pick a number one :-).

Busy times by the lake…

I’ve been a tad remiss in blog updates lately so (much like the main character in the film Memento) the blog is missing bits of history and being written like a series of short adventures, not necessarily in chronological order. But hey, that’s how my memory works anyway.    My tardiness is due to a mixture of work, fun, friends visiting and adventures being had, but after the Serengeti trip then a few big weeks back in camp I’ve found time to scratch myself again - and even to blog a bit.

Meanwhile... Life is going well here in Tanzania. I’m still feeling like I’m herding cats some days but also still living in a ‘boys own adventure’ novel. Lynne is out here now along with a couple of Aussie mates from Cambodia and a team of consulting geos so it’s all very social.  Rob & Stu (my mates) are out here to do some metal detecting, gold prospecting and general adventuring.  They’ve been out digging up rusty nails left and right but no nuggets yet. There’s definitely lots of gold around though and a couple of areas out here are unknown to the big companies but teeming with artisanal miners. We visited a local prospector/miner who has been raking it in for about seven years. He showed us his mine (complete with 20m shaft, ball mill & sluice) and a few ounces of his gold so we’ve seen lots of gold already (albeit sadly not ours lol). 

In the spirit of getting paid to play and the excuse of providing an area induction for a new geologist, we went down to Mgombazi on Lake Tanganyika one Sunday not so long ago. Lynne cycled down while most of the crew travelled by Landcruiser. I took the XR400 which was an absolutely brilliant way to spend an afternoon. Rob, a very experienced offroad driver, came back with the biggest grin after driving there and back, saying “now I can see why you like it here so much”…   It’s only 25km but it’s a rough old track which takes 90 mins in a 4WD - or 30 mins on the XR - and all the local guys seemed to think it was too far for a mzungu - especially a mzungu woman! – but Lynne loved the trip down and had a blast despite nearly coming a cropper on a rocky downhill section. With no protection other than a t-shirt and shorts, it would have been a long trip to A&E.

As for Lake Tanganyika - It’s bloody enormous! Longest lake in the world, second deepest and largest by volume of water. Basically you’d be better off thinking of it as a freshwater ocean than a lake and it generates its own weather.  The trip turned out to be a great day out, not least of all because we found a bulldozer parked down there which had just cut a new road from Kigoma, the biggest port on the lake and a relative metropolis.  

Our Sunday trip and conversations with the locals inspired us to see if the road was actually drivable so the following Friday we set off back down to Mgombazi but kept going north to Kigoma.  It’s election year here so a bulldozer has been busy upgrading what used to be a bicycle path for most of its length into a dirt road.  It used to take 5 days walk but is now 5 hours drive and it traverses an amazingly beautiful bit of decent coastal track.

We were lucky enough to pull into one village on a hill with perfect timing just as the ferry, a former WW1 German destroyer called MV Liembe was picking up passengers in a bay. A unique boat and quite spectacular - you’ll have seen it if you’ve seen the boat that played the German destroyer in ‘African Queen’.  

Another ferry that we found along the way which was less appealing but had to use was the MV Iladala – a floating wreck of a river ferry on the one major river crossing. It was hard to believe it was only 5 years old but the official plaque of commissioning by a local dignitary was dated 2005.  As usual, we had to wait for it to zig-zag it’s way across the river to pick us up then for the ragtag crew to position some logs in place of where they had torn off the tip of the loading ramp.  The logs weren’t even necessary for us in the Landcruiser but still we had to wait for them to faff around. When the engine started we realised why it zig-zagged across the river… The engine on one side had failed so they navigated by using a mixture of forward and reverse movement on one side.  It seemed like the crew had long since become used to this as standard operating practice but even so the landings at each side were hardly a magnificent feat of seamanship.

After a bit of a navigation exercise for the last bit we got into Kigoma and checked out a couple of mzungu hotels which were pretty boring but have now found our favourite accommodation in Tanzania. A guest house with private cottage and camping sites with two private beaches on the crystal clear waters of Lake Tanganyika. We BBQ’d a sunset dinner with cold beer on an huge deck on the hill overlooking a pristine ocean (aka Lake Tanganyika) watching the fishing boats coming out to dot lights across the horizon.   All this for $15/person. Beats the $100/night at the mzungu hotels hands down!

The next morning after a late start caused by a lingering brekky on the same deck, we spent a few hours shopping (always an experience of ‘no hurry in Africa’) then drove back to Mibango.  The trip with 5 hours of great scenery sure beats the 7 hours drive over bone jarring roads to dusty old Mpanda, which used to be our main supply town (until we discovered this new road to Kigoma). Bonus that there are also commercial flights from Dar so it has potential to cut our travel costs dramatically – at least so we thought that day. 

The road was so good in fact that it looked like we would have a new supply town and easy access to flights to Dar Es Salaam.  But nothing is that easy in Africa...  We had to drive back to Kigoma 6 days later to pick up a technician and equipment that had missed a charter flight only to find that a tiny amount of rain down the track had washed away some of the creek crossings.

We managed to 4WD around 3 massive washaways (just) but had to dig/build/adapt 5 of them including 2 that would have been big enough to swallow the landcruiser, never to be seen again. Luckily there’s always abundant affordable labour at hand but even so two of the washaways took half a dozen of us about 40 minutes eahc to refill with logs and loose dirt enough to make for some interesting 4WD'ing.  
If you'd like to see what I mean by interesting 4WD'ing, have a look at this link. 

In the end although it was great to get to Kigoma again and to swim in the waters of Lake Tanganyika, I foresee that was our last trip this year.

Herding Cats...

Two trucks, 4 Landcruisers, 10 Tanzanians and 1 Talbot notionally in charge of this rock show of a 6 day convoy across Tanzanian. Breakdowns, bribes, bad fuel, bad food, bad police, bad roads and big fun… But first before we get to that I’ve been a bit tardy with my blog entries but I’m happy to report that is isn’t lack of adventures to write about. On the contrary, it’s due to being too busy doing stuff worth blogging about to have time to actually blog it but here are a few highlights of a :

• A month in Cambodia catching up with good friends including a few who dropped in from Australia including few days in Siem Reap and wandering (also wondering) about Angkor Wat. It’s an enormous, enormous complex that had a million residents when London was a town of 50,000. Mind bogglingly big and fascinating to visit
• Also had a pleasant few days in Sihanoukville on the coast and got out to my favourite beach resort to laze in hammocks and swim on a private beach of an island paradise
• Shopping and driving the length of the UK to visit relatives in Somerset, dropping into Surrey to start a company in Gibraltar and picnicking at sunset at Lands End
• Seven days hiking the Rob Roy Way in Scotland. The original plan was to give a presentation at a conference in Lisbon then hike a few days on the coast of Portugal but the volcanic ash cloud put paid to that idea. RRW was a great alternative though. Stayed at pubs and B&B’s along the way and Scottish pubs would have to be some of the best in the world

As for Tanzania and the convoy to Mibango… Frankly it was like herding cats most days. Sometimes very frustrating but a wonderful adventure. You do your best to make things work out and the military experience definitely helped but most of the time you just have to keep your cool and roll with the punches. Valerian had the quotable quote of the journey when we were chatting about the lack of progress in yet another long queue for yet another accident when he said “If you want progress in Tanzania – you’ll just get hypertension...” So true. After 6 days on the road I’ve learned all sorts of things about myself, life, Tanzania and things that I’d do differently (mostly send someone else lol – just kidding). Long, long days though with 16, 11, 15, 12, 11 and 6 hours on the road respectively including driving through till midnight a couple of times. Not that we’d planned to drive after dark – just the opposite. The first day took till 4pm to get a truck loaded and then 8 hours to cover 200km (don’t ask – the blog isn’t long enough to cover the events and laughs of that day but trust me - if you don’t own a large chunk of patience you’ll find one or burst in Tanzania lol).

And as for the roads… They just got worse & worse every day. Starting with Dar traffic (diabolical) at 15km/h average and ending with 4WD tracks (bone jarring but fun) at 15km/h average speed… In between, Tanzanian roads are dangerous places and especially so at night. Overtaking on blind corners is the standard practice and every km or so there is a pushbike or vehicle without lights popping up out of the darkness as yet another semi-trailer speeds towards you with lights on high beam. In the first 15 hours we saw the remains of 7 truck accidents that wer so recent the wreckage was still fresh. The first was typical - 2 large trucks, 1 car: 5 fatalities. Very messy. It had happened only a minute or two before we arrived on the scene and we waited for 3 hours before we finally drove out past the oncoming queue which was over 10km long and occupying both lanes of a 2 lane highway. It’s a crazy place. Tanzanian traffic is crazy dangerous. Not as chaotic as Cambodia but far more dangerous. I drove the entire 6 days as I trust my driving above most others but it absolutely pays to keep your wits about you. Absolutely. The highways are good in eastern Tanzania but life is cheap and driver training obviously expensive.

Our truck drivers were a law unto themselves - or at least so they thought. A complete pain in the arse frankly. We hired two trucks to transport 5,000 litres of fuel plus startup supplies for the season. One driver in particular always whinging for more money. Too many tales of woe from that eedyit to bore you but no matter how generous we were with him he still wanted more... And more... And more... Trucks were also slow and police cash-points (they call them ‘check points’ - aye... Checking your wallet!) were ridiculously common. Had problems with fuel from Franko the friendly Oilcom man again in Mpanda. I shouldn’t have been surprised really - 3 out of last 3 refuels there have been contaminated, hence why we brought in 5,000 litres of diesel and petrol all the way from Dar. On top of flat tyres, recalcitrant truck drivers, corrupt police and accidents, after filling up on Franko’s fuel, we had to stop every 30 minutes to clean out blocked fuel filters which meant that it took us 9 hours (instead of the usual 3) to drive from Mpanda to Mwese.

We arrived at sunset in time to spend 2 hours unloading which made us waaaaay too late to drive the 4WD tracks to Mibango. They are tough in the daylight but in the dark – not even worth thinking about. Valerian pulled some rabbits out of hats though and we were all housed and fed by 930 that night. Mwese is up high at 1,400m ASL and the skies are crystal clear. So many stars that I was transfixed looking at them. If it wouldn’t have given offence to the homeowner who had generously offered a bedroom, I would have slept outside under their canopy in the cool clear air.

I bought myself an XR400R (dirtbike) from a mate in northern Tanzania and we travelled with it on the back of a pickup for 5 days as far as Mwese. At Mwese we’d already been on dirt roads for 2 days but the track gets even worse so we happily waved goodbye to our whinging truck drivers and their helpers (albeit with their usual demands for more money). We took the bike off the pickup and loaded stuff from one of the trucks in it’s place as well as onto the back of another landcruiser pickup that met us from camp. Making room on the truck was my justification to ride the last 53km through some great tracks with all sorts of terrain. Hills, rocks, mud, ruts, sand, river crossing and fast open sections – you name it, our main supply route has all of it. Took it slowly (at least relatively so) as I wasn’t wearing any armor or bike boots plus had to keep stopping for the convoy and have a 14 minute nap on the track every 15 minutes while waiting for the convoy to catch up lol. We’d already had lots of work done on the tracks so they were in much better condition than the last time I drove them in the wet season but it still took an hour longer than the usual 3 hours it takes.

I had a hoot on the bike though. Took it through one river which was up to the tank and we handled it fine. The last river just a few km from our camp was chest deep though and in full flood. Normally it’s knee deep and placid but at the tall end of the wet season – not so. Hence we loaded the bike onto the local ferry (a dugout canoe) but after 10 minutes of trying to balance it across the canoe, the whole thing looked likely to end in tears if the canoe actually left the bank. Eventually we decided the smart move was to unload a pickup at camp and send it back to ferry the bike across the river on the back of the 4WD. About 10 of the locals & staff came back from camp with the pickup to say hi and to watch the spectacle - and to help, so it turned into the usual gaggle of good clean fun. I rode the last 5km to camp from the river and gave it a good fang which was fun, fun, fun :-) Took it for another wee blat the following day to check the airstrip and am loving every minute on it. I’ll find an excuse every day to get on it including mapping some tracks and doing my visits to the flycamps.

Last Sunday I took the bike down to Lake Tanganyika (about 25km away). Some of the guys wanted to go down to pick up some fresh fish so we had 2 4WD’s and the new expat geo came along on the camp’s XL125. He’d just spent a year motorbiking India so was good company for a fellow bike nut and we had a ball. There was even actually a work related reason for the trip. We went down to buy some fish for the camp, check and the repair the track and do some driver training as well as area familiarization for our newcomers. Lokoma is out nearest point on Lake Tanganyika and is a stopping point for the MV Liembe ferry which is (among other places) the quickest way to Kigoma, the capital of our district. The catch is that the ferry only runs once per fortnight and is often chartered for weeks at a time by the UN to run refugees across the lake from whichever neighbouring country is most in need. Apparently it’s a great trip to do and in a past life it was a World War I German warship. The Germans carted it in pieces, rebuilt it and then sunk it at the end the war. The British refloated it and it’s been basically in service ever since. Michael Palin reckoned it was a highlight so that’s good enough for me even if I don’t have a film crew to carry my bags lol.

 
We’ve decided that every second Sunday will be ‘adventurous training’ as a kind of ‘day off’ but also to practice casevac, winching, mapping, driving, etc, etc. Us expats are gradually learning Swahili as well and basically living the dream in boys own adventure land :-)

Just as an aside, after I bought the bike I got our local fix-it man in Dar to transfer the rego but the hilarious part is that the Tanzanian Revenue Authority need me to have 3 names. I only have two. So Gerald took the initiative and gave them three names for their records. The bike is now registered in the name of “Julian Talbot Tim” lol lol. Just gotta laugh sometimes.

Picking the bike up from the truck that brought it down to Dar was also another great yarn. The nearest that the semi trailer could get to our offices was a few km away so I had to go collect it from a service station at an interchange. John, the guy who escorted it down for my mate almost wiped out a crowd of bystanders in spectacular fashion that morning before I’d even ridden it. It’s probably not really funny but no one got hurt and I’m still cracking myself laughing at the memory of it. I brought our medic with me to drive the car back from Ubungo but he seemed a bit averse to driving and said he’d prefer to ride the bike so I thought to myself “why not?” When he got on the bike though and had to say “so this is the clutch?” and “is this the brake?” the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Bear in mind that the XR400 is an absolute beast of an enduro bike. Big, powerful and fast. When Bernard had stalled it 3 times just trying to get 20m to the fuel bowser I decided that I’d be riding the bike and he’d be driving no matter how he felt nor how bad he was at driving. Meanwhile John had jumped on to restart the bike and decided to ride it over to the bowser. Well....... He let the clutch out with a bang and promptly endo’d the bike in spectacular fashion, landed it upside down, clipping a couple of the bystanders who’d gathered to watch the mzungu and 2 locals faffing with the bike. Another 15 of us leapt for our lives as he managed to keep hold of the handlebars and with it still running, bounced the back tyre off a huge metal sign which sent a few more people flying for cover as he did a perfect 360 donut before he pulled the clutch in and brought it to a halt. Quite spectacular really and very impressive if he’d meant to do it. Lol lol. Anyway, no-one was hurt and the bike is fine. I think he was a bit shaken but kept it together well. The crowd loved it anyway.

Meanwhile we're sitting in the senior mess as I write this. We've just finished dinner and I’m writing this as the sounds of the night and the quiet hum of the generator provide background to animated discussion at the table. I’m being rude and finishing this blog so my colleague Tim Sharp (senior geo)  piped up that I should write that he “thinks MapInfo is a piece of shit and is about to put a geologists hammer through his laptop” so just for you Tim – as requested. Tim’s actually a pretty placid guy and he said it with a laugh. Just one more thing that takes longer than you’d otherwise expect. TIA (This Is Africa) after all. Tim is typically more interested in looking at rocks of sampling fine red wine than messing with IT stuff but he’s spent the afternoon wrestling with a (still unresolved) ‘undocumented feature’ of MapInfo so perhaps some residual frustration from the day on the computer showing through. Good glass of red cured that pretty quick though.

Matthias who was our cook last year is now a geo-technician this season so we’ve got a new cook (Laurencia) who used to cook at Mahale National Park and she’s a fundi for cooking mzungu food. Peter the new geo is expecting an email from his mother any day now with her best banana cake recipe so the great food is probably only going to get better. Pete is a pom (a good bloke though so we don’t hold that against him) and has been going crazy this afternoon trying to set up the pay-for-view satellite television system so that we (he especially) can watch the World Cup when it starts tomorrow – but it’s no simple task and I could write a blog entry about his escapades today alone. Hilarious and frustrating. A comedy of errors and his ‘helpers’ have been helping him to make the job harder lol.
Setting up the camp has been an all consuming task for most of us and 5 of us have been down with malaria this week, myself included. It’s no fun but luckily 3 days of tablets and some long nights sleep has sorted it out. We’ve also been doing lots of training including first aid and driver training especially. I’ve been labelled a fundi camba (rope expert) for my knot tying lessons just for showing the guys the figure 8 and truckies knot. Basic stuff but lots of fun. They freaked out at first when I got them to tie the knots blindfold but we had a good laugh and everyone managed to do them blindfold – just as well coz late at night in the African bush on the side of a hill having to tighten down a loose load without a torch is not that far fetched a scenario. Doing river crossings and handbrake starts on a steep hill near camp was another fun day so despite the long hours and challenging training we’re having fun.

We’re off on Tuesday to scout out some flycamp locations nearby which will mean a night out camping in the scrub which we’re all looking forward to. Fireside chats and jaffles for dinner after a long day hiking up and down hills ‘kicking rocks’ (a technical term for what geologists do), scouting tracks and picking a location for a 2 month flycamp base for soil sampling later this month. Should be another fun day out…

Lot’s more to write in due course but I have to save some stuff to write for later.