Maggie's Rambles

Sleeping location: Bukoba Coop Hotel, Bukoba, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 15 / 14837 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 118000  Price of safety: ca £750 Day in three words: Well that escalated In the night we were woken by a massive storm with raging wind and rain and incredibly loud thunder. Lake Victoria seems to be the place to go for storms, we have seen about one a day when we’ve been on it. In the morning waves were still crashing vigorously onto the beach by the hotel, which seemed to be a bad omen for the overnight news, which was bad in two big ways. First, Turkey had suspended all flights to the UK, meaning our booked flight home with Turkish was now junk. A quick look at flights suggests that there aren’t going to be many out of Tanzania for too long. Second, the UK that we have to get back to is now in full lockdown. Any chance of staving off reality for a bit longer is gone.  After a breakfast/strategy meeting we decided to first head to the...

Sleeping location: Bukoba Coop Hotel, Bukoba, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 109 / 14822 Estimated climb (m today/total): 600 / 118000  Max speed: 81kph Day in three words: First steps home The slow journey home had an inauspicious start when the stove was accidentally left on after the coffee was done, leaking petrol everywhere. This made the whole room stink of it and it gave you headaches if you stayed in there too long. Then my flip flop broke again, after multiple failed repair jobs, and I finally decided to ditch them.  To start we descended off the ridgeline that we’d been on for the past few days and zoomed down a very steep and straight section of road to the plains 400m below. I hit 81kph (possible trip record) and did 10km in little more than 10 minutes. Down on the plains it was hot and sunny and very quiet. There was hardly any sign of humans, it was all wetlands and timber forests for the most part. The road was also flat and quiet and had a decent ...

Sleeping location: Lutheran Hotel, Kayanga, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 0 / 14713 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 117400  Soup competition: 1-1 Day in three words: Can’t go on During the night we both did some thinking on the Danish lady’s words and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t right for us to carry on into Malawi. We had been willing to test out the practical aspects of continuing the journey, but we might be putting other people’s lives at risk in places with minimal healthcare and we couldn’t do that. Therefore we couldn’t move past Tanzania, therefore we had to fly home from Tanzania because everything wasn’t going to be fixed before our visa ran out. So we booked a flight home from Dar (still extremely far away) in 6 weeks. This was the confirmation that t he trip was going to end before the end, but it wasn’t even that much of a wrench because it had been building towards this for several days. We still had lots of doubts; was this too late? Could...

Sleeping location: Lutheran Hotel, Kayanga, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 41 / 14713 Estimated climb (m today/total): 800 / 117400  Comic relief: Umbrella Man Day in three words: Back to civilisation At 3am we were woken by a noisy motorbike and some drunk men started shouting random things in a mixture of Swahili and (bad) English. We lay there quietly, thinking there might be some trouble, but nobody tried to get in and after about 15 minutes they buggered off again. Then at 7am we were woken up again by an angry little man, wearing oversized green wellies and waving a little umbrella around like a sword,  who barged into the room and started shouting gibberish. He claimed to be with the government but quickly lost credibility by threatening to throw a rock at us then demanding our dollars, so we just assumed he was a drunk idiot, removed him and shut the door on him. We packed up quickly and set off into thick fog and drizzle, which was oddly English. As we lef...

Sleeping location: Barn 1.274S 31.047E, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 62 / 14672 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1200 / 116600  Problems: mounting Day in three words: Africa’s worst village In the morning the checkpoint guy (Franklin) explained that he was the chief and that there had been people talking about throwing stones at us in our initial camping spot, hence why he had moved us to a place with a guard. Packing up was a depressing experience as a million thoughts ran through my head. Have we made a mistake by leaving the haven of Uganda and Bunyonyi? Does everyone here basically hate us? Are we in actual danger or is it just talk? Will we be able to get home if we need to? Can I make Papa’s funeral and what will it mean if I do? All of this sat on top of my already somber mood until it felt like I had the weight of a fully loaded Maggie’s (45kg) sat in my chest.  Before we left Franklin brought some food and asked if we would eat with him. He seemed ...

Sleeping location: Checkpoint 1.078S 30.768E, Tanzania Distance (km today/total): 57 / 14613 Estimated climb (m today/total): 800 / 115400  Days: 90 Day in three words: Tanzania allows us I felt better after a sleep and we efficiently got up and away well before 9am. Almost immediately we left tarmac and cycled towards the border along a rutted bumpy dirt road, past mostly quiet green fields. The occasional towns had some corona shouts but we mainly felt friendliness, apart from a guy with a big knife who started taking pictures of us but objected to me taking one back. He kept waving his big knife around and shouting “I will cut you” but it was the least threatening threat ever, as shown when he shouted “I am only joking with you” as we rode off. Fittingly, along this stretch I saw a couple of pairs of crowned cranes, the national bird of Uganda, flying overhead as if to see us off. We have both really enjoyed it here and it’s definitely been my favourite African country so...

Sleeping location: Kafunjo Hot Hot Bar and Lodges, Kafunjo, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 101 / 14556 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1200 / 114600  Papa: 93 Day in three words: A sad day In the morning the storms had passed but there was a lot of water around, and the sink was full of strange insects like wasps but with massive wings that seemed designed to fall off. An orange and brown bird was treating this like the delicious buffet it no doubt was. We settled for breakfast at the restaurant, but whilst up there it started to rain heavily and forced us to stay on the island a bit longer. For a while I watched an ibis strolling around the lawn, gobbling up worms that had come to greet the rain. Every so often it would shake out its feathers, which made it look like a huge shuttlecock.  We took the boat back to the mainland and climbed back up the dirt road we came in on, but it wasn’t as bad in the other direction. On the way I got a missed call from my parents’ ...

Sleeping location: Byoona Amagara, Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 0 / 14455 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 113400  Canoe: too wayward Day in three words: Strangely peaceful stress Sleep was indeed very nice, but the coronavirus situation is increasingly really not. We woke to news of lockdowns, enforced isolation and more cases appearing in East Africa. We had a Serious Chat and decided to divert towards Tanzania to avoid getting stuck in Rwanda. Sadly this will mean missing a couple of eagerly anticipated bits of Uganda, plus obviously the whole of Rwanda. We’ll just have to come back another time. news from the UK is also troubling, with the country seemingly on lockdown and life being put on hold. We are desperate not to be forced to return home to this. On top of this, Rebecca was feeling a bit ill* and my trusty flip flop, a leaving present from work, broke. This was all, if not overwhelming, certainly very whelming. I went for a walk to try and ...

Sleeping location: Byoona Amagara, Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 48 / 14455 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1000 / 113400  Canoe: too small Day in three words: It’s getting real Didn’t sleep well due to continuously rolling onto various grazes and waking up. As a result slept in until 8.45am; Rebecca slept in until TEN but to be fair she had essentially been sleeping on the ground for the last two nights. The hotel went massively down in our estimation after a rubbish breakfast of two sausages and some dry white bread. After processing this disappointment we didn’t get away until noon. The road continued to wind through green hills on smooth tarmac, although it felt less Welsh today. The main event was a steady 300m climb followed by similar on the descent, which was fun. We are starting to get more coronavirus shouts and some of them seem a bit less friendly than before. This is an unanticipated result of this increasingly bigger problem. A more anticipa...

Sleeping location: Satellite Hotel and Great Lakes Museum, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 115 / 14407 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 112400  Losses: margarine tub and empty haribo packet Day in three words: The first crash We were woken by scampering feet and opened the tent door to see a troupe of baboons wandering the site. They had designs on our food and had already got our tub of margarine and an empty haribo packet, then as we watched another took Rebecca’s tupperware up a tree because it smelled like food (it was subsequently dropped and recovered). We had to pack up and move everything away from the tent whilst also guarding our possessions. One tried to get to the main food bag a couple of times and I had to try and scare him off, which worked, but he lunged back both times. It was quite scary as they are the size of a medium dog and have big sharp teeth. After failing they just hung around the camp, eating the margarine straight from the tub with their ...

Sleeping location: Kalinzu Forest Reserve (camping), Uganda Distance (km today/total): 64 / 14292 Estimated climb (m today/total): 900 / 110900  Elephants/hippos: endless Day in three words: Medley of Wonders* *Actual slogan of QENP In the morning someone showed up at the visitor centre and we paid our pittance for camping and left. Our packing up was so smooth that we were away well before 9am even though I got briefly locked in the toilet. On the way out we went back to the hippo spot from the night before, where they were now all lounging in a big pile in the water. We watched them for a bit and greatly enjoyed their various funny noises, then headed back along the dirt road back to the tarmac. Along the way we saw more buffalo, kobs, antelope, mongoose, warthogs and distant elephants, plus we made up some jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger* and riffed at great length about whether or not the termite mounds were warthogs, warthogs in termite mound costumes, elephants in ...

Sleeping location: Tourist Information Centre (camping), Katwe, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 91 / 14228 Estimated climb (m today/total): 400 / 110000  Hemisphere: southern Day in three words: Close to nature Medium efficiency meant we were away by 10am, and set off down a dirt road along the river valley towards the main road. It was mostly smooth but some bumpy rocky sections meant I had to be on my toes at all times, but it was pretty fun. Back on the main road I ticked off some admin and met Rebecca in Kasese, where we had some lunch involving a cracking juice and average salad/sandwich whilst listening to an early 2000s R&B megamix. On the way into Kasey was a sign for the “Market of Grasshoppers” - is it for them, do they sell them, or is it just the name?  After a surprisingly difficult search for an ATM we hit the road towards Queen Elizabeth National Park, and progressed smoothly along smooth tarmac until we reached a big milestone: the Equator. Since...

Sleeping location: Ruboni Community Camp, Rwenzori foothills, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 0 / 14137 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 109600  Hikes: thwarted Day in FOUR words*: (What’s the story) Rwenzori? *Increased to four to allow a pun too good to miss A couple of days spent relaxing and gently exploring the deep forested river valley around where we were staying. Would have been one day if not for some bogus information, as we will see. Day 1 we enjoyed the peace and quiet by sleeping in until 9am. As expected the view from our elevated camping spot was indeed spectacular, up a deep green forest valley with the huge jagged rocky Portal Peaks (4500m ish) looming above it. Initially there were just a few fluffy clouds floating around, but quickly they gathered, filled the sky and hid the mountains away. We had access to a nice balcony belonging to the adjacent (unoccupied) rooms and spent much of the day on it, doing bike/mat maintenance, reading and making/...

Sleeping location: Ruboni Community Camp, Rwenzori foothills, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 73 / 14137 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 109600  Difficulty: surprising Day in three words: Surface to air   After some standard faffing, including Rebecca realising she needed some actual shoes* as we were planning to do some actual hiking in actual mountains, we set off a little before noon. The road was a mixture of OK surfaces, shuffling between bumpy tarmac, gravelly tarmac and smooth-ish dirt. it was quite up and down but the views were usually nice ones, of green hills and the foothills of the Rwenzoris always looming on our right. Later on it became more downhill and there were some fun short descents, enlivened by the inconsistent road surface. For our first rest stop we accidentally sat within earshot of two pigs making furious and bizarre pig noises at each other. At the next rest stop I sat under a tree in a village and attracted the usual attention. A ...

Sleeping location: New Fort View, Fort Portal, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 88 / 14064 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 108100  Maggie’s diet: 25kg Day in three words: More rift adventures Today we rode an out & back recommended by Sam from Kampala, and as it was just a day ride we went out with glorious light bikes, just as nature intended. Just before we left we had the entertaining sight of dozens of soldiers running/walking up the steep hill in full uniform, plus a man with a whistle and a stick supplying “encouragement”. The first 15km was gradual climb on smooth road through green farmland and villages. Towards the end of this Rebecca decided she wasn’t feeling it and said she’d turn back shortly, so I went off solo. Suddenly a sign warning of 10km of descent appeared, but no sign of any actual descent. This mystery was solved round the corner when I popped out into a huge deep green valley - another one of the rifts that cover this bit of Africa. The r...

Sleeping location: New Fort View, Fort Portal, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 2 / 13976 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 106700  Fort Portal: 4 stars Day in three words: Rest and rugby Spent a couple of days resting and relaxing in FP. On Saturday morning at about 11 the hotel annoyingly said they didn't have space, so we had to pack up and move across town. This took way longer than it should have (it’s a hilly place) and we didn’t get settled in to a new place until about 1pm. We still weren’t feeling great so rested in the hotel all afternoon. I did some blogging in the hotel restaurant whilst trying not to be distracted by a bonkers Indian soap opera that was on the tv. There was constant epic music and random camera zooms in/out whilst the characters said increasingly ludicrous things; there were about 5 betrayals each episode. But the dubbing from Hindi to English was done in completely emotionless voices.   In the evening we went out for dinner at the sa...

Sleeping location: Westend Motel, Fort Portal, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 109 / 13974 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1200 / 106700  Types of monkey: 2 Day in three words: Rolling but rewarding For breakfast I tried to make ugali/posho, but it went very wrong and just turned into more of a grey sludge than ugali/posho usually is. It was made borderline edible by the addition of lots of jam and peanut butter. The ugali packet has to clarify that it is “for food”, which says it all really. We rolled out with very stiff legs, but thankfully my expert bike knowledge (guessing) had sorted out some of Rebecca’s setup issues and she was in a more comfortable position again.  The riding was more of the same rolling hills, but with more forest and views which made things more enjoyable. Late morning we went through a big forest section, with loads of huge colourful butterflies flitting around our bikes, then I spotted something interesting in a tree and we stopped to l...

Sleeping location: Katente Country Resort, near Kyegegwa, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 126 / 13865 Estimated climb (m today/total): 1400 / 105500  Hills: I can’t even Day in three words: Soft legs suffer We set off, after some tweaks to our bike setups, into the same landscape of rolling hills. It was all very green with lots of trees and occasional farmland, and pretty in a low key way but without much exciting to write about. The hills were rolling but endless, and over the course of the day the incessant climbing started to really hurt. Our legs, particularly mine, have apparently softened up during the time off. Rebecca was having other problems as her bike tweaks had actually made things worse. Various things of note: -A public toilet with different prices for “short” (200) and “long” (300). Long seems like much better value if you ask me -Saw a few red billed hornbills, ie Zazu from the Lion King, in a tree, scheming no doubt -A man holding a sheep’s hand whil...

Sleeping location: Kolping Hotel, Mityana, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 81 / 13739 Estimated climb (m today/total): 900 / 104100  Goodbyes: many Day in three words: Back into it  Finally it was time to leave Kampala. Even though we were mostly packed we still didn’t leave the apartment until 10, then had to cycle via shops to the clinic to do an official goodbye. Maggie felt new and handled differently, probably a result of new tyres and new weight distribution*, and rush hour Kampala was a great place to test this out. At the clinic we had a big goodbye with lots of hugs and pictures, then wobbled off into traffic with waving hands in my rear view mirror.  In total it was 25km before we left the city, and 30km until we hit actual countryside. It seemed a lot at the time but I guess not so bad when compared to London/Istanbul/Cairo. The traffic was the usual craziness but surprisingly unterrifying, I guess because we were used to it by now. The lorries and b...

Sleeping location: Airbnb mansion, Bulago Island, Uganda (then back in Kampala) Distance (km today/total): 0 / 13658 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 103200  Disturbances: storms only Day in three words: Kampala week 2.5 Four days covering the last bit of Kampala, mainly spent on our little island paradise. It was blissfully peaceful and relaxed and a great way to get our energy up before setting off on the next stage of the journey. Saturday - we were woken up in the pre-dawn light by strong winds and realised that a huge storm was raging a few km away across the lake. We could see the whole thing from afar, a huge storm cloud, torrential rain, lightning bolts with colossal thunder, but we stayed completely untouched and stayed outside watching it slowly catch the rising sun’s light. Later on the sky cleared and we enjoyed testing the noon shadows on the equator* - the shadow of me wearing my hat was just a circle around my feet, which looked really odd. We did very l...

Sleeping location: Liz and Paul’s apartment, Kampala, Uganda Distance (km today/total): 0 / 13658 Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 103200  Rebeccas: 1 Day in three words: Kampala week 2 The second week in Kampala was much the same as the first, but with added Rebecca after she arrived on Saturday afternoon. She got her admin sorted and then also helped out at the clinic for the last few days. We made the most of Kampala’s bars and restaurants and both became quite attached to the high (read: the same or less luxurious than back in London) life, so it may be a shock to get back on the road. On Friday we travelled to an airbnb on a tiny island on Lake Victoria to have a few days of R&R, and celebrate our official 1yr anniversary, before setting off again.  Saturday - found that Maggie’s new tyres had both mysteriously deflated since fitted. Perhaps she got too attached to the old ones and is acting up. I can’t head off with unreliable tyres as I only have a fini...