Day 246 / 11

Date: 14 December 2022
Sleeping location: EER Guesthouse, Butare, Rwanda
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 60 / 15492 / 655
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 900 / 130900 / 12900
What’s that feeling?: dryness
Day in three words: Cruising on home

In the morning I packed up unhurriedly and cheekily made coffee using the kettle in the room rather than my stove. Take that, The Man. It immediately started raining when I got into my cycling gear, and at that moment it felt like Rwanda simply does not want me to be dry. The security guard informed me that there was "beaucoup de pluie" but thankfully he was wrong and it actually ended up being sunny the whole time I was riding. 

Instead of eating at the fancy place I packed up and went for a tasty and cheap buffet breakfast just down the road. This set me up nicely for a morning of fairly easy riding*, with ups and downs but more downs overall, and these were delicious fast downs where I could zoom at an effortless 40-60kph for a few km at a time. As ever in Rwanda the scenery was beautiful, rolling green hills with tea plantations and terraced farming. At one point I was chased by dozens of schoolchildren, but in a nice way, and it reminded me that the kids can be annoying but they also bring a lot of joy to the experience. It's quite a thing looking back and seeing thirty grinning faces running behind you. 

I didnt have any time pressure today, and this was to be the last day's riding for a few days, so I around halfway I stopped for delicious coffee and juice at a swish hotel and enjoyed that Friday feeling. After this the road began to follow a river valley and I actually got a bit of semi flat riding in for about the first time in Rwanda. I'm definitely able to ride harder on my own and Maggie 2.0 is set up in a way that allows a little more power and speed**. This bodes well for smashing out big miles on easier terrain. I still haven't hit 100km in a day this time out, despite putting in some big shifts. This has been a really tough section - I have done about 10% of the total climb for the trip in the ten days of riding since I set off. It’s all been quite low-key but relentless; if you look at a relief map of Rwanda the striking thing is how unstriking it is, no big mountain ranges or rifts, just endless hills, like someone has scrumpled up a piece of paper then tried halfheartedly to re-flatten it. It's rolling in the same way that the big spherical rock in Indiana Jones is - whilst technically true, the words understate quite how much it's going to hurt. 

In Butare I aimed for somewhere Christian and on the fancier side so I could leave Maggie there for a few days whilst I got the bus to Kigali and be more confident that she would still be there when I returned***. I was offered my choice of rooms, picked one at random and was delighted to find that the blanket on the bed said "Batman" under a large picture of Superman. Whilst I was showering there was a mysterious and repeated knock on the door but nobody was there. It turned out to be strange little bird pecking its reflection in every possible window up and down the row of rooms. What it was trying to accomplish I have no clue, but it was doing it with great enthusiasm. 

I chilled through the afternoon then went for dinner at a surprisingly fancy place with a proper "menu du jour" for about £4. I stuck around for the football and a small hangover was brought about because they only sold big beers, so I had two, then when I ordered a different smaller beer the guy brought two for some reason and I was powerless to resist drinking both. I will be quite glad when the world cup is over, it has been bad for both my beer drinking levels and sleep patterns.

*Says a lot about riding in Rwanda that 900m in 60km can be considered “easy”
**I flipped the stem to a negative rise which means the handlebars are lower, which in turn means a more aerodynamic riding position and (theoretically) more power from my legs. It’s possible that I am the only person reading this who cares. 
***”Thou shalt not steal beautiful personified touring bicycles”

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