Day 7 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour – The Bush Camp where my death bed almost was to Chipata, a.k.a. Fort Jameson in a previous life.
Distance – 65 km
Climb – 455 m
Time – 4 hr 28 min
Ave Heart Rate – 120 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 169 bpm
Thankfully the Support Team were able to break the suspension springs on the dreaded security road through the lower Zambezi Valley on their way to Chirundu.
With the promise of more bad roads ahead, we risk busting it properly to the point where we have no kitchen trailer and have to survive eating roadkill. But like Richard Hammond, I don’t know how to peel a squashed squirrel and plus, I’ve learnt that some dead things seen on the road, like vine snakes, for example, aren’t dead, just playing possum. Leaving us with no option but to get to Chipata early so Laurie and Russ could forage spare parts to fix the trailer.
So we drove out of our roadside camp with all the bikes on trailers and cyclist in or on top of vehicles. Al and I pulled the short straws and got the external seats with extra ventilation and extra legroom, laying on top of all the crap on the back of Isuzu D-max. But we also got the best views of rural Zambia, something I never saw much of yesterday on account of being on my death bed.
At a police road block, we were offered a rack of grilled rats to nibble on whilst driving, 50 for a hundred or 2 kwacha each, which is about 2.5 US cents. Apparently, they are delicious either salted, plain or peri peri, served with fur intact to ease digestion.
I told Billy that because rat doesn’t feature on San Diego menus he should treat it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience and try one, but he refused. Billy has grown soft living in the US. I couldn’t eat one because I was still full from breakfast, plus I worried that eating rat would make my bottom squeak.
Zambian villages are God-fearing. Every little village has at least one business called God’s Willing Investments or God Knows Best General Dealers and Hardware. It is quite charming.
Charming almost turned into a calamity when Mark Wilson picked up his first Dick of the Day award for almost causing a multi-cyclist pile-up behind when he recklessly swerved at the very last second and without warning because I asked him to take a photo of the sign I had just noticed outside the Nyango Construction, Furniture and Coffin Company.
I noticed other stuff on the ride today that I hadn’t picked up on before.
Not so long ago, the CocaCola logo dominated in Africa. You would see it plastered on every store sign on every sign in every village, without exception. Nowadays it doesn’t even get a look in mostly for cellphone advertising.
I also noticed how to solve Africa’s deforestation problem. Plant mango trees. As we moved into tobacco growing areas where the trees take a hammering for curing, the last men standing where mango trees in their thousands. I have never seen so many wild mango trees since my life. I want to come back to Zambia in Mango season.
I also want to come back outside of mango season. Zambia is a beautiful country, without many of Zimbabwe’s hang ups and hassles, with decent roads and a plan going forward. Unless Fred M’mbewe gets into power. Please delete any positive inferences I might have made about Fred in a previous blog. Apparently the man is Zambia’s version of Julius Malema. One nutcase politician loose in the region is one too many.
The riders disembarked with just 65km to ride to our overnight pit stop. A short leg was the best muti for those recovering from projectile nausea and leaky bottom syndrome.
I can’t remember when last I enjoyed a morning in the saddle as much, riding through new scenery on good roads with best friends and with no pressure, it doesn’t get much better.
As is his want, Al Watermeyer unfurled his giant Zimbabwe flag for the ride into Chipata, the busy little border town that is our pit stop for the night. That he was also wearing his entirely warranted Dick of the Day tutu will make the memory more special. And building memories is one of the boxes we look to tick when riding the Old Legs Tour.
Al drags the huge flag not only because he is patriotic, but the extra wind drag coefficient gives him a great excuse for coming less than second in the sprint finishes. I think I will also shop for an even huger flag that I can deploy going down the final strait so I can have a good excuse.
The peloton had the ‘last day at school’ feel about it. We sounded like the disco. The internet in Zambia is that good and that cheap, Mark was able to download song requests to play through his bike disco speakers. I chose Walk on Water by Thirty Seconds to Mars. CJ chose some Bavarian drinking song. When I first heard the alarming noises, I though I’d broken spokes in my front wheel. No disrespect to German music but I think it is best enjoyed after copious quantities of gluvine.
I had to ride without gloves today. They were last seen in my kitbag which means they are now gone and I’ll arrive in Uganda with hands tanned black.
I blame Vicky Bowen entirely. She picked up on my logistical problems last Tour and suggested I develop a more systematic approach to packing my kit using pack pods, little mini bags that you pack inside your main kit bag, to separate underwear, socks, clothing for inclement weather, happy shirts, ride shirts and so on.
Because I want to be super organized I have gone with 17 separate pack pods inside my mother kitbag, and I now have a less than 1 in 17 chance of finding shit, because nothing is in the pack pod is where it is supposed to be.
My system has collapsed completely. I even found 2 days of dirty washing in my camelbak, but only after humping it over mountains for 2 days. God knows where my poor ride gloves have been trafficked. I am thinking to solve the losing my shit problem, I’m going to ride the next Tour naked.
We were hosted in Chipata at by the Breytenbach family at their delightful Mamarula Lodge, a little piece of paradise complete with cold beers, soft beds and the best ever potjie dinner at the end of a long, dusty road. Ewan McGregor and Charlie Bornman stayed there on the Long Way Down. Put it on your radar if you can.
Today is a biggie. We ride 133km through lions, elephants, tigers and tsetse flies on our way to our next night stop and first rest day at the Wildlife Camp, South Luangwa National Park. +/- 880 kilometers down and 2200 kilometers to go. Wish us luck.
Also wish Peter Gilpin best of luck flying the Zim flag in
Friday’s Olympic rowing heat – 8:50am Tokyo time or 1:50am Zim time. Athletes will not be entering arena in English alphabetical order but Japanese – if anyone has an idea of where Z features in the Jap alphabet, please let me know.
Until my next blog, enjoy and pedal if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)
Day 8 and 9 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour – From Chipata to the Wildlife Camp, South Luangwa National Park
Distance – 132 km
Climb – 616 m
Time – 6 and a bit hours. (My watch conked out)
Ave Heart Rate – 114 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 170 bpm
I am blogging from the banks of the Luangwa River.
As I type, the baboon war to end all baboon wars is raging in the trees behind me. Apparently, according to the barman, a youngster has misbehaved and was now being terribly tortured by his elders, and every other baboon in the troop who wants a piece of him. I don’t know what he did wrong but it must have been real bad, because even the other little baboons are queuing to beat up on the little guy.
Shame. I feel sorry for him. But the pod of hippos snoozing on the sandbank in front, don’t. They just wish he’d shut the hell up. Ditto the family of elephants trying to enjoy sundowners at the little waterhole in front of the bar, ditto the even more nervous than normal bushbuck ewe, ditto the giraffe frowning down their long noses at the fractious apes, ditto the warthogs, and ditto the small herd of puku, which for those who don’t know, look like scruffy impala.
The only animals who looked like they were enjoying the baboon wars were a troop of monkeys spectating. The only thing they were lacking were packets of popcorn.
South Luangwa is fully deserving of it’s reputation as the best National Park in Africa, and I’m coming back to fully explore as soon as I can, but in a car, not on bike. Bicycles are not the best vehicles to view game from. Like hills, elephants are bigger when seen from a bicycle. Elephants are big enough naturally, and don’t require any further magnification.
The elephant that tripped over the guy rope of Russell’s tent at 7 minutes past midnight last night on his way down to the river was especially huge, according to Russell.
Russell spent the rest of the night wide awake, trying to summon up the courage to tell the elephant to voetsak if it passed by a second time. Russell now wishes he’d borrowed a bicycle helmet to sleep in, and a high-viz DayGlo orange tent. I’m very glad I didn’t lend him a sleeping bag.
My legs and my bottom are especially happy to be in Luangwa. Today is our first rest day after leaving Harare 8 days and 1000 kilometers ago. I think all of riders felt the same, bar maybe Billy who is soaking up Africa like a sponge, and C.J.
Politics, economics and grilled rats on the menu aside, Africa is good muti, especially Zambia. The people are easily the most friendly I’ve met, the views go on for ever and ever, the soils and climate look second to none. We’ve only been in Zambia for 5 days but already I understand why David Livingstone wanted his heart buried here.
But with most of Zambia still in front of us, I’m also suspecting exhaustion to be one of the primary causes of David’s death. Zambia is huge, especially on a bicycle at 20 k.p.h.
The leg from Chipata to Luangwa South was a monster 133 km amplified by 37 degree heat, and an absolutely pointless hill at the 80 kilometer peg, that made us forget all the pleasant downhill that had come before. On the route profile the hill showed like a pimple, but up close and on a bike, it was big like a mountain.
Still fearful of all the blood he lost to tsetse flies in the Zambezi Valley on the Lockdown Tour, Mark Wilson rode with a green mosquito net over his head, which clashed horribly with his Dick of the Day blue tutu. I think it must have been 57 degrees inside his mossie net. Any tsetses that went in there would have suffered fatal heat stroke.
For Billy it was his longest ride ever on a bike.
133 kilometers on a slow bike through much of the same scenery can make for a long day, especially if Adam sings. I begged him not to sing. Instead he made up a game which involved goats, instead of playing cards, and a very complex scoring system. So many points for a black goat, more for a white goat, and an undetermined number for brown goats. I am sure it would have been a jolly exciting game had we played, but alas, I was forced to feign exhaustion and dropped back to chat with Mark Wilson instead.
Conversation in our peloton is a very varied thing. While Mark was telling me all about a girl who came up to him at the bowling alley when he was thirteen to tell him she liked him, Jaime and CarolJoy were debating Maslow’s hierarchy of needs just behind us.
Adam and I had a race with a group of kids. Me and Adam were on bikes, and the kids on foot, but otherwise it was a fair contest. Over the 30 meter dash, I clocked the fastest kid at 22 kph. He was running barefoot on burning tar, and must have been all of 11 years old.
The vegetation changed from pristine woodland that definitely involved a mukwa tree, a Prince of Wales feather and a baobab, plus other trees whose names escape me to a coastal almost Beira type vegetation, complete with palm trees and at least one Flamboyant tree as we neared Mfuwe, which is weird considering we’re thousands of kilometers from Beira.
But as soon as we turned off the main road and on to the dirt into the wildlife area, we were into cathedral mopane and albidas, same same like Mana Pools, but with added attractions like giraffe and puku.
Thanks to our sponsors Ezytrack, Linda and Jenny were bust at Mfuwe International Airport, twenty kilometers off track. They tried to bulldust us that they’d gone there to buy bargain bananas, but we didn’t buy it for a second.
Also bust earlier in the day was Al Watermeyer who packed up his tent and all his belongings at Chipata at 2 o’clock in the morning, instead of 5 o’clock.
Al Watermeyer is our route master for the Tanzanian and Uganda legs of the Tour. Things might get quite interesting. As mentioned in a previous blog, Al slipped on a bar of soap and banged his head rather hard on the ground, mostly because he is a clumsy bastard. Well it turns out that in banging his head, Al has suffered a traumatic nerve palsy, and the horizon he sees out of his left eye is 5 or 10 degrees lower than the horizon he sees out of his right eye.
We have consulted my eye surgeon in Harare, I have him on speed dial, and we have been told Al will enjoy spontaneous recovery over a 4 to 6 week period. But until then Al has to ride with a patch. To make the uphills in Tanzania and Uganda easier, I have asked Al to wear the patch on the eye with the lowest horizon.
We are very privileged to be able to ride through Luangwa wildlife areas for the next three days. We are even more privileged to have Robbie Clifford from Robin Pope Safaris riding shotgun for us, to make sure we don’t get stood upon or eaten by lions, tigers or elephants.
In closing a huge shout out to Herman Myles and the staff at the Wildlife Camp, South Luangwa for best ever rest day.
We are riding 3000 km from Harare to Uganda to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. Please follow and support us on www.oldlegstour.co.zw and on Facebook, but be warned, we ride slow like paint dries.
Until my next blog from the middle of the bush, stay safe, enjoy and pedal if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)