It was late afternoon, the sun still murderously hot — and having biked almost 70km on increasingly difficult dirt roads, I was suffering. I carried on but froze when I turned the corner. Just ahead of me a dozen giraffe were emerging from the bush, slowly crossing the road. For someone used to having sheep run out in front of him while mountain biking in the English Peak District, this was a big deal.
”Seeing wildlife this close is what mountain biking in Africa is all about,” said John, our guide from Escape Adventures, the small New Zealand company running the trip.
With a passion for Africa matched only by his passion for mountain biking, John began bringing small groups of bikers to Africa six years ago. ”Cycling lets you interact with the locals as well seeing, feeling and smelling Africa in a way that’s just not possible from the confines of a tour bus or 4×4.”
It was the second and toughest day of a two-week bike ‘n ride tour of Kenya and Tanzania, which saw us travel fr om Nairobi to the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, 1 000km away.
Thankfully, we didn’t cycle all the way. The route has been pared down into sections, which together amount to a more manageable 550km. In between these sections, our small group travelled in the comfort of a fully-equipped support bus. We rode mostly on dirt roads, on either flat or gently rolling terrain, which was perfect for the casual weekend mountain biker. Be warned, though, that cycling this close to the equator is a hot and sweaty business. ”If you keep drinking, then it shouldn’t be an issue; and if you do feel yourself flagging, you can just get on the bus,” said John.
Helping him with the guiding was fellow Kiwi Mandy, who also cooked, and Nash, a local Kenyan who was our driver and translator.
For the first four days, we headed south from Nairobi deep into the semi-desert of Masai country, Kilimanjaro dominating the southern horizon. We watched vervet monkeys and baboons hanging out in the trees, but there was no danger of stumbling across any seriously dangerous animals since all the lions and leopards were wiped out long ago. The big cats are now confined to the safety of Amboseli, Kenya’s flagship national park, where we camped for a night.
The deserted bush campsite was situated right next to the park boundary, with only an electric fence between our tents and the whooping hyenas and grunting lions that kept us awake at night. We were up at dawn the next day for an early morning drive in the park, where we got within a trunk’s whisker of a herd of elephants and also encountered buffalo, wildebeest and zebra.
The next evening’s campsite was no less exciting. After cycling 25km across the bed of a dried-out lake, we arrived at a massive outcrop of rock at the base of which lay two tiny Masai villages. John had arranged with the chiefs to camp under the shadow of the rock, and news of our arrival drew a crowd of grinning, red-cloaked Masai men to watch us put up our tents in the sand.
Crossing the nearby border into Tanzania signalled a marked change of gear in the trip. Gone were the endless empty dirt roads and starry nights camping wild in the bush; for a couple of days we joined the tourist highway, complete with formal campsites and their truckloads of backpackers.
To escape, we drove south-east to the Usambara mountains, which rise abruptly from the plains to a height of 2 000m. They provided us with the one thing that the trip had been lacking so far — hills.
Over the next few days, we whizzed up and down the narrow dirt roads, through banana groves and rainforest, slowing down only long enough to watch hornbills and black-and-white colobus monkeys up in the trees. Everywhere we went, we received a warm reception from the villagers.
From the Usambaras it was downhill all the way to our final goal of the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Relaxing on the tropical beach with the help of a steady stream of beers, I realised that having almost been knocked off my bike by a herd of giraffe, mountain biking in the Peak District will never be quite the same again. — Â