Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Hm, Tanzania tourist on motorcycles, I don,t think so

New years eve here, big party at the camp tonight.
We are back in Arusha having had a few ride outs and spending some time (2 nights) in the mountains west of Arusha, the national parks guards make it so difficult for anybody travelling independant of a tour company.
I don,t expect to be able to ride in any of the wildlife parks(meals on wheels) but we cant even ride through the roads all the way up the mountains without coming across official roadblocks that want excessive fees just to ride along a road outside the wildlife parks.

I do realise that this area exists by its tourist income but its $200us to get into some of them, ouch!!!!
We have contributed greatly to the local brewing industry and I think we should be given a free pass at the very least, ho hum

we will try our luck further east when we leave for Dar es slam on the 2nd of Jan.
I have found a trail on the map that is just outside the Kilimanjaro national park that takes you up to 3600mtrs so I,ll have a go at doing that and see if we can avoid the AK47 brigade.


Nice to see a few coments from Friends in the UK and spain, also friends we have met along the way, happy new year to you all. Buon natale to our new found italian friends, Hi olivier and Danielle, and theres no skiing here mates!!

Friday, December 26, 2008

continued

We are having thunderstorms at the moment so I have to post and continue as the computer may crash.

Christmas eve at the camp was a really lively affair, party till 5 am!!!
Boxing day night was the same
We have had a couple of rides out up into the hills around here and its all very lush and tropical,
We leave tomorrow heading west to explore the hills and to find a active volcano we have been told about, shouldn,t be that hard to find.
We have not a clue what we are going to do for new year, no plan so nothing to go wrong, right?
Thats about it for now, Pete n Bruce

Continued

Set off from Nairobi to head for Tanzania, the road is supposed to be tarmac all the way , yeh right!!!!
Out of 300km about 100km of it is trail and a very dusty trail at that, if a truck was heading towards you it was really bad after it passed, visibility zero.
Cleared Kenyan customs into Tanzania with a minimum of fuss and headed off to Arusha which is right next to Kilimanjaro, the countryside you pass through to get here is spectacular, starts with rolling hills with the really big mountains behind them, Zebras munching away at the side of the road, a great days ride!!
we got to Arusha and found our campsite, its called Masai camp, run by a great guy called Darrel from new york ,once again great food, cold beers and a huge bar area that was very quiet when we arrived, we booked in to camp and we were the only tent on site, very peaceful. how wrong I was to assume this.
It seemed very strange putting a tent up on the 22nd of Dec, we are usually skiing in Italy by now and here we were in 90deg heat, it just seemed all wrong, but hey ho.
The same night 3 overland parties arrived, about 100 people all in, 2 massive pink buses, called the pink caravan adventures full of Swedes, driven by Andreas and Johanus and assisted by the quite lovely Anjelica, sorry about the spellings if they are wrong mates.
These are really nice people who we spent a few hours drinking with as they seemed to like our company and us theirs.
Thanks for the stickers folks(they must of crept up to our tents in the morning and put pink stickers on the back boxes) crept up because they left at 6am.
Top people, they do this route often and gave us valuable info for our next destination

Nairobi and beyond

Nairobi,well we finally got there only to find the bikes were in Jo,burg,
we had a complete nightmare getting the bikes to Kenya and then clearing them through customs, it seemed to take forever butwas in fact just over a week.
We had been recomended a campsite in Nairobi called upper hill campsite run by a guy from Preston of all places called Rich, top food, cold beers and friendly staff.
Rich arranged a truck which we took to the airport to pick the crate up that had the bikes in it, we then took the bikes back to the campsite so I could build them up again in peace, it was great to get my hands dirty again and as soon as I had built them up it was off to the gas station for 10ltrs of petrol to put in the bikes,(you have to drain them before they go on a plane)
I asked to borrow a set of jump leads as I assumed the batteries would be flat but decided to try them whilst they were looking for a set. Crikey they both started first time, I love yamahas, both bikes had been in a crate for over 5 weeks and the batteries were still charged .


I couldn,t resist throwing my helmet on and going straight out for a ride, he he!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

funerals, electricity and the lack of it!!!

Ghanayan funerals are the pits if you are recovering from malaria, what happens is they erect this huge sound system on the street and play crap music at unbelievable volume for 36 hrs non stop.
Where is the usual power cut when you need it?
Electricity is sporadic to say the least but they always seem to have it for funerals, sometimes you get a cut for just 10min,, enough thaat you just get off to sleep, then you are thrown out of bed by the bass throbbing and the windows vibrating,
fair enough people should have a good time at a funeral thought I,
so at 3 am unable to sleep I ventured out on the street to see what kind of a party was going on, what party!!!!!! the streets were deserted apart from a DJ asleep on top of the bass speakers.
It was at this point I considered getting blacked up and full camofluage and launching a commando raid on the electric supply.
Hopefully ouur next post will be from Kenya, we will see

Busua inn and hospital at dixcove

Ghana is a great place to be stuck though, the guest house we are in Busua inn is run by a great French couple, Olivier and Danielle, food is great and they are good company.
When I was in hospital Olivier brought me food and drinks, thanks mate.
Bruce was invaluable at this stage as I had to have somebody to wipe my arse and clean up the vomit and change the sweat soaked sheets, whilst the staff and doctors were great and the needles and drips clean it is really difficult to run a hospital without running water and toilets!!!

Er, Um, trying to leave Ghana

Well, well,well. ok our bikes are in Nairobi and we are stuck here, after re-crating the bikes and lots of being messed about,
our friends here put us onto a travel agent in Takeradi that se emed to be reasonably effecient, I remain unconvinced as when the young lady was trying to do our booking said what time would you like to fly?
there is only one flight a day!!!!
Its as if she was trying to book a cab!
Great I thought we will fly at 11 am and if we are a little late please ask the pilot to hang about a bit ..
We are supposed to fly on Saturdaay 6th Dec, we will see
I have been in hospital here for 3 days with malaria, what a crap illness, 3days of hell and another month to get bettter, I,ve lost a lot of wieght

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Another thank you

A big thanks to Amanda who also turned up with half the rainforest in the form of Sunday newspapers, a private eye, books, motorcycle news, bike magazine the whole yearly production of the duchy of cornwalls bacon supply, and most of that weeks production of cheddar cheese n stillton, a 14mm spanner, a 14mm socket, some chain lube, wd40 an a grease nipple. ta Amanda

Friday, October 24, 2008

winding up

Thats about it for today folks, we are awaiting a quote for shipping the bikes from here to Nairobi and will then set about east africa,
For one thing its to dangerous to head through the centre, for another to expensive, the visas are outragous prices, 250 us each for angola , DRC 150 us each, Namibia 100 us this is for us to travel for a few days there,
Shit we can fly for less and more safely..
Pete n Bruce

Same gas station


gas station

We needed gas and water, found both here

we had to go to the match v edgy




Waterfall spotted through jungle


Breakfast, mystery meat n rice


Mitzi n Ogri doin our washing


takeradi bus station


Bruce an Amanda, note suitcases on bikes


A happy day for our sean


A very happy Bruce, we had just hit flat gravel track


Just over the border into mali


Thursday, October 23, 2008

Shit that was a hard day, I,ve been sat here 4 hrs but I,ve learned a lot, Tony and Dan would be proud,
Patrick at the hotel is a star and you may all see some more pictures tomorrow if you are really really good and eat all your tea and go to bed without arguing
Guess where were going now,, its easy slurp slurp

Another shit sunset in paradise


The view as we came down the trail to green turtle beach


more bleedin jungle


Jungle in Sieerra Leone


Ghana

We travelled south from the border, over the white volta river,
I thought that was in russia, hey ho. then across the black volta river,
it looked just like the white one,
We had a overnight stop at Tamale where we discovered that some places in Ghana have joined the no smoking club, very very strange, this was not a posh hotel.

We have been using a webb site called horizonsunlimited get some advance information about acomodation and we decided to head for a place called green turtle beach, run by a couple of english, real nice people, Tom and Jo, unfortunately as we hadn,t booked we could only stay 3 days before we were evicted.
We moved to the next place down the beach called safari lodge ,run by 2 muppets who should get another job, a place to avoid

Photo,s

The guy who was going to help me has cleared off,, boo hoo, bloody africa

Mali/ Burkina

Headed on across Burkina to Ouagadougou, the capital to get our visa for Ghana, another 2 day affair but a really nice friendly city, got some small bits that I needed to replace on the bikes, a few bolts had fallen off.
Sean by this time had aranged to meet us in Ghana and would be bringing new brake pads for both bikes,, plus bacon, sausages, cheese and a fray bentos chicken an mushroom pie, I kid you not,
thanks mate but I still cant figure out how to cook the pie on a primus stove .
Oh yes he also brought industrial quantities of newspapers.
Visas got we headed off to Ghana, we crossed the border at Bolgatanga into Ghana with a cheerful welcome to Ghana from aall the officials.
Beer oclock now. Ghana deserves its own story.

Can I just welcome the SEM, I believe Dan has stickied us there, an hi Loz how goes it chuck

Guinea and onwards

We then headed up to Kankan on proper roads, Bruce was a very happy bunny. we crossed thee border into Mali and stopped for 2 nights in Bamako because wwe had to wait 2 days for our visa for Burkina faso, we treated ourselves to a proper hotel for the last night there,, the first night was in,,,,,,,,, yes your right another brothel.
I still had some Siera leone money left and had to go to the market to change it up,,
quite an experience even for me,
kicking chickens and goats out of the way this old girl made room for me in her shack and we proceeded to haggle over the dough, I got a really good deal in the end and she offered me her daughter as part of the deal. cackling away we shook hands san daughter
Onwards the next day to Segou which is on the banks of the Niger, really impressive, we stayed there days,, the ATM machines worked FFS.
The next day we headed for the Burkina border where we saw a computer for the first time , the guy actually put our visa numbers in it, we were very impressed till I realised that he would have to take it to the capital to download it.
Never the less a very civilised border crossing

Update/////// a bit

We are currently in bloody paradise, Busua beach infact 150mls west of Accra in Ghana,
we have had some visitors out to see us, Sean an old pal of ours arrived here and spent a week with us down at safari beach, then Amanda arrived on the same flight Sean went back on,,
so we have been busy entertaining people which was nice but kind of strange as the only real people in our lives on the road have been ourselves,
Great to see you both and I have a guy here at this bloody expensive internet in a 5 star hotel is going to help me put some photos on,, we are not staying here by the way just using the interweb jobby.




After our fiasco leaving Sierra Leone we left Farina in Guinea and headed south to Kissidugu then north to Bamako . I,m going to post this now and then start again as we haad a power cut yesterday aand I lost a page of text so left in disgust and went for a beer,
can anybody spot the recuring theme here?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Leaving Freetown

Having got the bikes sorted and running really sweet again we headed off through the lion mountains towards the Guinea border, we stopped the night at a place called Kundara to give us a full day off road to the border,
This trail was really tough going the rains have played havoc with the terrain, some of the river fords were so deep they were up to my tank,
we arrived at the border leaving Sierra Leone to find yet again no bugger there, so carried on to the guinea side only to find the guy hadn,t got a stamp for the passports or carnets
I suggested he just looked the other way and we would slip through, hey ho, nothing ventured an all that, but no way, he gave me a letter to take to the Prefecture in the town 30miles down the trail, we were going to stop the night there anyway:
What on earth this guy had done to deserve posting to this place god only knows, but he had definately upset someone
So , plotted up at a hotel and then went to present ourselves at the prefecture
Sorry mate he aint in the office, recuring theme here yes??
Ah, but he,s at home I was told , you,ll have to go there,
by this time I,m pissed off, hot, tired and its way past beer o,clock but I aint got a stamp in my passport and this lot love their paperwork
So off to the guys house with the letter firmly gripped in my sweaty paws, his manservant told us to sit in his yard whilst we awaited the head honcho.
Out he comes and I present him with said letter and showed him the passports and carnets,
This is sod all to with me, says he, my guys at the office should of done this, go back there at once and how dare you interupt my dinner.
Back to the office where I assume the cop had had a phone call to tell him what to do, he just writes all the details down and tells me to piss off back to whichever stone I had crawled out from under,
GRRRRRR I still dont have a stamp but at least I,ve delivered the letter, it was like when the teacher gave you a letter for the headmaster, I still don,t know what was in it but its now way past beer o,clock so we go back to the hotel and relax and get a early night in thinking that we had made everybody happy.How wrong could I get it
BANG BANG BANG on the door in the morning, OPEN UP ITS THE POLICE, lo and behold its the head honcho and his driver,
he wanted to know our date of births and our professions, that was it!!!! the guy had missed the info off the form last night so the top man came to do it himself, service hey
I still dont have a stamp and never got one, we left Guinea the next day and the border into Mali was a breeze, we arrived last night and checked into a real shithole as it was a early start for us, we vacated at 7.30am and went to the Burkina embassy to get our visa, sure no probs, come back at 3pm and I,ll have them ready for you says the lady
There is a really nice hotel round the corner so sod it we have checked in for the night and will try to get a early start tomorrow.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Labe, Conakry, Free town

After leaving Labe and the wonderful cooking of Flavio and family at The hotel TaTa in Labe, this is a recomendation folks, we headed off to Conakry to await the arrival of desperately needed parts for the bikes,
Conakry was not as expected, its a capital city that dosn,t work, I mean we waited 3hrs for a ATM and it then ran out of cash, it appears that there is only 1 ATM in the city, great heyho.
We decided to limp the bikes to Freetown Sierra Leone, it aint that far about 300km,
Well bleedin well, 14hrs later we got into town, the road was crap the borders took forever to clear, we had a shit day, we got lost on the way into freetown and I finally paid a bike taxi to guide us to a hotel.
Well as it turns out the hotel has, ahem, other activities, we thought it was a bit busy at midnight but any port in a storm and we were in the shit so to speak.
This has in a way turned to our advantage, the staff are really friendly and security is tight,
we have a little appartment at the rear of the place, away from the activities and worst moaning and groaning
The gardner cleans up the condom packets and has cleaned our bikes inbetween shifts, top bloke.
We are awaiting new chains and sprockets for both bikes and new fork oil seals for Bruces bike, hers is unusable as no oil in the forks means bouncy bouncy which= bloody dangerous

I,d jus like to mention a few people who we have met on the ride down who have been of great help to us, Some of whom are still to email me, you know who you are
Quaddy Mark in Gambia, let me use his garden to service the bikes, donated a 17m ring spanner to my tool kit and also gave us a bed for 2 nights, thanks mate.
Internet Malc and his son, also Gambia, who are the ones who helped me put the piccies on and gave me internet lessons
Flavio and family in Labe,
Bruce had damaged her front wheel badly and Flavio took us to the bush docter who straightened it with a sledgehammer an a piece of wood, a good repair aswell
His, Flavios wife also cooked the best shin of beef I have tasted for years, cheers mate
The hotel we are in now Mothers residence, and Bakharr the nephew of the owner
Thanks als to everyone who I have not mentioned who have assisted us
And finally Mr pig in MCR FOR SORTING THE PARTS OUT

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Chute de Saala

We took a ride out to find these the other day, 45km of real backwoods trail with no signs at all,
You have to wait for someone at every cross in the trail and ask the way, well it was sure worth it these falls are spectacular, I have the photo,s but my camera is broke,I have to buy a new one somewhere but I aint a clue where

The next step and the last ones too

We are currently in Guinea Conakry at a place called Labe, we came over the mountains from Koundara a mere 260km of the worst trail I have ever ridden, it took us 11 hrs or so a real shitter of a day and it pissed it down for the last 30km of it turning the trail into a mud slick.
It has been an interesting few weeks, on our way to Guinea Bissau we asked a guy for directions, he was also on a Yamaha, not only did he say follow me but he took us to his house and fed us.

He also showed me his gun collection, thanks Ruis for yours and Mirielles hospitality.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008