DAY 3: 29th July Bujumbura(BU) to Kigoma(TZ)

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After sadly saying good-bye to American Cowboy, we start our way to get out of Bujumbura and find the Tanganyka coast road to Nyanza-Lac and the border. On the way to Nyanza Lac, the WANNAGOPRO moments create 2 new videos, the chicken killing and the cornfromthetrucktothecar!!!! (available when better internet connexion)

The motorbikes can drive easily through this road full of interruptions, but the car finally reaches Nyanza Lac, where we start to climb from 900 mt (lake Tanganyka altitude) to 1600 mt in very short distance. Once there, we say goodbye to Burundi with 30 km of very hard road, where even the motorbikes have fallen, and African Pirate and Mohammed experience the sand biting. The dust covers every cm of the car and the bodies of the riders, we hope Tanzania gives us some asphalt.

We say good-bye to Burundi with Pilipili lover trying to lower the Burundi flag from the border point. 

Right after a little more dust, we enter to Tanzania through Manyovu border crossing and we start to discover the benefits of crossing borders through less transited entry points. We luckily find very friendly border officers and we get TRANSIT VISA very easily, we have 7 days to cross Tanzania, which decreases the VISA from 50 to 30 USD.

We drink our first Kilimanjaro beer (room temperature) right after the border and make our ritual dance with amazed Tanzanians watching us.

Our destination, Kigoma, receives us with very good news. We have to get the entry documents for the vehicles in the customs of Kigoma due to the fact that the customs officer was not in the entry border, at Manyovu. Although the office closes at 5pm, the customs manager calls some responsible civil servants and gives us, within a reasonable period of time, the needed documents.

The arrival to Jakobssen beach lodge is also awesome. This dutch stablished in Kigoma since some years ago, give us, due to a mistake on the booking, a chalet and a tent. The atmosphere is more than perfect; Tanganyka Lake gives us a warmly welcome in its Tanzanian waters. We have the chance to swim until the sunset and prepare our dinner with solar power.  Even Jakobssen and his wife offer us some eggs from their own farm and we take them for tomorrow breakfast.

The day could not end as well as it has been, and we find the bad notice that the clutch of out Land Cruiser is dead. We will see how to manage it tomorrow.

Good night riders!

ADVENTURE SPONSORED BY PRIMUS BEER

DAY 2: 28th July. Bujumbura(BU)

We wake up unusually late (08.00) due to the fact that we want to visit Bujumbura. Tomorrow African Cowboy will be going back to Kigali and we want to rest and visit some parts of Bujumbura.

After a surprising breakfast in l’Hotel de l’Amitie, we get lost for a while in Bujumbura city centre. Pilipili lover tries to find the flag of Burundi and makes everybody to look for him, unfortunately is Sunday and all shops are closed.

Time to go to, as the guides say, the most hilarious ZOO, the one in Bujumbura. We reach the ZOO with our friend Emmanuel, who guides us through the city.  Just right after the entrance we discover 3 walled spaces where they hide 3 Nile cocodriles. First surprise is that the guide coming with us offers us to feed them with guinea-pigs or rabbits. Second event becomes even more surprising, the biggest cocodriles can be visited inside its cages. We suddenly find ourselves watching a crazy guy (foreigner) who is pulling a 2 mt. cocodrile by its tail. We decide to accept the offer and feed the cocodrile. The GOPRO camera guives us another amazing moment, only VIP people will have access to the videos. Afterwards, time for a nice Chimpance, who plays with the collars and head ties of African Pirate and African Cowboy. We finally decide to define it the creepiest and most freaky ZOO ever seen when the dangerous snakes are taken out of the cages and left alone in the floor. We will probably never come back to this ZOO but we will talk about it for a long time.

Time to go to visit the TANGANYKA sand beaches of “non-salty” water. For this purpose we choose BORA-BORA, the place to be in BUJUMBURA. This is one of the most popular beach side-bars. When the music gets louder, the pro volleyball team finish their match and the sun is high, we start our match against ourselves and some locals and other visitors.  It becomes a good combination of cultures and languages in the same match. You can hear Spanish, local Kirundi and French, English and Catalan.

After some hours of watching the boats in the lake, the hour of Laughing Muzungu to change her nickname has arrived. She decides to rent a sailing boat in a nearby place and sail Tanganyka lake with two of us first and 3 later. She has become from now on the Captain Muzungu.

The sunset finds us saying goodbye to some local kids in the beach and, after stopping by the hotel, we have a delicious dinner composed of goat brochettes and PRIMUS beer. Tomorrow, time to focus on Swahili and Tanzania!!! 

DAY 1: JULY 27th Kigali(RW) to Bujumbura (BU)

Kigali, Rwanda. After a long night party in Nerea, Catheryn and Diane’s house in Kimihurura, Kigali, where some of the riders forgot to finish the kitchen cleaning works, we wake up at 6:00.  Well, everyone except Darth Vader, one of the riders who surprinsigly showed to the rest of the riders his capability to imitate the breathing sound of the Star Wars famous character by hiding his face with a simple sheet in the bed. 

Of course, the plan was to start the trip as soon as possible, but the hangover and the last preparations, which have not helped us to think faster, we finally start the EAST AFRICAN RIDERS ADVENTURE near 8.00 am.

The are two bikes to be ridden by African Cowboy and African Pirate who are experienced drivers, but the third bike must find its own rider. Final explications are given to Mohammed, the choosen one from pilipili lover, laughing muzungu and Indian photographer, he never drove TVS star before, but he is going to ride from Kigali to Bujumbura. We wish you Good Luck Mohammed!

We have decided the best day to start our trip, Rwanda is having UMUGANDA, the activity that makes the whole country to do community works once monthly. This means that the roads are almost desert and we can ride the country as we want.

After passing through some morning controls, where the police has nothing to say but to stop us to know more about our convoy of 3 bikes and an old car, we finally start the first stage.

The morning starts with Pilipili lover and Indian Photographer in the old ex-military car, we discover that the tyres are prepared for non-asphalt road, and today we have mainly asphalt roads, which means trying to follow the bikes gets more difficult whenever we are going through climbing roads or really curved road. Just after that we have discovered the capacity of American Cowboy to give us sings from the other side of the vehicle to be overtaken and use them to correctly pass the vehicle.

Once everything is going on and we do nor have to worry, pilipili lover discovers that Indian Photographer has a little videocamera called GOPRO. Without knowing it, he starts the WANNAGOPRO moments of the trip when Indian Photographer gives him a camera while recording. 

We reach Rwandan/Burundi border enjoying the people faces in the little villages we pass by, helping the increasingly experienced rider to reach every new step on its way to TVS Star sport controlling and learning to blow the “boat” horn we have in the old car.

We enter into Burundi after an hour in the border, we have decided to cross through the less crowded border point, GASENYI.  We are ready to leave, but suddenly a Burundian customs agent decides to stop us. We have to show her all the content of our bags and passports. After 20 minutes of looking for something we do not know, she openly says to Emmanuel (our Rwandan trip colleague until Bujumbura) she is looking for some USD. We diplomatically solve the matter after recovering Indian photographer passport, which had been in her pocket for the last 20 minutes.

Once we have realized we were starting our trip, after the first border crossing, we have started to enjoy Burundian roads and its drivers.

However, whenever pilipili lover was the driver the before mentioned signs of American Cowboy to overtake, become mere orientations. We have learnt to respect Tanzanian truck drivers, whose driving skills almost costed us to need to be reborn, well, us and the ciclyst who was carrying some banana kg.  Once we have started to overtake the Tanzanian truck, he has decided to turn to his left, causing the road to become narrower and narrower to us, and the cyclist coming from the opposite direction, who has became white for some seconds.

Another outstanding moment of the journey has been when African Pirate and Laughing Muzungu have decided to stop in a curve in order to buy some fresh fruit. This situation has caused Mohamed to stop in the ditch of the road and finding really difficult to recover the position in the road. This has made him to be surrounded by 30 curious Burundians until African Pirate and Indian Photographer have gone to rescue him. When Indian Photographer has returned to the car has seen Pilipili lover with some carrots he has bought. When I.P. has tried to advice him about not eating without washing them, he has realized P.L. has already eaten.

Once arrived to Ngozi, we have decided to stop for lunch, where Laughing Muzungu has officially started our dance. We will prepare a special video with all the spots where we have done our official dancing ceremony. Special mention to Emmanuel, our choreographer, you will see him in our firsts videos, as he is coming back to Kigali on Monday.

Finally, after our first 312 km we arrive to Bujumbura, We choose l’Hotel de l’Amitie, where we can park our vehicles and have a rest. We decide to have dinner, together with PRIMUS and AMSTEL BOCK (official beers of this first part of the adventure), and rest after our long and full of experiences.

Tomorrow we will visit Bujumbura and will continue the trip on Monday.

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The riders!!

INTRODUCTION

We are 6 common people trying to enjoy East Africa by travelling it, well it is more appropriate to say by Riding it. Our ethos are to reach Maputo in 19 days starting from Kigali, to create day by day the strongest and most coordinated team ever and to share the experience with our families and friends. 

The idea is to ride from Kigali through Bujumbura, then across Tanzania by the Tanganika lake side, enter in Zambia through Mbala and travel the whole country from its northeast to it southwest until we find Victoria Falls. After that, the next mission is to ride Zimbabwe from East to West, until we enter Mozambique by Mutare border. Once in Mozambique, the Indic Ocean coasts will join our steps and finally the capital of Mozambique will await our arrival.

The team is composed by(nick names under construction):

SANTI, alias Indian Photographer

NEREA, alias African Pirate

ANNA, alias Laughing Muzungu

JOAN, alias Mohammed alah hakbar!

LUIS, alias Pilipili lover

MATT, alias African Cowboy

Our bikes are:

2 TVS Star Sport, Rwandan plate

1 BMW F800, Canadian plate.

1 Toyota Land Cruiser 1987, Rwandan plate, previously owned by a Belgian ex-military.