We woke up to a chilly and windless morning in Ilulu. With big smiles we made our way knowing that it was all downhill for the next forty kilometers.
It was a good moral booster to be moving again. Screaming down the long mountain pass, slowing down to pass trucks and buses. Winding our way off the escarpment, down towards Dar es Salaam.
After covering forty kilometers in less than an hour and a half, the mountains opened up into the Ruaha River Valley. The slopes of the valley are littered with great Baobab trees, giving the area an ancient feel and hard, barren look. As far as you could see these “old men” of Africa were staring into the valley, each with their unique characteristics. After all the hours we have spent cycling past these giants, we are still to find two that look alike.
After lunching at a truck stop, we pushed another 25 kilometers and came across Crocodile Camp. Inquisitiveness and our lust for cold beer sent us through the gates.
Marc shouted over to me, pointing at a pair of loaded bicycles. We had stumbled on two other cyclists.
Hiro and Yoko, both from Japan, are a young married couple cycle touring around the world, slowly. They are in no rush to get anywhere, they just keep moving to better places. They have ridden the Friendship Highway in Nepal, toured through Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. They are on their way to Malawi and South Africa. From Cape Town they are flying over to South America to carry on seeing whats out there.
We set up camp together and sat talking over some ice cold beers.
Marc and I provided the bar snacks by cracking open some krematat (Baobab fruit) from the trees around our camp.
Hiro and Yoko meet Pedal2Peak.
Yoko was most impressed with the creamy sweet, yet sour taste of the fruit. Poor Hiro was told to collect some for the road.
The beauty of the couple was their views to traveling with loaded bikes. They were not ultra-light and living tough, like some of the other tourers we had met. They had similar setups to us.
They agreed that the minimalist approach would just make a tour longer than a month overbearing. Then again they are not cyclists, they are travelers.
It was sad saying goodbye to Hiro and Yoko. We had only spent one night together but it felt like we all knew each other for years due to our similar experiences on the road.
I am sure our paths will cross again.
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