The week of the cake and the cycling...

Photos are in reverse order - I'm still not a pro at this blogging lark!

Rachel's dusty legs

The final push on tarmac, Mulanje mountain


Tea fields and a hill called Milanje in Mozambique, near the border

The village crowds around

Going down...

Going up...

Mulanje massif from the track to Phalombe

Our start and finish point

Cake:mark1

This week Rachel succeeded (twice) in making fantastic sponge cakes with no electric mixers, no cake tins, no power (for some of the time), no recipes and no measuring facilities to use even if she did have a recipe. That both cakes have turned out to be total taste-explosions is down to some significant skills, and quite a bit of good luck (but mostly skills, I’m reliably informed…)

We are just back from our 2nd evening with the Blantyre Hash House Harriers. For those who haven’t heard of the ‘Hashers’ they are a very social running club who meet once a week (Monday evenings here) with some odd beer-and-song-related-rituals which serve as great ex-pat social clubs in many areas of the world. Apparently there is a group in Edinburgh, so we may investigate that when we get back – perhaps it will be full of travellers to Edinburgh. The emphasis is more on the beer and less on the running, so that suits us just fine! It has provided a much needed service of allowing us to hang out with other white people and not feel like aliens/celebrities/walking dollar signs for a while, and has allowed us to meet some really friendly and interesting people Additionally, it is a great place to hear of other events, such as the camping trip we may be taking this weekend (stay posted for updates on that!).

Last weekend we had our (now) usual trip to Blantyre on Saturday which was quite nice. The coffee shop was open this week, so we had some real coffee and good (but expensive) chocolate cake. Then we headed to a MayFair we’d been told about at the international primary school. We watched some incredibly acrobatic dancing which seemed to have an east-Asian theme to it, while kids rode petrol powered go-karts, or played in the foam slide, played 5-a-side or ran around shooting eachother with BB guns. There were many stalls and we gravitated to those selling cakes and books. We both came away with a veritable library of new reading (I got 3 old copies of National Geographic) and some coconut ice to keep us going on our Sunday bike ride…

Around 6.20am we were picked up by R, a Dutch ex-pat in a Landrover Defender 110 (the epitome of savannah transport but outnumbered by Toyota Hilux’s here). R had scrounged 2 extra bikes from other members of the Mountain Club of Malawi for the trip we were to undertake, for Rach and I. The route was a round trip from Mulanje town around the Mount Mulanje Massif, 113km in total, only 30 of which were on tarmac’d roads!

The start was inauspicious, riding off almost silently into the mist (after R had acquired his first of several punctures that day while his bike was in the car…very bad luck for him, but it did slow him down to almost human pace!). 8 of us rode off sweatily, even although it was only 7.30am, with at least 2 of us wondering why we were doing this, saddle sore already and tiring quickly of the almost continuous shouts of ‘asungu!’ from the constant strings of villages and hamlets we rode through. We were in Tea country and most of the people we saw would work in the tea fields. I’m sure they’ll have seen white people regularly before, walking the many paths of the mountain, but yet young and old still delight in shouting ‘white person!’ in Chichewa with the excitement a kid might shout ‘ice cream van!’…this will take some getting used to...

Fairly underwhelmed by the start, and feeling much slower than the main group who we hadn’t seen since about 7.35, Rach and I decided we would head back slowly once we had met up with the others at the agreed waiting spot of Phalombe, 35km further on. Around 10am Rach and I arrived in Phalombe, the mist had cleared from the lowlands by this point but was still clinging stubbornly to the massif. We were more upbeat at this point, and knew that the next section was over the Fort Lister Gap – this had the attraction of 12km of downhill, once you had slogged up 8km of uphill. And on the other side, R’s wife, A, would be waiting with cold water and a picnic. Well, as Rach and I are so ruled by our stomachs, and not wanting to shirk the challenge of the Gap, we decided to abandon our plans for a shorter day and just get on with it. We pedalled and pushed up through the gap, sweating profusely. The pushing gave us a great opportunity to speak to M, the youngest member of the trip, who is sitting his AS levels at the moment and had an IT exam the next day. Great conversations were had, and before we knew it we were at the top (again surrounded by people acting like we were Madonna – for all they knew we could have been! Unlike Madge we decided not to adopt any of the scruffy little kids.) Instead we zoomed off down the other side. The downhill was really fun and long, rough double-track road with large rocks and water worn runnels to avoid – great fun, and time to stand up out of the saddle and give the bum a bit of a rest!

When we got to the village at the bottom of the hill we met A and regrouped with a wonderful apple cake, fresh pineapple, and an attentive audience consisting of pretty much the whole village (see photo). R had by this point acquired 2 more punctures on the decent, and his front tyre was still leaking air. As he rides so much faster than us, and we were beginning to get fairly wierded-out by the odd celebrity attention we were getting from the villagers, Rach and I decided to head off. Next stop, the Mozambique Border!

It was shortly after this that the worst part of the trip happened, for me at least. The track was almost continuously lined with closely spaced houses and occasional markets. We were being constantly ‘asunugu’ed, but no more than previously. Then some bloke who may have had mental disabilities but we think was probably drunk tried to block us from getting past. We got through but he continued shouting incoherently at us in Chichewa and trying to grab us. Several rude words were exchanged (in both languages, I’m sure!) and as much body language as one can muster while still trying to cycle along. Eventually he gave up, having decided that we weren’t worth running after – or maybe forgetting why he was chasing us in the first place. The fact that this bloke was obviously not representative of the community (one of them severely reprimanded him) helped to calm us down, but it I was furious at the time.

This section of track to the border was long, hilly and rough. It was the heat of the day and we’d already covered 70km, so understandably we were a bit irritable. However, I do think the character of the ‘asungu’ing we got on this road was far less easy going and far more ‘give me money’. Not a fun situation, and we got through it by mirroring the people (asking them for money when they asked us, but trying to get in there first with a nice ‘how are you’ in Chichewa to steer the conversation away from their predictable impolite demand for funds – nobody says ‘please’ here at all…). On the positive side, the area is truly beautiful, with tea fiels, small villages shaded by mature trees, banana crops and views across the vast plains in nearby Mozambique. Once we got to the Border (by this point having been caught and passed by R, M and the gang once more) we fueled up on soft drinks and sandwiches and prepared for the final 35km of beautifully tarmac’d road back to Mulanje.

This section was enjoyed the best, although we’d been told to fear it for it’s long hills. The hills are long, but the tarmac is sweet relief after 80km of dirt tracks, there are very few villages - so no ‘asunugu’ing, and there is a camaraderie among the local cyclists who outnumber the motor vehicles 50-1. One kindly soul who was going along at our pace helpfully advised us of how far we had to go, and on hearing of our day’s activities said ‘you truly know cycling’…well, perhaps!

We staggered in to the pizzeria in Mulanje at 5.30 in a power cut. Luckily they cook on a stone, wood fired kiln so pizza and beer were had all round.

A tough day, emotionally and physically, but we’re glad we did it – what doesn’t kill you…

Love to all,

A & R