On the road again

After two weeks of rest, the Tour had its re-start on Sunday, march 16. We travelled in seven days from Arusha to Iringa. The first day was the only one on tarmac, the other six we rode on dirt road. Besides that, march is the rainy season in Tanzania. If lots of water have come down, riding your bike we’ll become a very muddy affair (this goes for rider and bike)
We’re now in Iringa, in central Tanzania. We have finished the six off-road days. It was tough, sometimes very tough, but it was also do-able and great fun. In terrain like this, biking is not only about using your legs, steering your bike in the right direction is just as important. Luckily the water-downfall was not too heavy, so this did not cause any great problems (let alone a few muddy spots. Only the last days there was a rainshower during the ride, but by then i was on tarmac already.
I averaged (apart from the first day) about 20 km/h, the off-road conditions really slowed me down.
The landscape is green and spacious, looking a bit savanne-like. The people are very friendly and open. I have used the word “jambo” (meaning “hello” in Swahili) a zillion times in the past 7 days, answering the calls from the locals along the road. English is the second language in Tanzania, it makes it a lot easier to communicate with the people.
In Arusha 12 new sectional riders joined the group, it is nice to see some new faces.
From now on the road surface will be tarmac, all the way to Capetown (with the exception of 4 small stretches in Namibia). From Iringa to the Malawi-border, we’ll be doing in 4 days.

EFI

The importance of EFI ( if you have traveled Every Fucking Inch of the Tour d’Afrique on your bike, you are EFI) is a very special one. The riders talk about it often (“is x still EFI?”), but nowhere you’ll find an official list of EFI-riders. The TdA-organisation does keep track of who still is EFI, but they don’t want to focus on it to much, to prevent that people will do strange things to keep their EFI-status, like riding your bike, while you are very ill.
How do you lose your EFI-status? Mostly it is because of one of these causes:
***Not being able to ride the whole way during a difficult stage.
***Being ill or injured
***Choosing to visit a touristic site in stead of riding the bike.
To remain EFI you need luck as well. For example at the border-crossing Sudan-Ethiopia, the name of one of our riders looked a bit like that of an international terrorist. Because of this, customs held back his passport until the next day. He received it too late to be able to make it to camp on his own.
The hardest stages are now behind us, so the chances of staying EFI until Capetown will get larger every day. It is very important though to remain as sharp as can be, a small wound can (if not treated right) keep you of your bike, and one moment of inattention can make you fall of your bike, with all the consequences.