In one week through Malawi

On march 28, we entered the sixth and smallest country of the Tour d’Afrique, Malawi. First we rode for a day and a half alongside the beautiful Lake Malawi on a level road, to arrive in Chitimba Beach for a rest day. It is a lovely place right on the lakeshore with no internet or mobilephone connection, being run by two couples from the Netherlands. Really the only thing to do there is taking it easy. This came in very handy for me, because my right foor started to swell as the result of an infected blister. The right medication and a lot of rest, was enough to be able to ride the bike on the ay after the rest.
During the next stages there was a lot of rain and many altitude-meters to do. It is not bad at all to do serious climbing in a rain shower when the temperature is 25 degrees!
After four days of biking through the Viphya Mountains, we arrived in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. Tomorrow we have another rest day, the day after that we’ll head for the border with Zambia.

Malawi

* A poor country with excellent roads, and hardly any cars.
* A lot of enthusiastic children
* There are many Christian churches represented: Seven Day Advetists, Jehova’s witness, Roman catholic, Salvation Army, etc.
* It is the most mountainous country on the Tour, after Ethiopia.
* Tobacco is the cash crop.
* Important source for aquariumfish
* Marketshare of Toyota is appr. 90%
* Is he saying Moni (Chichewa for ”hello”) or does he want money?

Health, injuries and biking-power

If you travel with a group of 80 people through Africa, sleeping in tents, it is hard to stay healthy. And of course the resistance against diseases is weakened because of all the energy that goes into the biking, day in, day out.
I think by now everybody has had diarrhea a few times. A lot of people suffer from slowly healing wounds on their bodies.
Since Gondar, Northern Ethiopia I had my share of illness: diarrhea, an infected right foot, problems because of the long hours on the saddle and several wounds that require antibiotics to heal. I estimate my medicine consumption for the last 2,5 month to be equal to what I consumed in the past 25 years. The medical support during the Tour is perfect: there is a doctor and a nurse on the staff. Besides that there are many medical professionals amongst the participants. By immediately turning to them whenever something is wrong, I managed to stay on my bike upon till now.
The number of injuries as the result of people falling, luckily is very small. Upon till now one rider has broken his collarbone in Northern Ethiopia, he is back on the tour since two weeks. Another participant couldn’t ride her bike for more than a week because of infections of her wounds. She also is back in the saddle again.
At two-thirds of the Tour the more and more people are getting extremely tired. The development of my own biking power is a good example: I started in Cairo, being well prepred and trained, and I could ride at the head of the peleton. Later more people got into the groove, and rode up front. After the restart in Arusha I have the feeling that I have used a lot of my energy resources, and that I don’t fully recuperate after a day of riding. I hear more riders complaining about this, especially the older riders.
My approach for the rest of the Tour will be to not waste any energy if possible, and to rest as often as can be. It is important to ride at a pace which I can handle, so jumping along with groups that are passing by, I’ll refrain from that for a while