Our departure from Lilongwe on Friday April 4 introduced a lot of changes: First of all th rain clouds disappeared, and also the rain that they produce.. We are riding und4er clear blue skies again. After having followed a southern direction in the past weeks, we are now riding in south-westerly direction. We’ll keep on doing this until Windhoek, Namibia at the end of April. The distances we’ll be ding are increasing now as well: We have averaged 115 km/day so far, but in the last month of the tour we’ll be doing 150 km on an average day. .
And of course we have left Malawi, to enter in Zambia, the seventh country of the Tour. According to a South African rider, from now on every border-crossing will imply better facilities and infrastructure.
We have traveled in 5 day to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. The road conditions were mostly excellent, only every now and then there could be some half meter pot holes in the tarmac. So you have to stay alert not to ride into one of those.
On Saturday we had to do the longest stage but one of the entire Tour, covering 195 km. A lot of riders had never before rode a distance like that, and were a bit uncertain about whether they could finish it in time. Everything went down well, the last participant came into camp at sundown. The day after, more people went on the truck (in stead of riding the bike) than normally do.
Zambia is not a very densely populated country, you don’t see many people alongside the road. In the villages the people are very nice and interested, waiving like a king we ride through these towns, constantly answering the three questions: How are you, What is your name and Where are you going?
Thursday we’ll be on the road again to go to Victoria Fals in three days. Here we have two rest days to take part in on of the activities in, up, around or above the water. They must have a reason to call it the adrenaline capital of Africa!