Distance: 137.1 km
Ride time: 8:35:53
Average: 15.9 km/h
Max speed: 47.2 km/h
Total: 48766 km
After a steep climb up to the border town of Tunduma I left the traffic behind and headed into the country side. A couple of years ago this would have been a rough dirt road, but now there is shiny new tarmac with almost no traffic; great cycling! Most new roads in Africa are built by the Chinese, but this one had signs saying it was constructed with support of the American people. Whoever built it, we say thank you 🙂
The mountains have flattened out a bit, but there is still not such thing as flats. It was up and down between 1400 and 1700 meters all day. With an early start I was still able to put in 137 km even though I had to wait out a rain shower here and there. The rain is fine for now, but I’m still wondering about the state of the dirt road I will be hitting in a few days.
With the new road and almost no traffic, this was a perfect day to listen to podcasts, and luckily I was able to download a number of new episodes. The mobile internet is (as most things) cheap in Tanzania, and it works reasonably well.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find a guesthouse for the night as things were getting more and more remote and I hadn’t seen one all day. Luckily in Laela there was even a few to choose between. Usually I’m looking for the cheapest bed in town, but with prices as low as they are, these days I’m more likely to look for the best – then the chance that there is power much higher. In this village the best bed was 6$ a night.
Those roads look fantastic. I had heard that most of the new African roads were built by the Chinese.