A new one to add to the mix – Tar!!

So our last day in Kenya had to be nothing less than epic to end off our journey through this country. It was a 160km day, which is the first century ride that we have done in quite a while, actually since February 17. Our legs and bodies have taken a break from the long distances and with my bruised hip I wasn’t really looking so forward to the day. Early on, a man on the road looked bewildered at me and said “Aren’t you going to church?”… This statement made me panic because I knew that nothing good could come from the fact that- No, in fact I wasn’t going to church- instead I am riding my bike through Africa… I said to the person I was riding with, “nothing good will come of that statement, in fact something bad is going to happen today…” Not 20km later, I had my 16th flat tire of the trip, the tube exploded going downhill and blew my rear tire off…. Luckily (again) I wasn’t going fast enough for this to cause me to crash. I got the tire changed and continued on this incredibly long day. At around 95km, the road construction started. There was a clear diversion road, which was dirt and then the road that they were working on… We started to ride onto the dirt road, when the road worker waved at us to go on the “closed road” It looked much smoother and better than the dirt road so we opted for this. Little did we know it had “just” been newly tared. YIKES. I thought dirt roads were bad. Within 3km, we were riding on freshly wet tared roads, with the tar flicking all over our drive trains, cables, bodies and faces… and it was slippery, very slippery. We had to get off. Just then we saw two riders on the side of the road, one had just crashed and was covered head to toe in tar, with cuts underneath. What a nightmare. We sorted this situation and cleaned our bike and bodies the best we could with diesel from the truck when it stopped to get the injured rider. We carried our bikes across the way back onto the dirt road. The road construction continued for kilometers and kilometers… we now rode on the dirt. It was a long long hot day covered head to toe in tar. When we finally did arrive at camp it was a hectic mess of petrol and rags and riders covered with tar. This is a lot harder of a clean up job than mud. This is the kind of clean up job I would have loved to pay someone $200 shillings to clean for me. Yet Another epic Kenyan day. We will cross the border tomorrow morning and have our first riding day into Tanzania. I cannot even begin to imagine what Tanzania has in store for us. We just need to pray to the rain gods not to give us rain, apparently it makes the dirt roads of Tanzania an absolute nightmare.