21 February

21 February

Mchiji – Lilongwe

68 Miles

Erik:

Today was a good day. We got breakfast in bed for 1USD. Super win.

Started out at around 8am. The weather was really nice. On our way out of town there were no cars but tons of bicycles and people walking. A whole new kind of rush hour traffic. All the kids run after us and scream "MIZUNGU!!!". Sometimes they sing it, like a chant. Haha. We saw a church choir singing by the road. That was cool.

At one point we saw some people selling bananas on the side of the road so we stopped for a snack. I wanted 4 and thought it was 50KW (15 cents) per banana, so I gave him 200KW. It ended up being 3 bananas for 50KW. The guys started loading our bags with 12 huge bananas. We were both confused. It was hilarious. He seemed pretty happy though. We ended up eating a third of them and gave away the rest to an old man hanging out by a mosque.

Everyone is super friendly. This is Africa. What I thought it would be. The colors, the singing, the sniles. There are crops everywhere. People people people. It's nice.

One of my favorite moments of the day was this little girl, about 3 or 4, who just stood, mouth open, on the side of the road and pointed at steph the whole time as we rode by. With a completely baffled look on her face. MIZUNGU!!! A white girl on her bike!

It was a great day. Long but great. Just as we were about to enter Lilongwe (the captial), it started raining cats and dogs. We got soaked. We came into Mabuya camp around 3pm. I was putting the bikes away and, lo and behold, two more bikes!!! I enquired about who the riders were and found them. Jorge and Benjamin de Chile. They had actually heard of us in Namibia, from Martin, the Argentine motorcyclist we ran into in Botswana! They also met Johan, the german cyclist we met in Namibia. Small world! They have been doing the same route as us and are now heading south into Mozambique. It would have been cool to continue riding with them for a bit. But oh well. We hung out with them the rest of the night swapping stories. It turns out they hated Garies, in South Africa, just as much as we did. Haha!

MIZUNGU!!!! MIIIIIZUNGU!!!!!!

These ladies were all smiles until I said, "three!" Then it was all business. They were so nice

20 February

20 February

Chipata – Mchinji

23 Miles

Erik:

We woke up in the morning to the thundering of rain. Absolute downpour. It sounded as though the roof would cave in. During breakfast, one of the servers said it would most likely die down around noon. We reorganized our bags and changed things around a little to balance our load better. At around 1030am we headed out. It was a nice chill ride. Mostly uphills, but we took it easy and just talked and pedalled. There was only like one car as far as traffic was concerned. Lots of bikes though.

The border was a bit of a joke. Haha. So easy. It was just a room on both sides. Stamp. Done.

I changed Zambian Kwacha to Malawian Kwacha and got way ripped off. Oh well. On the Malawi side they won't even take Zambian KW. I hope they do in Lilongwe of the airport.

Malawi is beautiful. The people are lovely and everything is cheap. Finally. I really do love the people so far though. Just so friendly. The kids are back to asking for money, pens, our bikes, etc. Pens is the best request though. Steph wishes she had brought some to give away.

We found a gem of a place to stay in Mchinji. The room is clean and it has running water and it's so cheap. We got lunch /dinner and watched as they peeled and chopped the potatoes for our fries and feather a chicken. All for 2USD each. Win.

Tomorrow will be a longer ride. 60-something miles. Should be good though, based on what we've seen so far.

I am really happy to be on the road again!

(Steph says, "me too!")

:)

The rain in the morning. Woo!

Welcome to Malawi. So pretty :)

19 February

19 February

Lusaka – Chipata

354 Miles

Steph:

Today we left Lusaka. Our home away from home in Africa. Gigi was kind enough to give us a ride to the bus station at 430am and it was tough saying goodbye. I'm excited to have new friends though and can't wait to see them all again.

The reason we're taking a bus to Chipata (border with Malawi) is because we don't have time to cycle the 354 miles to Malawi before our visa here in Zambia expires. I'm going to be honest and say that I don't really mind. It's a hilly way to Chipata and the road is not that great from what we've heard, so we might as well, right?

Right. :)

Erik:

Yeah, Gigi gave us a ride this morning which was very sweet. The bus station was just as crazy busy at 4am as it was yesterday afternoon when we bought the tickets. We got on the bus, stored our bikes safely underneath with all our luggage and left relatively on time.

We then got to listen to 7 hours straight of Zambian gospel music. Along with the music videos. It was interesting and at least not in English. The country side was marvelous. Rolling, jungly hills and huge rocks shooting out of the greenery. Steph needed to pee the whole time and here's why:

We stopped once for a potty break in the middle of nowhere. Everyone piled off the bus to pee. The dudes street side and the ladies behind the bus. Steph went out with everyone but when she got back she seemed upset. It turns out all the women were just squatting in the long grass and she tried to go but got gunshy and "just couldn't". Haha! So she had 5 more hours of waiting.

Getting off the bus was a circus. But we pulled it off ok. There were a bunch of guys offering to take us on their taxi. They wouldn't accept the fact that we had bicycles and didn't need a taxi. Even while they watched us pull them off the bus and load them up. We road around town for a while and ended up staying at a pretty posh place with Airconditioning. I'm glad we did because it was bloody hot.

LUSAKA #3

Steph:

FAMILY!

Since everyone had to work and go to school during the weekday, Erik and I hung out at the house. We had a lot of fun cooking for everyone and trying new things, such as making bread, yogurt, cookies and banana bread. We also had little projects to keep us busy and off the computer :). Erik built up the family's playground out in the backyard while I organized Gigi's impressive arts and crafts room. Since they recently moved from Ghana, a lot of things were still in boxes, so we unpacked and put away a bunch of stuff. I honestly enjoyed myself quite a bit and felt like we were at least trying to give something back for their incredible hospitality.

While they were at home, I spent a lot of time hanging out and talking to Gigi. During one of those conversations, she mentioned that she really wanted to get a dog. The size of the house and backyard would be perfect for one! Woo! Puppy shopping! She and I took a day to go to a kennel and we picked out an adorable little mut for the boys. She was playfull and super sweet. The kids ended up naming her Pizza. Coolest name ever. From then on, Erik and I also had puppy sitting duties. She was a handful but I loved it. Here's a picture.

In the evenings, we would all hang out at the house together and mostly watch soccer. We were in Lusaka for the whole African Cup. It was exciting because last year, Zambia beat all odds and became the underdog champion. Woo! So at the beginning of the Cup, the streets were full of vendors selling posters and scarfs and green and orange Chipolopolo (Zambia's team name) shirts. Erik caved and bought one :). So every night we watched soccer and yelled at the tv. Unfortunately, Zambia lost and didn't make it to the quarter finals. BUT Yuyu's team, Cabo Verde (he's from there), did exceptionally well. It is the tiny nation's first time EVER in the African Cup and they did amazing. There was a lot of screaming and cheering and booing at refs.

The kids were hilarious and we got to know them pretty well while their parents had to work late a few times. Alex is a very witty 12 year old who was fun to bug and tease, especially because he teased right back. And Leandro (6yrs old) kicked my butt at Cars Monopoly a few times.

Gigi, Yuyu, Alex and Leandro were amazing hosts. Really, we got incredibly lucky meeting these crazy people. They welcomed us into the family as if we'd known them for years and I don't know if they'll ever know how much we appreciate it or how much fun we had. Thank you thank you thank you!

Erik, Sylvester and Kedis building the play set 

Pizza :)

The Family in all it's glory :)

Leandro drew us a good-bye letter

TICKETS

One reason we stayed in Lusaka so long (besides being lazy and comfortable) was that we really needed to figure out our Flight situation. After hearing a lot of "iffy" things from family friends and talking to a few other people who have lived there during national elections, we decided to skip going there. It breaks my heart a little because that's been our end goal all along. Also because that means we won't be able to go see our elephants. On the other hand, things are already getting violent over there and we would be in Nairobi right in the midst of the elections. We really don't feel like risking anything or being worried and stressed about it. So, after a lot of going back and forth and trying to get a hold of our ticket agent at Airtreks, we decided to cut our trip short a few weeks. We'll take advantage of the extra time at home by signing up for the fall semester at ASU and going to the Las Palomas Triathlon in Rocky Point with our families. We wanted to make sure that we had all of this squared away before heading out to Malawi, where internet may be harder to get.

So now, Officially, we flying home on the 11^th of April from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

LUSAKA #2

Steph:

HASH RUN!

Gigi also introduced us to Daryl and Fritz. A really fun couple also from the embassy. Daryl is american and has lived all over the world for the government. She met Fritz while living in Austria and they got married and continued travelling. Now they are in Zambia and really like it. They invited us to go to the HASH Run. It's a weekly event that brings people from the US embassy as well as a lot of other ex-pats from all over the world and a few locals. It's a run/walk but they change locations every week. One week it'll start and end at someone's house, another week a restaurant or bar, another week a park, etc, etc. The week that we went happened to be a special one called the Internation Hydration Hash. I think it was the 700^th run in Lusaka. We ran (or walked) from one house to another and every stop had a different theme (germany, usa, england, scotland, etc). At each stop, they would have a typical snack and alcoholic beverage from that specific country. Everyone got a little tipsy, to say the least. Then we were officially initiated into the group by having to down a few beers in front of everyone. It was a lot and we met a ton of people from all different backgrounds who had eventually landed in Lusaka and now call it home. Awesome. I realized that although my cycling muscles are alright, my running ones are way weak. It all hurt :)

OTHER!

What else happened...

About 2 weeks in, Erik went for a walk and tweaked his knee somehow. It stunk, he had to really baby it for about a week, but thankfully it got better.

We got pretty into the show "24" with Kiefer Sutherland. They had all the series and I got to season 3. I watched way too much tv. Haha. Oops.

Yup.

Oh! There was a rat in the house! For weeks, the family had heard it and seen it randomly and Gigi was FREAKING out. We finally discovered where it was coming in and almost caught it a few times. Eventually some rodent experts came and blocked off their entrance. By the time we left, it seemed to have gone :) That was pretty amusing. Except for the time we couldn't sleep because the thing was running around inside our room.

Erik worked a lot on his spanish. He has improved a lot and we can actually have little conversations now. It's very impressive.  

Stay tuned for LUSAKA #3 tomorrow!!

LUSAKA! #1

Steph:

So instead of staying a week, as we originally planned, we ended up staying with Gigi and Yuyu for over a month. I know. It's crazy. This is something that we definitely did not plan, BUT IT WAS SO NICE!! After both of us getting sick in Livingstone we really enjoyed the down time and hanging out with this crazy, fun family. We've manage to do a lot of fun things as well as a whole lot of nothing.

Don't worry though, I won't go day by day and bore you guys to death :) We'll just do highlights, ya?

MOVIES :)

We had been super excited about this city for a while. Just because it was a city. Not that we don't love the villages and towns, but this place had a movie theatre! It was a little upsetting for me to admit how much I missed 1^st world stuff. I think I just really like movies. The fact that they cost close to nothing helped as well.

The Hobbit: Pretty fun. As fun as the other LOTR. The theatre smelled badly, but the movie rocked.

Django Unchained: We went to see this one with a bunch of cool people from the embassy. Ehh. The story was cool, but Q. Tarantino is a little over the top for me.

Les Miserables: Totally awesome. I didn't realize the whole movie was just singing. Pretty impressive. Anne Hathaway's rendition of "I had a Dream" was lovely. But that's just me.

Zero Dark Thirty: I guess there was a lot of contreversy about this film in the US. Especially between the political parties. Which meant that we pretty much had to watch it. I thought it was awesome. Very exciting and interesting.

There you go. Those are my reviews. The theatre we went to (with the exception of The Hobbit) was in a mall called Manda Hill. This is also where we went to grocery shop and run any other errands we came up with. It was a 15 minute walk from Gigi's house and a very pleasant one at that.

SALSA!

We met Jose through Yuyu and Gigi. He's one of the marines at the Embassy. We clicked right away after finding out that he is also from Arizona and speaks spanish. He was incredibly nice and we hung out a few times. One of these times he took us to a hotel in a very seedy part of town. It ended up being a salsa class that he goes to every once in a while. Oh man, it was so much fun. Completely random. There were a lot of people there. And a lot of people who knew what they were doing. These Zambians know how to salsa! Erik and I were taken aside by one of the instructors for a crash course :) We've decided that we'll need to take lessons when we get home. After our little class, we sat and watched everyone else shake their booty and chatted. It was a really good night.