What’s Eating Me

Ever since we crossed the equator there have been new and interesting insects confronting us at every turn (or at least stories of them). And by “interesting” I mean horrifying–like from a science fiction movie where everyone but the lead character dies in ways that involve gory dismemberment. As I have to live in fear of these beastly critters, I thought I might share the love a little and feed your nightmares with stories of the insane variety of bugs mother nature has sown here in Africa. This post is not for the faint of heart, or anyone who is eating, so be warned.

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Blister Beetle (also called a “Piss Moth“)

Really a perfect choice to start off the list. This charming insect has acidic urine and relieves itself on you as a defense mechanism. If you touch the resulting blisters, the acid spreads to wherever you touch next. One of the riders, Andre, was fortunate enough to serve as a human urinal for a blister beetle in Tanzania. He describes the resulting string of blisters on his ankles as, “Ghastly.” Andre ended up with several blisters about the size of dimes on both ankles. The more antibiotic cream he put on them, the more they absorbed the cream and swelled even larger. He says the worst part was that when he slept he had to be careful not to roll over on them as they would pop and ooze a sticky fluid. His girlfriend was so grossed out by his affliction, she booted him out of their sleeping bag. Poor guy!

Mango Fly

In the annals of TDA lore is a beautiful story about a woman and her love of the mango fly (or one in particular). You see, the mango fly stings you and plants an egg under you skin. If you scratch it, you can damage the egg and leave half of it behind inside you, which then festers and rots under your skin. Charming. If you don’t harass the bite, the egg will grow into a larva and eventually a tiny worm, which you can give birth to and will slither off and at a later date grow into a mango fly. Apparently last year a woman was bit twice by a mango fly and lovingly gestated two worms in her arm. She called them Jack and Jill. When they were ready to enter the world, she popped out the worms and sent them on their way. Kids, they grow up so fast.

they come out your freakin' EYE...I dare you to google it - kadinsky

Tsetse Fly

The tsetse fly is actually to thank for many of the amazing national parks in Africa. They are so irritating that large swaths of land were never inhabited by the locals or any colonizing groups despite the abundance of game on the land. These areas include the Serengeti National Park and the Tangerie National Park in Tanzania. Thanks to modern insecticides, they’re pretty well under control in most of the parks but during the wet season, when game is less concentrated around scarce water resources, they have no one else to bother so they come after the tourists. Now I know what you’re thinking, I read this blog every day, weren’t your in Tangerie National Park during the wet season? Why yes, yes I was. Wayne, Patrick and I had three days there and every time we drove through the swamp area we were besieged by an army of tsetse flies that snuck into every tiny opening in our safari vehicle.

So what’s so bad about the tsetse fly? I just said they are responsible for some of Africa’s nicest parks after all. Well first of all it bites and sucks your blood. And when it bites, it really hurts and resulting fly bites are itchy for days. Plus, they can bite through even thick clothing so covering up is no defense.

Second, it has a ridiculously hard skeleton that makes it really difficult to kill.

Sort of this like, with wings.

In Tangerie we finally perfected a two-hit system in which you whack the fly on the roof or window with a flip-flop, which stuns it and it drops to the floor where the crucial second whack finishes him off. Without the second hit with full force on the floor, the little bugger will shake off being smacked with a hard object at close range and come back at you.

Third, they swarm. We had literally hundreds of them in the safari vehicle when the driver stupidly picked us up with the windows open. It took an hour of constant sweating and whacking at flies before the number was manageable enough to enjoy the rest of the drive. By the end of the drive, the car looked like a crime scene with the smashed carcasses of flies that had just had a nice meal off us creating bloody prints on the windows. Naturally this breaks the first rule of the national parks, as our driver quipped in a perfect deadpan voice after a particularly enthusiastic twump on a fly by Wayne: “Please do not harass the wildlife.”

Finally, the tsetse fly carries African Sleeping Sickness. Although I’ve been assured that no one actually gets African Sleeping Sickness anymore, I was still a little concerned about the forty bites on my legs and feet after our game drive. Even if Sleeping Sickness isn’t an issue, I’m sure those nasty little things carry other diseases we’ve never heard of. So if I mysteriously fall into a coma, someone please remember to tell Dr. House about all the tsetse fly bites as I have a feeling it will be crucial to his diagnosis.

Mango Fly

Tsetse Fly

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Africanized Killer Bees

Bruno will save you! - k

Ok, so they’re not really killer bees, but they are really aggressive here and sting much more frequently than their North American counterparts. Somehow we ended up with a swarm of bees in the truck one day, which weren’t adequately cleared out and a few stragglers stung two of us riders on two consecutive days. I innocently put my arm down on the seat and one hiding in the cushion stung me on the elbow, which remained swollen and itchy for four days. Maybe not really the stuff of nightmares, but it hurt a lot and I’m looking for some sympathy here.

Fire Ants

One of our South African support staff loves to regale us with stories of the various insects, spiders and snakes that are sure to kill, or at least maim us, during our trip. One of his favorites are the fire ants that swarm across in the millions and eat everything in sight–including people. Yikes.

Though we’ve not come across a plague of ants decimating the entire group in one fail swoop (yet), even the regular ants here are crazy. One bush camp, which I thankfully missed as I had headed into the rest day a night early, was smack in the middle of a biting ant freeway system. Apparently the ants did not take to having tents on top of their transportation infrastructure. When they emerged from their fortresses of doom as dusk fell and discovered tents in their way, they just marched right into any tiny hole in the tents (in groundsheets or where zippers closed) and right over their sleeping inhabitants. Several riders woke up to a brigade of ants marching up their legs, biting as they went. Cheeky little suckers!

Anopheles Mosquito

Anna isn’t anything particularly freaky really–just a mosquito that bites as mosquitoes do. She makes the list though because the female Anopheles is the bug that carries malaria. My friend Patrick, a devilishly handsome Australian who contracted malaria in Tanzania eloquently described the experience for me: “It sucks. Seriously.” One of our support staff also contracted malaria further down in Zambia and was sick for a week. One of the riders served as Florence Nightingale for both the afflicted and she said, “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” Chills, fever, upset stomach, body pain–you name it, malaria brings it. Oh, and death if not treated promptly–don’t forget that one. And just for fun, once you have it, some forms can reoccur years later without warning. Good times. Don’t forget to take your anti-malaria meds folks!

So there you have it, the insects we love to hate here in the TDA. This summer when you’re irritated by some common mosquito in your backyard or a fruit fly in the kitchen, just remember it could be so much worse.

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Safari Pictures!

Hey all! Check out the Facebook group for my safari photos. It took forever to load, so I hope you enjoy them.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=photos&gid=212257773520

I spent three days in Tangerie National Park in Tanzania.  It was an amazing experience.  The lodge was wonderful, with a resident herd of antelope and tiny dik diks (antelopes the size of a smallish dog) walking around my tent in the morning.  We went on several game drives where Tangerie lived up to its reputation for being the place to see elephants.  We also saw lots of other animals, as you’ll see in the pictures. 

Enjoy! 

(The pictures took so long to load that I couldn’t get any more pictures from the road loaded.  Those will come later.  Promise.)

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Crossing Into Malawi

Hey folks!  I’m in Mybeya, Tanzania grabbing a quick minute of internet before we cross over into Malawi tomorrow.  I’m told the place we have our rest day in Lake Malawi doesn’t have internet available so I just wanted to give you guys a quick update on what I’m up to in case I can’t post for a while.

I’m sad to be leaving Tanzania.  I think it’s my favorite country so far this trip.  It’s the rainy season now so everything is lush and green and staggeringly beautiful.  Every day there have been amazing cloud formations shielding us from the sun, making the riding more comfortable than it would otherwise be given the humidity.  We’ve gotten our fair share of rain, but usually at night so the only inconvenience is packing up a wet tent.  And the people here are very friendly–although English isn’t as widespread as it was in Kenya so most of our communication is thumbs up and clapping on the side of the road.

I’ll type up some more details of the last week for my loyal readers from the beach at Lake Malawi and send them out when I can.

I can’t believe there are only four countries left!

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I Wear Zip-Off Pants

I Wear Zip-off Pants

I wear zip-off pants.  

All the time.

The kind you wear camping, that dry quickly and have large, sensible pockets to carry things like a Swiss Army Knife or spare batteries.

I pair them with my “fancy“ t-shirt and flip-flops if I go out for the night.

 

Otherwise I wear spandex.

I tell myself that bike shorts don’t look “that” bad.

And that having a big padded seat doesn’t make me look like I’m wearing an adult diaper.

I don’t find myself that convincing.

 

I bathe with wet wipes.

There is no irony in my voice when I call it “bathing.”

I have a whole system.  I actually think it makes me clean enough.

I wish they made wet wipes for your hair.

 

I consider it a luxury to take a cold shower in a dirty stall that also houses a squat toilet and a frog.

When I finally get a shower, I have to wash my hair twice before it is actually clean.  Rinse and repeat is not merely “as desired” if I want the rinse water to run clear.

Usually I don’t bother. Who’s going to know?

 

I consider only four hours of hard exercise a day to be “slacking.”

I try not to feel guilty about it.

I think I would feel more guilty if I made it a habit, but I don’t.

 

I sleep like a toddler.  Or a grandmother.

I wake up at 5:45 a.m. every day, with or without an alarm.

If I have a big night, I can sometimes sleep until 6:15, but only in a real bed with the shades drawn tight.

Out at a bar, I’ve been known to exclaim, “It’s 9 o’clock!  How’d it get so late?”

I can’t wait until 7:30 so I can start getting ready for bed. For some reason I’ve decided it would be embarrassing to go to sleep before eight.

 

I often wonder how I will re-acclimatize to the “real world.”

Where I wear suits and heels and pretty going out clothes with fancy labels.

Where you work more than you work out. And no one gets to the office before ten or goes to dinner before eight.

 

But I don’t have to figure that out right now.

Right now I’ll just sit here in the heat and take a little rest.

Maybe I’ll zip off my pant legs to cool myself down a bit.

Zip-off pants are handy like that.

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Parent/Teacher Conference Week

After the Mando Day, I woke up exhausted and in stark contrast to the day before, everything seemed to go wrong.  I was behind in loading my stuff on the truck, I couldn’t find the water jugs, we were out of the jelly I like, and most tragically, I could not find the bottle of sunscreen I’d accidentally left at lunch the day before.  Despite being told it made it onto the lunch truck, I could not find it anywhere.  As the bottle was almost full and comprises half of my remaining good American sunscreen, it was a devastating blow.

I finally got myself together and got on the road.  Fortunately my mood changed as the morning was mostly downhill and It Was Awesome! Packed dirt roads with enough rocks and sand to keep things interesting–basically a road that felt like a good single-track mountain biking trail.  I was in heaven.  I put on my best ass-kicking album on my iPod (Green Day’s American Idiot) and flew down the mountain.  I was tempted to climb back up and do it again.  But after a Coke stop at a local village, I kept moving forward across a beautiful valley littered with tiny farms and villages.

At around 45 km, we hit a large intersection and the road suddenly changed for the worse.  Big trucks started passing us left and right. With big trucks come the dreaded washboard corrugation that is absolutely no fun to ride.  To top it off, the big trucks had ground down the rocks into a fine sand that threatened to swallow your bike whole at every turn.  Brutal.  Shortly after the change in the road, we started climbing towards lunch.  Climbing on corrugated, sandy
roads is my new definition of hell.  I got to lunch at 60 km hot and exhausted.  I almost got into the truck then, but my friends were continuing on and I knew I could finish the day if I wanted to, so I felt I should.

After another 10 km and two more hills I was miserable.  My body is beyond exhausted from two months straight of biking.  The three day rest in Arusha helped me get some energy back, but I still wake up a little tired most days–even after ten hours of sleep.  It is a testament to the human body that you can keep going even in this state, but it isn’t always fun.  I was climbing and slipping up a sandy hill, calculating that at this rate I would get into camp around five again when it occurred to me that this is not my job–I’m on vacation!  I am allowed to take a break and let my body recover a little, especially if not biking the whole day will let me experience this trip more fully.  So I sat under a tree and waited for the lunch truck to pick me up.  I got into camp with time to look around, chat with friends and write in my journal.  A rare gift given the usually hectic TDA schedule.

The next day I woke up with more energy and ready to go.  The roads were a little better and a little flatter, but still quite sandy.  The flat sand is not that treacherous to ride through, but it is exhausting.  Plus the large trucks and busses passing kept kicking sand into my face–and contacts.  By kilometer twenty I had to remove one contact.  I squinted my way to lunch winking with my good eye every few minutes to try to determine whether the patch ahead was sand or just blurry dirt.  When I got to lunch, I tossed the other contact, which was filled with sand and burning, and called it a day.

Parent/teacher conference week at my elementary school, where abbreviated classes were held in the morning and school was out for the afternoon for parents to come in for one-on-one discussions with teachers, was always my favorite week of school.  A half day to spend with friends at school with a few extra hours of fun every afternoon was the perfect mix of structure and freedom.  Half-blind and still pretty tired I decided then that on this road, with seven days in a row of riding without a rest day, that half days were sufficient and I embarked on my own personal parent/teacher conference week of the TDA.

The rest of the week was great.  Fifty to sixty kilometers on dirt is plenty for me to get a good workout, with time to stop and see the area but not so much that my body did not have time recover at the end of the day.  Without any time pressure, I could check out the single-track side roads that the locals use to go from village to village to explore the area and hopefully finding an alternative to the crappy road.  I had a spectacular time winding my way through fields of sunflowers slowly moving to face the morning sun and seeing the surprised faces in the village when the Mzugu (foreigner) popped out of their fields to ask if this track leads back to the road.  Plus I enjoyed the extra time in camp–catching up on my journal and talking to friends who generally arrive in camp hours before me every
day.  I arrived in Iringa, Tanzania with more energy than I’ve had in a while and feeling ready for the next seven weeks of riding.

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A Perfect Afternoon

Long time no see everyone!  Sorry again for the blackout, but I’ve been on safari and then out on a dirt road in Tanzania for the last week and a half.  I’m now back in a decent sized-town–Iringa, Tanzania–and have internet access once again.  I’ll save the blog post about my safari in Tangerie National Park until I have a connection that is fast enough for pictures as the animal pics are the highlights of the trip.  Here are a few posts letting you know what I’ve been up to in the meantime though.

Skipping over the vacation from my vacation leads us to the post-Arusha, seven-day long, dirt road extravaganza that was last week.  We left Arusha and surprisingly the first day of riding was all paved.  It’s amazing how quickly sections of the Tour are paved over. I think in a few years they’re going to have a difficult time finding dirt roads to take for the off-road lovers in the group.  Day two was a “Mando Day,” meaning the racers cannot use it as one of their three “grace” days that don’t count towards their race standing.  For the rest of us, it just means that it’s going to be a hard day.  And it was.  One hundred and twenty kilometers on dirt with over 1200 meters of climbing.  The morning started off a bit dull, but after lunch we started climbing into lush mountains that were both unbelievably beautiful and serene.  It was one of those days on the Tour that come along when everything falls into place and I can’t stop thinking, “This is why I’m here.”  The riding was incredibly difficult and a bit technical in parts, but it was the “fun” kind of dirt where you can look around without constantly hitting a sand trap.  There was very little traffic, so I just winded up the quiet dirt road by myself enjoying every moment.

I stopped to take a break in the shade and some kids came up to say ‘hello.’  I took out my camera and took pictures of them and showed them the results.  They clearly had never seen a digital camera before (or maybe even a picture of themselves), and they went absolutely crazy over it.  They made me take pictures of each of them and I ended up spending almost an hour relaxing with them.

The kids.

Despite trying to give me a "serious" face, this little girl could not stop laughing.

 

Despite the beautiful day, by the time I reached the finish-line banner marking our campsite, I was glad to see it as I was totally exhausted.  I was quite proud of myself for managing to go an entire day on some pretty tough dirt without falling once.  At least that was my thought when I turned into the campsite, hit the sand and fell pretty spectacularly in front of a horde of laughing children.  Damn. I guess my legs were looking a little plain now that all the bruises from Northern Kenya have healed, so maybe it was time to add another one.  I rolled into camp after five and was a little rushed with my evening routine, but I didn’t mind.  A small price to pay for a perfect day.

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