Everyday Adventurer

S1 - E1 Rev Up Your Podcast Playlist with Everyday Adventurer's Inaugural Isuzu Episode! I sit with Seb, marketing manager for Autoworld Zimbabwe and talk all things Isuzu!

Days 32 and 33 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour - From  Lake Bunyoni to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, our finish line and the home of the mountain gorillas. This last blog of the Old Legs Silverback Tour is coming to you from the back seat of an Isuzu D-Max twin cab which has almost as much legroom as my bicycle.  Over and above sore bottoms, you know you have ridden a long way on a bicycle when the drive home is expected to take 7 days. 

The Old Legs Tour rode from Harare to Uganda to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners who lost everything they have during 30 years of economic stupid, leaving them dependent on your charity. Please help us help them. 

I am blogging to you from Lake Bunyoni in Uganda, just 56 kilometers from our finish line in the Impenetrable Forest where the Mountain Gorillas live.

Lake Bunyoni and the resorts on it are surreal and could have been cut and pasted from the Swiss Alps, apart from the stone quarries just down the road where women and their children as young as 6, crush rocks by hand with a hammer all day long. The quarries and the women and children who work them have been cut and pasted from some miserable time back in history before child labour was outlawed, and before work safety was invented. Uganda’s rock quarries are easily the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and will be one of the standout memories I take away with me. Alas.

I am blogging to you from Villa Katwe, a very cool and very funky backpackers lodge in Uganda, run by Robyn and Wycliffe. Russel, the seasoned backpacker in our midst assured me funky is still a word. At $350 dinner, bed and breakfast for 16 people, is easily our best value for money night-stop on Tour. Dinner was a delicious vegetarian curry and rice dish and it was such pleasure to not hear any of the ingredients scream during preparation.

I am blogging to you from a little hotel with a huge amount of bling, as in Las Vegas amounts of bling. The sheets on our 4-poster bed are louder than my shirts. The bed has more frills and pink ribbon than the Dick of the Day tutu. Our bathroom has a nine-way stainless-steel shower mixer, and a hole-in-the-floor toilet.

Our hotel boasts a restaurant. So after days of bush camping, we’re splashing out on dinner tonight. My menu choices are chicken, fish or goat. I’ve gone with fish, because you can’t hear fish scream when the chef runs faster than them. I have so gone off chicken, especially the sounds they make when the chef catches them and am so thankful no one ordered goat. If there’d been a vegan option on the menu, I’d have gone vegan.

Day 25 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour - From  Kigoma to Makere, somewhere near the Burundi border. I am blogging to you from  a police station, complete with heavily armed policemen, somewhere near the Burundi border.  Today’s ride was epic, one I will remember for years. Unfortunately, epic doesn’t always translate into fun. 

In the harshest reminder that Africa is more than just forever views, game reserves and sunsets with Ice cold drinks on white sand beaches, we were able to blunder into an area with one million plus desperate refugees, all looking to flee the despair and hopelessness of which ever of Africa’s shit-hole failed states they hail from. In just 5 days, we have been able to ride from heaven to hell. 

I am blogging to you from Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, in northern Tanzania. We are 15 kilometers from the Burundi border and Goma in the DRC is just across the Lake. Since my life I have had absolutely no desire to go anywhere near either place, but here I am. Our Old Legs mantra is have fun, do good, do epic. So as to tick the do good box, we’re riding mountain bikes from Harare to Uganda to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners.  

Day 20 and 21 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour – From Sumbawanga to Lake Tanganyika

Day 18 and 19 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour - From Nakonde, Zambia to Sumbawanga, Tanzania via the Tunduma border post, a town that makes Beitbridge look like a virgin. I am blogging to you from the Holland Hotel in Sumbawanga, Tanzania which is 5 Star according to the sign outside, but inside not so much. But with porcelain in the bathroom and the possibility of hot water on tap, and all over the floor because the plumbing leaks, plus the best view of a beer shop and a motorbike repair shop, it is way better than my tent in the pumpkin patch.

Day 18 of the Old Legs Silverback Tour - From Mbala to Nakonde, both Northern Zambian border towns. 

We have had to detour via Nakonde, because under  Zambia’s stringent COVID control strategies, Mbala border post is closed to vehicles, but open to pedestrians and cyclists looking to exit.  To further confound the coronavirus, the Zambians have decided to leave the border open to vehicles coming the other way from Tanzania. The larger border post Nakonde remains  open to all traffic. Next up, they’re thinking about  making people wear masks, social distance and vaccinate. The coronavirus might be a complex little bugger but the Zambians are all over it.