Our amazing Cycle Ride Across Tanzania for Charity

TIA = This is Africa..... that's what the locals say every time something goes wrong.

Well we did it , 412 km across Tanzania in temperatures over 30 degrees and a total climb in 5 days of 12000 feet, whilst raising funds for such worth while causes as Breast, Cervical and Ovarian Cancer. To be honest had we known just how tough a challenge it was going to be,  would we have done it? Probably not , but we had gone all that way and faced the physical and mental challenge head on, it wasn't just the cycling but the gruelling 24 hour journey to get there,  then straight into cycling, put that together with camping with no electricity and 4 toilets and showers between 89 women, on top of food that gives you a dicky tummy, swollen ankles, not being able to sit down ...oh and did we mention the heat!!!  All these factors together with up at 5am each morning trying to force food and jelly babies (and we never want to see another jelly baby in our lives!) down us to maintain energy levels up, added to the daily challenges we faced. 

During the 5 days we cycled through bustling towns, sleepy villages everywhere we went we were greeted with happy children shouting jambo (hello) to us. A highlight was visiting 2 Masai Mara schools where the children sang to us and we gave them gifts from the UK, these children had nothing and to see their faces when given a football made us realise our own children don't know they are born, it was a very humbling experience to say the least.

Looking back now ( through our rose tinted glasses already) we can say it was an amazing experience and knowing that our group as a whole raised £265000 for the charities makes us very proud to have been part of it, the four groups together raised over 1 Million -   We'd like to share with you some of our highlights with you some involved laughter some tears ......

Funny & Best Moments:

1. Has to be when Vicky was overtaken on a hill by a local one armed man on boneshaker of a bike!
2. Vicky getting all excited at monkeys in the road that turned out to be dogs
3. Going for a bush week behind a rock that turned out to be a termite mound
4. Meeting so many amazing and inspirational women on the trip
5. Water stops, the magi magi (water water) man kept us topped up and even poured water over our heads to keep us cool in the heat
6. Having the local children cheer us on as we passed they must have thought we were mad
7. Passing the finish line knowing we had done it!
7. A nice hotel bed and hot shower at the end.

Toughest Moments-

1. OMG the hills that went on and on!
2. Off road cycling through sand and rocks for 34km in the savannah heat
3. Camping! need we say more
4. Toilets we got quite adept at bush wees - sometimes there would a long line of us chatting as we went together
5. Sore bottoms we found a new use for sudocreme
6. More hills!
7. Food, if we see beef stew and beans and carrots again it will be too soon

Will we do it again ? Probably not - but never say never we have likened it to labour where pretty soon after you forget the pain that you went through!

Once again we would like to thank everyone that supported us and gave to such worthwhile causes, we are going to continue to raise money through our website for these charities so they can continue their good work. We would also like to thanks all our very patient customers who put up with the delays of their orders.

Before we left ..... 

Yah .....over 1 million was raised between our 4 groups so we all felt very proud at that point.

Share

Tweet