A good nights sleep was had by all, which probably explains how we managed to get packed and on the road by 8am. On the road and straight into the wind, except this time it was behind us. A combination of the tail wind and some decent descents meant that we were positively flying along. In fact it has been a while since we have done over 50km by 11am.
Entering the town of Igawa we decided to stop for an early lunch, as according to our map there was no settlement of any great size for a further 45km. Lunch was the usual beef stew and rice, although this time the beef was a bit on the chewy side which didn't go down too well with Debs. Despite having stopped being a vegetarian 6 years ago, she still struggles with bones and anything a bit tough. Still there was plenty of rice and the sauce was very tasty, plus at 2000TZS (80p) each it was cheap. Full of food, we bought some bananas for the road and stocked up on water. We were planning on staying in a guest-house tonight, but we thought it prudent to be prepared for a free camp if necessary.
Back on the road and we had a longish climb out of the town, before the road returned to a series of reasonably long descents. Fortunately we didn't encounter much traffic on these, so we were able to continue at speed. The Tanzanian lorry and bus drivers propensity for making no effort to give you space, regardless of whether anything is coming, makes coasting down hills difficult. You never know when you are going to have to dive off the road, which is fine if you aren't doing nearly 60km/h! Halfway down one such hill I had to stop because we had reached the 8000km mark. The now obligatory photos were taken and we continued on our way. It seems ages ago that we were excited about the first 1000km mark!
From there on in the road levelled out and we made steady if not overly rapid progress. Having dropped quite a lot of altitude, the temperature was noticeably warmer than we have been used to for the last couple of days. Peddling along we passed through several small settlements and waved to countless excited children, until eventually we arrived in Chimala. We knew nothing about Chimala other than a symbol on the map signifying a hotel and a small road heading off towards a national park. The only reason to stop here was that we had ridden 100km and that was enough for the day. The descents end here and what comes down has to go back up tomorrow. We have a longish climb gaining over 1000m in altitude before we head down to Malawi.
For a largish town Chimala doesn't seem overly blessed with guest-houses, although we will probably ride past loads when we leave tomorrow. Having first been told that the one we are staying in was full (we think, obviously not speaking Swahili doesn't help) another guy arrived and told us he had a room. The room in the Mahanji guest-house is basic and clean, which is all we care about, oh and cheap as well! Hopefully we will be able to find some food for dinner and get a good nights rest. Tomorrow should be a shorter, although possibly tougher day.
Update: We found some dinner, BBQ'd meat and chips in a nearby bar, which was just what we needed. Despite being a bar we stuck to the sodas as we still have a few days cycling ahead of us before our next rest day. While waiting for our food to be cooked we met a nice guy, Mr Roberts, who is a debt collector and therefore we suspect doesn't have many friends. His English was pretty good, certainly better than our Swahili and it was nice to have a chat with him. Even if he found it hard to believe we had cycled from England. An early dinner is going to be followed by a very early night.
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