A hot Christmas and dead-quiet new year's eve

Sometimes human being do things they really shouldn't do. For instance: go cycling when your body clearly indicates that it isn't ready. Like when you're a bit ill. Our bodies and minds absolutely disagree when we leave Dar es Salaam. Intellectually we are convinced that it is about time we left, after two weeks of rest in Dar and a great holiday on Zanzibar. I'm experiencing an unusually painful menstruation, Peter is harassed by the second cold within four weeks with fever, throat-aches and matching coughing-fits. But… the cycling blood crawls to our legs, where not a lot of wisdom is found. To add to this we have let ourselves tempt to make a 1.700 kilometre detour to Mozambique, of which 500 kilometres will lead over bad and unpaved roads. The good part is that we will be able to cycle through our ninth national park and we will cross beautiful mountain-ranges, again the Rift-valley and splendid nature area's. The only obstacle is our Tanzanian visa, that can only be extended with a month. We have 42 days to reach Mozambique. If we don't make it, we have to pay a fine of four hundred US-dollars each.

Like expected the cycling doesn't go very well: there is a lot of will, but not a lot of strength and breath. In the stifling heat of the days before Christmas we don't even manage to cycle seventy kilometres per day, even though the tarmac is beautifully smooth.
In the village of Mlandizi all our plans for the future threaten to be annihilated: the owner of our guesthouse, the former captain Lyamuya, offers us a large piece of ground to build a house upon. He truly means it, because a free breakfast and dinner preceded his offer. His wife and two sons are very open in their vision on their fellow-country men: people are lazy, have no ability to organise things and miss a whole lot of practical skills. It hurts, but we recognise everything from our daily experiences.

The next day our legs are just as heavy, they feel like wooden logs filled with porridge. It's 35 degrees Celsius in the shade, the hornbills clap their wings from baobab to baobab and the children call at us: "Daktari, daktari!" Every white person is a doctor here. A family of baboons celebrates an early Christmas by sitting on the road with a stolen mango. Just before the village of Lukole we spontaneously get a police-escort: regularly people get attacked and robbed on this stretch of road.
In Morogoro we discover that it's Christmas Day. The baboons apparently know these things better than we do. In an Indian restaurant we spoil ourselves with a delicious Indian meal for three and a half euro per person. Quite an expenditure, after all it's Christmas.
Christmas isn't celebrated here like in Europe, a garland printed with 'Merry Christmas' here and there, on market-places people sell starved conifer for Christmas trees, most shops are open. At the back of our guesthouse there is a huge bar where dressed up families drink a lot in Christmas' honour. The conifer that are put in all corners are decorated with cotton-wool, bright toilet-paper and small lights. It's 36 degrees Celsius in the shade.

After a day of rest in Morogoro we both feel much better and cycling goes as of old. Despite the heat and thanks to a rare tailwind the kilometres easily glide under our wheels. We leave the villages and fields and enter the savannah-landscape we know. Sitting under a tree and eating a banana, we hear the cicada chirp in a wave from left to right; it's so loud we can't hear each other talk. Then we arrive in our ninth national park: Mikumi.

Cycling in this park is supposed to be very safe, as long as we stay on the tarmac. It feels different, because the absolute lack of other traffic. After twenty kilometres of bushes and trees we haven't seen a single animal. The villages in the park that are shown on our map do not exist either; our maps often disagree with reality. Ten kilometres further our detour through Tanzania is 'rewarded': a dead baboon lies on the road, his family runs around the body and screams. He most probably has been hit by a bus form Scandinavian express, they always roar past us like idiot madmen. On the back of the busses the saying 'In God we trust' is painted. We think that their God doesn't have a drivers licence.
Five minutes later we encounter a zebra that is knocked down, what fortifies our opinion.

A few kilometres the real reward awaits us: impala, giraffe, zebra and two families of elephants (all alive). Even for the ninth time it is very special to witness this.
The day after it gets even hotter, 37 degrees in the shade and even fifty in the sun. We have problems with our water-supply and -housekeeping, until a threatening sky in the distance makes our dreams come true in a thirty minutes downpour. The thermometer sinks thirty degrees and after a while we even feel cold. The sky is filled with flying termites that escape from their underground homes at the first rain. In the village of Mbuyuni we find shelter in a new but very simple guesthouse, where we wake up dozens of times during the night because of the truck-drivers that come and go as they please.

Through a fantastic wood of baobab-trees, entertained by baboons and vervets, over a steep (12%) mountain-ridge we reach Iringa two days later, that is situated on top of a steep rock in the middle of the landscape.
New Year's Eve everything is dead-quiet in the elevated town. Nothing reminds us of the tension that reigns the last hours of the year in the Netherlands. Exactly at midnight we're sitting outside on the terrace of our guesthouse, the church-clocks ring, a couple of children run through the street. For the rest it's dead-quiet. We look at each other, completely flabbergasted, kiss each other and declare the new year to be opened. Shyly some Tanzanians shake each others and our hands. The question is: who