Our girl on a bike is half way

   14 Mar The road out of Nairobi was busy and hilly. The outskirts of the city gave way to pretty landscape and we almost expected wild life to step out of the bushes at any moment. At some stage a sign told us to leave the paved road due to road works and move over to a parallel dirt road. As we could see no reason to do this, we ignored the sign. After about 2 kms of relatively new tar we reached wet tar – by then there was no where else to go. I was completely covered in the stuff after only about 5 minutes. Back at camp unconventional cleaning methods were required. I first gave myself a full wash with petrol (getting a little nervous when a guy with a lighted cigarette walked past!) and then had a shower with chain degreaser – it worked!! 15 Mar Half way there !!! We crossed the border to Tanzania today and arrived in Arusha. This is the official half way warm. It was quite an amazing feeling cycling along red dirt roads with the snow capped Kilimanjaro to the left and the peak of Mount Meru (the real oneJ) appearing to float above the clouds. We have a 3 day break here and I am planning to celebrate the mid point of the trip royally……   16-18 Mar I have been for the last couple of days simply because I was at a loss for words. If you think I have sent some reports from the most inhospitable places that Africa has to offer – then today I am writing from one of the best! I have first read about the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge more than 10 years ago and wanted to come here since. For some reason it was never possible and when I heard that the tour would stop over in the area, I simply had to book. The Lodge is on the rim of a volcanic crater (more correctly a caldera) which is 600m deep and houses a huge animal population. We saw elephant, lion, buffalo, black rhino, and much more on a single game drive. I am tempted to describe the setting and architecture in detail - but will spare you. This is a place of ultimate luxury. And I am leaving here very reluctantly. (But, as of tomorrow, I am enthusiastically going back to eating dirt - literally as we have 7 days of dirt roads in Tanzania to master :-)) 19 Mar Yesterday I flew from Lake Manyara to Arusha in a tiny airplane. It was very scenic though a little bumpy, and it took just 20 minutes. Today our cycling route took us to the other side of the Lake Manyara. The route was not as bad as anticipated due to some road building and the journey took 4.5 hours.