March 7, 2025 to March 11, 2025
Day 156-160: Arusha to Moshi
Arusha to Moshi is only 90km. But the road isn’t all that fun
Riding through Arusha is bad enough. We’d been warned that it wasn’t much fun. But taken slowly on a bike the traffic is manageable - busy but slow and mostly gave us space. We can see how it would be difficult to maintain patience in a car – it’s very slow and bikes / taxis head in all directions without a lot of warning.
Out of Arusha, the road is busy, and bone shaking. The road makers have this idea that they need three or four sets of warning rumble strips before and after each speed bump. And speed bumps are needed at the start and end of towns, and sometimes in the middle. And just because. The rumble strips we’ve whinged about before (they’re deep enough to make a bicycle shake like crazy, but close enough that cars, trucks, motorbikes just skip over them), but this road had them and enough potholes to make it seem like it was a whole day of rattling. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but there was a lot of trucks and busses, and that means a lot of diesel fumes. Overall, not a great day.
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Lucky it was mostly downhill, so we made pretty good time.
But we did get our first glimpse of Mt Kilimanjaro. Well, we could see the cloud that was in front of Kili. In four days we’ve seen the ridge line a couple of times, but not too many clear views of the mountain. We ended up staying long enough for the mountain to peek out from behind the clouds on day four.
What do you do in Moshi for four days? Not sure. Eat mostly. And just not be on the bike for a while. A break (without doing much) was overdue.
Only a couple more days in Tanzania once we finally leave Moshi – we’re planning to do a loop part way around Mt Kilimanjaro, then on to Kenya.
Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 8,015 km (4,977 miles)
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