Cape Town to Port Said
In 2018 I cycled across Africa from Cape Town to Port Said. Let’s say every inch. Here is the story.
I landed in Cape Town morbidly obese, full of hope and knowing nothing about solo outdoor adventures.
With Mount Table in the background, I begin the adventure on the somewhat deserted streets of a Saturday morning. It was raining and sunny and I was full of emotions, a strange sense of exuberance at the departure. Didn’t have the faintest idea how to get out of the city, my instinct told me to pedal north. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I needed; the desire for new lands, an unknown language, I needed mysteries and adrenaline.
The first night I slept consumed by paranoia of wildlife.
Second night happy as a kid in a candy store – at the Atlantic.
Third night in convulsions of depression in an abandoned stone quarry.
What seemed like a romantic and delightful idea, cycling along the shores of the Atlantic, turned out to be a temporary catastrophe. 40 miles – 30 pushed, in deep sands.
After five days the party was over. Every cell squeezed out of energy. I was moving at the speed of a fat drunk jumping into a sack of potatoes at a fraternity party. The will of adventure has diminished to a mental state of advanced confusion. I take the decision with broken mind, constantly questioning what are you doing here to pedal 650 miles further up the road to Windhoek, the city of pain relief… in shame and silence to board the plane back home to mommy.
During this time, the body spoke; I don’t know what this guy is up to, I better adapt to this lunacy. When I arrived in the capital of Namibia, Windhoek, for the first time I felt that I was going to be there, on that continent, for the whole tour. The brain had become reptilian, the body had adapted to the conditions, I sweated off 19 pounds in two weeks, I felt and looked like Adonis… I had become bulletproof.
Then the Kalahari Desert to Botswana, a country well known for its wildlife. In the old days, at my grandparents’ village house, the dog and rooster acted as an alarm clock, here I was woken up by zebras, jackals and felines. So did the roar of a lion a few yards from my tent.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m scared of dying. Thoughts of death petrify me, although the pain that precedes death frightens me the most. Like any male, I can’t stand pain. Therefore, if a feline would come towards me, I would voluntarily jump forward – carotid first. Let everything be done quickly, painlessly and efficiently.
I did the touristy thing at Victoria Falls, both in Zambia and Zimbabwe. I responded to the children’s continuous greeting how are you? although they never expected an answer and I really enjoyed the palm trees, street vendors and fancy shopping malls in Lusaka. In Zambia I received the first free meal. From Ivone – certain names are unforgettable. Ivone laid out her cleanest carpet, the shiniest plastic bowls… I was washed first from the jug and was served first: nshima with mushrooms. Best meal ever.
When I entered Malawi I felt like I was back in a version of the Wild Wild West. A country placed second from the bottom on one of those internet lists, a world dominated by the desperate struggle for survival. A country in need, and meat classified as contraband. Suffice to say, the reality beats the reviews on TripAdvisers. The people of Malawi have earned my deepest gratitude.
Here I added an asterix to the bottom of the page. I broke a promise and destroyed my dreams. Nkhotakota National Park officials forced me… loaded the damn bike into a minibus. I bribed the unofficial driver to throw me out of the minibus 300 yards up the road. A few yards for which I have nightmares about. Like a vicious drug, I knew it would create inconveniences but I did it anyway. I can’t go back. I don’t need to be reminded oh, you were supposed to do this or that… I did it and can’t go back. I will never be able to say that I pedaled all Africa, rather I pedaled through Africa. The only consolation was seeing the completely surprised face of the ranger at the other end of the national park. ‘No one enters this park unaccompanied, much more on a bicycle,’ said the astonished guard.
Someone on TV once said: Even the toilet has a nice view in Tanzania. The following happened in this country:
The longest cycling day – 140 miles
The highest daily average of any country – 86 miles
No day off
… so much for absorbing nature.
As soon as you exit Tanzania, you will be in Nairobi, Kenya. A huge metropolis, a conglomeration of cars, Russian trucks, cramped motorbikes, people and the occasional hazard – the ox and cow on the median line. If you take the bovines out of the picture, you can see the similarities between New Jersey and New York traffic. Millions in one direction, nothing moving forward.
An innocent burger from a reputable campsite, forced me to visit a nearby hospital. Little did I know it would be the first of four hospitalizations.
Only one thing worried me in Africa. Not the wildlife, the lack of food and water, the civil wars, the deserts, neither the corrupt government officials, nor the infected mosquito or a disease that sounds horrible just by pronouncing its name, it was the northern part of Kenya. From Isiolo to Moyale. Bandits rule the lands – or so to speak, they used to rule them. The government equipped the villagers with weapons to protect themselves from the Somalis who were stealing their cattle. The villagers used the weapons for other purposes. In the worst of times, two people were killed a day.
And so I felt the danger firsthand. Near Marsabit, a gentleman in camouflage runs aggressively perpendicular to my path, coming out of a ravine… with an AK 47 bouncing over his back. Stop, give me the water. He was in a hurry to reach me. I didn’t stop, the Fight or Flight instinct ordered me to run. I pedaled frantically away from the gentleman, looking over my shoulder with only one dilemma; how far does an AK-47 bullet travel? I’ll never know if the guy was really dying of thirst or maybe he just wanted to shake hands, say Have a nice day!
Fact: Ethiopia was never colonized.
I knew from the start that physical and verbal abuse would be the norm. Rocks were coming towards my head with the precision of a Tomahawk cruise missile. The inexplicable part is that once you get off the bike, people behave naturally, even annoyingly polite. There is something about a tourist on a luxury bicycle that changes the chemistry of an Ethiopian’s prefrontal cortex. From the attitude of a pacifist tourist I turned into Caligula. 1070 miles at the other end I had the answer: Ethiopia was never colonized because of stone-throwing children. The Blue Nile gorge increased my heart from the effort, the tasty injera filled me with calories, the children pulled gray hair.
Think of going from Ethiopia to Sudan as going from a Megadeath concert to the quietness of a library. Thoughts crossed my mind that I had become transparent.
If Botswana is the land of wildlife, Sudan is the land of hospitality. However, as in any society, there are bad apples; a hit-and-run accident partially destroys the bike, a broken rib and minor lacerations. The doctor and street mechanic fixed the problems overnight and I was back on the road the next day. In fact, back on the road 12 miles to the scene of the accident. In order to go forward I had to go backwards. Remember the every inch rule?
As I stood barefoot, watching the sun retreat behind the dunes and the stars appear in the sky, I wondered how it was possible that an ordinary inefficient laborer from Pennsylvania, an irrelevant born in Romania… had the chance to witness the shooting stars in the Sahara desert? Me, a bicycle, a tent and five liters of water, stripped down to the essentials of life. In America I live in the conventional, otherwise quiet suburbia, next to an anxious bald neighbor, the gas station on the corner of the street, and a lazy tornado every five years. In the Sahara, the landscape and the light are so aesthetic, so present, intense, so wild. I loved Sahara.
If you have ten days at your disposal, don’t know what to do with them and want to impress your family and friends, pedal the Sahara. Just do it from north to south! Guaranteed to go 30 miles per hour without cranking the pedal. The wind does the job for you. I pedaled Sahara desert in the wrong direction. I hated Sahara.
The tenth country, Egypt. A land of philosophers, museums, tombs, culinary art… and worried officials. The police didn’t want me to ride a bike. It made absolutely no sense to them why I wouldn’t have loaded the bike in the car as it is an easier form of transport. We formed a very unhappy partnership.
On the 104th day, the magic became reality, an open buffet with a bar at the luxurious Panorama Hotel & Resort in Hurghada. An otherworldly sight for a malnourished cyclist. It’s not like I haven’t been to a buffet before, but in the budget starvation of the three-month adventure I suffered an emotional shock. I jumped from tray to tray like a Tasmanian devil, snarling and irritated, grabbing everything in sight. It was glorious. At the end I drank a jug of orange juice – not that it was necessary, hid a few crackers in my pockets, and on the way out I grabbed a handful of Mementos. Please understand me, the survival instinct kicked in.
I reached Port Said and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea after 108 days. I shed 40 pounds but gained memories.
The trip wouldn’t have been complete without visiting Cairo…. and on that camel… facing the pyramids… it hit me like a brick:
“I came, I saw, I. c… “ I cycled Africa.
Do I have regrets? Yes. I crossed the whole continent on an unchristened and nameless bike. The thing was called she, you, bicycle, come on!! But She did the job well.
A desperate sound comes from the son’s room. Dad, DAD!! I jump over the thirteen steps…
“Wha… what happened?”
“Wifi is slow”
At that moment, dear readers, I knew I was back home.
However, the adventure did not end here. Five days after I landed in Philadelphia, the seven days of drinking Nile water caught up with me. Hepatitis A. As soon as I walked into the hospital lobby with the words out of my mouth I traveled to Africa and I feel sick, the whole area went into a panic. It took the doctors three days to stabilize me. Finally, the kidney doctor came in and the following conversation took place:
“Cornel, you are a very lucky individual”
“Why?”
“Well, let me tell you this: the toxic enzyme ALT was 113 times higher than the standard, the AST enzyme 46 times, the bilirubin 7 times, the ammonia 3 times. Not only will you walk out of this hospital on your own two feet and not need dialysis, but it looks like you have no damage to the internal organs. In 25 years of practice I have never encountered anything like this. You should be a case study for this hospital”
“Thank you for the medical care. I will be more careful next time”
Footnotes to the story
- Ethiopia was occupied (not colonized) by Italy between 1936-1941.
- many thanks to the Egyptian police; professional, protective, respectful attitude… still, a huge inconvenience.
- in retrospect, cycling in Malawi’s Nkhotakota National Park was reckless and dangerous. I would not do it again and it is not recommended for anyone.
- no bribes were given to officials and no officials asked for bribes.
- I pedaled the entire Africa, 7320 miles… less about 300 yards. An equal distance from the door of my house to the mailbox.
- …and finally, yes, I am writing a book… here’s an excerpt.