Entries from 'Africa'

Huye rally

 

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// Nikon D7200 | -2,60891 : 29,73706 | alt. 1750m

Before the rally starts, Julianne and I went for a small visit of the area, this place is also famous for what happened during the genocide. 65000 Tutsis were sent to the main school where the french army would protect them. It was a trap, and the army wasn’t there to help, well at least not the Tutsis…. 45 000 were killed on site.
All the skeletons are still here….. Not something you see every day. The scale of it is beyond imagination.

The silence of death got disturbed by a few loud engines revving nearby, the first pilots are coming for the rally. Time to swallow that hard pill and meet everyone.

The main hotel with its restaurant and bar is now the meeting point for all this crowd ! Loud engines banging in the background, and we meet again with Yann, and his pilot Jean Jean. Jeanne also came to support them, along with Gogo.

On the first day, I went early to get a prime access to one of the best curves. A bit too early perhaps….. hundreds of kids started running down the hills to meet us… Once we stepped outside, we had this huge and dense disc of kids followings, all these eyes looking at us. A really intense experience ! They are full of fear, curiosity, and yet so excited. The concept of private space doesn’t exist here, and as Uwe suggested, always make large gestures when you move to clear the space around you, otherwise you will end up like sardines in a tin can. Such an encounter !
I’m glad our friends quickly came by to break the weirdness of the situation.

Yann and Jean Jean will run in the toyota celica n°06, which I will follow closely for 2 days and 1 night 🙂 Uwe also made it to Huye, and he’ll stay with us.
We’ll have a steady supply of local beers, enough to stay in this crazy mood all the time 😀 The crowd is super cheerful and enthusiast, It’s clearly a big event here for the locals, for us as well.
This is my first rally, and an amazing experience. Yann had a different experience with technical issues on the toyota but they still did a very few excellent runs 🙂
This is one of the highlights of the entire trip for sure……

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Kibuye

  // Nikon D7200 | -2,06724 : 29,35607 | alt. 1509m At last we left Kigali for good, and we drove west to the south tip of lake Kivu. Mostly premium highway, and it became a bit boring. The landscape is amazing, hundreds of green hills all around…. it would be a shame not to explore…

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Starting a friendship with a thermostat

  // Nikon D7200 | -1,94093 : 30,06518 | alt. 1440m Time to cross the border, we applied online for an evisa (3 days process) to Rwanda. Surprisingly here, the whole immigration process for both sides takes place in one building ! How convenient ! With Tanzanian and Rwandan customs sitting next to each others,…

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Tanzania

  // Nikon D7200 | -4,91037 : 29,59877 | alt. 771m Since Tanzania (and east Africa in general) is promoting internal business for tourism, going to any park with my foreign car, as a foreigner, will cost me a few hundreds dollars, this is why we won’t spend much time in those countries, everything…

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Mbeya

  // Nikon D7200 | -8,8852 : 33,31994 | alt. 1380m Back again on this terrible dirt road below Mushroom farm, but this time way slower, the noise from the front axle is painful to hear, and I’m just afraid of losing my front wheel…. Back on the highway, we made a stop at…

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Mushroom Farm

// Nikon D7200 | -10,58662 : 34,13493 | alt. 1094m Time to visit the most famous place in Malawi, the mushroom farm near Livingstonia. We are not really sure why, but everyone keeps talking about it, and it just seems unmissable. Just a quick drive from here, but we knew the last…

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Nkhata bay

  // Nikon D7200 |34.30428 : -11.61205 | alt. 516m Two days drive, a night in the bush high up in a forest (and some fresh air for the first time since a while), just enough to remind us how we miss bush camping. As much as I enjoy parties by the beach…….. I didn’t come…

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Cape Maclear

  // Nikon D7200   |-14.031 : 34.83053 | alt. 494 m First impression is not always the best, and can be misleading. This is what happened when we arrived in Cape Maclear. We made it 2 hours before sunset, crossing the back of the village, which looks like a slum… and then, once on the beach,…

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Summit of Malawi, Mt Sapitwa

  // Nikon D7200 |-15.94856 : 35.59056 | alt. 3002m The plan is to drive south of Malawi as far as we can, and then slowly make our way north to Tanzania. So here we are in Likhubula, next to Mulanje, the most popular trail head on the west side of the famous Mulanje massif. A…

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Luangwa national park

// Nikon D7200 |-13.18397 : 31.72271 | alt. 543m Finally, we left Lusaka. En route to Luangwa national park, we stopped in Katete, but it’s not an easy job to find a place to sleep in Zambia ! There is people or fences everywhere !!! And I had enough troubles with the locals while bushcamping,…

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magbo system