Give Josee Clermont two wheels and an open road and away she goes on a world-class adventure.
“I live for it,” Clermont said, after returning to her home in Yellowknife from a seven-month, nine-country solo cycling tour in Africa, her most recent adventure extraordinaire.
“I just love cycle touring. It makes me feel alive and I find I learn a lot on tours. I like to discover new cultures and I love languages. I have studied linguistics, so it is a way to be adventurous and to meet people in the small places,” she said. “When I am on a bicycle, I really feel that I am experiencing a country.”
And experience the landscape she did, travelling between 60 and 135 kilometres in a day, often on less-than-ideal road conditions.
Clermont started her voyage in South Africa, where she met up with a few fellow cyclists who had done a similar cycling trip in the past.
“So, they helped me design the route more specifically, especially in South Africa. There are some areas that are not safe so they helped me out with that,” she said.
At the beginning, she planned her daily travelling distance according to where she would stay each evening, as wild camping is unsafe in South Africa, but the farther Clermont ventured, she said her confidence grew and she found many safe places to stay along the way.
The distance she travelled each day would depend on a number of factors, including the road conditions, the weather and wind direction and whether the landscape had many hills.
“Because I was doing (the trip) south to north, I had a lot of headwinds, so most cyclists do it the other way. I did it like that because I was starting in September to avoid the worst of the rainy season. You try to time it so you don’t get caught in the rainy season in some of the countries.”
After doing her research on what type of bicycle she would need, Clermont purchased a very strong model especially for this journey because of all the gear she had to carry.
“It is heavier than a regular bike and the wheels will have more spokes and the steel is stronger and you need more gears,” she explained. “So, it is a bit like a road bike but you have the gears of a mountain bike on it.”
Added to the bicycle was the weight of her packs.
“So, on the bicycle, I had four bags, two on the front wheels, two on the back, a fifth bag on top of the rack and I had a handle bar bag on the front. It is a lot of stuff and I am a small person, so it is a lot of stuff to carry for a small person like me,” she said.
But Clermont managed the load on her bicycle and said she immersed herself in the beauty of the countries and people she encountered along her journey.
Astounding Africa
The scenery throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda was nothing short of incredible, she said.
“My favorite was Tanzania. It is so beautiful — it has beautiful vistas, a lot of traditional tribespeople and exceptional wildlife and people are so kind. There is so much growth, like flowers, and so much greenery everywhere.
“As a matter of fact, I am going back this fall. I am organizing a cycling trip for people,” she said.
Energy was needed for the many kilometres Clermont spent on her bicycle, and she found it challenging in some countries to meet her caloric requirements.
“It was really good in South Africa and Namibia, but then once you get into Malawi, it is not very. It was challenging… I always found the breakfasts offered were not enough, because you eat more when you are cycling.”
When in a big city, she said she would seek out stores where ex-pats would shop and then buy extra food such as oats, energy bars and peanut butter to supplement her diet.
When she arrived in Tanzania and then Rwanda, however, she said she was able to enjoy a variety of dishes because they were more multicultural countries.
“Rwanda had really good food because of the French influence. It used to be a French colony or Belgian colony, so they had really good food. Roasted potatoes and goat and really good mayonnaise and bread — simple things become a treat.
“When you haven’t had cheese for two months, when you find that flavour of cheese you are in heaven,” she laughed.
And experiencing that occasional special treat made Clermont appreciate it even more, considering the hardship and poverty faced by residents in so many African countries.
“When you think that people don’t even have the basics to eat to feed their kids, it is pretty sad, and that you see every day,” she said. “Every place I stayed, there were stories. You could be constantly helping people out.”
And that harsh reality only made her appreciate her own circumstances even more, she said.
“I find it so amazing that we live in so much abundance here and we take so many things for granted. For example, in Malawi, it is the third-poorest country in the world and yet people are smiling and they laugh and there is joy and there is love and you just wonder, wow, how do they do this?” she marvelled.
“It makes you put into perspective what is important what is not important, and be grateful for what we have because we forget that we have so much.”
Clermont welcomes anyone interested in joining her on her Tanzanian cycling tour in October to contact her via Facebook.