Going up up up!

On the bike program today: a quite hilly stage from Ho to Biakpa. With 44km it was rather short, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t challenging. Passing over tar & gravel roads in these temperatures is not easy at all. The good part of today is that we did not start with a steep climb up, but with a nice downhill tar road.

After a few kilometers the tar road was swapped for the gravel roads everyone still remembered from yesterday. Very soon on those gravel roads, we suddenly had an extra biker in the team. Local Michel gave everything he had to follow the group that past his village. His efforts were appreciated a lot by the bikers, and of them, Furkan, even swapped his bike with the one of Michel for a little distance. It totally made his day.

The last part of the track was the most challenging today: 7 kilometers of climbing towards our overnight stay: the beautiful Mountain Paradise in Biakpa, with a view on Mount Gemi. The sky is still quite foggy unfortunately, so we cannot full enjoy the view but we can only imagine how breathtaking it must be in a clear sky.

For some of the bikers, there was an extra challenge involved in the last climb of the day: Become the KOM (King Of Mountain) on Strava’s “Evil switchback climb” that was part of the track. Local Prince Kudifia had the record since end of 2020, with a time of 6:27 for a distance of 1,48km, with an average 9,2% slope. But today, the prince was detroned: our Laurens broke the record with 35 seconds!

We didn’t receive an update from our fellow hikers yet, but we know they hiked down from Mount Gemi, the mountain we currently have a view on. After a short bus transfer to Mount Afudjata, they enjoyed a local tour in the village, including a visit to a local distillery. As soon as we receive some footage from them, we’ll make sure to include it on the blog!