The sweltering border town faded behind us as the road climbed into the cool coffee growing region of Tanzania. We were off to investigate an obscure hot spring icon on our National Geographic map. We’d inquired on it over the last few days and neither locals nor overlanders had any knowledge of it. This only increased our curiosity. It was in fact only 40 miles off our route. However, 40 miles started to add up as the light failed and the heavy rain set in. The hot springs would have to wait til morning. We settled for a hotel in Mbeya. This was the greatest hotel experience we’d ever had. For $16 we enjoyed secure parking, a clean room, hot shower and free breakfast. Best of all was the gregarious Swahili speaking staff. The arrival of two sopping wet American bikers managing barely 3 words of Swahili generated continuouss boutes of laughter from the hotel clerks. Katelyn gets credit for pulling off enough Swahili to sort out our room and breakfast.

In the morning, we battled through a few miles of heavy truck traffic until breaking out of Mbeya. We found our dirt track, supposedly leading to the hot spring. This was our first dirt track since the run up to Livingstonia in Malawi and it felt good to work the suspension and weave around the waterholes. The track ended at an outpost manned by guards. We sorted out that we were on tribal lands and needed permission from the Chief to continue. As it worked out, we located the chief a few miles away and he personally guided us to the hot springs.

We would never have found it without him.

From the top of a cliff and just beyond a deep cavern flittering with bats, we found boiling water bubbling out of a 50m long crack and cascaded towards the river below. Not exactly a place to soak your travel weary bones, but a sight worth seeing none the less.

Having sorted out the whole “mystery hot spring”, we trekked back to our bikes, mounted up in our sweat soaked riding suits and rode hard for Zanzibar!