My current WIP ((fantasy novel) Curse of Tongues) is ticking steadily along. I've got about 23000 words writtened. My rough plot follows a three act play format:

Act 1: MC meets love interest, gains new powers.
Act 2: Bad guy threatens to kill said love interest
Act 3: people die, kingdoms fall, loves prevails, etc...

I'm pretty much done with act one, and I know how to begin act two, but between them I am stuck with a boring bit. I am trying to make this part more interesting, but haven't found a good way to do that which contributes to moving the story forward. I think I can use it to deepen my characterization, but I haven't found a good way yet. I am thinking of following the advice of (someone famous... I actually forget who at the moment...) who said that when it gets boring, have disaster strike.

I think that is a great idea, but I don't want a disaster to strike merely to get through this. My best idea so far is to have a band of robbers strike them and steal something important to one of them, and my MC goes out to get it back against the advice of the others.

Here is what is going on:

Two men and two women are traveling to a city (a few weeks away). One woman speaks no English, and the MC is trying to teach her. (I've had a few nice scenes where he tries to teach her, so I don't want to continue with more of that. I don't have many more ideas on how to make it interesting as she learns...) They need to travel for a time, because I want her to speak a little by the time they reach the city (I'm guessing about 3 weeks...)

So I need to kill about 3 weeks. This is a classical era civilation-level technology. Its fall, but not yet winter (and besides, I don't know if a storm would do much at this point.) I've already had one character get sick and recover, so at risk of repetition I don't want more of that.

Anyone have any ideas about stuff that can happen whilst traveling by horse? Or should I bite the bullet and say something along the lines of:

"... and so three weeks passed..."

Here's an example for illustration only, I'm not suggesting that you do this, but it falls somewhere between a baldly stated 'time passed' and a detailed accounting of the entire journey:

Jane looked up at the towering walls of Point B. "I can't believe we left Point A only three weeks ago," she said in accented but understandable English.

Dick was too busy trying to pry himself out of the saddle to reply.

One of the horses could get shot, or sick. You can develop love between the two character's. They're running low on water and have to sneak onto public property to get it. They get shot at doing so.

They have to travel through danger woods. Perhaps a hostile people live there, or dangerous beasts.