Category: travel
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African shoestrings – Tanzania Day One Hundred and Twelve the last day!
Our last full day was spent just aimlessly wondering down the alleys and streets of Stone town, stopping to browse the bazaars, have a coffee or something to eat. We finished off the day with a meal at the Stone town bistro in the old dispensary building. The old dispensary building was in fact a charming old building that was restored to its former glory in the mid 1990’s. Built for one of the richest Indian merchants in Zanzibar in the 1890’s it was donated as a medical dispensary by the same wealthy merchant at the end of the nineteenth century. It stands four stories tall with decorative balconies that give it a sort of colonial feel. We dined there twice and each time with the sort of feeling that you were dining in the same sort of atmosphere that the British Raj would have done at the height of their colonial power. We felt the urge to look around at any newcomers in case they had handlebar moustaches, belonged to the coldstream guards and said “what old boy” every other sentence.
As we left the restaurant I suddenly remembered (I’m ashamed to say that I forgot) the cricket world cup! Australia was playing South Africa in the semi. Immediately the search began for somewhere that a) had a TV and b) had it turned on and tuned into the cricket. We searched high and low and eventually found one at a hotel not far from our guesthouse and seeing that it was tuned into the wrong channel I cheekily asked the lone resident if she minded if I switched channels. We sat down ordered a drink (we thought we had better) and then proceeded to cheer like madman as the game seemed to ebb and flow from one side ‘s advantage to the other. The porter, the receptionist and a few other members of the hotel staff weren’t the slightest bit interested in the drama that was unfolding in front of our very eyes, they found our reaction much more entertaining. Not so the lady who we had hijacked the TV from. She disappeared quick smart.
Those of you who saw it will recall that South Africa needed 9 runs to win in the last 4 balls whilst Australia needed 1 wicket…………….. Lance Klusener hit 2 successive boundaries and we shook our heads discontentedly. The staff looked at us puzzingly……………. The next ball and Klusener panicked and ran out his partner, Alan Donald (to be fair to Klusener, Donald was not backing up enough).
It’s a draw and due to some rule or other Australia earned the right to go through to the final. Now we’re both up and jumping up and down, shouting and carrying on whilst the totally bemused hotel staff looked on even more puzzingly.
OK, you had to be there!
Our final few hours in Africa were spent pretty much the same way as the day before. Aimlessly wondering the alleys of Stonetown soaking in the atmosphere and feel of the place for the last time.
We checked out of the Malindi and caught a taxi to the airport. During the half an hour wait or so I totaled up our expenditure. We had failed to keep to the original daily budget and ended up spending, on average, $130. This meant we had spent $3300 more than we had budgeted and work would have to be found almost immediately we hit London. Oh well, we shrugged, we did have great time. “What’s three grand in the scheme of things!”
It took about 20 minutes to fly back to Dar es Salaam with great views of the some of the surrounding islands shimmering in the heat surrounded by the deep blue and turquoise water.
We were looking forward to being able to easily find our way to the international terminal and crash for a few hours before our flight. That plan disappeared very quickly.
The airport that we landed at was not the main Dar airport so we had to get a taxi the 1.5 kilometres to the international airport. We didn’t exactly have a choice as to which taxi we took. Once we hit the deck our bags were taken by the airline staff and deposited straight into a taxi waiting there. The driver must have thought we were rich tourists ripe for plucking. He wanted to charge us US$12 to take us. Eventually after much haggling we got him down to US$5.
At the international terminal we went to stroll into the building and were stopped. “Yoo a not aloud to go in de terminal until de chick in coonta is opan” a rather officious lady told us from her desk at the entrance. “yoo will ave to wait over der” she vaguely gestured towards a courtyard with two bench seats already filled with passengers waiting for their airline “chick in coonta” to open.
We had no choice, we had to admit defeat.
As Stephan would say, “Africa wins again”
But Africa is so spell binding, so beautiful, so rich in nature at its best that it won the day we first set foot on its fragile soil.
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The Old Dispensary in Zanzibar, Tanzania Share this:
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African shoestrings – Tanzania Day One Hundred and Eleven Zanzibar
After that sad little story (see the last post) we went further into depression and visited the Anglican Cathedral, site of the slave market. Apparently a group of missionaries came out to Africa to oppose the slave trade. They eventually found their way to Zanzibar and after its abolition of the slave trade, built a cathedral on the very site, removing almost any remnants of this ugly meat market. The altar stood at the same point as a post that was used for whipping the slaves stood. The floor was a symbolic red marble to depict the blood spilt to show potential buyers the strength or weaknesses of each slave and therefore justify the asking price.
Next door at the St Monica’s hostel we were shown the original holding cells for the slaves. About 1 metre tall and not that much wider they looked extremely cramped for one not to mention the dozens that were crammed in at any one time.
Wherever you go in the world there’s always evidence of man’s inhuman treatment of his brothers usually because of the colour of his skin, the religion he practices or the country he was born in. It seems to me that there is no end in sight and we are forever damned to be cruel to each other. The only species that has a consciousness of itself has been unable to capitalise on this gift. If anything it has used it to carry out barbaric acts in the name of intolerance of racial or religious difference. At least animals attack and kill in the name of survival.
But that’s enough of that!……………..The Busaidi Omani Arabs built the Arab fort in the seventeenth century as a defense against rival Omani Arabs, the Mazrui and the Portuguese, who they had recently kicked out.
Since then it’s been used as a prison, a railway depot and (only the Poms would think of this one) a ladies tennis club. Nowadays it’s been restored and used as an open air theatre and restaurant.
We went to one of the traditional dance shows held in the fort that evening. The ‘tucker’ was good but the dancing was at first interesting, then mildly entertaining and finally boring! I can only concentrate for so long when all there is on offer is a slightly different dance to the same tune, time and time again.
In the nineteenth century Zanzibar created for itself a niche market (to use modern marketing jargon) in the growing and exporting of spices. In the twentieth and twenty first centuries another market has grown from this industry, the spice tour. No, nothing to do with the good looking girls that prance around singing and dancing making squillions but the real spices.
We had read in a borrowed Lonely Planet guide, that Mr Mitu ran the best value spice tour. So taking that advice at face value we booked with his company and turned up at the prearranged meeting place only to be picked up by Mr. Sulaman tours. Apparently if one particular tour company doesn’t have enough paying customers to justify leaving they shunt them on onto a rival company. So there’s always a chance that the poor unsuspecting tourist will go with a tour company they haven’t booked with and may have not wanted to use. Somehow, though, I think that they are all pretty much of muchness. Certainly we had no complaints except for the weather. It literally hammered it down. Aswan, our guide, attempted to tell us how the different spices grow, when they are picked and what uses they have. Meantime we were getting soaked and struggling to hear his voice above the din created by the rain pitter-pattering on to the umbrellas and jungle vegetation. Nonetheless we were impressed by the number of spices grown. Cloves, Cardamom, Cumin, Turmeric, Ginger, Mint, Cinnamon, Lemongrass, Coconut and Nutmeg, the latter I learnt to my amusement, is used as an aphrodisiac as well as for cooking.
We were transported around in a dala-dala; a small converted covered in Ute, with wooden benches either side, to a government farm where all these spices are grown. From there we were herded on to other attractions like the Kidichi Persian baths built by the Sultan Said for his Persian wife, Sherazade, 150 years ago and now occupied by a colony of bats; the Mangapwani coral cave which was about as interesting as the bat shit left by the Kidichi bats and Mangapwani beach for an extremely pleasant swim in warm tropical waters beneath the now dry but stormy clouds. In between all that we somehow managed to try Jackfruit, a sort of fleshy pineapple and Pamillo, a giant grapefruit and chew on the addictive sugary Zanzibar doughnuts. Not to mention sitting crossed legged on the floor of an open sided enclosure surrounded by banana trees, eating pilau rice and veggies in coconut sauce for lunch.
Its funny the sort of fellow travelers you meet. Once again we met with two Poms Deb and Andy, who had spent a few months in Perth and whose eyes watered over at just the mere mention of where we lived. I suppose to the rest of the world, we live in paradise; to us it’s just home. They were with a kiwi couple who were travelling around Africa with an 18 month year old baby. Now I’m all in favour in dragging kids around the world. When we took our kids, at the ages of eight and ten, out of school for a few weeks to go to Europe many years ago their teacher was fully supportive. “They will learn a lot more in those few weeks travelling than they will back in school”. But what possible experience will a child that age remember and the potential risk for disease is far higher for an 18 month old baby than a 8 year old. Still that was their choice.
We chatted with a Norwegian couple as well and later had dinner with them at Pychi’s (pronounced peaches). Pychi’s is a casual sort of place overlooking a small beach and, as is pretty normal in this climate, was virtually all alfresco. I find the Scandinavians fascinating people. Those that travel of course, because having never been to that part of the world these are the only ones I ever meet. They are one of the few races who can relate to the Aussie ironic sense of humour (provided they speak English well enough, which almost invariable they do). Stephan the Swede actually started to act like an Aussie after his 3 year stay in Oz. These guys (the Norwegians in case you got lost) were not as well traveled as Stephan but seemed just as able to appreciate our sense of humour as we all guzzled Calzone and pizza. Of course they could have been just polite and probably said after we parted “That was pretty boring! Strange sense of humour these Aussies have!”
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One of the many small streets in Zanzibar town, Tanzania Share this:
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African shoestrings – Tanzania Day One Hundred and Ten Zanzibar
We awoke the next morning, still shell-shocked after the events of the last 24 hours; our next challenge to catch the boat to Zanzibar.
First however we had to change some money. The hotel didn’t accept travelers cheque’s or US$ or change money and the nearest bank didn’t change travelers cheque’s either. So leaving Sue behind (she was just about ‘Africared’ out) to relax at the hotel, I went off to find a Bureau De Change or a real bank.
What a place Dar es Salaam is! Every street was buzzing with people of all walks of life, market stalls and shops lined the streets and footpaths. This is where the Middle East meets Africa with a small remnant of European colonialism thrown in. The peddlers were remorseless as they called out to me from everywhere.
In Malawi we had struck up a conversation with a Kiwi (New Zealander) who had just traveled through Tanzania and he had nothing but scorn for the Tanzanians who he had said “hassled us from the time we had entered the country to the time we left”. We had already struck their continual harassing in Mbeya and on our previous visit here. But this seemed different. It was light hearted and a lot less intense and added to the feel of exhilaration as I walked through this city of life.
Eventually I found a small Indian bureau de change, who tried to interest me in his cousin’s trinket shop down the road. My usual answer is “sorry, no money” but when you’ve just changed a wad, it somehow didn’t seem so convincing. “Sorry I’m in a hurry,” I just said. Expected some persistence, I was saved by another customer and he muttered something about having a good day.With the aid of Namur a very protective taxi driver who picked us up at the hotel, we managed to purchase tickets for the next fast ‘cat’ to Zanzibar down at the wharf. As the boat wasn’t due for two hours we got Namur to drop us off at the Sheraton. We were in dire need of a bit of western culture. We were tired and just had enough of travelling in ‘local’ fashion and decide to book a flight back from Zanzibar to Dar and thus avoid the struggle across town to get to the airport.
Sitting relaxing at the café there restored some of our energy and by the time Namur picked us up we were once again ready to brave yet another challenge of travel.
As it happened there was no real challenge apart from hogging one of the seats next to us with our bags on quite a full boat.
The Sea Star was comfortable and we had a smooth journey across the Zanzibar channel. Of course it would be, after all it was built in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Zanzibar was already an important centre for trade between Africa, the Middle East, and India by the time it was visited by the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth century. Seeing the opportunity for a trading post the Portuguese took control in 1503. Arabs from Oman ousted the Portuguese in 1698 and the island developed into a major slaving centre. After several years of political maneuverings between Britain, Germany and France plus a sustained effort to stop the slave trade that revolved around Zanzibar, the British made Zanzibar a protectorate in 1890. Some 83 years of British rule albeit through the Sultanate was ended when independence was granted. This was immediately followed by a violent revolution and the Sultan was overthrown and exiled. In 1964 Zanzibar was merged with the now also independent Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
With such a checkered history dominated by peoples from other parts of Africa and the Middle East it’s not surprising to find that the people of Zanzibar are of different stock. The largest population is that of the Swahili, which as with the rest of Tanzania is spoken widely. But these people have a Persian and Arab ancestry as well as black African. The rest of the population is made up of more recent Arab immigrants, descendants of African freed slaves, Indians, Pakistanis and the usual sprinkling of Europeans working mainly in the tourist industry or employed as teachers, doctors or engineers.
Maybe it’s because of its differences that, even though Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, we still had to pass through customs and immigration after disembarking. On the other side of customs are the hotel touts like lions waiting for their prey, they watch you carefully and when you are within striking distance they pounce.
” I know veely good hotel. Good price, good shower, big big room”
They all seem to say one after the other as we walked single mindedly through their group.
We already had our accommodation booked at the Malindi Guesthouse, just a short walk away. Oozing with character this white washed square building with dark wood shuttered windows had a pretty as a picture enclosed centre courtyard and a maze of passages leading to the rooms. Our first room was a large cool white room with a concrete floor, large wardrobe, colonial furnishings and to our surprise an en suite bathroom. I say first because after the first night they moved us to the room we should have had which was a smaller version with single beds and no bathroom. Apparently they had double booked the first night and that was the only room available.
In Zanzibar the main tourist activity apart from the obvious ones of eating and drinking is to wonder the tiny streets of stone town and find a new wonder around every corner.
Looking at a map of Stone Town you would think that it was a map of a maze. The bulk of it is hemmed in by a triangle of main roads that despite their narrow width supports road traffic. Leading from these main roads are a myriad of miniature streets some of which can only really be described as narrow paths that wind their way through tall buildings. Unlike a maze these alleyways lead somewhere and eventually any walker will find themselves back out of the tangled web of houses, restaurants and curio shops or in a square that houses a Mosque or Palace in the middle of an alleyway.
Like many of the other African towns of our travels, many of the buildings were derelict. Wooden balconies and shutters overhung the alleyways in a state of disrepair and stray cats played amongst rubble and rubbish at the rear of some of the buildings. But through it all, the place had charm and oozed character.
Of course it’s not all about exploring alleyways. The House of Wonders is one of the largest buildings in Zanzibar. A once proud ceremonial Palace is now just a run-down shadow of its former glory, housing the National Museum. Its marble floors, huge carved doors and two old Portuguese cannons are the only things worth going there for. Another museum is the Palace museum dedicated to the Zanzibar sultans and their history. Most of the exhibits were items of furniture including a few thrones, beds and even the sultan’s water closet.
What was fascinating was the room devoted to Princess Salme, daughter of the Sultan Said. Her remarkable story started in 1859 when as a fifteen-year-old, dominated by laws that prevented her from having contact with any males other than her father and brother, she helped one of her older brothers escape after an unsuccessful attempt at overthrowing his older brother Sultan Majid. Rejected by her family, she began, as she grew older to socialise with a lot of the Europeans in Zanzibar. One of them Heinrich Reute did the unspeakable and got her pregnant, necessitating in her fleeing Zanzibar to prevent bringing shame on her family. An immediate wave of anti-European feeling on the island brought a British warship to Zanzibar just in case of reprisals.
She married Heinrich soon after and they had three children before (and this is the rub) he was tragically killed in a tram accident. They had only been married three years.
Unwelcome in her home country, Salme stayed in Germany and after a brief stay in Syria she died in Germany in 1924.
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A typical wooden door in Zanzibar town, Tanzania Share this:
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African shoestrings – Tanzania Day One Hundred and Nine – Dar es Salaam
And so the events leading to bus ride from hell number three started to unfold. The bus wasn’t due to arrive until 11.30 pm but Leonard, who was not as friendly and as obliging now that we were leaving, would only give us a lift to Mzuzu at 12.30 in the afternoon and charged us for the privilege. So the three of us (Stephan and Lucy were also coming, except Lucy decided that she wasn’t ready to leave at that time and would get the bus later whilst Stephan obligingly took her bag with us) plus two other locals crammed into the back of this small Ute. After another bone jarring journey we were dropped off at the Mzuzu hotel where the porter helpfully checked in our bags whilst we killed time in the town. We had lunch at the Sombrero restaurant and wondered as aimlessly as possible around the markets. It was here that we found a tape of ‘Brenda’ the instigator of the song that had been buzzing around in our heads ever since that sleepless night in the Gross Barmen camp in Namibia. It must have finally brain washed us because we actually bought the damn thing!
Back at the hotel we settled down in the bar to watch the cricket world cup until the game got rained off and we decided that we might as well have a decent feed here at the hotel.
Stephan is a big bloke who, we had noticed, likes his tucker. So when our meals arrived first – all looking quite respectful in quality and quantity, his mouth was watering. However, the look on his face, when what can only be described as a sample of a mini pizza, was put in front of him was priceless. He shook his head in absolute disbelief and sent it back, replacing it with the curry hoping it that it came in the same or bigger portion as Lucy had. Fortunately for the rather confused waiter, it did.
We caught a taxi to the bus station with all our bags and waited there with three other tourists for three hours. At around 12.30 am the bus eventually turned up and then all hell let loose. From the shadows all the other passengers moved as one towards the bus. People on the bus were trying to get off to go to the toilet and stretch their legs whilst what seems like the population of Malawi was trying to get on. Stephan used his bulk to push his way through the madding crowd with us following in his wake and eventually we get on. But there was nowhere to sit! The bus had obviously been overbooked and we had a choice, stand and travel or get off and wait a couple of days for the next one like one of the other tourists was doing. Well we stayed on and I stood with our bags around my feet and only one of my feet actually on the floor, rubbing rear ends with a sizeable local woman and hanging on for dear life. Eventually the bus moved on and the journey for the next five and half hours will remain forever etched into my memory. The recent heavy rains and flooding had damaged a lot of the roads and once again the bus spent valuable time trying to avoid or simply running straight through potholes. At one time both Sue and I incredibly fell asleep whilst standing up for just a few seconds of escape from this nightmare. Its 36 hours to Dar and somehow the thought of travelling like this put us into denial. Surely people would get off on the way and we would end up sitting.
We reached the Tanzania border just after dawn and without much fuss we were allowed to pass into our last African country of the journey.
Even though we were assured by the driver and his sidekick that there would be seats for everyone from hereon as a lot were getting off; the thought of travelling another 30 hours standing up was too painful to contemplate and we looked for an alternative during the hour or so stop.
It was Stephan who came up trumps. A group of five preachers from Malawi were travelling to Dar for a conference. They would take us on condition that we pay some of the cost of fuel and change some local currency into US$, which they badly needed to pay the horrendous vehicle transit fees that Tanzania had imposed on them at the border. They had a four seater Toyota Hilux Ute and the only room for all of us was in the tray! We didn’t deliberate too long; at least we would be sitting down and would most likely get there well before the bus. We later found out that the bus got to Dar an hour later but had to sit on the outskirts of the city for five hours because of a midnight to dawn city curfew on large vehicles.
So we got in and somehow the four of us managed to cram amongst the preachers and our bags and we were off. It was a long trip. Lucy and Stephan jumped out at Mbeya from where they were making their way elsewhere and we continued on with another 880 kilometres to go. All in all it wasn’t too uncomfortable and we were out in the fresh air.
We soon came to realise why these guys had been so anxious to have us along…………. they had no money! The fees they had to pay at the border was an unbudgeted expense and had wiped them out, so we ended up having to pay for most of the fuel. At first I felt cheated but then I thought well we’re helping them as much as they’re helping us. Maybe their master will look after us a bit better next time we attempt to travel by local transport.
Watching the scenery and the towns and villages go past from the rear was an interesting experience for that length of time (we had our backs to the cab). It was typical African rural countryside. Dusty villages and towns were dotted along the road with crops of tobacco, coffee and various others dominated the terrain. At one stage the scenery changed to that of the high country, small streams, rainforest and mountains as we passed through the Rubeho and Ulunguru Mountains before ascending down towards the coast where Dar es Salaam sits. Just on the outskirts of the Dar we were diverted down what seemed to be an endless, very dark unsealed road that made us very nervous. Our apprehension was justified half way along when a skinny shadow suddenly appeared on the back of the Ute and was obviously looking to pinch one of the bags. The speed of my reaction surprised me as much as it did him. I lunged with my foot and made enough contact and noise to frighten him off. The old heart was pumping well at that moment.
Eventually at 1 am we reached the city and then spent the next half an hour trying to find a hotel we had booked. These guys really didn’t know Dar at all and eventually we gave up and settled for any hotel. The Starlight Hotel was not the best value for money. It was tired and grotty and for US$50 it was a rip-off but by that time we really didn’t care and just wanted to find a safe bed.
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Lake Malawi’s eastern shore Share this:
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African shoestrings – Malawi Day One Hundred and Seven/Nine – Nkhata Bay Malawi
So the very next day we went into Mzuzu to find out for sure. The information we were getting in Nkhata bay was unreliable and sketchy.
Stephan had a saying “Africa wins again” well that’s exactly how you could describe the sum result of the next eight hours in Mzuzu.
We were getting a lift in the back of Leonard’s Ute but due to the remarkable fact that it had run out of petrol before it had even moved we were delayed for a while. Eventually we were dropped off at the main Post Office in Mzuzu. Nearby there was a bus depot where we asked for directions to the bus station where the office of TVC, the Dar es Salaam bus operator, was located. The guy offered us a lift in his bus that was about to start its journey. Half an hour later we were still sitting there and decided to get out and walk the 500 metres (he had said that it was a least two or three kilometres).
At TVC’s office, which incidentally was also a hairdressers and beauticians, we found out from the couple of guys in there that they were sure there was a bus Thursday but to ring later to confirm.
We were still toying with the idea of flying to Dar so off we went to the Air Malawi office in the Hotel Mzuzu, the closest premises Mzuzu has to a three star hotel let alone a five star. There the rather impatient ‘customer service officer’ told us that flights to Mbeya (at a mere 500 kilometres away and the first major town in Tanzania) had been discontinued LAST WEEK! But we could take either a flight back down to Lilongwe and up to Mbeya for US$225 each, which he was happy to tell us had just gone up or a flight to the town of Karonga (180 kilometres away but still in Malawi) for US$53 each. Neither of these options were really much good as we would still have to get some form of land transport to Dar or pay another few hundred dollars to fly. Thanks for nothing!
Whilst we were at the hotel we thought we may as well change some money. This was also a waste of time, as they didn’t have any cash, so we had to walk back to the bank and queue for half an hour.
One of the reasons that we needed money was to help bail out the resort. We had been approached the day before to pay some of our bill so that the resort could afford to stock up on beer and food. As we mostly ate and drank there it seemed like this was in our best interests.
Despondent we caught a minibus that as well as looking like it should be condemned and probably not good enough to be wrecked for parts, packed us in like sardines and took one and half hours.
Back in Nkhata Bay we phoned TVC from the travel agents. No there was no bus on Thursday after all but there was definitely a bus on Saturday night.
Thoroughly depressed we drowned our sorrows at Njaya, watching the Aussies beat Zimbabwe and reflected on Stephan’s “Africa wins Again!”
We spent the next two days strolling into town, eating, drinking and just lazing around on the beach. On one day we watched our laundry being washed in the lake and dried flat on the sand by Fraser an entrepreneurial young man, who on reflection charged a lot more than a coin operated washing machine.
The only chore we did was to visit the local doctor to obtain some ‘cleansing’ tablets for Bilharzia. Apparently you can take these pills that make you feel like shit for a day or so but cleanse your body of any of these little worms that carry the disease. We never actually used them but visiting a local doctor’s surgery was certainly an eye opener. The surgery itself was tucked away behind some houses and the main supermarket. So get to it we had to follow a small footpath through several private gardens. The doctor’s rooms consisted of two rooms, the consultation room equipped with a basic examination, table desk and a chair and the pharmacy equipped with just a table. All the medication was sealed in bags and small containers sitting on this table. The doctor was helpful and did say that Nkhata Bay was Bilharzia free but we decided to err on the side of caution. It cost us nothing for the doctor’s consultation and very little for the tablets we required. We felt that we had somehow denied the locals medication simply to save a few dollars. (The same service and tablets in London would have cost a small fortune).
We did mix a little with the others but it became fairly clear that Stephan and ourselves were no longer part of the ‘inner circle’. The problem seemed to stem from my comments about some ‘friends’ of Lucy’s who in between bouts of dope induced blankness told us of their far-fetched plans to build a lodge around another bay. I innocently said after they wobbled away that they didn’t know what the hell they were doing (I’m easily irritated by anyone who loses control of their faculties due to excessive drugs or alcohol). Lucy obviously took offence and contradicted me and I left it there. What Stephan’s crime was I don’t know nor did I care much.
We spent our final day mooching around town and attempting to pick up two shirts and two sarongs that we were having made. I say attempt because we had been unable to get these items made by the same tailor as the first one (he was too busy) and we had to settle for Kenny. It became clear to us that Kenny liked a drink or two. The day before we had checked on his progress and the smell of stale alcohol was everywhere, even so he had promised us that they would be ready on time and at that stage in the game it was too late to change tailors…………. Well, we went to pick them up and he had a made a real mess of it. He hadn’t finished for a start and had stitched the shirts with the wrong colour cotton, one of Sue’s sarongs had not been even started and the material for the other had been turned into a shirt! The sum result was that Kenny (again smelling of alcohol) paid us for the shirt material and replaced the material for the sarongs from another market stall but we had no shirts or sarongs. For some strange reason I actually felt sorry for him and until stopped by Sue and Stephan I was quite prepared to just walk away and leave him the material. After all it had cost very little. But as they said it was the principle.
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Small cluster of huts on Lake Malawi’s eastern shore Share this:
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African shoestrings – Malawi Day One Hundred and Five-Six – Nkhata Bay Malawi
No sooner than had we settled in and despite our fatigue, we were out exploring. We came across a couple that we had met in Chimanimani, Patricia and Jonathan. Patricia was a short attractive French girl who liked to talk whilst Jonathon was her antithesis, tall, balding, quiet and English. They too were staying here and told us that the Njaya resort next door was probably nicer but a lot noisier.
We went to see for ourselves. Run by an English couple, it had a sort of up market backpacker hostel feel to it. But it did have a great bar high on the hill overlooking Lake Malawi and it had a satellite TV. By now the world cup cricket was well under way and as we going to crash here for a few days, we could allow ourselves the luxury of being couch potatoes for periods of time.
Lake Malawi is an awesome sight……….. Taking up one fifth of Malawi its located in the Great Rift Valley and forms a natural border with Tanzania in the north and Mozambique in the south. It is about 500 kilometres long and an average of about 48 kilometres wide. The area of the lake has been estimated at 27,785 square kilometres and its surface is a surprising 472 metres above sea level. Looking at it from the shore or even from the Bar of the Njaya resort it seems to have that slight concave surface of a large body of an ocean as if it were hugging the contour of the earth (which it is of course). It looked so tempting in the hot humidity of the afternoon. But there was one thing holding us back. Bilharzia!
Bilharzia is a disgusting disease. It’s not the disease itself that is so bad, although it’s pretty serious, but the way it’s caught! Its carried in freshwater by minute worms that initially live in a certain type of snail and then after an increase in numbers hit the water ready for any poor unsuspecting humans.
It will then enter through the skin and find its way to the intestines and bladder and from then on it’s all downhill. It’s found in slow moving bodies of water like the shallows of rivers and streams and lakes. There has been a long debate as to whether it exists in Lake Malawi and the bottom line is that it does in some parts. However, we decided to risk it on the basis that we were assured that the area around Nkhata Bay was clear of these horrible little bleeders. It did actually make sense. One look at the small swell and waves that seemed to continuously wash the beach meant that water was moving and the absence of reeds where the host snails were found was also comforting. So I took the plunge!
That night at the restaurant we met the other two residents. Stephan, a Swede who had been travelling all over the world for around five years (three in Australia) and Lucy another Pom. The six of us were the only guests in the resort and for the next few days we saw a lot of each other.
Nkhata Bay was a smaller quieter lakeside version of Blantyre. Ramshackle building and stalls lined the dusty streets that became small paths in and out of small pockets of more ramshackle buildings and stalls. Banana sellers were everywhere offering their produce for almost next to nothing in western currency.
As the others had been there longer they had already acquainted themselves with some of the more extrovert individuals of the tourist curio trail. We meet Chester, Comfort and Shosho amongst countless other sellers. Shosho to his credit showed us how to play the local game of Boa a game similar to checkers played on an indented board with Mahogany seeds. Later in the day he found us on the beach and chatted with us all the time hoping, we would buy some of his wares.
We also met Happy, Happy and Fraser, three young boys who were selling home made postcards. That’s the key to these people they wanted to learn about you and practice their English but most of all they wanted to sell you something.
I arranged to have a shirt made for the ridiculous price of US$2.
And that’s all there was to do in this tranquil place. Browse, eat, drink and swim.
The next day (Tuesday) we decided that whilst this might be a little bit of paradise it was time to move on and get to Zanzibar. We found out that there was a bus leaving to go to Dar es Salaam that night from Mzuzu. So after another eventful day of doing nothing, we said our good byes to the others in our regular lunch spot, the beautifully located Safari Restaurant and headed back to pack and leave. By the time we had walked back we had changed our minds at least four times. I felt that we were acting out that song that goes “should I stay or should I go”. In the end we decided to stay and would see if there was a bus any earlier than Saturday. We were just not ready to face yet another bus ride especially a much longer one than the last two.
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That link againLake Malawi’s eastern shore Share this:
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African shoestrings – Malawi Day One Hundred and Three/Four – Nkhata Bay Malawi
So hang on tight, Bus ride from hell two starts now!
We arrived at the bus station at 5 pm for a 5.30 pm departure. This dusty, grimy, polluted bus station was not quite as threatening as Harare. There were lots of people floating around, and almost as many security guards. Music blared from the PA system and even at that time of day the market stalls that surrounded the station were doing a roaring trade.
At 7.30 pm the bus finally arrives and then all hell let loose. No orderly queue here just chaos as everyone attempts to get onto the bus at the same time with bags, pillows, blankets, box’s, small children and heaven forbid, babies. Any thoughts of having a reserved seat are blown out of the water. Another bus turned up, so thinking we were smart we attempted to board that one but were turned back by the bureaucratic driver who unconvincingly pointed out that our tickets said we should be on the other bus.
“But there’s no room on that bus” we countered.
He just repeated the fact that his bus was not our bus.
That was the final straw for Sue. She marched onto the first bus, cleared all the staff belongings from the front seat and shouting at anyone in the way that this was where we were going to sit. The rest of the passengers and staff were stunned into submission as we chucked our bags on the floor in front of us and sat down.
They had never seen a wild white woman before……….. usually we were so polite and accepting.That’s not to say that we now had the best seats in the bus. We had to sit with our legs elevated on top of our bags, resting on the handrail in front, not the most comfortable position for a long bus ride but at least we had seats away from the congestion of the rest of the bus (the isle was crammed full of bags, boxes and other belongings). Plus we had full possession and sight of our bags. The doubt in our minds about the security of having bags stowed away in the luggage hold or on the roof were confirmed by the rest of the passengers.
Not one of them had their belongings where they couldn’t keep an eye on them.At around 8.30 pm the bus took off and we had been going for just over an hour we were stopped at the first of five police roadblocks that we were to pass through before reaching our final destination.
Two police officers carrying AK 47’s over their shoulders, ordered us all off and went to search the bus and our bags. The reaction to this was not cooperative.
After a lot of arguing and discussion we eventually had no choice and an hour later we resumed our travels. The rest of the journey was an ongoing frustration at the speed at which we were going. Either the bus was heavily overloaded or it wasn’t man enough for the job, because it just about crawled up every hill (and in Malawi there’s nothing but hills). On some stretches we could have walked faster!Eventually we got to the bus station at Mzuzu at around 9.30 am, some four hours late and managed to meet our next challenge finding a bus to take us to Nkhata Bay.
We found what’s known to travelers to third world countries as the chicken run bus. It was exactly like the local buses you see portrayed in the movies. Full with locals carrying on just about anything you could imagine. Bags of seed, wood, fruit, ordinary luggage and yes, of course, chickens. We sat with our bags on our laps and watched our knuckles turn white from gripping tightly anything we could hang onto as the bus weaved its way at a speed that was just a wee bit fast down the winding potholed road to Nkhata Bay.
As it sped past banana plants and maize fields, I did manage to notice that every inch of land appeared to be cultivated. Even the steep hillsides were terraced with various crops. In between there were small clusters of straw huts with their chimneys masquerading as a hole in the roof smoking. It was a cold morning in the highlands of Mzuzu.
It was a lot warmer in Nkhata Bay and we were thankful to get there in one piece. We now had to find our way to Chikale Beach Resort a couple of kilometres south. When we got off the bus a young local approached to see if we wanted a lift. Thinking that he wanted to take us to another hotel or resort we declined and with our backpacks on we summoned up some energy and marched in the general direction of Chikale Beach. A few moments later he was back.
“Where are yoou gooing?” he asked
“Chikale beach resort”
“I am Leenard, de manager. I will take yoou dar.”
This guy had to be no older than 21 but despite this and our initial concern that this was a potential mugging we jumped into the back of his Ute, too tired to really care. We had to share the Ute with a couple of crates of beer and a couple more passengers but it sure beat walking with all our belongings on our back.
The resort was pretty basic with thatched cottages grouped around a tree-lined beach and the bar/restaurant right on the beach. Each cottage had double bed and its own bathroom, which as far as we concerned after the experience of the last few days was heaven! All this for 600 kwacha (US$10) per night.
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Nkhata Bay on Lake Malawi. Share this:
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African shoestrings – Malawi Day One Hundred and Two Blantyre
An hour later we got our bags and decided that enough was enough, it was time to jump ship! We had already learnt that the Bus Company in an amazing piece of logic had decided to fix the clutch by sacking the bus driver and a replacement driver had already miraculously arrived. This was the last straw and with the other two we cleared immigration and customs and walked into Malawi.
A minibus heading for Blantyre was waiting down the road. After the usual fare negotiations and once again watching our bags being loaded onto the roof, we got going and apart from being tightly packed in and being stopped by the police, we had an uneventful two-hour journey.
The police in Malawi have quite a number of roadblocks. We were told that they were looking for drugs, guns and illegal immigrants but in this case they weren’t exactly pedantic choosing only to talk to the driver and have a quick look at the bags on the roof.
The bus dropped us off at the very pleasant Doogles Backpacker hostel, which as it happens was next door to the bus station, a place we would have to brave if we were to follow our plan. We were shell shocked and tired and all we could think about was how the hell were we going to face another bus ride again.
In fact so frazzled were we that we spent most of that day looking at alternatives.
And guess what? There weren’t any! We went to the British Airways office and got a price for a flight to Dar es Salaam. At US$195.00 each it was out of the question although such was our reluctance to catch another bus that we were tempted. But realising that we were not in the right frame of mind to make that decision we wisely decided to stay the night at Doogles and worry about it tomorrow.Blantyre itself is one of these colourful and vibrant African towns and although we should have been in Lilongwe some 250 kilometres north, we still enjoyed its feel. The buildings were as usual rundown and dilapidated, the streets were dusty and dirty but the people were happy and smiling and seemed to spend their days in and around the many food stalls and street vendors that thronged the streets. There was a sort of musical beat about the place, as if everyone was listening to it and swaying as they went about their business.
How could these people be so happy when they have to travel on such appalling transport? Don’t they realise how stressed out we were? What right did they have to be happy and smiling when we had to brave death to move on?
As you can see we were becoming paranoid. Our paranoia subsided somewhat as we too began to feel the imaginary beat of Blantyre and then spent the evening back at Doogles watching the Aussies play India in one of the world cup cricket games.Malawi is without doubt a beautiful country and despite our experiences on the bus has a warm, friendly and happy population. But like Mozambique, Lesotho and Zambia it’s poor. That night we met Martha an Irish nurse who had come to Malawi 10 years ago for a two year stint as a voluntary AIDS education worker. After that she had stayed on and was one of the people responsible for managing the AIDS education program for the whole country. I was touched by her willingness to give up her own life to help the people of Malawi, a task that seemed to me to be almost a lost cause.
As she said “These people are not worried about a disease that will eventually kill them in 10-15 years. They are more worried about how they can put food on the table now!”
Malawi like most of its ex colonial neighbours has a lot of growing pains since independence and has only recently become a democracy. An increasing number of the Malawi’s population doesn’t think that this has improved their lot. Dr. Banda was Malawi’s first President and held office as a dictator for 34 years and whilst freedom of speech and other common liberties that we take for granted were missing, generally the standard of living was better than it is today. As we were told; freedom of speech doesn’t put food on the table. With its main source of income being tobacco the government is hoping that tourism will bolster its ailing economy. From what we had seen and were later to see, it’s got a long way to go.
After a good night’s sleep everything looked better especially after everyone assured us that we had just unlucky and so we bought reserved seats for the bus to Mzuzu some 600 kilometres north. We had realised that time was getting away from us and Malawi was going to be the casualty. We had a little over two weeks to get to Dar es Salaam to catch our flight to London. In that time we had at least another three days of travel and wanted to spend at least five days on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Dar. So a lot of what we had planned to see in Malawi was not going to happen especially as we had effectively lost a day and half and around 250 kilometres thanks to the bus ride from hell number one.
Our new plan therefore was to get to Nkhata Bay, a small town on the edge of Lake Malawi, chill out for a couple of days and then continue on to Dar. To get to Nkhata Bay we had to go via Mzuzu and pick up a local bus there.
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The main street in Blantyre, Malawi Share this:
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African shoestrings – Mozambique Day One Hundred and One Bordertown
With a GDP of only US$104 per person Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. The Portuguese up and left in the mid 1970’s after decades of plundering the country and a fifteen year war of independence. They took with them valuable skills and capital reserves leaving behind nothing but chaos.
A Marxist state eventuated and before long the cherished ideas of socialism had the country’s economy in tatters. A civil war that left 900,000 people dead, 1.3 million refugees and a countryside strewn with over 1 million unexploded land mines followed. Finally, in 1990 peace reigned and with the aid of the United Nations a democracy of sorts emerged. The economy is still dependent on foreign aid and its infrastructure is only now being rebuilt. Soon after our visit a devastating flood decimated the country setting back its efforts to rebuild.
The Tete corridor is an area of Mozambique that juts out between Zimbabwe and Malawi. A lot of the guerrilla warfare during the civil war was staged here leaving behind a legacy of land mines and poverty. This is the area we needed to cross on this bus to get to Malawi.
After several stops for police checks and simply to avoid the huge crater called potholes in the road we got to within 100 kilometres of the Malawi border and it was getting late!
The Mozambique border post at Zobue apparently closes at 6 pm and there was some real concern that we might not make it.
As we got closer there was an awful sound of clonking and scraping as the driver changed gears. Finally, as the bus began to climb a steep hill, it stalled and came to a standstill. It was almost dark as the driver restarted the engine and then attempted with no luck to select first gear. Some of us got off to lighten the load but that made no difference. As we got back on the driver rolled the bus back down the hill so that he could make a run back up in second gear. I shook my head in disbelief. We’re rolling backwards down a hill in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, in the infamous Tete corridor of Mozambique. If he goes off the road there’s a chance that a landmine could be waiting for us and then its ‘good night Irene’. In fact, we did meet a truck going up as we were going down but it overtook us without any mishap. Eventually we got going and the bus limped into Zobue sometime later. Of course the border was by now closed, although only just, and despite some animated conversation outside one of the border official’s house, it stayed that way.
Then the fun began. Most of the travelers on the bus were apparently from Malawi, going home after doing a bit of shopping in Harare or having a break from working in Zimbabwe. They did not take kindly to this situation and I had to interfere to stop the bus driver from being lynched. They accused him of being in league with the town traders who they believed would profit from our enforced overnight stay. I can’t say I was convinced. The town wasn’t exactly busting with tempting designer label goodies or food stores. The hotel was full, which was just as well as it looked and smelt like the pits. The only place that appeared to be initially open was a small tin shack of a store that sold cold beer and by that time we sure needed a drink. Within a few minutes more tin shacks opened and vendors came to us with fruit, potato chips, drinks and various currencies.
Initially the place was quite scary. Apart from the street sellers, there were street kids and other suspicious individuals hovered around, including a man with a rifle who was obviously guarding something but we were never able find out what. With Portuguese sounding to us just like Spanish, the whole town reminded us of one of those dusty, rundown Mexican or South American towns portrayed in the movies. All we needed was Clint Eastwood to ride in on a mule wearing a Mexican poncho and wide brimmed hat, cigar in mouth and the comparison would be complete.
We spent the next six hours on the steps, watching our bags on the top of the bus, of what we think was the town hall within full view of the bus. It was one of the most bazaar experiences of my life sitting there guarding our bags from a distance, drinking beer, listening to Led Zeppelin (Jenny had a tape player) and playing cards whilst the man with the rifle wandered around looking for something to guard.
Andy and Jenny told us of their search for land on the North Mozambique coast (when they eventually get there) for a tourist camp. Due to the bad roads and infrastructure, the only way to that part of Mozambique was via Malawi and they were set to meet up with other members of this venture in Blantyre, the only other major town in Malawi.
Eventually sleep got the better of us and we returned to the bus to risk sleep and luggage stealing. Sleep was rather fretful, with snoring from half the passengers that were asleep and constant chatter from the other half that were not, adding to our rather cramped conditions.
At first light I ran up to an overland truck that had also got there too late to cross the border, to see if we could get a lift. It was driven by a young woman from New Zealand, a relative neighbour, and the travelers were all women, a single guy’s paradise I thought. They were going as far as Dar es Salaam. This was our eventual destination and they would take us both for US$40 each. We were in business or so I thought. Our problem was getting our bags and the bus driver refused to offload them until we had crossed the border into Malawi. The bus somehow limped the kilometre between border posts and they then began to offload the baggage for the Malawi customs officials. The overlander was already there and I appealed to the driver to wait. She said they would and then promptly drove off never to be seen again!
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Buffalo near the Zambezi River watching canoes in Zimbabwe Share this:
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African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day One Hundred Harare
Our last session of paddling was a mere 6 kilometres to our final destination, Nyamepi Camp in Mana Pools National Park. All in all we had paddled a total of 58 kilometres and by the time we had finished we all felt strong and confident enough to have gone on for another three days. When we were asked later on what had been the best thing we had seen and done whilst travelling this always comes to mind. It had been one of the greatest experiences of our lives!
We were back in Harare at around 10 pm and settled into our very ordinary (especially at the price of US$65 per person) room in the annex of the Bronte Hotel. This was meant to be our treat but the room was tired and old and really was no more comfortable than an average priced motel found in anywhere in the western world. What was nice about the Bronte was the hotel lobby and gardens and we made sure that we fully enjoyed having our breakfast, a drink in the afternoon and a coffee after dinner in the tropical colonial style gardens. Dinner was actually the best event of the day (we had spent a good few hours at the Tanzania embassy obtaining our visas). The Italian Restaurant Fat Mama’s in the Russell Hotel was obviously the local white and ex-pats hangout and I could see why. Great food, great atmosphere and great prices!
The next few days were taken up with transport and what I call the bus rides from hell! What follows next is reality but not necessarily typical of public transport in this part of the world. Of all the people we met during our travels we were the only ones who seemed to cop the experiences that I’m about to describe. It just seemed to happen to us!
Bus ride from hell number one started with a pick up at our hotel, early the next morning, by the bus company Ute to take us the Mbare bus station across town. On his way (in fact out of his way) the driver went via Possum lodge and picked up two other unsuspecting white passengers.
The bus station was chaotic and frightening. People came from everywhere grabbing at our bags and us. Someone grabbed one of our bags and with me still hanging onto it, led us onto the bus and then asked for our passports. What then confused us was another guy sitting further down the bus also asking for our passports and at the same time shouting “Watch your bags, watch your passports, watch everything!”
This guy was obviously in charge and we held onto the passports until we reached him. The other guy mysteriously disappeared and there was no doubt in my mind that had we relinquished our passports to him that would have been the last we would have seen of them.
Once we found our seats we could see the chaos and crap outside the bus. I say crap because the diesel fumes were noxious and those working in the area had paper filters fitted over their mouths and noses.
The seats we had were one row from the back and directly behind the other white couple who seemed to have handled the situation a with lot more cool than we had. Our bags were on the seat behind and we had three seats all to ourselves. This wasn’t going to be so bad we thought as eventually the bus got going. But that was as good as it got! Fifteen minutes later it stopped at the bus depot to pick up double the amount of passengers and probably triple the amount of luggage. There is a rule in Africa; don’t allow your bags to sit on the roof of any vehicle ’cause there’s a big chance you won’t see them again. Even the locals hang onto their bags. This time despite our protests we knew we had no choice; there was hardly enough room for all the passengers let alone the bags.
I got out of the bus and stood and watched as they loaded the bags on to roof. The only other white guy, Andy stood next to me. Andy was a Zimbabwean and his girl friend Jenny was from South Africa.
“So what happens now” I asked
“I dunno” he said
“You’re the local”
“Yeah but I’ve never traveled on one of these before”
The bus driver, conductor and other helpers finished covering the bags with a huge tarp and tying it all down and we were beckoned back onto the bus.
Oh well I thought not much we can do now as we got back onto the bus.
We had now lost our spare seat to a small quiet man who spent most of the time dozing. His head flopped about as if connected to his body by a rubber neck and often ended up on my shoulder. We westerners are funny like that we cringe at someone encroaching on our space. I had to keep shrugging him off and I swear that if I had some rope I would have tied his head to the back of the seat.
The bus actually set off at 8.15 surprisingly only one and half hours late. It didn’t take long for part of the tarp to come away and start flapping against the side of the bus and on our first refreshment stop it was retied well enough to last around fifteen minutes before it started flapping again.
After that stop we acquired a rather sinister looking uniformed man who checked a few passports and then disappeared and then reappeared half an hour later to collect a Z$70 ‘border fee’ from everyone. It was the last of our Z$ and I had the feeling that we were being ‘had’ especially when no receipt was forthcoming even when asked for. This fee was apparently to ease the pain going through the Mozambique border post.
At the Nyamapanda border our passports were collected by this bloke and he made a sort of half hearted inspection of our bags before giving our passports and presumably money to the Mozambique officials. We had to wait around for about an hour whilst all this ‘officialdom’ was dealt with.
This was the pits.
The Zimbabwe side was not too bad but the Mozambique post was an old dilapidated shack with a couple of holes in the ground masquerading as public toilets a few metres away. They stunk! The stench was almost visible from 10 metres away.The whole area was full of persistent moneychangers, curio sellers, drink sellers and sellers of anything else they could rip you off with. It was the first of only two times that we were glad to get back onto the bus.
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Happier times -Dug out canoes at the Okavango Delta In Botswana Share this:
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African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-Nine Zambezi River
Later that morning with us bringing up the rear as usual we were paddling alongside an island to avoid a pod of hippos.
Suddenly a flurry of activity brings four hippos scurrying out of the bush and into the water just metres in front of Peter and Greg. They disappeared into deep water and four pairs of eyes popped up about twenty metres from us and watched as we tentatively crept past getting as close as we could to the bank.After such an exhausting morning (we had covered 20 kilometres as well) we were thankful for a stop for lunch and a couple of hours siesta followed by a swim in the shallows later in the afternoon under the watchful gaze of a few hippos.
Still by the time we had got to our overnight stop at a deserted beach we were all pretty much exhausted and aching. The excellent food and some elephants strolling down to the water’s edge for a drink a mere 150 metres away soon resuscitated us.
We were now in Mana Pools National Park and the hunting camps and other signs of humanity gave way to thorny bushveld and groves of Acacia and other trees. It was a full moon and as it rose it lit our campsite with a soft glow and turned a nearby perfectly formed thorny Acacia tree into a silhouette.The distant roar of a lion, the call of hyena and the munching of the hippos nearby seemed to be with us all during the evening and overnight. Despite our soreness, exhaustion and apprehension this was as good as it gets!
Peter and Greg allayed our fears somewhat about hippos. Apparently like most wild animals they only attack only when they feel threatened. The stories of canoes being turned over are greatly exaggerated and usually caused by accident. In deep water a hippo may be right underneath the canoe and its occupants totally unaware, so if it decides to pop up and you’re in the way, bad luck!
These guys seem to know their stuff. Peter was from the Shona, the most populous people in Zimbabwe and Greg was a young white guy from a farming family. When talking amongst themselves they spoke Shona. It seems that even though English is the official language Shona is more commonly spoken. They also told us of our biggest danger. “We (meaning Peter and I) will stand guard overnight to watch for Zambians paddling across from the other side. They ‘ave been known to raid a campsite and steal belongings from the tents and canoes whilst everyone slept.” Greg said.
Great I thought, we have to watch out for crocs and hippos by day and thieving Zambians by night.
Our final full day at 24 kilometres was a lot shorter and allowed us to leisurely enjoy the sun rising over the Zambezi.
This was our best day!
The river was mostly a series of tranquil channels and the wildlife was everywhere. Lots of hippos to be seen but none that were close enough to trouble us; a herd of elephants on the Zambian side; more elephants near our lunch spot; waterbuck, buffalo and impala also darted in around the national park edge, whilst little bee eaters probed small openings they had created as entrances to their nests inside the cliff face of the riverbank. But the piece ‘d’ resistance was yet to come. Swimming in a shallow channel we dried off and under Peters leadership we approached, by foot through the water, a large pod of hippos. We got within four metres of them as they watched us whilst closely bobbing up and down, ears flapping and noses snorting. They were watching us as warily as we were they. I snapped away around ten shots only to realise that I had the camera still set for a much dimmer light. By the time I reset, the hippos were almost completely submerged and moving away. Curses!Ten metres beyond them an elephant descended the bank and paddled across the deeper channel up ahead to join his mates strutting on a small island. Later that afternoon we stopped our paddling and drifted as we watched more elephants frolic in the water just in front of us. Peter was pretty keen on ensuring that we didn’t get too close but some other canoeists were foolishly a lot closer and came very close to having their canoes turned into firewood.
Five kilometres on and it was time to set up camp for the last night on another sand island. First we had to navigate our way through a narrow channel with, you’ve guessed it, another pod of hippos in the way. No drama. Peter and Greg slapped their paddles against their canoes and off they went to safer waters.
On dry land we were all busting and Sue managed to grab the spade before anyone else and headed off to an inconspicuous place. She was had been so absorbed with finding a hidden spot that it wasn’t until relief had come that she realised that there was a hippo lying on the bank asleep a mere five metres away. Any alien who had no prior knowledge of humanity would have gone away thinking what strange toilet rituals we have once he saw this mad women running towards us waving a spade with one hand and holding up her shorts with other!
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Elephants in the Zambezi River walking across the river in Zimbabwe Share this:
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African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-Eight Zambezi River
We got to the Bronte at 5.00 am the next morning ready and waiting for our guide Peter and his offsider Greg who both turned up at 6.00 am with a driver Showee.
We were heading for Chirundu some seven hours drive away via Breakfast at Chinhoyi and picking up the final two other members of our group at Makuti, Peter and Susan. They were Aussies as well, like us travelling on a tight budget and (shock horror) were about our vintage.Chirundu is a small town set on the river and serves as a border post with Zambia. It’s here that the real business begins.
A leisurely lunch was followed by a lesson on Canoeing and some tips about animal behaviour. This last topic made us all sit up and listen. “Iiif you are feced with hippo, den puddle towards shallow water und keep you distance. Iiif a hippo charges und turns oover de canooo den geet into anoother”.
Great!
I noticed that Peter (the Aussie) had some bad scratches on his legs and arms. “Oh that. We were charged by a hippo in Matusadona and I jumped into a very thorny bush” he said.
This was getting worse!
Now it was time to get on the water. The canoes were twenty-foot Canadian style (whatever that meant) and we climbed in after all our bags and supplies were loaded into the middle of the canoe. If this baby turned over not only would we get wet but so would all our belongings.
That afternoon we covered 16 kilometres and it felt like 100! I had the rear seat so the art of steering was all mine to conquer and needless to say our progress was a series of zig zags along the fast flowing water.
This part of the Zambezi is around 800 kilometres downstream of Victoria Falls and 140 kilometres from the eastern edge of Lake Kariba and the infamous Kariba Dam. I say infamous because when it was built in the 1950’s, nature (in the form of the god Nyaminyami according to the local Tonga tribe) did its damnedest to destroy the project with three unprecedented floods and a heat wave causing the deaths of many workers and severe damage to the work in progress.
The river was wide with the seemingly uninhabited terrain of mountains and hills of Zambia on the north side and the steep riverbanks dotted with hunting camps of Zimbabwe on the south. In between both banks, islands of marshy wet lands split the river creating tranquil channels with lush grasses and lily like growth. With the current flowing with us it all seemed very easy at the beginning. But it didn’t take long to realise that I needed to get the hang of this steering quick smart to avoid the hippos that seemed to be lurking around every corner and the odd croc that lay patiently at the water’s edge.
By the time we reached our destination a small sandy island a couple of hundred metres from the Zimbabwe side, we were ready to rest.
As with the rest of trip there are no washing or toilet facilities here. A spade with a toilet roll at the water’s edge is as good as it gets.
After we erected our tents around the dining table and the fireplace, Peter and Greg presented a feast fit for kings.
Amazingly we had steak and fresh vegetables washed down with the local Myuku red.
Add that to the good conversation and the odd snort of a hippo and roar of a lion and I felt like we were in paradise.Not so Sue.
Her arms ached from the paddling, she was also concerned as to whether she could paddle the 38 kilometres the next day and she felt really worried about the hippos.
We later attributed the latter to the malaria tablets, Lariam that we taking. One of its side effects is anxiety and as you can see there was plenty to get anxious about.If Sue was worried about hippos the day before then the morning doubled her fear. Soon after we set off we rounded the bend and the channel narrowed.
Suddenly out from the tall grass on the left bank, rushed a huge hippo straight into the water towards the opposite bank.
Steering and stopping a two berth canoe was still beyond Peter’s and my capabilities as first our canoe, then Peter and Susan’s jackknifed into the bank. We both came to a halt facing back the way we had just come, a few metres from where the guides were waiting patiently in their canoe.
Peter (the guide) opened his hand, drew it down his face and took a deep breath. “OK” he said, “You can’t turn around here so you’ll both have to go back and turn around keeping as close as you can to this bank”Peter and Sue set off first and successful negotiated the turn. We (well actually me) didn’t do so well. We ended up with such a huge turning circle that before we knew it we were heading directly for the spot in the water where the hippo had last been sighted. There was nothing we could do except, as I yelled to Sue
” Paddle for fucks sake just paddle!”
Which is exactly what we did as the canoe passed right over the top of the hippo as the others watching in amazement or was it amusement.
Footnote:
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Hippos in the Zambezi River watching canoes in Zimbabwe Share this:
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African shoestrings – Zimbabwe Day Ninety-Seven Harare
Possum Lodge had such a quaint name for a backpackers hostel that we felt we had to stay there. We ended up in a small (and I mean small) wooden cabin in the back yard listening to something that is described as ‘Techno’. The main bar and recreation areas are outside and not that far away from our cabin consequently we could hear everything as if we were actually there at the bar and it was horrendous. I’m sorry but call me out of touch, old fashioned or just plain ignorant but I cannot for the life of me see how anyone can enjoy this type of sound (its not music).
Its mind numbing headache material that’s produced by people with little or no musical talent (if they have its well-hidden) on electronic devices and computers not on musical instruments. Fortunately for us it was eventually changed to rap (see I’m not that single-minded) and then even better turned off at 11.30 pm.We had a whole day in Harare to do a couple of chores. The next four days were to be spent canoeing the Zambezi and then we would return to Harare where we would catch a bus to Lilongwe the capital of Malawi, which meant having to cross the infamous Tete corridor in Mozambique. So chore number one was getting a transit pass from the Mozambique embassy, a three-day visa that allowed you just enough time to get to Malawi.
Just before getting in the long queue we thankfully discovered that we needed two passport photos instead of the one we had been led to believe was required. We found a stall around the corner that obviously does a roaring trade in passport photographs of tourists who like us have been caught short and then have to pay through the nose for them.
Back to the embassy and half way through the hour and half queue we discovered that unlike every other embassy this one only accepts local currency not US currency.
I left Sue in the queue and went off to find the nearest bank or ATM and after a sweaty search eventually found one about a couple of k’s away and got back just as Sue was about to be served by a grumpy and unhelpful official. Later that day we returned to queue for another half hour to pick up our passport that we had somewhat nervously left behind for them to stamp.Chore number two was visiting the Goliath safaris office in the slick looking Bronte Hotel. There we reluctantly paid for the canoe safari and made the final arrangements with the two very friendly and helpful girls that manned the office.
They also helped us organise a taxi to bring us from the backpackers to the Bronte in the early hours of the next morning to get picked up for the safari. The Bronte looked that good that we decided to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury and book a room for a couple of nights there when we got back. We just needed a rest from backpackers and camping to remind ourselves of what we were missing.Chore number three was booking the bus to Lilongwe at Possum Lodge.
Chore number four was buying a torch and a few supplies for the next few days and chore number five was trying unsuccessfully to find a guide book on Zanzibar.
The final chore was checking our e-mail at Possum Lodge which was so painfully slow that you wondered whether it would have been quicker to use the old fashioned lick the stamp method.
Somewhere in between all these chores we found a great little restaurant called the The House Café in a small shopping centre not far from the Bronte and bumped into John and Alice (our companions on the Audi camp trip through Botswana) for the second time in twenty four hours. The first was at Possum lodge the night before.
Footnote:
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Sable walking on the park road in Matobo NP Zimbabwe Share this:
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