Safari Short Stories

A night in Dar Es Salaam was needed to recover from the ferry crossing, then we hopped on a 12 hour bus across Tanzania to Arusha, the gateway to the famous Seringeti and many other safari destinations! After a short walk down the high street we soon realized it would be no problem to book on a safari at late notice. With almost every step, a different sales person would come up to us and tug on our arms or almost shove their business cards up our noses, so keen were they to get our custom! We eventually settled on a company called Crown Eagle. They were running a 5 day safari that left 1^st thing the following morning with all food, camping gear, cook and guide included. As it was such late notice they were desperate to fill the places and so we got a very reasonable price! On the itinerary was the world famous Serengeti, the Ngorogoro Crater, Lake Manyara and Tarangerie National Park.

Instead of describing each day in detail we thought it would be more interesting to just give a brief overview and then tell some short stories of funny things that happened. Basically, the safari was incredible. We saw pretty much every animal you could dream of; zebras, wildebeest, elephants, giraffes, lions, leopards, cheetah, hyenas, countless deer/gazelle type animals and probably loads of others that I can’t think of right now. We camped every night and drove around the various parks, checking out the beautiful scenery and watching with wonder the many animals in their wild habitats. The best part was seeing the animals so free in their home as opposed to cooped up in a zoo or a cage. Watching the lions proudly prowling around in the long grass of the Serengeti, looking for their next meal was something special.

Hakuna Matata

It turns out “Hakuna Matata” (no worries) is not just a phrase from the Lion King! It is actually used all the time as a way to get around day-to-day dilemmas that occur all over Africa. For example, if the bus is late…”Hakuna Matata”, or if something is stolen… “Hakuna Matata”. It is perhaps because of this phrase that means a lot of governments across the continent struggle! It’s quite funny really and we’ve even taken to using it ourselves when things don’t quite go to plan.

So following the Full Moon we woke up to one heck of a hangover… Whilst both suffered from dodgy stomachs and a constant battle over the bathroom ensued, poor Ewan was struck down with fever and was bed bound for 3 days whilst the waves lapped on the shore just 30 meters away!

After a Malaria test (which showed negative thank goodness), and more tablets than you could imagine, we were both back on our feet. Until we boarded the boat back to Dar that is…

Just as we had almost recovered our appetites and felt strong enough to travel, the ferry tried it’s best to put us back to square one. It was a notoriously choppy crossing but we seemed to pick it on a particularly angry day! The waves were high and the boat went up and down, side to side and back to front, much to the discomfort of its passengers! Thankfully we hadn’t eaten anything that day so we could leave the sick bags intact! Others however weren’t so lucky…

Hakuna Matata!

High Tide

We arrived at Nungwi Guest House, a strange but welcoming place with cartoons of sharks and animals painted over EVERY wall! It had a small courtyard in the centre of the rooms where we met and became friends with a girl called Sita from Birmingham, and a ridiculous Italian guy called Miguel who showed us great places to eat, and took us down to the beautiful beach that evening. The beach was just like the pictures in the magazines, luscious white sand and crystal clear water, with bars along the waterfront. Gorgeous!

They filled us in on the plan for the Full Moon Party the following night, held at Kendwa Rocks, an infamous party hotspot for travelers and locals alike. We mentioned that we had found out about the party from some Irish girls we had met way back in Zambia, to which they replied “what… the dentists?”. What a small world, they had been staying with them just a few weeks previously!

After some excellent and remarkably cheap dinner at a local restaurant, we headed to Kendwa. We arrived to see hundreds or party goers stretching from one beach bar right across to the other side of the beach. We headed up to a lounge above the bar where we were reunited with the Irish girls and the festivities began!

At around 4.30am, we decided to stroll the half an hour back along the beach to Nungwi, where we had food and warm beds waiting. Our plan however was foiled as we were faced with high tide and no money for a taxi! Eventually we gave up and headed back to the party, where the crowd was beginning to disperse, so we made a nest on sofas with our gang and huddled there until 7.37am when the tide was low enough to continue on!

Paradise Isle!

On our arrival into Dar es Salaam, were again ambushed by taxi drivers, but keen to get the cheapest deal between 7 of us (the medics were heading our way), we haggled hard! Eventually setting on an truck with no sides or roof we headed into the bright lights of the big city. We had phoned ahead to the YMCA and booked a double room (lonely planet told us it took women too). I’m not quite sure what we were expecting, but we were both a little bemused and disappointed when we arrived and there were no red Indians, cowboys or traffic cops dancing out to meet us!

We woke early the following day, keen to leave for Zanzibar as soon as possible (we’d heard reports of muggings and thieves!) so headed for the 7am ferry. The weather was glorious and the sea was calm, so with the sunnies out and factor 15 on we were set for a relaxing few days on the paradise Isle!

Arriving in the port of Stone Town, we made first for our hostel where we downed our luggage and headed out to explore. The town itself was magical, with twisting alleys, and shops and markets that you could quite literally get lost in. The seafront was dazzling with white sand and turquoise sea, it felt almost Caribbean but with Arabic twist! The population of Zanzibar is 90%Muslim, so we were careful not to eat or drink in public, as they are currently fasting for Ramadan, to avoid scowls from the locals (many tourists didn’t seem to realise why the people were occasionally hostile). We were grumpy enough after a couple of hours without food in that heat so I don’t blame them!

Katie got over excited and bought elephants spoons, giraffe spoons and a couple of local paintings – the kind of purchases that when considered in hindsight seem totally absurd! Ewan took a more laidback approach and bartered fiercely for a giraffe painting and some baby elephants, and made some bargain buys.

Exhausted and hungry we headed that evening to the fish market at Forodhani Gardens on the seafront. It was mesmerizing, with row upon row of tables laiden with all sorts of sea creatures, lit by lanterns in the trees. After a feast we retired to get some rest before heading north the following day to the beach!

Tazara

Our stay in Mbeya was brief, and the next day we ventured about 30 minutes out of town to the Train Station to get the Tazara (Tanzanian – Zambian Railway). We had first heard about the train from a group of Irish girls in Livingstone who had been raving about it. It sounded like great fun so we decided it would be an interesting way to get to Dar Es Salaam, and would make a nice change to being stuck in an overcrowded, smelly bus for 14 hours…

We bought our tickets from the ticket office and waited patiently for the train to pull in.  When the train arrived, they didn’t open the doors at once, so a sort of ad hoc queue developed in the waiting room. When they did eventually open them, the queue vanished and it instantly became a free for all with baggage/children hoisted above people’s heads and everyone jabbering away in Swahili. After negotiating our way through the throng of people crowding to get through the door and reaching the actual platform, it turned out that the train wasn’t even ours and the Dar train was on the other platform! We searched around for a bridge or subway that would take us, but to no avail… When we were amongst the last people on the platform and getting very confused, this German guy came and asked us if we were heading to Dar. We said we were and he told us that we had to go “through” the train to get to the other side. Bemused, we hopped on the Zambia train, walked through the carriage and out the other side, dropping down onto the tracks. We picked our way carefully over the rows of train tracks (being careful not to get electrified) and joined all our fellow passengers on the other side!

Our train when it did pull in was great. The journey in total took 24 hours and so we each had little bunk beds in small dorms of four people. Once we got going, we befriended a group of five medical students from Liverpool who had been working in Malawi, they had lots of interesting stories to tell, in particular about how crazy it was during the Malawian riots. Apparently you could hear gunshots right outside their apartment… The train ambled on through the south of Tanzania, through national parks and conservation areas, through tiny little villages where all the kids came out and waved us by and past huge mountains, the like of which we hadn’t seen before on our travels through Zambia or Botswana.

Every now and then the train would stop in a village and the whole carriage would be instantly surrounded by traders trying to sell various things to you through the window. They sell bottles of water, fresh fruit, biscuits, jewellery – pretty much anything really. Whenever they saw us, they shouted “Mzungu, Mzungu!” which means “white person” and they would all flock to our room in the hope that we would buy some of their goods.

That night can only be described as very bumpy with an often interrupted sleep. Mainly due to the train’s constant shaking and it making huge, lurching, scraping noises every time we slowed down or sped up, akin to a stampede of metal elephants in desperate need of some oil!

However the next morning we awoke in good spirits, and found ourselves in one of Southern Tanzania’s most famous parks. Out the window as we had breakfast, we could see herds of zebra, impala and giraffes grazing on the plains and just going about their daily business, the same as you would see sheep or cows back home. It was brilliant to watch them, however the whole journey got quite funny when the lady tried to serve us tea in little saucers after our breakfast. If you have ever watched the Monty Python sketch “The ministry of funny walks”, try and remember the bit when the waiter brings in the tea on a tray, but he is doing such a stupid walk that the tea spills everywhere and is totally ridiculous. If you haven’t seen it then go on YouTube. But that is what it was like. Every time someone went to drink, the train would give an almighty lurch and the tea would spill everywhere! By the end, everyone was a bit wet and it became a sort of challenge to try and actually get some tea in your mouth without spilling it all over yourself/your neighbor.

When we eventually pulled in to Dar Es Salaam, the sun was setting and it felt like we were returning conquering heroes, so great was our reception! Every kid in the area had turned out to watch the train pull in and they were all screaming, waving and running around with excitement at our arrival. We pulled in and departed the train, happy to be on solid ground again but also having had a great 24 hours and definitely glad we had made the effort to join the Tazara!

Road Block

The next stop after the busy, noisy and dusty Lilongwe was the picturesque, serene and beautiful Nakata Bay. Nakata bay is a small village on the shores of the colossal Lake Malawi. Although people had mentioned to us that the lake was massive, nothing can quite prepare you for when you see it. It is like the sea off the coast of a tropical island – perfect calm blue water stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions, small boats floating along fishing and a range of birds flying over the water.

We got a taxi to our accommodation, a place called Mayoka Village, that had been recommended to us – and for good reason. The “village” is situated on a hillside overlooking the bay, with a number of little one room chalet type things right on the water’s edge. They also had a bar/restaurant, canoes/rowing boats that residents could take on the lake for free and snorkels that you could use to try and spot fish. After carrying our bags down the hill, we were enthusiastically greeted by Gary, the hostel owner, who was incredibly friendly. We had spoken to him on the phone and originally told him that we just wanted the cheapest accommodation (a dorm room) as we were on a budget. He waved us aside however and offered to give us one of the lakeside chalets for the same price as the dorm as he liked the look of us! It was only after we had dropped our bags and returned to the bar that we realized he was in fact pretty drunk. Come to think of it, I don’t think we saw him sober the whole time we were there… he must live a very chilled out life!

The chalet was the best place we had stayed yet. Literally opening its doors onto the lake, it had a comfy bed and plenty space to dump your bags and make yourself at home. At the front there was a porch/veranda area with deck chairs where you could sit and enjoy the sun. All this was around 1,000 Malawian Kwatcha each (this is currency, not a type of rare fruit…) which is around eight pounds. Bargain!

During our stay in Nakata Bay we pretty much did nothing… it was so good to relax after a hectic few weeks of dusty bus travel and hostels of various cleanliness. The highlights included swimming in the lake out to a small diving platform near our chalet and washing our clothes for the first time (don’t judge) by hand beside the lake as a washing machine is a rare occurrence around here!

After a few days however, it was time to move on and say goodbye to Malawi and its beautiful lake. The next stop was Mbeya, a town just inside Tanzania and the place at which the Tazara (Tanzanian – Zambian Railway) Train to Dar Es Salaam stops. Our plan was to board the train at Mbeya and go straight to Dar, from which you can easily get to Zanzibar where we would stay for about a week. The journey had a number of different components, first we had to get a taxi from the Bay to Mzuzu, a city in central Malawi. A minibus then took us to Karonga in the north of the country, where we got a shared taxi to the actual border. Once we had negotiated the border crossing and successfully got into Tanzania we jumped on a bus to Mbeya and finally a taxi to our accommodation.

The journey was largely uneventful however it is worth mentioning the minibus that took us to Karonga. These minibuses are designed for 3 people in the front seats, then 12 in the back, sitting in four rows of three. Anyone who has travelled in Africa however, will know how little this means… When we jumped on the minibus in Mzuzu, we were lucky enough to get seats at the back as it wasn’t quite “full”. As we left the town and started on our way north it soon became clear that there is actually no such thing as a “full” minibus in Malawi. At regular intervals we would stop and more people would hope on. Sometimes one person, sometimes two, sometimes they carried big bags that had to be crammed in and sometimes the women had children on their backs or sitting on their lap. At one point I counted 8 people sitting on seats designed for three. There was a large lady, somehow with five children of varying ages perched on her lap/back/any space available. Next to her was another large man who in turn had another grown man sitting on his lap. It really was crazy.

Perhaps the most memorable part of the journey was when we went through a “traffic police roadblock”. Unsurprisingly, we were pulled over for being over capacity. We were apprehensive, assuming that some people would have to get out and find alternative transport due to the bus being too full. This was not the case, our driver simply pulled out a wad of cash, handed it to the guard who nodded us on our way. 200 yards down the road we promptly stopped and opened the door in order to somehow cram a further passenger into the melee!

'The warm heart of Africa'

The following morning at 0800, we ventured on to the Zambian-Malawian border with an American guy called Matt we had met at Dean’s Lodge. The border crossing was fairly subdued in comparison with the last (less chickens, and no rivers involved)...all we had to do was sign our names in a visitor book and write our passport numbers! We spent a while daring each other to write Father Christmas, but decided eventually it wasn’t worth the risk.

After the border we took a bus to Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. There were already noticeable differences in the landscape from the previous to countries, rather than flat dusty roads we were traveling on windy roads through the hilltops and lush greenery all around. That said, there was still noticeable poverty there were still potholes everywhere which we’re beginning to find comforting!

On the ay we were briefed by a local guy on the recent riots that had been happening all across Malawi - Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantyre were the three main cities that had been hit. Sadly around 19 innocents were killed by police in the demonstrations. There is another riot scheduled for the 20^th, so we were sure to be out of there before it all kicked off again. We were told that the government is a mess and the President has been changing his priorities (apparently due pressure from his recent wife, a politician herself). Malawi, sadly has had a lot of bad press for having some of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS, and totally grim poverty statistics.

We rolled into Lilongwe at around midday, to a great backpackers called Mabuya Lodge where we found a group just heading out to a local football match with a local guy called James. They kindly invited us to join so we paid the equivalent of 30p entrance and went with them! The team was the Silver Strikers, they are a professional team in Malawi and James played for them when he was younger.

The people we met in Lilongwe were so generous and welcoming, and despite the alarming statistics, its nickname ‘the warm heart of Africa’ is thoroughly deserved. Having had a hectic couple of weeks of travel we decided to trek on for one more day up to Nkhata Bay, at the north end of the lake where we could stop to recoup for a little while!