African Adventures: Part III - The bumpy road to Malawi

Before we'd left for Zanzibar we had bought tickets for four beds in a first class cabin of the Tazara Line train, to take us down to Mbeya in the south of Tanzania, from where we would take a bus into Malawi. We'd bought four beds because passengers get separated by gender unless the entire cabin is bought out, and Paul and I wanted to stay together (to be together, but also to look after our things because we'd heard reports of robberies on the train, especially by people opening your window from the outside at train stops at night and taking things while you sleep! Eek). We took the ferry back to Dar from Zanzibar, changed some money from Tanzanian Shillings into Malawian Kwacha, bought food for the journey, had a chai with Chaki and then headed to the train station - only to find out that there had been a cargo train accident on the line and our train would not run until the following evening! Bah. Back to Dar we went. We got ourselves a new hotel room, had dinner of chicken and chips with Chaki (all 3 of us had food, drinks and chais - for 8500Tsh in total, or about 4 pounds!), had a great sleep and then spent the next day in the markets bargaining for a million and one souvenirs.

Back to the train station that afternoon at 4 for the 6pm departure. I don't know why we thought it would leave on time haha, but we did get a bit restless waiting until the actual departure time of 10:30pm! When our train finally rolled up all of the passengers got into 4 or 5 lines waiting to enter the platform. A station worker stood at the entrance to the platform and allowed one line at a time to move forward, every so often stopping them and getting another line to start. This sounds quite reasonable, until you realise that the guy was screaming and shouting at everyone, being totally arbitrary in the numbers of people he would let through from each line, would wave people through impatiently like they were taking too long but then suddenly shove people around and yelling when they didn't stop quickly enough. He even shoved a boy out of the way which made him knock over a sign, and then he hit the kid for knocking the sign over! It was hilarious to watch but a bit terrifying when it came time to walk past the guy ourselves haha. Everyone in the station seemed to be giggling to themselves.

Finally we got onto the train, a whole cabin to ourselves complete with cockroaches and a fan which didn't work. Hey, at least there was a stick in there to jam the window open or closed with! We tried to sleep as much as we could but I've never been on such a loud, screechy, jerky, bumpy, rocky, grinding train ride in my life, let alone trying to block out the other passengers who seemed to love having a good chat in the corridor at 2am.. The 22 hours couldn't go quickly enough! When morning broke we had a nice time as we passed through a national park, read our books and snoozed. Towards the end of the journey as night fell again, the cockroaches and mosquitoes came out in force. Ugh. We made it into Mbeya around 8pm and were instantly surrounded by a thousand taxi drivers. I hate, hate, hate those situations, so we ended up walking up to a taxi with its light on but no driver and started shouting to see who owned it, rather than dealing with the mob. The driver eventually saw us and ran over, and we got a lift to the Sombrero Hotel for 6000Tsh (3 pounds). Really nice, cool hotel so we had a great sleep.

In the morning we went straight to the bus station to figure out our transport into Malawi. **ALERT - THERE IS NO DIRECT BUS FROM MBEYA INTO MALAWI** A kind young gentleman called Jack (DJ Magic as Paul nicknamed him - he looked like a DJ, he was from Malawi and his name was Jack, hence ma-gic) helped us out by guiding us into his office away from the hordes and showing us the timetable of buses we could take into Malawi. We just had to pay him one payment of 30,000Tsh (about 15 pounds) each and we would get a minibus to the border, then a big bus from the border to Karonga. Easy. On the mini bus to the border a woman sitting behind us tapped me on the shoulder and handed me her phone, on which she had typed 'be careful changing money there are lots of cheats and thieves'! It was nice of her to warn us, we got to chatting and ended up walking through the border with her. When we reached the other side, lo and behold, there was no bus waiting. In fact, there are no buses from the border! Oh we had been cheated big time. The nice woman was with us when we got surrounded by 6 loud guys offering to drive us to Karonga and as she sped up and tried to get away, they left us behind and followed after her. She negotiated with them for us and arranged for one of them to drive us there for 400 kwacha each - a 50km drive for 2 pounds! Not bad :)

Karonga was a hot, dusty, nowhere town, a transit point in the north of Malawi. We tried to find accommodation there but everything was 20 pounds and above! I don't think so. We decided to keep moving on to another town called Chitimba a bit further south and hitched a lift on the back of 2 young boys' bicycles to the bus station for 50 kwacha each :) The bus station was one of the most stressful I've ever been in. 10 guys surrounded us (why does everyone always need to surround us?!) all of them offering different vehicles, prices, times, distances, and apparently levels of safety! "No this man is drunk, he is not safe! No this man, he speeds! He crazy!" We were being told one bus was good, then being told the same bus was not running, then another bus was too slow, another was falling apart, another bus was full, another bus would not leave for hours.. Absolutely exhausting! I ended up walking away to ask a woman sitting down on a nearby bench for her help to make a decision and to get the right price. Then SHE got surrounded by the men! She ended up leading us, with the pack of guys, to a minivan and told us to get in because it was full and almost leaving. Just as we were about to, we spotted a driver of a van who actually looked like a decent guy - we asked him how much and when he would be leaving, and jumped in there instead. We had a bit of a chat and a joke with the driver, and still waited for a good hour to leave, and right as we were about to go - as in we had driven through the station and had reached the gate - the driver jumped out and a different one jumped in! We were furious because we'd chosen the bus because of the driver, and the new guy looked drunk. We gritted our teeth and beared it, while the guy sitting next to me who was pissed out of his mind sat with his face right next to mine, swaying back and forth and trying to make conversation, while the driver left the station but drove all the way back so the man sitting next to him could buy some more 'water'.. We figured if you waited for a completely perfect situation you would never get anywhere in Africa!

We made it to Chitimba! We got out of the bus when we saw the sign for the Chitimba Beach Campsite and walked down a dirt path in the sinking sunshine. We walked past about 10 separate kids who all introduced themselves then asked for our pen or water bottle or pen or bottle haha. We just kept saying "Hi, how are you? No. Hi, how are you? No" over and over haha. At the end of the dirt path was our heaven after a day of hell. A double room, mosquito net and bathroom with a thatched roof for 2800 kwacha (14 pounds) which opened straight onto the sand, a very cool and chilled out bar run by a cute rasta guy with music pumping, and other white people from one of those overland trucks lounging about.. Ahhh.

Posted from Adelaide

The train station's notice board

Market in Dar

Waiting in the train station

Beautiful scenery from the train

Mbeya at sunrise

DJ Magic.... The bastard

The road from Mbeya

Our mini bus driver getting fined for having too many passengers hahahaha

Walking from the bus stop to the border

Where our bus was meant to be..

Chitimba Beach Campsite

African Adventures: Part II - Zanzibar

Zanzibar was an interesting one. The island lies about 40km off the coast of Tanzania and has been influenced by various cultures over the centuries including Indian and Arabic. It is part of the archipelago known as the Spice Islands, made up of Zanzibar and Pemba. We took the excellent Sea Bus ferry across there for $35US, which included Arnie Schwarzenegger movies to our delight, got our passports stamped at ‘Immigration’ and then got surrounded by men who wanted to show us how to find our hotel. How about this – LEAVE US ALONE!! But no such luck, as much as we tried to look like we knew what we were doing, or tried walking in the opposite direction, or walking super fast or super slow, we couldn’t lose them. In the end I assume they got commission from our hotel. We stayed in Zanzibar’s capital, Stone Town, for 3 nights. I think we felt a bit let down about the island because all I’d seen of it before is the picturesque photos of white sands and beautiful sunsets, which yes we did see, but for the most part Stone Town is a dingy, dark cobweb of alleyways. It was one of those places that you don’t want to be walking around in after sunset. In fact our hotel manager warned us to keep our stuff away from the windows in our room because he’d heard of a man who could climb up the wall and reach inside to steal things, ‘but don’t worry, he can’t get inside, he could only reach inside with his arm’. Sure, I believe that these wooden shutters with broken slats and no locks would be able to keep someone from entering the room! We wanted to move up a floor, which the guy finally agreed to after the third time we asked.

One of those things you ‘have to do’ is a spice tour where you’re driven out to a spice farm in a mini bus, walked around and shown different plants and trees for a couple of hours and then given a lunch made using some of the spices that you’ve just seen. We did this on our first day and it was actually really cool seeing cinnamon, cocoa beans, cloves, lemongrass, turmeric, star fruit (not really a spice..) and vanilla pods in their original form. Our lunch was also pretty nice and I bought an ointment made from lemongrass that soothes itchy or sun-burnt skin AND acts as a mosquito repellent! After the tour we were dropped by the sea front in Stone Town and wandered back to our hotel in the sun, stopping for a drink to watch some boys jumping into the water. Walking through the alleyways we came across the Zanzibar Coffee House which apparently serves some of their best coffee. There was a poster nearby for the up-coming Tanzanian Barista Championship which excited us coming from the coffee freak cafes of Edinburgh. We had a nice evening meal, sharing a pizza at a huge open bar overlooking the ocean – til the mosquitoes came out in force and we sped back to the hotel.

The following day we took a daladala out to the Jozani Forest where we took bicycles and rode a kilometre or so to a mangrove walk. We saw some amazing Red Colobus Monkeys, unique to Zanzibar, and got within a couple of metres of them! After the thrilling mangroves (not so much), we walked ourselves through the rainforest and were petrified by some other monkeys and Paul was eaten by a few ants. We stood on the road under the shade of the Jozani Forest sign after we were done and waited for a daladala to drive past and hopefully take us to Jambiani beach. We ended up hitching a lift in a 4WD (funny how I would never get into a car full of strangers at home, but in Africa I would..) which was great and found the white, never-ending beach. We chilled out in a beach hut bar run by a bunch of rastas, and then found a place for lunch which took a whopping hour to deliver our food.

We walked along the beach in the blistering sun for about 20 minutes and managed to burn like beetroots, then headed back to the little white-washed village to find a daladala back to Stone Town. Waiting in the village for about half an hour was really relaxing and interesting in the end – we sat under the shade of a rickety hut with a little old man and watched a group of guys riding their motorbikes, others walking around barefoot, while a little girl nearby dragged a squid around on the ground! The daladala back took about 3 hours and it was hilarious entertainment. Stuffed to the brim, including 8 tourists, one of which a Korean girl who was telling everyone on board that she was short-changed and it was bad for their economy because she writes in newspapers in 4 languages and she’s going to spread the word about how bad Tanzania is; an old man telling us he has 2 wives and is looking for a third, who cracked up laughing when I asked (knowing the answer already) whether women could have more than 1 husband; a young guy next to us talking excitedly about football; and more people being stuffed in every minute! At one point we reversed up to a house and the driver got up on the roof and started throwing planks of wood into the yard that we’d apparently been transporting for someone. I love Africa.

Posted from Adelaide

Our ferry

Leaving Dar

Entering Zanzibar

View from our hotel window

'Lipstick fruit' on the spice tour

Sunny days

Noone else probably cares but..

Stone Town's beach front

Red Colobus!

Paul looking excited about mangroves

Jambiani

African Adventures: Part I - Dar Es Salaam

When I was trying to decide on where to go for my last adventure before flying home to Australia it was a toss-up between Greece, Croatia and Slovenia or Tanzania and Malawi. In the end Africa won out, mainly because of the ‘do it while you’re young’ argument. One day I’ll make it back to Greece to see where my grandpa is from, but I wasn’t so sure about Africa. I also wanted to go there because it felt like I had let myself have negative thoughts about Africa after Ghana and I wanted to give it a second chance. After some consideration Paul decided to join me and I’m really glad he did – wouldn’t have wanted to be there with anyone else :)

So this is how it went. On Tuesday the 16th of March 2010 we flew Edinburgh-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Dar Es Salaam with KLM, Kenya Airways and then Precision Air! Landing in Nairobi at sunrise was absolutely stunning, and then we had an entertaining flight with Precision Air during which the pilot was announcing things throughout the flight such as ‘the weather in Dar is now..’, ‘if you look to your right you’ll see Mt Kilimanjaro’ (WHICH WAS FREAKING AMAZING!!), ‘there are many national parks to visit in Tanzania such as..’ and finally ‘after this flight we’re flying to *insert place-name here* and you’re welcome to join us, all you need to do is buy a ticket at the airport!’. It was like having our own personal tour guide, hilarious.

As usual, arriving in a new country was daunting. It was hot and sticky, we were tired, the ‘queue’ to get visas was more of a crowd milling around the few barred windows with a guard-looking guy wandering around taking money and passports from people, while the immigration staff behind the bars seemed to be doing not much at all. It was 9:30am and it was already boiling hot. We did the whole try-to-get-out-money-from-an-ATM-without-anyone-noticing-or-realising-how-much-money-we-were-getting thing and then caught a taxi from the airport to a hotel we chose out of our Rough Guide, the aptly named Holiday Hotel. We arranged a room for 20,000 Tanzanian Shillings, or 10 pounds, and then headed out for lunch and a walk to the Kisutu Market where we bought lychees and bananas. After an afternoon nap we tried to find a place for dinner and ended up at New Zahir Restaurant just around the corner. It’s a busy place owned by 2 friendly brothers. We ate some form of chicken and rice dish and halfway through Paul started feeling really sick. Still not sure what that was – the heat, the food, the tiredness, the new country – but he went off to the (disgustingly smelly) bathroom for a few minutes. Meanwhile a friendly man, whose name I learned was Chaki, came up and spoke to me. I know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers but, after sharing a chai and a good chat, we ended up letting this guy take us to the roof-top of a nearby hotel so we could see the view over the harbour. Chaki’s one of these lovely people who wants to take you everywhere and pay for everything, and try as we might we couldn’t convince him otherwise.

The following day Paul and I woke up early, mainly because of the incredible heat, and went to ‘A Tea Room’ for breakfast of chai, boiled eggs and a dough ball they called a doughnut. We went back to the top of the hotel for a day-time view of the harbour, and then walked 45 minutes to the Kivukoni Fish Market. I’d almost say it was cooler than Tsukiji in Tokyo! It was split into the land-side market and the sea-side market. We checked out the sea-side first – dhows and fishermen in the water, hundreds of people milling around the tables and benches of fish. They were having auctions on the big ones, with 20-30 people shouting and pushing money around tables with huge fish in the centre. It was a smelly place! We walked across the road to the land-side market where there was a range of fruits and veg and other things being sold, and further inside was a huge shed with loads of people cooking up fish in MASSIVE wok-looking things. The rest of the day was interesting enough – a trip to the National Museum, fish in coconut sauce for lunch, dinner in the dangerous area of Dar called Kariakoo where we were offered a lift from a dodgy character and chatted up by a Masaai while we waited for a taxi, and then ended up with a chai with Chaki and I nearly stepped on a rat that ran under my feet as we walked back to the hotel! Gross.

On Friday March 19th, Chaki had offered to take us for a day trip to Bagamoyo, an old slave trading port. We met him at 6:30am for a fantastically greasy breakfast of chai, Spanish omelette and a sweet, deep-fried rice ball called kitumbua. As we stepped on the hour-long bus to Bagamoyo I heard a familiar tune – Alhaji, a song that I had heard a thousand times in Ghana! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXE1zBoQgHU – this is the only video I could find of the song, so probably just shut your eyes and listen to the hilarity given the fact that I was told the word Alhaji means ‘a man who has returned from Mecca’) We arrived and walked to his friend’s house to ‘order lunch with his wife’ as he put it. The family that we visited were lovely. Chaki’s friend called a tuk-tuk for us which we used for the rest of the day to visit some old ruins, a slave trading museum, an art centre and the beach. We went back to the family’s house for lunch of pulao rice and chai and then took a daladala (minibus) back to Dar which was falling apart and smelt of petrol..

Posted from Adelaide

Nairobi airport at sunrise

MOUNT KILIMANJARO!!

Our little hotel in Dar

At the top of the Harbour View Tower

Paul at the land-side market

Kivukoni

Kitumbua and chai. Mmmm..

Chaki's friends in Bagamoyo

White white sands, and the little boy poking his head over the wall kept edging closer and closer and eventually begged for money..

Me, Paul and Chaki in our tuk-tuk

It's been far too long

I'm writing this sitting at my dining table in Adelaide with a cup of tea, enjoying the sun pouring in the window (but with the heater on, because, yes, it is winter!). In my last post I finished up writing about my trip to India, which was actually in May 2009. It's been an entire year, a lot has happened and I reached my final destination 10 weeks ago. My two years, two months and four days of travel is up. Weird feeling, not thinking about the next trip, not sharing a flat, not saving money for anything in particular, not even having to buy roll-on deoderant in case I jump on a plane in the next couple of months (these are the things travellers think about haha, and I will continue to do so anyway for environmental reasons). At the start of the trip I didn't think I would last being away for a whole year, let alone two, but I sure am glad that I did because around the time I was feeling the most home-sick is when I turned up in Edinburgh and met Rory. You never know what's around the corner hey?

Since I last wrote I stopped working at Kilimanjaro and started up at the City of Edinburgh Council where I met more fantastic people and enjoyed having my weekends free; the Fringe Festival came and went and I was lucky enough to see Rhys Darby and Adam Hills; I caught the Military Tattoo with the gals; travelled to Portugal for a week with the lovely Rory where we had a blast with the sunshine and sangria; mum came and visited for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Years and we visited Manchester together, and then went to Dublin for NYE with Rory and caught up with my aunty and uncle, Gabrielle and Nick, in the winteriest winter you could imagine; I had one of my best birthdays ever with a flat cocktail party, and definitely my best Valentine's Day with an amazing home-cooked meal by Rory; and spent a night at the amazing Channings Hotel, again obviously with Rory! In between all the events and special times, there were also many nights out with good mates, great nights in with spag bol and a dvd, fantastic films, new music, exploring exciting foods like Malaysian feasts and Polish sausage, and seeing the ballet Swan Lake. Edinburgh, you've done me proud! Could not have hoped for a better 18 months.

To finish up the expedition, more travel and good times were required so Paul and I headed to Tanzania and Malawi for a month, and then I met up with my dad for a trip through Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore on my way home. So keep reading!

Posted from Adelaide

Rory and I in the Portugal sun

Seamus and I on a great night out at El Barrio, salsa club

.. and at the Salsa Bar

Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Dublin for NYE


Snow snow snow out of my bedroom window

Winter Wonderland from the ferris wheel above

Rory's Remembrance Day ceremony while he was involved with the Universities Air Squadron

About to climb Arthur's Seat with Rors

Summer in Edinburgh - display of wild animals in St Andrews Square

Swan Lake! Yes I know you're not supposed to take photos, but I'm glad I did!!

My birthday party

Leaving time..