Tanzania Part 2

Left our camp just north of Dar Es Salaam in the morning heading along the Great Rift Valley towards Moshi, which is the nearest city to Kilimanjaro. From about lunchtime onwards we had the camera ready in anticipation of the first sighing of the Africa’s highest mountain. It was a cloudy day so we weren't too hopeful. Then,  about 100 km away just as we were coming over a hill overlooking a huge valley, Ian and Heater who were travelling behind us called on the car radio: ‘can you see the mountain’? We looked and looked and all we could see was a line of cloud on the horizon. We couldn't  quite understand that we didn't see what they could. Then we lifted up the sun visors and tilted our heads up and there it was, sticking above the clouds: Awesome!

Even more amazing was the fact that Ian and Heather had climbed Kilimanjaro five years ago and yet, this was their first proper sighting of it since it was enshrouded in cloud the whole time they were on it. A special moment for them as well!

 

Tanzania

We entered Tanzania a week ago after two days of solid driving along the western shores of Lake Malawi, another sign how big this lake is, especially bearing in mind that our starting point was about a third of the way up.

Driving  up the lake was really beautiful with the road meandering through mountains and valleys  and the lake on our right. All along the way are little villages and local people offering their produce and services. Something we hadn’t seen before were roasted rats on kebab stick, head and tails included, decided to give those a miss!

Before we headed off towards the Tanzanian border we spent a few more days with Bruce and Beryl, this time in the Sheri valley where Bruce is GM of a large sugar plant. We had a very interesting tour of the plant and now know how sugar is made before it reaches the shelves of Sainsburys.  Stop buying organic girls, the sugar is regularly tested for pesticides and none are ever found in the final product!

Left Bruce and Beryl with freshly cut hair and our larders stocked with homemade cookies, homegrown tomatoes, peppers and carrots and our water tanks replenished with the last water from a ‘known source’. We were also lucky to be able to watch the Olympics closing ceremony and actually felt a pang of homesickness. Thank you again Bruce and Beryl, we hope we can repay the hospitality in the UK one day.

Now we are making our way slowly up to the Serengetti where we are hoping to see the annual wilderbeast migration.  Planning to stop off at a couple of game reserves on the way and also hoping to get a glimpse of Kilimanjaro on the way north. Pity I only brought my flip-flops!

As we are making our way closer to the equator the climate is slowly changing and it is getting hotter. Yesterday we hit 35 degrees for the first time. We have not had a single day of rain since starting our trip and the mosquitoes are now joining the tsetsies to plaque us. Up until now we have been relying on supermarket bought food mostly. As we are depleting our stores we are having to rely mostly on locally produced fruit and vegies, that is tomatoes and onions and bananas and oranges for Tanzania.  We are left with about six meals worth of meat in our freezer, also bought down south, so we are not sure what we will find up ahead.  The same goes for drinking water so, next time you drink a glass of cold sparkling mineral water, think of us!

The four of us are in good spirits and continue to marvel at the fact that we can pick up our maps daily and pretty much make up the route on the spot.  Difficult to imagine how we will settle back into ‘normal’ life after this but don’t worry Mel, we ARE coming back!

Malawi



We crossed into Malawi last Friday and were glad of another bit of respite after a couple of really gruelling days of driving on impossible dirt roads,  getting lost, losing each other despite two-way radios and then ending up (Don & myself) spending the night 100 km apart from Heather and Ian in different camps, us camping on the lawn of a guesthouse wondering where they had got to.

Arrived at Bruce and Beryl’s, who have the use of a house on Lake Malawi, and were spoiled once again and this time in real need of a bit of home comfort. Tired, covered in insect bites (tsetsie’s mostly), almost no clean washing and out of fresh fruit and vegetables.  We arrived late in the evening and had no idea of our surroundings and were greeted the next morning by this:

Spent a couple of days messing around on the lake, swimming, snorkelling, boating and after all batteries had been recharged headed off to a game park on the south of Malawi called Liwonde for two nights. A big ‘Thank you’ to Beryl and Bruce for a much needed break.

Malawi feels like Zambia’s little sister and has been described in travel guides as ‘Africa for Beginnners’. Although the landscape is dramatic with the contrast of the lake (which makes up 15% of the surface area) and mountains marking the edge of the Great Rift Valley, it feels altogether more gentle.  Roads are better, the Malawian people are very friendly and welcoming and the country side is green rather than brown. There are numerous stalls along the roadside with Malawians selling anything from fresh fruit and veg to handmade wooden toys to skinned animals, not always obvious what they are.

This made me miss you Jess :(





Internet access is getting more difficult now and we have to rely on internet cafes to update our blogs which means less regular updates from now on. But just hang in there....





Zambia - Bangweulu Swamps

Well there we were in the hills in the remote Bangweula Swamps when two little additions to the MacIntyre clan arrived and we only found out four days later as we entered an area with phone signal.

CONGRATULATIONS Al & Joy on the birth of your twins girls, Bella and Catlyn!  Your adventures from this point on will be much more exciting than ours! Al, this is what your mum and dad looked like when they received the news, amazingly, via a phone call from Jess in York!

We seem to have settled into something of a pattern with one day of travelling and two or three days of staying in a camp. So far we have managed to find a camp every night which is great. They range from very basic with nothing more than a “long drop” to slightly more fancy with hot showers (African style, e.g. an overhead bucket filled with water heated by a wood fire).  For the last two nights we have stayed in a camp at Kapycha which has a natural hot spring at 40 degrees Celcius. It was difficult to leave this place!

Bangweula Swamps was very special.  It is a vast area of swamp land (10,000 square km) and is best known for a rare prehistoric  Dodo-like looking bird called a Shoebill Stork. Only 60 are thought to still exist here and the only way to see it is to drive about four hours from the park entrance to the swamp area on an almost impossible dirt road, then take a  boat (not dis-similar to an Oxford punt!) for about an hour and lastly walk through ankle to knee deep swamp water, depending on the season. You then wait and hope for a sighting.  Well we were lucky and even though neither Don nor myself are knowledgeable of birds, this sighting was something really special. Here is a picture of it.

The other species you only find in this region is an antelope called a Black Letchwe (as distinct from Red Letchwe which is found in South Africa).  As you drive onto the plains immediately before arriving at the swamp land you suddenly see thousands (more like tens of thousands!) of them, another very special experience. We were lucky enough to have them cross right in front of us as we were in our boat and if we don’t make it to the wilderbeest migration, this will be the closest to it.

We have subsequently moved south and have just arrived in 'Buffalo camp' in the North Luangwa National Park which is only accessible from March to September. The entire camp, which comprises eight reed huts, is under water in the rainy season so each year the whole camp is re-built from scratch. North Luangwa Park is in the Luangwa Valley which is part of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. The valley is estimated to be 175-300 million years old and is considered to be one of the last “True Wildernesses” left in Africa.

Well it is now next morning and needless to say we didn’t get much sleep. A large male elephant walked right up to the open end of our hut (they are only enclosed on three sides) and for about 10 seconds we made eye contact and neither of us knew what was going to happen next. Eventually he moved on and as we went back to bed he decided to walk through the camp on Don’s side of the bed. The space was too small for him to fit through and for a moment it felt like the whole hut was going to cave in. Amazing!