It's a long way to Lilongwe...

19th December 2005. Are you ready for a mammoth installment? We caught a taxi early to the Tazara railway station, a very 50s building, big and green, with very old trains. Dave says the gauge is a lot smaller than the UK, that's if a gauge is the width of the track (he's not entirely sure!). We eventually found the 1st class lounge with the help of 2 canadians, Janine and her husband. She had been teaching English in Dodoma (the Tanzanian capital) and her husband had joined her for a travelling hol. The queues outside were huge and full of wonderfully colourful Africans carrying huge parcels. We (and the Canadians) surrepticiously peered round the door of our lounge to take photos of the queue, the reason for this being that we have been told many times to be careful when photographing local people. There are 4 reasons for this, firstly on religious grounds, particularly the Muslims, secondly, tribal beliefs of some Africans, such as the Maasai, who believe it will steal their soul, thirdly because we don't want to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves or to our camera and finally because we are likely to be asked for a fee! We boarded the train and found our wonderful cabins, males and females are separate, 4 beds per cabin. I shared mine with Caroline and Naomi who were incredibly giggly particularly whenever I spoke a word of Swahili. Most disconcerting. We spent most of the day in the lounge/bar coach where there were bigger windows to watch the wildlife as we passed through the Selous Game Reserve and saw a giraffe, warthogs, lots of birds, impala and lots of wonderful scenery. We caught the slow train on purpose so we passed through the reserve in daylight hours, which meant we stopped at random villages with no platforms, where people jumped on and off. Although the beds were very comfortable and clean, sleeping wasn't as easy as expected due to the braking system on the train failing which meant we kept juddering to a halt, nearly causing us to topple out of our bunks! Other than that it was the most enjoyable and comfortable mode of transport up until this point. 24 hours later we arrived in Mbeya, a beautifully situated and cool town. The altitude was much appreciated after the hot, close climate in Dar. The town itself was very small, the size of a small English village, and was surrounded on all sides by magnificent mountains, often covered with thunder clouds. When it rained it was torrential, with lots of exciting lightning! We arranged a trip with a local guide to hike to the Ngozi Crater Lake, south of Mbeya in the Poroto Mountains. We were joined by an Austrian and a German lady and we set off from our guest house with our guide at 6am the next day. Luckily it was a cool, cloudy morning and having caught a dala dala (we had been promised a car) we made it to the junction where the track to the lake began. After a brief pause, where Dave took the guide aside to vent some frustration at his blatant lying and the price was reduced, we continued on our walk happily. The walk was very challenging and I was affected quite badly by the sudden increase in altitude, feeling light-headed and quite sick at times. Everyone was very patient waiting for me to compose myself and we continued on up. The walk up was through wonderful dense indigenous woodland and the view form the top, looking out over the green crater lake was amazing. Well worth it. The colour of the lake changes throughout the day and is supposed to possess magical qualities meaning no-one is allowed to swim in it. It was an extremely steep and dangerous climb down so we weren't tempted anyway! On the way back, a much more relaxed walk, we got absolutely drenched, despite Dave using his bushcraft skills to make me a banana leaf hat, wearing our waterproofs and holding huge banana leaves over our heads. But at least it kept the flies away. Back on the main road we then had to wait a while for a dala dala with any space at all to come by. Finally when a vehicle did stop, you would not have believed that another 5 people would fit in, but we constantly underestimate the ability of the Africans to always fit another person in. Amazing, and also incredibly uncomfortable, with both feet never touching the floor at the same time or at the same angle. There is no such thing as your own personal space. The next day we did our christmas shopping in Mbeya. We had allowed extra in our budget to splash out and treated ourselves with a bottle of Amarhula, a cream liquer, not the best choice for travelling in a hot climate as we were to find out, red wine (big treat for Joey!), spuds, onions, and carrots, stocking filler pressies bought secretly for each other and some tinsel for the tent. We also bought our dala dala ticket to Matema Beach on Lake Nyasa, close to the Malawian border. 23rd December. Up very early again (we now have an alarm clock as we don't trust oursleves to wake early when not camping) we made our way to the bus station and as usual waited over an hour for it to turn up. We knew there would be a couple of stops where we would change dala dalas but had been ensured that the tickets would take us all the way. Our man who sold us the tickets was with us for the beginning of the journey but was apparently suffering with a nasty bout of malaria. Not long after departure, he told us that he unfortunatley wouldn't be able to accompany us all the way to Kyela, the first change over point, and headed back to Mbeya. After he left us, we waited a while longer while the touts desperately tried to fill the dala dala. They stop at nothing to achieve this, we already knew they could be unpleasant but the behaviour we witnessed next was despicable. A poor woman had her bags ripped from her and then two touts, working for different dala dalas, each grabbed hold of an arm and were pulling her in both diretions while she was desperately trying to get free. She lost a shoe in the fight, I didn't realise what was going on at this stage and was in shock, which was picked up by one of the touts and thrown into his dala dala (ours) with her bags. She was hiding behind a street stall having managed to get away. Now realising what was going on I tried to reach her shoe behind me so I could give it to her so she didn't feel forced to enter the dala dala, but the bloke closest to it (a mzungu) was obviously in a deeper state of shock than me, or oblivious, and took a while to pass it up to me. By this time the woman had decided to board our dala dala. I was livid for ages afterwards - horrible touts! We arrived in Kyela to find that our promised pick-up was nowhere to be seen and we had to pay extra to get in another dala dala, very cramped, to get to Ipunda. It was now David's turn to be livid. At Ipunda, an out-of-the-way trading village, we found a truck heading down to Matema. The journey in the truck took 5 hours to cover 10 kms due to 2 blow outs, very loud bangs. This wan't surprising as the tyres where as bald as my Dad (sorry Dad!!). The first was replaced by the spare, unfortunately there was only one spare so the second led to a long wait, during which the children threw stones at the mango trees to bring them down, yummy. Eventually a pick-up drove by and agreed to take us and a few others the rest of the way. On arrival at the campsite we felt really dispirited having been ripped off and miffed with the general attitude towards Mzungus, and pitched our tent on the beach, not appreciating the beauty of the place. A beer in the village lifted our spirits slightly! Christmas Eve - 'A log cabin on the Beach'. We woke up early the next morning to see a lovely beach surrounded by the Livingstone Mountains on the eat shore fading away into the distance, the Poroto Mountains to the north and west and the lake as far south as you could see. Truly stunning. We spent the day wrapping presents, reading, decorating the tent and drinking Amarhula (which was already on the turn!). Sitting in our sheltered area on the beach we were joined by a large African family, obviously well off. A second full minibus arrived shortly afterwards and another group of Africans filed out, not as well off but friends with the first family. The children in the second bus all greeted each of the adults with a quiet 'shikamu' and touched their heads as they said it. This is a sign of respect for elders in Tanzania. One girl touched my head and I remembered to reply with 'Marahaba' - I'm delighted. I had read this in our guide book and this was the first time I had heard it so I was very pleased to remember the response. We had decided not to swim as we were still wary of the risk of bilharzia in the lake (a parasitic worm that uses pond snails as their host and humans as the vector and causes fever). We'll have to get over this concern at some point as we're planning to dive in the lake off the Malawian shore. So we showered in the mossie-infested communal showers. Just in case the water came from the lake (we'd forgotten to ask) the shower had to be quick, as the worms take about 10 minutes to burrow into your skin, followed by vigorous towel drying to encourage the little darlings to realease their grip. By which time I'd worked up a bit of a sweat! Sitting on the steps of a banda near our tent, three local boys approached us and emptied out large green fruit from a sack. They were describes as big oranges so I thought I'd try one. Dave got his hunting knife out and I cut it up and it was like a huge orange but tasted more like sour grapefruit. Delicious and quite satisfyingly crunchy. I was tucking into my giant orange when Dave had a sudden desire to ask Amani (our hotelier) if he could have a look at one of the bandas. So the next thing I knew we were looking at a huge double bed with red rose printed cotton sheets, log cabin effect wooden floor and walls, en-suite (with loo roll, large soap and box of matched for lighting the lantern) in other words it was time to move in! I have to say I felt guilty taking the tinsel off our little yellow tent and taking it into the banda. Our little tent had been traded in for a better model. But as Dave said, he'd had to have a look as he'd been wondering how Santa was going to get into our tent without a chimney. We watched a breath-taking sunset which actually lived up to our guide book's description and as it got darker more lights appeared on the lake as the fishermen took their wooden canoes out for the night. Amazingly we could see stars appear over the Livingstone Mountains as the sun set slowly over the Poroto Mountains on the opposite side of the lake. It was a truly magnificent setting. Lakeside was just like being on the coast, as the wind created small regular waves in the shallow water. The people here seemed much less used to tourists which was very refreshing. The feeling from the Africans today compared to yesterday was a vast improvement. Christmas Day. Woken up at 7am by Amani to buy fish from the fishermen on the beach to go with our veg bought in Mbeya. There was no fish to buy so we were slightly miffed at being woken up so early as we'd had a disturbed night sleep in our log cabin due to a mossie that was happily living inside our mossie net. Dave's shoulder is particularly tasty. What was much more pleasant was the bird song, very tuneful and sometimes bizarre. We left Amani after hopefully communicating to him that we would like some fish to cook on our stove about 5pm. A dug out canoe was delivered to our part of the beach (we had booked 2 canoes, thinking they would be like the modern plastic ones we'd seen lying around) and decided to wait unitil we had opened our stockings to go out on the lake for a paddle. We took turns to open pressies, my first was a homemade cracker, which actually worked when we pulled it and I won! Inside was a toilet roll, as Dave knows how much I love them and inside that was a beautifully made christmas cracker hat - he's a genius! Dave got an apple (lucky boy), a bottle of banana wine (local brew), snacks and a masai bracelt as a main pressie. I got a selection of sweets (chupa chups, magic hand which lit up, jewel ring and bubble gum) a hair scrunchy and a gorgeous sarong with turtle print. We then collected our wooden canoe and went for a paddle. This was a lot more difficult than we had expected as the canoe wasn't naturally balanced and we nearly capsized several times. Dave fell in while trying to get in, so that was the bilharzia worry out of the way. In the end Dave paddled on his own as he'd got the hang of it and I swam and walked back. We prepared our christmas dinner on our stove in the banda and Amani brought the fish, huge steaks so we gave him one. We sat at a table on the beach and ate our roast pots, onions carrots and fish with our bottle of red wine. As we ate a storm was brewing over the Livingstone Mountains and out over the lake, so we ate our homemade chocolate mueslie biscuit cake watching the lightning storm in the rain! Boxing Day. Up at 5.30am to be finally collected by a pick-up at 7 and driven to Ipinda with 3 German volunteers working in the local hospital for a year. They were off to Zanzibar for what sounded like a well earned break. Their work included all sorts of scary things they weren't qualified to do and they'd seen lots of child deaths from malaria. Opposite the hospital, next to where we waited for our pick-up, behind a fence there was a compound of shelters where the families of the patients stayed. They came from all around to get to the Matema hospital, sometimes walking for days, to accompany their ill relatives and cook meals for them in the compound on open fires. We managed to get to Kyela and onto the Malawi border without a problem and having got our entry stamps (despite the fact we didn't have any 'christmas presents' for the border guard) we decided to catch a taxi to Karonga as a treat. [Dave taking over as Jo needs the loo] On arriving at Karonga, we decided it was just a little too dull, and immediately caught a bus intending to go to Livingstonia, which is reputed to have the best view in the world from their long drop toilets! When we did arrive at Chitimba, 16km from Livingstonia, we got off the bus to hitch up the mountain. Within minutes a soldier informed us there was no way up and the road had collapsed in the rains. Luckily for us, our bus was still trying to get through the police check point, so we managed to dive right back in our old seats and followed it on until the end in Mzuzu. The views from the bus were lovely over the green mountains of Malawi, the typical Africa red soil and small villages. This was much farther into Malawi than we intended but there was little we could do. Mzuzu is a typical Africa town, nothing special, with the usual run down buildings, street traders and dusty roads. We found a cheap lodge run by the church, and then headed out to find a phone, as Joey had a need to phone home. Two hours later still no luck, the phone system here is ridiculously complicated and expensive, so we blasted off a couple of emails instead. We went out for a huge curry feast, with exceptional service, there was nothing they could not do for us! Followed by a couple of beers and the expected hanger on trying to get beers out of rich mzungus. 28th December 2005 Awoke nice an early again, to catch a dala dala to Nkhata bay. We had heard that Nkhata bay is your typical hippie travellers hang out, and we were tired after 2 months of travelling, so we needed a break. We pitched our tent up at Njaya lodge, which was a wonderful lodge with a bar overlooking the lake and the Livingstone mountains on the farside in the distance. The place was built by a couple of Londoners from Clapham, who also happened to be staying over for new year. They no longer live there as they had to go back to England for their young boys education. That evening Joey managed to borrow a mobile phone from the staff to make a quick call back to her mum, giving her the lodges number. After a lengthy chat with her parents Jo was in a much brighter mood. Over the next couple of days we generally lazed around on the beach, had beers, and cooked on our trangia. This was exactly what we needed, a little time to re-charge the batterys. Although it was on a couple of days lazing before we started to get itchy feet, but we had promised ourselves no moving around until after new years. In this time, Joey went into the village with Sue, an english lady who has lived and worked in Blantyre for 8 years as a teacher, and her malawian friend Moses, and Vicky an english friend from London over on a visit. Meanwhile, I would just hang out with the bar staff. New Years Eve Joey took a trip to feed the fish eagles further down the lake with Sue, Moses and Vicky, with some excellent photos, I, er, remained at the bar. On the beach all the locals were celebrating with a local band, and traditional dancing. For the evening we treated ourselves to the lodge's BBQ of spit roasted pig (Joey did not partake!), veggie burgers and kebabs and masses of salads. We ate with Jonny and Fiona, a couple of Londoners working in the film industry, which was enlightening as i now know what a grip is, a best boy and all the miriad of film jobs. J&F save up a months holiday each year and go travelling somewhere new. After stuffing ourselves, we went out on the balcony overlooking the lake and drank the night away with J&F and Quin and Debbie, coincidentally also in the film industry, pop video editor and choreographer. We had the usual kisses and hugs at 12 and some dancing, and the same again for 1 (the spanish new year for Jos familiy) and then the same again for 2 (the english new year). New Years Day Awoke with a remarkably clear head and I joined Jo for a swim in the Lake. 2nd January 2006 We could not contain our travelling bug anymore and had to move on, all of 2km, into the village into the usual travel hovel. From here it was easier to check out the dive centre and we arranged a dive for 2pm. In the meantime we went for a wander in the village, and had a result. I bought a bun from the bakery, and then went to one of the street vendors and got some hot pork to put in my roll, all for 26 Kwacha! Thats 13p for a pork roll! Joey had a banana roll for 8 Kwacha, or 4p. Our dive was lovely surrounded by Cichlids, small colourful fresh water fish with amazing social lives, and through some small caves. Great value at $20 each. We finally decided to leave Nkhata bay on the 3rd and caught a dala dala back to Mzuzu, to change some money and buy provisions for our next remote destination before catching another dala dala to Rumphi, north of Mzuzu, and typical trading town, where we waited for 2hrs in the back of a pick up truck to fill with passengers. Our destination was Kazuni camp in the Vwaza marsh. The ride was as expected very uncomfortable hour in the heat. The camp itself was worth the effort, on arriving in our hut, a herd of Kudu strolled past in front of us grazing, behind which was a magnificent view over the marsh area. The lake was home to lots of hippos, and after the warden left us we were the only people in the camp. It was the most remote place we had been to so far. We woke the next morning for our guide to take us on a walking safari, to find that some other travellers had moved in next door. No worries though. We packed up a day sack and went for a stroll around the marsh. We unfortunately did not see much big game, we blame the yanks, but we did get very close to the hippos! Joey was practicing her tracking skills, identifying poo and foot prints. When we made it back to our hust we discovered we had been robbed! The evidence was lying on the hut floor...monkey poo! They had nicked our mangos, tomatos and bread, but had failed to find our gin. The place itself was lovely, but we tore ourselves away the next day, back on a pickup, onto a dala dala, on another dala dala before being dropped off on the Viphya plateau, along malawis busiest motorway the M1. This is completely misleading as the M1 has more pedestrians than cars, you can stand there for half an hour before seeing a vehicle, and the country side is stunning. We found a pair of former colonial residencies, now lodges in the forest. The one we stayed in was owned by Sir M. Roseveare, the man who created the rationing system during the war. He previously helped develop the education act in 1940 something in England, before moving to Malawi where he worked helping the Malawian education system. The lodges were great, with open log fire (the plateau is high up and quite chilly), hot baths and the whole house pretty much to ourselves, so we made good use of the kitchen. From the lodge we went for a couple of long walks into the forest and to the local villages. Again being this remote meant that mzungus are quite rare, so kids would hide in the bush to stare, or giggle loudly and run away, and everywhere we were greeted witha Good morning, how are you? It was a very peaceful place. But finally we could take no more of the quiet, and needed to move on. We wanted to get to Lilongwe, for some city life. We made the trek back to Chikengawa village on the M1, assuming, being the busiest motorway in Malawi, that a bus would have to pass soon on the way to the capital. 4hrs later after a torrential soaking, starting to feel slightly downhearted, Joey made up a song for us to raise our spirits (sung to the tune of its a long way to tipperary): Its a long way to Lilongwe its a long way to go its a long way to Lilongwe to the capital city lights glow Goodbye to Mzuzu farewell Chikangawa its a long way to Lilongwe will we get there for happy hour? I could take this no longer so resorted to hitching. Remarkably a pristine mercedes stopped for us, remarkable because this had to be the smartest car we had seen since arriving in Africa, and remarkable beacuse no other bleeder had stopped. He agreed to take us the 200km to Lilongwe for the same price as a bus. It was only a few kms down the road when we discovered this was the Minister for Water and Developments chauffeur driven car. The minister in reckless spending had sent the driver to take his daughter to school in Mzuzu and pick up a couple of puppies (discovered near the end of the journey when whining from the box, the driver had thought they were dead - hopefully he was joking), and on the way back the driver saw a chance to supplement his wage. It was an amazingly comfortable ride, and instead of the usual request for 'presents' at the police check points, we were saluted past. Thats hitching in style. So we are now in Lilongwe, arriving at Kiboko (meaning hippo) camp, in a goverment owned chauffeur driven Merc. From here we are trying to sort out a visa waiver before entering Zambia. Zambia charge $65 for a visa, but fellow travellers have informed us if we contact a camp in Zambia, they can send a visa waiver to the border, for free! We were hoping to find a cinema in the capital city, but alas no luck. Narnia will have to wait. Kiboko camp is lovely, a hilton (remember that means supplies own loo roll), with hot showers. So we'll stay a few days to sort out the mundane parts of travelling, knicker washing, food shopping(although Joey says this is not mundane and has found a new appreciation for supermarkets, she gets all excited when we see a shoprite!). While we are here we will take a few days out, enjoy the bars and visit Lizard Island on the lake, where there are hundreds of giant monitor lizards. Then onto country number 5...Zambia! We hope you all had a great new years. Tray, we need a mittens update, Mum&Ray keep the mail coming, and we'll reply soon, promise. Great to hear the Louie stories, Steve send us a mail. Vicky if you are reading this thanks for 'a barefoot wedding', we have both thoroughly enjoyed it, hope your flight back was good. We have added another link on this site, to Michelle and Ross's blog. Friends from Brighton who are travelling through Central and South America. Love and hugs to all Dave and Jo