Day 28 Chitemba Campsite, Malawi

Last morning in Tanzania, left the campsite at 9 am to get to the border in reasonable time.  The scenery was beautiful mountain ranges and the banana fields were taken over by huge tea plantations over the last 50 km.  The border crossing was surprisingly smooth - we managed to side step all the hawkers trying to get us to change money and border agents selling car insurance and we were through and into Malawi within an hour.

Days 28: Lake Malawi, North Malawi
Days 29-30: Nyika Plateau
Days 31-32: Lake Malawi, Central Malawi
Days 33-35: Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve
Days 36-40: Mumbo Island
Days 41-42: Liwonde National Park
Days 43-45: Zombo Plateau and Huntington House
Days 46-47: Lilongwe

Our immediate impression of Malawi was that it is a much poorer country than Tanzania, the roads were seriously potholed and the Chinese influence that has brought the motorcycle to Tanzania has not reached Malawi yet with the push bike being the main means of transport.  However, finding food stores and banks seemed much easier in the first town we stopped in, Karonga – hopefully this will be the case throughout our stay.

We decided to stop at a different campsite to the one we had originally planned to go to (original Thunduzi, new campsite Chitembe), and amusingly both the Spanish couple we had met in Ruaha and the German’s who had been at last night’s campsite both made the same choice – we are expecting to cross paths again before the trip has ended.

We were glad that we had cooked all the meat yesterday as we were able to quickly reheat our beef in red wine and for once had eaten and washed up by 5.30 pm (turned out it was 4.30 as we hadn’t changed our watches crossing the border) so we can actually have a relaxing evening walking along the Lake Malawi beach and even perhaps a beer in the bar!  The moonrise was spectacular – it was a full moon and it was dark red when it rose changing to orange as it got higher in the sky.

Reflections on Tanzania

We have driven 3855 kms (over 2000 miles) since we set off and have had some really long tough days driving on difficult roads but we have had a great chance to see lots of different aspects of life here.  

Tanzania is certainly not a cheap place to come to visit but it is a fascinating place. We both agree that our favourite National Park was Tarangire followed by the Serengeti.  Ruaha was very different and much wilder and we wouldn’t have missed the Ngorongoro Crater but not sure it is totally worth its exorbitant fee at this time of year. 

The people have all been amazingly friendly – we are now adept at asking how folks are before diving straight in with our questions, we are not sure the police are used to this though as they always look a bit surprised when we ask them how they are.  It has been particularly interesting visiting during the election campaign and seeing how seriously everyone takes it and are willing to talk about who they are voting for (not the taboo subject it often seems to be in the UK!), even the smallest villages have posters and flags everywhere and we have seen numerous rallies and political meetings during our month here.  

 It also seems ludicrous that there are still millions of people without easy access to water and electricity, yet mobile use is ubiquitous throughout Tanzania – clearly this just represents the difference in complexity of the infrastructure yet water is a necessity of life and obtaining it is still the mainstay of life for the majority where ever we have travelled. 

Day 27 Bongo campsite

After the long drive yesterday we decided to have a leisurely start so for once we didn’t get up at dawn and also had a proper cooked breakfast.  Finally set off at 10.15 for at least another 5 hour journey.  Scenery was a bit dull for the first part but the villages were fascinating – they seemed more affluent than further North judged by the fact that the majority of houses had electricity and there were less individual brick kilns.  Life still revolves around getting water though but with more bikes and motorbikes the transit of large numbers of water containers was much easier.  Street side vegetable stalls changed too with no sign of the onion and tomato stalls from further North, now there were loads of potato plus beans and cabbages.  The Tanzam highway was as busy as previous days even though it is a Sunday.  We came though a weighbridge at one point and the queues of lorries in both directions were horrendous – luckily we just went straight through.  We did come to a complete stop a little later – a policeman kindly informed us that we would have to wait a few minutes – half an hour later we got going again still no the wiser for the hold up.  

Close to Bongo campsite we went back into the hills and the agriculture changed completely with loads of small holdings everywhere.  The campsite is lovely and for once we feel that we are in the real Tanzania, the local children spent the evening playing football on the campsite in front of us and everyone walking past stopped to have a chat – shame our Swahili is still pretty non-existent. We have had meat fest for tea – we have had large amounts of steak plus potatoes and sweetcorn for our tea but that used less than half the beef so we have also cooked steak in red wine which hopefully we will get across the border and it will still be edible for tomorrow night’s tea.

Day 26 The Old Farmhouse Kisolanza

Woken in the middle of the night by a loud crash – we think it was a hyena but once we were awake we realised that we also had a couple of very large elephants within yards from “Thomson”.  The noise of them tearing the bushes apart was quite disconcerting – they can be extremely destructive.

First hour of the morning was spent cleaning the defunct fridge as the eggs had broken and gone everywhere – the smell of off eggs is not the best start to any morning.  Once we got going we headed up the river in the opposite direction to yesterday and were glad to see a lot more wildlife.  There were several herds of elephants along the river bed and you could clearly see their destructive path all along the river side.  We also saw a large pride of lions asleep under some trees plus a couple of lionesses with a large cub sleeping further along the river bank.  

Disappointed not to see more variety in antelopes as the park is famed for this but all we saw were hundreds of impala plus a couple of groups of lesser kudu. Lots of trees destroyed by the elephants but still loads of huge baobab trees to see.

Left the park 6 minutes before our deadline of 1pm (i.e. exactly 48 hrs after arriving) and headed back to Iringa – a 3 hour drive.  After a short stop in town for petrol, money and groceries (locations of which all meticulously researched – same ones as last time!!) headed south to our next campsite, The Old Farmhouse, Kisolanza.  A very different camp to our previous ones – we had our own banda with seating and cooking facilities.  We had heard they also had a farm shop where we could buy meat for tea but it turned out the meat came in frozen packs so we now have 1.5kilos of topside beef to eat tomorrow!

Day 25 Ruaha public campsite

Full day to explore the Ruaha park so we set off at about 8.30 with the aim of doing a leisurely drive and finding a nice brunch spot.  Best laid plans!  Having fleetingly seen a leopard quite soon after we started we then saw nothing for hours – the only living creatures were tetse flies which were everywhere and seemed even more vicious than in Tarangire.  We did see a coach load of school children playing on a rope bridge – they were having loads of fun and it great to see the local kids getting the opportunity to visit the park. Eventually made our way back to the Ruaha river that runs through the park where there were a few impala, lesser and greater kudu, the odd dik dik and a herd of zebras and giraffes.  We concluded that the wildlife must have all migrated to somewhere more lush but the news headlines that we had read before we left about the disappearance of 40,000 elephants was never far from our thoughts.

Returned to our camping spot from yesterday at about 2pm having discovered that both the other public campsites marked on the map were in the process of being reconstructed – for once we had a map that was so new that it was ahead of the game!  Much discussion about what to have for tea as I was vetoing corn beef and Ian wouldn’t eat tinned tuna.  In the end Ian’s strange but tasty concoction of fried rice with onions, ginger, garlic, chopped baked potato (cooked a couple of nights ago), egg, raisins and dried apricots.

Day 24 Ruaha Public Campsite

Cooked bacon for breakfast and actually made sandwiches for en-route – it would make a change from biscuits for lunch.  The drive was due to take 3 hours but once again it took quite a bit longer – the tar road coming to an abrupt end and transforming into a corrugated sandy track causing “Thompson” to side slip and skid in trying to get back on track. 

On arrival in Ruaha we paid our park fees and Ian decided to buy a recommended book on Ruaha birds – the official looked a bit perplexed but we persevered and paid for the book and a map.  Unfortunately we didn’t get the look at it before buying and it is clearly meant for birding experts not for complete novices – no pictures – the park map may prove more useful!!  I have challenged Ian to decipher the descriptions to identify at least one bird that we haven’t seen before out of the 571 described in the book (he has just told me he has identified the Cardinal Woodpecker - who knows though!). Stopped for lunch watching the hippos and crocodiles.

Camping tonight on the Ruaha Public Campsite no. 1.  We have great views over the Great Ruaha River with dozens of elephants coming down for some water.  Slightly nervous though about the oranges – we have packed them in a plastic bag inside the defunct fridge in the hope that the elephants can’t smell them (elephants have a thing about fruit) but in hindsight we should have got rid of them before we arrived.  Darkness falls very quickly once the sun sets and we quickly found ourselves in semi darkness with 2 elephants just below us, so had to pack all our gear away in rapid time – no time for doing the washing up so we ended up going to bed wondering whether elephants would be attracted to the small of curry emanating from the back of the truck.

Day 23 Iringa Rivervalley Campsite

Spent the morning at Tan Swiss Campsite, not intentionally but by the time we had done the car checks, worked out routes to the next few campsites and changed a tyre the morning had gone.  The tyre changing was yet another saga in itself – the bottle jack is really too big so causes huge problems when we need to jack the vehicle up and changing a flat only to find that the spare is also flat doesn’t go down too well!  With knock on that we now also had to find a garage in Iringa to get the punctures fixed. 

The journey to Iringa was expected to take 3 hours but the traffic was terrible again so it took more like 4.5 hours.  The scenery was stunning though, rolling mountains for mile after mile.  Interestingly on the TV news last night (after Richard Hammond) that there had been photos of bush fires and we now found ourselves travelling through swaths of burnt out bush with fires still raging in places.  Got stopped again for speeding but this time Ian managed to charm his way out of a fine – actually I think he bamboozled the cop by showing him the speed on the GPS. 

In Iringa, (with planning and foresight or just blind luck!!) we managed to find a supermarket next to the bank ATM having driven the wrong way down a one way street and parked up.  Luckily the parking attendant (yes they have parking wardens hear as well) warned us about the one way road before we caused any more havoc and then asked us for TSh 1500 for parking. We managed to find a Garage that did puncture repairs – 5000 TSh for each repair plus 70,000 TSh for two inner tubes (from a shop on the other side of the road). The whole thing was fascinating: 1^st tyre garage–shop–garage; 2^nd tyre garage–shop–garage; in the UK we would just have got two new tyres.

Drove back up the road to Iringa Rivervalley campsite – a lovely spot by the river.  The bulk of their business appears to come from people having Swahali lessons but the atmosphere was more like a hippie commune.  We had a lovely evening and were able to cook a decent meal as we actually had fresh meat and vegetables – the only day for a while that we would have such a luxury as the fridge is still broken.