Goodbye and good riddance Tanzania

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After a mammoth bus ride of about 14 hours across Tanzania (note to self: no matter how long, hot and dusty the bus ride, there's no point in paying extra for the "deluxe" air-conditioned, toilet-on-board service when the air con doesn't work and the toilet is out of order) we arrived in Mbeya, a border town in the South. We were so knackered and fed up that we were even daft enough to pay another bus company to take us all way across the border into Malawi and on to Mzuzu the next day. Bad idea. It didn't dawn on our fatigued and sleep deprived brains that it was an unlikely deal, and a tad expensive... Oh well you live and learn. We got across the Malawian border (less than half way) and the promised second bus didn't actually exist! Doh... It certainly wasn't a total surprise that we had been ripped off in Tanzania once again.

So the title may seem a bit harsh but we were fairly fed up of the constant hassle from touts and being ripped off in Tanzania. Everyone just seemed to view us as having a dollar sign over our heads. Not in a cheeky way, or in a "ok they're much poorer than I am and I can spare some change"way. Just in a daylight robbery way. To some exent it was our own fault because we really did only visit the tourist-central places, not the off the beaten track places, but it really started to grate.

We did bump into Nadav (one of the Israeli guys who shared our raft in Jinja) at the border crossing who was heading to the same music festival as us, which was a stroke of luck. We jumped in a taxi from the border heading southwards and promptly ran out of petrol in a rather small roadside village, the inhabitants of which had obviously never seen a white person before. Soon we had a fan club of 30 odd school children who we did a good job of distracting from getting back to school. Marianne got them to show her how good their counting was, in English surprisingly, while we waited for the driver to head back to the petrol station we had just driven past to get a plastic milk bottle of petrol.

Our first intentional town stop in Malawi was a pretty cool place called Mzuzu, and a guest house called Mzoozoozoo where we stopped before heading on to the festival in Chinteche. Run by April, a canny lass from Indianapolis who had come out with her boyfriend. He had work lined up out here and she ended up looking after the hostel when the owner had to return home to care for his sick son. Its the first time she had been out of her state and has gone straight into running a hostel in Africa, fair play, it takes a certain kind of person for the job and she's brilliant. She also had adopted two fab puppies called Dunkin and Donut.

At Mzoozoozoo were a couple more Israelis, Gilad and Michael who had bumped into each other on the way to the festival. They were really sound, had just finished their national service and were travelling before resuming their lives in Israel, be it study or work. They had quite a dark sense of humour, as can be expected, and we got on like a house on fire. Us: "So what do you miss most about home?" Michael: "My collection of ears". That sort of level of comedy.

There is strength in numbers especially when negotiating a Matatu, and with 5 of us we got us a bargain to take us to the festival. George and George Junior had officially the most comfortable, well-driven matatu we have been in so far on the trip.

The Lake of Stars festival is an "International Music festival", organised by Brits, staged in Malawi, and aimed at raising the profile of African music abroad (whilst raising some money for charity). It's held in the grounds of a safari lodge on the shores of Lake Malawi called Chinteche Inn. Normally the haunt of the more well-heeled traveller, for the weekend of the festival its like a mini Glastonbury but with better weather and a beach. Most of the acts were DJs (several from the UK), which surprised us, and although some of them were very good (The South African 'Goldfish' one to look out for, and some of the African DJs played some cool music such as the Israeli 'Apples') we were slightly disappointed at the lack of African music at the festival. The ones that were there were very good; Lucias Banda and his slightly odd dancers were brilliant.

Apparently 100% of the proceeds from the festival go to UNICEF and a local orphan charity which is brilliant but it does have knock on effect that the lodge tries to make it's money out of food and beer and the camping fees to the detriment of the locals. A couple of enterprising locals had set up food stalls outside the gate but were hastily chased off by the lodge staff, which we thought was a bit off as it is them the festival should be benefiting. The ones who had paid the relatively steep fee to set up inside had to sell a reasonable amount of food to just break even. So not a lot of the revenue seemed to go directly into the local pockets which we thought was a bit dissappointing. Also there were no deals for the locals on tickets - the standard price was extortionate for a Malawian - a shame.

At the festival Nadav bumped into (yet more) former Israeli military colleagues, Raz and Uzi. These two had bought a Nissan 'Sani' 4X4 (Sounds like the cockney model) with all of the offroad gear for a bargain $6000 in Jo'burg, and were doing a big loop up through Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, then back into South Africa to do the Wild Coast and the Garden Route down to Cape Town. Each evening they insisted on cooking and I have to say it's the first time we have seen anyone cook (very nice) bread on a camp fire. In fact we ate very well the whole time we hung out with them and we saved ourselves the expense of buying the food from the lodge.

The grounds of the lodge are right on the shores of the lake and going for a swim in the perfectly flat water first thing in the morning was something both of us could have easily got used to (we didn't have much choice in getting up early, the tent got to about 50 degrees by 6 o'clock in the morning). We never really got used to swimming in a lake where you couldn't see the other side, there were fairly large waves, and you didn't need a shower when you got out to wash the salt off. Just a minor case of Bilharzia to worry about. One of the staff at the lodge stated in no uncertain terms that on a clear day you could see Dar Es Salaam... If only I'd had a map...

As Raz and Uzi were heading in the same direction as us they offered to give us a lift down through Malawi and into Zambia. The distances in Zambia are much bigger than the Eastern African countries we had been through so far and the roads supposedly not too good, and so not ones for turning down free stuff we happily accepted along with Nadav.

We recharged back at Mzoozoozoo after three days of virtually no sleep and decided to head to a small and infrequently visited park in Northern Malawi called Vwaza before going South along the lake. It was to prove our first encounter with the Tse-tse fly. Like horseflies but smaller and far more numerous, Oh, and they potentially carry Sleeping Sickness. Nice.

To get to Vwaza without your own transport is difficult so it was a stroke of fortune that we had a lift with Raz and Uzi as we probably wouldn't have gone at all. North West of Mzuzu, Vwaza is pretty much a swamp in the wet season, that abuts Luangwa park over the border in Zambia. There is a large elephant and hippo population there, lots of baboons, the elusive leopard, lots of bird life, and allegedly some wild dogs. Although they seemed to be as elusive as the leopard. As it turned out the campsite and the elephants were the highlight for us (and the dinner we cooked when the Israelis finally let us cook).

The camp site itself bears the very obvious scars (and deposits) of the elephants who are free to wander through at will. A previous tenant of the camp site apparently spent the night in the long-drop toilet (no more than a wooden shack) when he was caught with his trousers down as a herd of elephants decided the camp site was where they were going to hang out for the evening. Fortunately the closest a herd got to us while we were there was a relatively non-scary 30 feet away. But it was pretty cool to be chopping garlic and drinking wine while a herd of elephants wandered past for their evening drink.

We were amazed how destructive these animals can be. They eat something like 250 KG of foliage a day, that adds up to a shed load of bushes. They strip them bare with their trunks, brush off any dirt on their tusks and eat the leaves. Bark is also a favourite which they strip from the trees using their tusks, sometimes killing the tree completely. Elephants also like to use trees of any size as a scratching post, some turn out to be more suitable than others for having a 7 tonne elephant rubbing its arse against it and the resulting destruction is everywhere. It becomes obvious that sometimes culling the population is a necessary evil.

Self-drive is an option in Vwaza unlike some of the more popular parks, and as the Nissan came fully equipped with a rooftop "safari chair" (kind of plastic school classroom chair without the legs welded on, complete with seat belt) it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity. The only problem was the tse-tse flies and the electrified tennis racket Raz and Uzi had bought in Mozambique came in very handy. It was the first safari the other guys had been on and so they were getting enormously excited about the different deer that we saw, as well as the hippos and monkeys, but we didn't really see anything that we hadn't seen before and there generally isn't really that much there apart from the elephants.

After a couple of nights in the park we were really looking forward to getting in some beach time on the shores of Lake Malawi.

Here is our current travel map: AdnMaz Travel Map

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Photos

The mighty safari chair in action
Uzi takes his turn as tsetse fly bait