The road to Dar, Zanzibar, and safari at Kruger Park

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Now that I'm home already, I'm getting lazy but I do want to finish up this blog before everything leaks out of my memory so here goes, albeit abbreviated.

Once I met my brother at the airport in Lilongwe, we decided to start traveing north immediately and caught an overnight bus to Mzuzu, in northern Malawi. The ride left abour 7pm and arrive 530am, we got lucky and jumped on a minibus towards Karunga. The city was small and we still had a lot of traveling to do, so we grabbed a soda and hopped on a minibus toward the the border crossing into Tanzania. After battling our way through money changers to the immigration post, we learn that the visa to Tanzania has been increased to 100US dollars per person. We questioned it thoroughly and didn't believe them, but they showed us the 'proof', yoli found his last few US dollars, and we crossed. After a bit of a walk in the hot sun, we caught another minibus to the nearest town, where we changed onto to a half-bus towards Mbeya. There we found the atm (eventually) and got a room in a hotel. At the hotel, we met a guy who said he worked for the hotel and offered to show us a place to buy tickets, he said he might actually be on the bus with us the next day. We got tickets for the 6am bus direct to Dar the next day, grabbed dinner, and went to sleep.

We boarded the bus the next morning, with the guy we had met at the hotel. Once sitting, he asked my brother to borrow some money (20,000shillings, or 16usd), I told my brother not to do it but he felt bad and offered the guy 10,000 to borrow instead. A halfsecond later, the bus was leaving and the guy disappeared with the money- never to be seen again. The ride was long, but beautiful- southern Tanzania grows lots of bananas and tea, so the views were great. My brother and I were sharing a three seater bench with a woman who insisted on carrying her gasoline container on the seat with her. Also, the road to Dar passes through a National Park and we got to see some good large animals.

We arrived in Dar too late to grab a ferry to Zanzibar, which was our final destination. We found a place to stay, bought tickets for the first ferry in the morning, and went to grab dinner. Afterwards, we decided to walk to find a bar and, instead, find ourselves a little lost in the dark streets of Dar. We wander for a bit and start to find out way back when we are approached by three vaguely-uniformed men with rifles. They demand to see our 'passes' and- even though we both have them- I say that we left them in the hotel, so that they don't get lost. They inform us that its a crime to be a foreigner without a pass in the streets and that they should take us to the police station. We apologize profusely and promise to go straight to the hotel to get them afterward, and the police tell us that we must pay them for their kindness. We give in, hand then 20,000 shilling and get back to our hotel.

The next morning we take the ferry to Zanzibar and finally arrive! We meet up with my brother's friends Nick and Michelle (friends from the PhD program in Denver, who are doing research and living in Zambia for a few years). The plans are to go down to Jambiani with them and see Stone Town on the way out of Zanzibar. So we hop in the prearranged shuttle and take the hour-long, very pleasant ride to Jambiani, which is the south eastern coast of Zanzibar.

We arrived at Red Monkey, our hotel, which sits nicely on the southern coast of the beaches- giving it the feel of a private beach on a paradise island. The beaches on Jambiani are specially because of their long tide- which, twice in the course of a day, stretches out almost a few thousand feel from edge of the hotel. When the tide goes out, though it does leave us with a long walk to the water, it also leaves tide pools fills with living things, beautiful shells, and warm, shallow water.

Over the course of the next four days, we don't do a whole lot worth writing about- but that doesn't mean it wasn't incredible. We do some swimming, alot of lounging, lots of hiking and walking on the shore and in the water. The only downside to this type of tide is that is was nearly impossible to find any water deep enough to really swim in- that is, until we hired a sailboat-type-thing to take us snorkeling, which was unbelievable. There are coral reefs not too far off shore, which teem with all sorts of sea life- large, brightly color fish in different shapes, octopus, giant starfish, all housed in huge multicolored reefs. I saw some incredible natural selection at work- bright orange and white nemo fishing hiding wavy, orange bushes and thin, narrow green eels intermingling with identical-looking sea grass.

Otherwise, we wandered the beaches in search of the perfect shell and the perfect restaurant and, while we had much luck with the shells, we weren't so lucky with the restaurants. Plenty of places, most overpriced, some with bad service (2.5 hours waiting for dinner), tiny serving sized (4usd for bite-sized sandwiches), but delicious fresh fish offered everywhere.

We spend out last day on Zanzibar in Stone Town- which is a really cool town with a middle eastern vibe, full of tall old buildings and narrow passageways creating a labyrinth of interesting architecture, small shops, and locals doing their thang. We spent the day wandering around, taking pictures, buying gifts, and enjoying the town. We spend the night and left on the first ferry the next day back to Dar to catch a flight back to Johannesburg, South Africa for the final leg of our trip. The flight is short and we arrive late that evening at the airport and get a pick up from our hostel, Airport Backpackers. At the hostel, we check email and get ready to leave early the next morning (for anyone reading this who plans to travel the area- Airport Backpackers kind of sucks and is overpriced).

The next morning, we go back to the airport to rent a car for our trip to Kruger- we leave immediately and the ride to Kruger is only 4.5 hours. On the way, we tried making reservations and found many places booked and one place with phones not working. At the gates of the park, I said that we had a reservation and they asked for the reservation number, I said that we didn't get one. Back and forth, finally he said he would look it up- I gave him my last name and he couldn't find it, but I told him that we did have a reservation and he let us in because we had a tent and could figure it out inside.

Not more than five minutes in the park and we had to stop for a large family of elephants crossing in the road- it was incredible to watch. Some large females and a few very young ones, too. Once they finally got out of road, we continued on towards Skukuza, which is a small tourist center/shopping/camping/hotel site. On the way we saw impala, giraffe, and other animals on the way. We arrived and finally spoke to the manager who said their system was down during the day, the camp sites were full, if we came back before closing they'd give us either camping or a double chalet to stay in.

So we went out and drove around until dark and saw some fantastic wild life- huge giraffes 5 feet from the car, many more impala, lions in the distance, a few others, and- the jackpot- 2 spotted hyenas on the way back to the hostel during sunset. At the camp, we ended up with the chalet which was expensive but very nice. We bought some wine and made some cheese, avocado, and chutney-flavored-chip sandwiches. Delish.

The next morning we take a sunrise safari drive on a proper jeep with a guide- we got to see a black rhino from very close, hippoes, different antelope, more giraffes and elephants, and a few lions- prowling suspicious near to the impala but, much to our sadness, the impala ran and the lions did not give chase.

After grabbing food, we took the car for a very long drive out of the park- we drove all day and saw tons more animals- some of which you can see in the pictures- they are great to see but not as cool to hear about- except that we got to see a few cheetahs but they were very far from the road so did not photograph well.

We got back to Joburg very late after a tough drive on dark roads through dense fog. We got picked up from the airport car rental- this time by Diamond Diggers Backpackers, which is a nice place. The next day we voted to relax and get our stuff together. Becky's friend John dropped my bags bag, unfortunately Becky was sick in bed. I packed and repacked until I fit everything and we just relaxed the rest of the day- spend the evening at the bar in the hostel.

The next day we got to see the Aparthied Museum, which was, for the most part, very well done- there wasn't much information that I hadn't learned in Nelson Mandela's autobiography, but if I hadn't read the book I would have learned alot from it.

We caught a flight later that day and the rest is history.
Thanks for reading!

Mark

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