Read about Ron & Viv's journey so far through Africa - TANZANIA & ZANZIBAR, June 2007.
Tanzania
The Selous Game Reserve had some great Maasai Giraffe.
A large group of Impala under an acacia tree.
Our camp just outside the Selous Game Reserve at Mbega Camp was very pleasant, right beside the river.
Neil getting a hair cut - it did not take long.
The fish market near our hotel was always a very busy place.
A pleasant sunset dhow cruise out to a sand bar just offshore.
Neil & Ron with their 'king' of the spices crowns.
The coast on the northern end of the island.
Their was a very big fishing village at the northern end of the island..
The magnificent building that was once the Dispensary along the foreshore.
The lively food market was a great place to eat.
AFRICA TRIPEarly - mid June Southern TANZANIA & ZANZIBAR
Border Mozambique & southern TANZANIA
Our first day in Tanzania was spent in the small border village of Kilambo waiting for Fred and hoping the ferry would run.
Border Village
Neil and I headed up the street to see what was around. The main street is a rough dirt road along which stores and houses front directly onto. Most of the buildings are mud and daub but some are of cement and brick, although these are no bigger – just about 5-6 metre square with a thatch roof. You never know what is a store until you get close and look thru a door or window. There were a couple of stores selling a variety of goods. The store nearest us had not much on the shelves apart from four or five different brands of beer, a small range of soft drink, some milk, a few biscuits, soap, a couple of jars of jam and that was about it. Further along another had shoes, clothing material and even transistor radios in old boxes on the top shelf, another had a range of flour and kero, while another had more general goods such as soap, bottles of water, cordial, pencils, etc. But it's not a huge range or many of each in any of the stores and buying more than a couple of cans or packets means you near exhausting their stock. Around the little square where the community well and water pump was located there were a couple of small open-air stores selling a very limited amount of tomatoes, coconuts, lemons and, of course, charcoal.
In the meantime Viv and Helen, who hadn't wanted to go up the street because of the crowds and the hassle they get, ended up patching up two blokes who supposedly cut themselves with an axe. Anyway by the time they had finished the medical clinic they had about 40 onlookers crowding around.
Fred arrived at about 7pm. The ferry was crowded (again) with his vehicle, a large truck and two bakkies loaded with people. Once again the custom's post re-opened (it had been closed since about 1pm) to process passports.
Next morning as we were about to leave - I could see this coming after the health clinic the day before - the young bloke who had cut himself badly came up looking for more pain killers. We gave him some and then the queue started – a woman came up with an 18-month old kid who had an extended belly and wanted to ‘know what was growing in her belly' . Another mother came up with a young kid with a badly burnt hand and another women who had a bent or busted leg and was using crutches wanted to be fixed. With the help of the Customs lady Viv explained she was not a nurse and then we bolted!
On to Historic Kilwa
Got to Mtwara where the bitumen started and where we shopped and then headed north a short distance to find a camp at the Makondi Beach resort , (most of the locals know it as Litingi) (GPS 10°16'14”S 40°08'27”E). The ‘resort' takes up 25ha and is nestled on a mangrove lined headland just to the east of Mikindani Beach where a bit of accommodation and a place to camp just above the beach is provided. The toilets are those in the bar, there is no shower, but there are security guards. Food and drinks are available and as it turned out it was a good spot to camp.
Heading north next day, the blacktop taking us as far as Lindi where the road was being worked on for the next 100km. It was rough and slow. This great south road was supposed to be bitumen by 2005 (then 2007) but it will be lucky to be finished by 2010!
About 5km from the centre of Lindi on the road north an enterprising local has Samike's Beach Resort , ph: 0787 637 231 (GPS 9°56'14”S 39°42'55”E) which has a bar and camping over looking the beach. It's not a bad site – but we're not sure of what facilities are on offer.
Got to Kilwa Masoko, which is a small town strung out along the road. It boasts an airport and a few government buildings as well as a number of guest houses and a couple of resorts along with the normal run of the mill stores and sidewalk stalls. Found our way to the Kilwa Seaview Resort (GPS 8°55'40”S 39°31'18”E), which has a small camping area (big enough for 4-5 camps depending on how friendly you are) which has cold water showers, toilets and lot of ants. Cost is US$5/person/night. Located just above the beach it is a 50 metre walk to the sand and sea – very pleasant. The resort has a number of bandas (s/c huts) for accommodation with a bar, restaurant and pool, with very reasonable prices for food and drink.
John and Gill, our South African friends who we had met and camped with on a few occasions as we had all headed north were there, so it was like old time school week again.
While I stayed around camp and fixed a few things Viv went out with John and Gill to Kilwa Kisiwani. This island just 1km offshore from Kilwa Masoko is lightly inhabited today (about 5,000 people) but once was an important fort and harbour for the Arabs, much of it lying in ruins today and now registered as a World Heritage site. These impressive Swahili remains date back to the 11 th Century when the town and port were involved with shipping gold coming from Greater Zimbabwe as well as ivory (and later slaves) from all over southern and eastern Africa. We arranged the trip and guide through the resort – cost was US$20/person, while the trip was for about 4 hours, the boat trip being from the main harbour in a small but clean fishing boat. Viv really enjoyed this outing and thought it better than the Isle de Mozambique!
Into the Fantastic Selous
Next day it was a slow trip north on the main ‘highway' and as we got closer to Mohoro and then Nyamwage the road got worse. The number of log trucks and 2WD buses using it is unbelievable and it is no wonder it is chopped up. At one point there was a heavy log truck and trailer bogged and he was going to be there for some time. We slopped through potholes and washouts, it taking us about 4 hours to get to the brand new bridge across the Rufiji River just north of Nyamwage. The wide floodplain here is clothed in rice paddies and other crops. The villages on both sides of the river are busy affairs and on the north side (GPS 7°57'01”S 38°59'09”E) we turned off the blacktop, which we had finally got to, and struck west for the Selous Game Reserve on a track that is not marked on very many maps.
This track parallels the river, initially passing through a near continuous line of huts and villages, which slowly thin out, to the large village of Mkongo , where the main access track from Dar Es Salaam to the reserve comes in from the north (GPS 7°52'53”S 38°44'34”E). It took us the rest of the day and it wasn't until after sunset that we got to our camp at Mbega Camp (GPS 7°45'42”S 38°13'44”E), just outside the eastern boundary of the game Reserve. This camp is located on the edge of the Rufiji River amongst the tall trees of the riverine forest. There's a couple of small campsites, a rough bar with an earthern floor with a good outlook over the river, a few small huts tucked into the scrub while a bigger campsite looks like it is meant for an overland truck group. Well set-up and clean cold showers and flush toilets add to the pluses! Price is US$5/person/night. There's a few other camping sites nearby most run by the small village of Mioka.
The Selous Game Reserve is the biggest reserve in Africa and the 2 nd biggest in the world. This is a vast reserve where mountain ranges can form and fade away and rivers rise and fall – over 4.5 million hectares of wild virgin country – that's bigger than a number of European countries. Over 60,000 elephants, 200-400,000 buffalo, 3-4,000 lions and a host of other animals have meant that the Selous and the surrounding area have been declared a World Heritage Area. The reserve is surrounded by buffer zones of low population areas, forests and game management areas as well as having, on the northern boundary, a couple of large NP, With the reserve divided into 47 ‘hunting blocks' only 4 are open to the public for photographic tourism. 90% of the US$2 million generated in fees each year comes from hunting and without it, the park would not exist!
Had a great day exploring the eastern edge of the park, although we didn't get to Selous' grave which is further west. Saw heaps of impala, giraffes , especially young ones and hippo, as well as a few crocs, zebra, wildebeest (Nyasa wildebeest - not the common or blue wildebeest found on the Serengeti) and kudu. The other good things about the park is its wilderness qualities and the lack of other tourist - we only saw one other game viewing vehicle for the whole day. As we came out of the park in the evening we spotted an African hunting dog then a small group of elephants - it was a fitting end to a great day!
Hectic Dar Es Salaam
Four and a half million people make Dar, as the locals call Dar Es Salaam, one of the biggest cities in Africa. A melting pot of a multitude of nationalities this important port may not be the official capital of Tanzania but in all other aspects it is the centre of the universe!
And what a hub bub of activity, noise and smells Dar is! Traffic is thick as is the air pollution all made worse by the confined narrow roads in this old city. Few things have been painted and all the shop fronts look like they are in some stage of final decay.
There are a few beggars around – many deformed probably from that birth drug that was banned in the west back in the 60s and dumped in Africa up until the late 70s. Geez, you just try and ignore the poor souls – like everybody else seems to!
Apart from the maze of shops there's the street stalls selling all sorts of goodies from roasted peanuts and corn to fixing shoes (in fact reselling done-up and repolished shoes seems to be a good flourishing business) while street touts try to get to your money by selling watches, or helping you to find your way somewhere – whether you want them or not. The fish market near the ferry terminal is always a madhouse of people and boats anchored offshore while the smell lets you know that is a fish market!
We found our way to the Mikadi Beach Resort (GPS 6°40'10” sth / 39°19'15” east) situated right on the beach along the southern beaches of Dar, about 3km south of the ferry and away from the helter skelter of the main city. Set up and owned by Jules and Andy Nagy, another Aussie couple who saw a need for a good camp for the overlanding trucks passing thru' Dar. It's worked and every night there was at least one truck with a group of travellers staying – most using it as a base to park their vehicles as the groups head over to Zanzibar (we did the same). With good showers and toilets, a pool, pleasant bar and restaurant that serves cold beer and good food it's hard to beat at US$5/person/night.
The next few days were spent accessing emails, sorting out vehicle servicing and visiting our favourite DHL Express store (we are DHL junkies now - they are fantastic getting parts from Oz to a major city in Africa in 4-5 days) and finding a replacement gas stove for Neil and Helen.
Exotic Zanzibar
Our trip to Zanzibar started early having to catch the 7.30am ferry. The boat – a fast cat, one of a number that ply this route - was full although where we were – 1 st Class – had a few spare seats and wasn't crowded. A few tourists on board but the big majority are locals who get a ferry ride for TSh19,500 compared to our tickets US$40 per ticket each way. There's a number of slower ferries as well with the slowest ferry (barge really) being cheaper but takes about all day (or all night) and carries cars as well.
Once in Zanzibar at 9.20 (the boat taking closer to 2 hours than 1.5 hours) we got off the boat and then had to go thru immigration , which seems a bit strange as we are in the same country, highly autonomous as Zanzibar is from the mainland – a point of grievance as far as the government is concerned by all accounts. Still we now have a ‘Zanzibar' stamp in our passbook!
Headed to our accommodation – Malindi Guesthouse (the port is Malindi Port) which is less than a 5-minute walk from the harbour and situated right beside the local fish market, which was a mass of movement and people. For the price, US$30/night (for 2 of us breakfast included), the rooms are clean and tidy with a/c and an en-suite bathroom. The rooftop restaurant has breakfast, lunch and dinner, but we couldn't get anything to eat in the late morning as the chef wasn't in, and the staff couldn't do anything. It was a bit like a sketch out of ‘Faulty Towers' as we asked for ‘food', ‘breakfast', ‘menu' ‘drink', ‘coffee' and the three girls hummed and aaahhed over the menu, looked very closely at the coffee machine and then slyly over at us. We gave up, they smiled and waved … and we went for a walk down town.
Spent the next hour or so wandering thru Stone Town, in and behind the fort area. The whole place is a labyrinth of narrow streets, alleys and laneways lined with all manner of shops and stalls. Of course, there are a large number of tourist type shops selling nic knacks, prints, etc but what really got me was the internet and computer shops – rather rustic looking you've got to say, with not very up-to-date equipment – that could be found scattered thru the area.
The narrow lanes are only about 1-2 metres wide in places and people walk, push carts, ride bikes or scoot around on small scooters or motorbikes. Shop keepers sit on their shop's steps chatting with their next door neighbor or trying to get a passing person, tourist especially, into their shop. What was surprising was how cool it was in these little alleyways and lanes – much cooler than out on the more open and exposed to the sunlight roads that skirted the waterfront.
That evening we went for a dhow sunset cruise out to a small sand cay just off Stone Town. It was very pleasant. Lots of birds, a good snorkel and even a few fish, although given the amount of fishing done here, I'm not sure how anything survives the pressure!
You've got to do a Spice tour on Zanzibar. The islands (technically speaking ‘Zanzibar' is the whole island archipelago which includes the island of Pemba) once produced 80% of the world's cloves and a host of other spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, pepper, tumeric, etc, etc. They still produce a lot! We enjoyed the morning, our taxi driver, Ahmed , who had been recommended to us by John and Gill and who had organised our sunset cruise turned out to be excellent (Ahmed Idarussy, cell ph: +255 777 41 2910; email: ahmedidarussy@hotmail.com ).
The government owned plantation we went to also grows coconuts (the 2nd most important cash crop on the island after cloves) and also a range of fruit including jack fruit, durians (or ‘jurians' – ‘smell like hell, taste like heaven' ), bread fruit, star apple, mango, avocados, oranges and tamarind - again most are grown for local consumption.
With our spice tour over we headed north through about 4 police check points to Nungwi , a fishing village on the northern most point of the island. This village is the biggest dhow building community on the island and in the ‘boat yard', set up amongst the palms and trees along the beach, there was about 15 boats of varying sizes in different stages of production. There were about 5 boats being worked on at this very point in time with about 20-30 people involved. One boat was quite big – about 15 metres long – while the smallest was about 5 metres long.
There were a few more tools being used than at Pangane, but they were still all hand powered; hand saws for cutting the timber to length and width; adzes being used to trim the timber to shape, especially the bigger round support timbers; hand-bow drills to drill the holes for the hand-made nails to be driven in; while any hole in the timber was plugged with a dowel of wood; corking being done with raw cotton. The bending of the timber was done over a small fire – the wood being covered with a fat to get the heat into it without the fire damaging the wood too much, which basically only chars it a little.
Out on the water lining the beach were over a 100 (I counted them) dhows of all shapes and sizes from large canoes to 15-metre craft – while there were a few more (10-20) on the beach itself. The fishing pressure on these reefs, like those further south is immense, testified by the heaps of shells – large helmets, trumpet, conch, spider, cowrie and other shells near the boat building yard and which are for sale, although none were any good – the best having already been sold to the buyers you see around town, I guess.
Found one guy cleaning his net of seaweed. It was a long net with big mesh – meant from what I could gather from speaking to him and with much arm waving, to catch groper and other large fish. With a mesh size of a foot square it would have to be something like that.
We spent the next day exploring more of Stone Town and visited the old slave market and the Anglican cathedral built on the very spot where the slaves were whipped to show their strength – a red circle in front of the alter marks where the tree once stood! Two small underground rooms under what was an old mission building nearby are the slave chambers – dungeons in more ways than one – once held 75 people in each waiting to be sold in the market. Nearly 770,000 people were sold here back in the 1800s – those poor souls being the survivors of the initial raids (the old, weak and too young were killed on the spot) and horror marches where they were chained and forced to carry ivory and other goods from far inland. Nobody knows how many died on these great treks.
Of course Zanzibar and this area resounds to the history of the missionary, Dr David Livingstone, who was responsible for ending the slave trade. He stayed on the island on a number of occasions while preaching Christianity, trying to stop the slave trade and while preparing to search inland for the source of the Nile – as did Speke and Burton - along with other famous African explorers. Tippu Tip's house is nearby - he was once the biggest slave dealer on the island, his caravans, some up to 4,000 strong, heading out as far as the Congo to get slaves. With the demise of the slave trade he returned to Zanzibar and lived out his retirement as one of the respected members of the society here.
One evening we headed down to the Gardens and the food market that runs here every night. It being Saturday night many locals, natives and Indians were out having a meal while there was also more stalls to cater for the extra crowds. Boats had pulled up along the seawall and unloaded their catch. The amount of seafood on offer here is unbelievable – crayfish, mudcrab, prawns large and small, octopus, squid, plus a variety of fish. I got ripped off for a barracuda fish kebab, because I took a few pics first. Viv done well with the samosas – her bartering skills get better each day, Trent would be proud of her - and I went okay on buying the beef kebabs and bread. We all tried a ‘Zanzibar Pizza' which was very nice – then went back and got a banana and chocolate pizza, which wasn't too bad at all. By 7.30pm the place was abuzz with standing room only around all the stalls - it was a busy place
The walk back to the g/house that evening was a bit more nerve racking than normal as the power had gone out and much of the roadway was in darkness. We picked up a single American girl at Mercury's Restaurant (yep, Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen was born on Zanzibar) who wanted to go our way and we walked her to her place not far from our accommodation. We then walked down the near black alleyways – fingers on the Mace – to find some lights on in our place, courtesy of a small generator.
Would we go back to Zanzibar – at the drop of a hat. It was fabulous!!!
Back on the mainland we sorted gear and prepared to head for the Serengeti and beyond – stories for the next instalment!
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Neil checking out the local
village
stores in the border
town of Kilambo
.
Viv & Helen
doing some first-
aid on a couple of local lads
who had some nasty cuts
.
The fort,
Gereza, on the island of
Kilwa Kisiwani
.
The
Great Mosque ruins, on the
island
of Kilwa Kisiwani .
The road
and dilapidated bridge
on the way to Selous Game Reserve
.
The road to
Dar Es Salaam was
slow going, full of pot holes &
muddy sections
.
The ferry crossing to the main part of town is alive with local fishing vessels and people.
The constant movement of vessels and people at Malindi port.
The old fort on the foreshore at Stone Town.
Viv & Helen walking down one of the many alleys in stone town.
Viv & Ron - King & Queen of the spices.
Viv buying some spices.
The site of the old slave market.
Just one of many nagnificent carved doors to be found around Stone Town..
One of the few wide streets to negotiate in Stone Town.
