Zambia - Dr. Livingstone, I presume.

We left Malawi in the early morning and hit the Zambian border around midday. Exiting was easy enough though entering Zambia was a matter of how long they wanted to take more than anything else.

Zambia is noticeably different than Malawi, and really the east of Africa. At times it feels like we “crossed the tracks” so-to-speak. Despite 80% of the Zambian population living in rural areas, the areas are somewhat built up and the housing looks more like what we are used to back home with brick housing and backyards. But it still does retain some of its ruralness and there are still the mud housing but it is less frequent.

1 hour and $50US later we were back on the truck and heading to Chipata, a campsite called Mama Rula’s.

The campsite was nice and the weather was cool. The only issue we had was another tour group deciding they were in desperate need of companionship and placing their tents amongst ours rather than using the wide open spaces available to them.

WiFi was the most popular item at Mama Rula’s, despite it being slower than a stoned snail and dinner was most interesting.  We had delicious French Onion soup and then Chinese Chicken, feet included.

Whilst it was disgusting to see the feet amongst the actual chicken pieces, the chicken meat was nice and the feet led to some interesting dinner shenanigans.

One cold shower later and some post dinner conversations we went to bed and were grateful to see the air mattress had survived inflated throughout the night giving us some hope we may have fixed it.

Another early morning wake up saw us leaving Chipata and heading to the capital of Zambia, Lusaka.

It was another long drive, taking us 8-hours plus an hour stop at a shopping center, before we got to our next camp, Eureka.

Eureka was another large campsite with plenty of space and not many people around. It also has a bunch of wild animals roaming about including Giraffes, Zebras and velvet monkeys.

I took a walk outside the gate where I come across a family of Zebra’s and some others who were quite content on grazing. Judging by the fencing and the food they were eating, I assumed they were not wild, rather “pets” but they were still timid and I got close to a male, within about 2 steps, but when I took another step closer he would look at me, and then when I tried again, he started moving towards me.

I figured I better not test my luck, lest he turns me into a rug for his living room floor.

Continuing my exploration, I saw an Impala who ran as soon as he saw me and a family of Waterbucks who were wary of me and then moved off as I got closer.

The next morning we left early and headed to Livingstone, the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. After a brief stop to get something to eat, we arrived at our campsite sitting on the magnificent Upper Zambezi River. The campsite was huge and full of velvet monkeys who would play amongst the trees above our tents. We sat at the bar and had lunch overlooking the Zambezi before organizing our plans for the next day. Our original plan was to go to Botswana and do a game drive at Chobe National Park before heading to Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe side, but the tour also takes us to Botswana and Chobe after Victoria Falls so we decided to head to Victoria Falls the next day and also do Devil’s Pool rather than go to Botswana twice.

We had our final dinner with our chef, Dom, who will be leaving us once we hit Victoria Falls and went to sleep.

The next morning we awoke, had a light breakfast and was picked up and taken to the Royal Livingstone Hotel, a 5-star hotel that would cost more in one night than this whole trip would cost overall. It was one fancy hotel.

We had a briefing and jumped in a boat and took a 5-minute ride to Livingstone Island, where David Livingstone was shown Mosi-O-Tonya (Victoria Falls).

Having been to the Falls before, I am stilled amazed at it. It is such a beautiful, and powerful, place to visit. Even during the low season, it exudes power to make you respect nature.

In saying that, we practically dropped our pants and mooned nature as we waded out to the Devil’s Pool. A rock pool formation sitting right on the edge of the Falls themselves.

It was exhilarating to peer over the edge and see the falls and the Lower Zambezi. We sat on the edge and then leaned over the edge and had our photos taken. It was such an adrenalin rush to do and, after missing out two years ago, I was stoked with doing it now.

Definitely a top-3 highlight on my holiday so far.

After we finished the Pools, we had another breakfast (including Bacon, woohoo!) and headed back to the hotel where we were taken from there to the Zambia/Zimbabwe border to cross over to a new country.

Where in the Malawi, are we?

We crossed the border into Malawi early in the morning and then stopped to get some money and some supplies. Also had a surprisingly excellent strawberry milkshake. One noticeable thing about Malawi is that it is cheap and another is that it is noticeably poor.

It is also known as the friendliest country in Africa. Time will tell.

After getting what supplies we could, we headed for our first two-night stop called Chitimba Beach, which is situated on Lake Malawi.

Lake Malawi is the 3^rd largest lake in Africa and 2^nd deepest, the lake itself is an amazing sight to behold and the beach is quite nice as well. We arrived at Chitimba beach around 4pm (also gaining an hour due to time zone change at the border) and set up camp. The campsite itself has a really nice set up with the bar over looking the beach and the lake. Unfortunately they only had cold showers and not much in ways of things to do.

We brosed the local curios just outside the campsite and I got to play the local game called baobowl (or something along those lines) against a local and I won despite not knowing exactly what the rules were.

I suspect he let me win, but still I retire with a 1 – 0 record.

I bought a wire bracelet to add to my already thickening collection, it has the Malawi colours on it and actually looks pretty cool. Danni bought a similar item but as an anklet and not in the Malawi colours.

Day 2 at Chitimba Beach saw us sleeping in, exhaustion had set in after a couple of days of early wake ups and we decided there wasn’t too much we wanted to do and took it easy, did some washing.

We were hoping to see the local witch doctor but this was before we saw a photo of him on the signboard and he looks like Snoop Dogg and dresses like a normal guy, not exactly the image of a witch doctor we had so we decided to skip it.

It was nice to sit back and relax a bit, we also had to try to fix the hole in the air mattress which has so far eluded us much to the disgust of my shoulder and back that suffers when it goes flat at night.

Once again we had an early wake up and headed to our new camp site about 150km away from Chitimba Beach called Kande Beach.

Kande Beach was an even better set up than Chitimba with fuseball, a pool table and a handmade table tennis table that plays like a day 5 pitch in India.

But still I managed a 1 – 0 record to retire as table tennis champion.

Unfortunately the first night we were stuck hearing from loudmouths on another overland tour who just wouldn’t shut up and were acting like dickheads, doing rude poses on a statue and other idiotic stuff.

We were glad to get rid of them the next day but not until they yelled and talked as loudly as they could at 6am.

Sigh idiots!

General Sherman (Simpsons Reference)

Anyway, the day we arrived we did a village tour of the local area, which included seeing the school, medical center and orphanage.

As we left the campsite we were jump upon by locals, most of us had two, who would pepper us with questions asking about Australia or wanting us to ask them questions and, of course, showing us what they sell so we can buy them.

We passed by the local village and saw how they made bricks for building which basically was done by collecting mud (I think) and placing it into a giant kilns made of mud and hay with an opening on either end. Depending on which way the wind would be blowing they would block one end of the kiln while the wind blew in the other and with a fire going underneath they left it for 48-hours to create bricks. These kilns were all over the village.

The villagers didn’t build the houses themselves, rather they would hire someone to do it with the bricks they had.

After showing us how they made bricks our guide shows us his home, it was a most 4-room house with very little in terms of furnishings but he did have a bed and toys for his kids and, strangely enough, a satellite dish yet no TV.

He took us on a long walk to the school next.

The school was modest with 3 buildings and over 1500 students and only 10 teachers. Yep, that’s right, each teacher would have 150 students in a class.

School for the kids is free in primary school, which runs to grade 8, and then they have to pay 150US per term to stay in school.

That is when they threw us the sponsoring angle at us to try to get us to help a child go to school.

We thought about it but no one had the money on them to do it at that stage but we did donate some exercise books, pencils, chalk, erasers and other stuff for the kids, which didn’t even elicit a thank you from the vice-principal who was talking to us.

Once we were finished at the school we walked a short distance to the medical center that is used for pregnant women in the local area.

They only do natural births and if there are issues they have to send them 70kms to the nearest hospital, even though they don’t always have a car to do so!

It was a bit eerie in there, the only room they had only had 6 beds and it just felt more like an abandoned mental hospital you see in movies right before the ghosts or something appears.

Very errie indeed.

Thankful to get out of there we took a long walk to the orphanage where the kids were utterly fascinated by our cameras and us. They loved it when we took a photo and showed them the image.

They followed us around the outside but stayed outside when we went inside. The house was a single building with a couple of rooms, some used for a sitting room, some as bedrooms and one as a classroom for learning. We donated more exercise books, pens, pencils, erasers and colour-in books, which got a huge thank you from the matron of the orphanage (take note vice-principal!)

Afterwards we walked back to our campsite along the beach still being questioned by our new friends (my guys were named Shawn and, I kid you not, Sisqo. I expected him to breakout a rendition of the Thong Song). They kept on asking questions and what I thought of Malawi and if I wanted to buy their paintings or woodwork and all that fun stuff.

In the end I gave them a shirt, some socks and jocks and a pair of god-awful-coloured flip-flops that elicited an interesting response. Shawn seemed happy about it but Sisqo wanted to keep selling me stuff and when I wouldn’t purchase anything he just seemed angry.

Whatever, I did my good deed, no matter how selfish the guy wanted to be.

The next day we did our first freshwater dive ever. It was so much better than I expected, though to be honest I didn’t have high expectations because all you would see were fish. But I wanted to do a freshwater dive to see how it goes and I had read that Lake Malawi is one of the best freshwater dive sites in the world.

Besides it’s diving, as if I could not do it.

However I was pleasantly surprised with the dive, not only with the abundance of colourful fish, but we also saw some freshwater crabs, a big, resident catfish but we also saw some fallen trees, a sunken boat, a sunken canoe and a jeep. I suspect they were all deliberately put there but it added to the experience. I was also thrilled in swimming through some natural canyons, between boulders and I was pleased that my buoyancy was excellent and we dove for 45 minutes at 18 meters and still had 100 bar afterwards.

Overall I was very impressed with the two dives we did. I was also pleased to see that aside from diving, the dive company there does marine research and I got some information on how to go about doing such a thing without the need to have a biology degree, though I am seriously considering educational options in marine research to some degree.

Another pleasing, and redeeming, aspect post-dive was as we were departing the boat carrying our stuff, Shawn showed up wearing the shirt I gave him the night before. It was nice to see him make the effort to come out and wearing the shirt I gave him.

This was incredibly eerie when we approached it

After taking a nap, we just hung around the campsite for a bit, enjoying the sun and shade and our last day in Malawi before heading to Zambia tomorrow.

Malawi is an interesting place, it is one of the poorest countries in Africa (I think 3^rd on that list) and I think aside from Lake Malawi, which is worth the visit, and some Game reserves there isn’t a whole lot to see. It would be a nice visit if they didn’t throw there rubbish everywhere (really getting annoyed with this in countries) as the countryside is nice. I don’t know if I would call it the friendliest place in Africa due to some of the responses and looks we got from people (right at you Sisqo!). Also the children have an annoying habit of running up to the window of the truck, rubbing their fingers together and saying “Give me some money”.

I get they are poor and want money and I do feel bad for them, but it’s just not the way to go about it.

Tanzania & Zanzibar - Phil! Did you get the Photo!

Our departure from Nairobi was delayed due to Sebastian (who I have dubbed SeaBass) not showing up. After an hour and trying to find out where the guy was (rumours ranged from him being a CNN journalist covering the incident at the Westlake Mall in Nairobi to him simply not showing up at all), we left Nairobi and drove a couple of hours to the Tanzanian border and we were relatively quick in getting through despite having a group of 28 people plus the driver, cook and tour leader.

Nearby was a mountain that we thought was Mt. Kilimanjaro but was some other mountain that wasn’t quite as tall.

The scenery of Tanzania is a stark contrast to that we had seen in Kenya and Uganda. Gone were the scenic green tea plantations and lush green trees and in its place were arid, dry plains with few trees and a lot of dust and sand.

The drive from the border to our camp took another 4 -5 hours and we arrived at our camp in the afternoon. The camp was mixed between a campsite and a snake park where the owners have rescued or captured snakes.

I went into the snake park the following day and browsed the snakes, they had a wide variety of snakes from man-eating Pythons, Egyptian Cobras, Black and Green Mamba’s.

The Black Mamba’s are scary, they are long, about 4 meters and, of course, one of the deadliest snakes in the world. I do not want to come across one of those. However the Green Mamba’s are small and quite a nice looking snake…as far as nice looking snakes go. Aside from snakes the park had tortoises, crocodiles, lizards and owls, goshawk and a rescued, female yellow baboon that was in heat and looking pretty affectionate.

I got to hold a sand snake (not poisonous), a little crocodile and a leopard tortoise. It was a pretty cool place and the park is the only place that treats snakebites in the area.

The unfairest freakin' animal in the world.

After lunch we packed our tents into 4x4 jeeps and began a 2-and-a-half hour journey towards the Serengeti. We stopped at a really nice camp spot just before the entrance of the Ngorongoro Crater. We had a dinner and got to know the new people on tour before we got into bed.

The next day we got up early and headed into the Ngorongoro Crater, a naturally formed crater created by mountains over millions of years. We did a game drive and saw a lot of animals, including a lot of Wildebeest and surprisingly and lot of Hyenas. I am sure we saw at least 20 Hyenas, whether they were 20 different ones or some of the same is another matter but before that day I thought they were rare to see.

Unfortunately we saw no Cheetahs or Leopards but did see some more Lions, but they were basking in the sun or heading to the lake.

We stopped for lunch at a lake with a lot of hippos to be seen and two black Kites swooping us, trying to steal our lunches and sometimes successful. We were also visited by a male, single-tusked Elephant who walked right past us and around the other side. Pretty cool!

After the Ngorongoro Crater we headed into the Serengeti and did an afternoon game drive but didn’t get to see a whole lot aside from a Leopard in the distance in a tree with a kill but even then it was only possible to see it from the camera.

We camped overnight and woke early in the morning for a final game drive. It was another disappointing drive with the driver being completely disorganized and we were stuck at the airstrip for an hour trying to organize a permit. We stopped for 20-minutes trying to find a Cheetah at the base of a tree so far away it may as well have been Australia for all we could see.

The only saving grace of it all was we got really close to 2 lioness and their 3-cubs who were basking on the rocks and I also got a few good shots of another Kite and a Fish Eagle.

The drive back to camp was 4 hours and we inhaled enough dust to bury an elephant in and I felt a bit disappointed for the whole Serengeti experience. It’s not that we didn’t get to see much because they are wild animals and it really is hit and miss. I have been lucky enough to see so many awesome things in the 35 or so game drives I have done in Africa. It was more the disorganizing of the group we went with and their lack of communication. As we left to do the morning drive in the Serengeti, the group behind us (we were split into 3 cars) saw a lion immediately as we left and we were never told of it so we never got to see it. They have radios in their car, they could have used it to calls us back.

The driver was also keen to drive as fast as he could which lead to some dangerous situations. We were only bitumen rather it was a dirt and, at times, very bumpy road and we would get airborne over the really hilly parts.

It was just highly disappointing.

We also had an annoying person in our truck who would yell to her husband in a different car and was incredibly loud. Though we did make a joke of it later about how demanding she is.

“PHIL! Did you get the PHOTO!” is what she would yell to her husband in the other car. Then later when we got to camp: “PHILLIP, DID YOU FILL THE WATER BOTTLE!”

I had to laugh, but felt sorry for Phil who was an alright guy.

And SeaBass still hadn’t shown up.

Phil certainly didn't miss out on these guys

The next morning we broke off with 10 of the others who were only joining us for the Ngorongoro Crater/Serengeti part of the tour and were heading back to Nairobi. I wasn’t sad to see any of them go, they weren’t with us long enough to get to know and I found some of them a bit annoying. I miss the old group. They were so much better.

We departed the Snake Camp around 8.30 in the morning and made a quick stop at the shopping centre in Arusha to get some supplies before heading to Korogwe for the night.

The drive was pretty, the arid landscape changed to mountainous but it was still a decent drive and the long drives are the ones where you get antsy and a sore ass from sitting so often. We finally arrived just before sunset, set up our tents and had dinner and pretty much crashed after we learned they didn’t have WiFi despite being told otherwise. The gall of this place! Gen Y needs WiFi like a fish needs water. Also we had to be up at 4.30am to drive to Dar Es Salam.

And SeaBass still hadn’t shown up.

4.30am wake up is surprisingly easier to get up than any time I needed to wake up to get to work. Funny how that works.

Anyway, we got up and had a quick breakfast, packed the tents and drove to Dar Es Salam. The drive wasn’t long to reach the outer city limits, probably 3-hours but Dar Es Salam is the biggest city in Tanzania and that means traffic. Traffic here is like traffic in the Middle East. People drive wherever they want, honk the horn every 3 seconds and red lights are merely a suggestion and not an actual road rule.

The city itself is dirty and busy. It reminded me a lot of Amman in terms of how much rubbish was everywhere and how they burn it, as if they think it would make a difference to the amount of rubbish they have. We managed to weave our way around traffic and the rubbish and arrive at or campsite at a decent time of the day (around 3.30pm).

And wow, what a campsite. Situated right on the beachfront, our tents were a stones-throw away from the Indian Ocean. The warm, blue Indian Ocean.

As you may have guessed, we went for a swim. It was beautiful and much needed after spending the past couple of weeks bathing in dust.

We once again had a short night as we had to get up at 4.30am again to get to Zanzibar.

View of the Ngorongoro Crater

Zanzibar

We awoke the next morning and once again had a quick breakfast and packed up. Thankfully the truck was to go nowhere as it is staying in Dar Es Salam while we spent the next 3 nights in Zanzibar.

Once we were ready we were taken to the first of two ferries where we survived the mad crush and the over-riding smell of BO (Body Odor) to board the ferry and take a quick 20 minute ride across the bay to where we would board a second ferry for a 2-hour boat ride to Stone Town port.

The second ferry was much better than the first, mainly because it was indoors, the boat was better, we got a seat, and there was not a whiff of BO to invade our nostrils. It even had a TV and showed a movie (Real Steel. Has Hugh Jackman, so it’s automatically awesome).

The only negative was they had the air-conditioning set to absolute zero even though it wasn’t that hot.

Once the boat docked and we went through customs (because we needed our passports stamped for some reason) we gathered and drove through Stone Town. From the little I saw, I liked the look of Stone Town, it wasn’t as dirty as Dar Es Salam and had a rustic feel to it. It is a basic, small town with simplistic designs from mostly wood and stone. The streets are narrow as well, for some reason it makes me think of what a small town in France would be like. While everyone else was dropped off, Danni and I took a taxi directly from Stone Town to Nungwi (the others are coming up tomorrow).

The taxi ride took us from the small city feel of Stone Town to the wild and untamed countryside of Zanzibar. We were also stopped by the police who, as our driver informed us, are corrupt. They also didn’t give him back his license, though the driver didn’t seem overly concerned about this.

At this point, I was too tired to care anyway. I’d been up for 6-hours already by then.

Finally we reached Nungwi and it is one sexy beachside resort town. The town itself isn’t much, it’s just wooden huts and a lot of diving shops but the beach and the ocean are stunning. The ocean is that crystal blue you see in photos of the Caribbean or resorts in Bora Bora.

The driver dropped us off at our hotel – Doubletree Hilton – and we were greeted with a cold face wash, iced tea and a cookie. It was the kind of reception a King would get I imagine. Even Kings love a cookie.

We managed to check-in and admired our view of the ocean from our room before doing some washing, organizing diving for the next day, having lunch (which wasn’t very nice) and talking a walk down the beach to see what is around. There isn’t a whole lot, though there are quite a few restaurants that we browsed before settling on one called Blue Ocean for dinner later on.

Also, as like the rest of Africa we were accosted by people who carry the same stuff trying to sell it to us (necklaces, beaded bracelets, paintings etc) also, as a strange twist, we were approached to buy some “good stuff from Kilimanjaro” weed.

Politely declining this request to buy drugs from a complete strangers, we returned to our hotel and relaxed for a bit, caught up with the family on Skype and then headed back to our restaurant of choice.

Spoiled for choice, I reluctantly (ha!) settled on the large Lobster for $35. Yes, it cost $35 for a big-ass, full lobster. I wouldn’t even get a lobsters leg for $35 back home. Danni bought a plate of calamari and octopus.

I can confirm that the seafood here is amazing. We enjoyed our meal on the beach, watching the sunset. I considered a second lobster, and perhaps a third but sanity got in the way of greed and we headed back home to get some sleep, ready for diving tomorrow.

Day 2 of diving was another pleasant day, it was a little cooler and overcast but we still got some good time underwater, logging in 40 and 50-minute dives. There wasn’t much new we saw, but we did see another octopus hiding amongst the corals, changing colours, and a spotted eel that looked very similar to a sea snake. We also found a giant lobster hiding in a cave he was a big boy. Aside from that we saw a lot of nudibranchs and the usual assortment of fish.

It started raining as we surfaced on the second dive, Danni had a problem with her regulator and had to ascend early, the divemaster handing me the SMB and I was a divemaster for a little bit before he returned after making sure Danni was ok.

Aside from that, it wasn’t overly exciting but still pleasant and the water temperature was good. Zanzibar has some beautiful dive sites and well worth the visit to dive.

It rained throughout most of the day so we didn’t venture out, rather stayed in the hotel and relaxed, dealt with the sunburns from yesterday and packed our clothes ready to leave tomorrow morning.

We had dinner at the hotel, a buffet which was ok, but I seriously missed the lobster I had the other day.

The next morning we were picked up and met up with the rest of the group and finally got to meet Sebastian, who is chronically late. He was still in bed while everyone else was ready to go so he hadn’t endeared himself to many people in his short time with us.

We went home the same route we entered, via the ferry. The ocean was rough and a lot of people were refunding their lunch, including a few from our group. I felt perfectly fine which I was quietly proud of myself for considering I remember my first boat ride in South Africa 2 years ago where I wanted to hurl. I guess I am used to it now.

The second ferry was the usual mad rush with everyone in a hurry to get on and then get off, the body odour was still there and by the time we returned to our camp site in Dar es Salam, I was relieved to be there.

We set up our tents and had dinner, a lovely barbeque grilled chicken with potatoes and vegetables before we went to bed for an early wake up.

I don’t think anyone slept that night. It was so hot, I almost flooded the tent with sweat and somehow we managed to spring a leak in the airbed, though I think I have sealed it. It seems to have come from the patch job when it first got a whole, so hopefully it is all good. We’ll see tonight.

We were awake at 3.30, although I really didn’t sleep much at all neither did anyone else in the group due to the heat, and left at 5 after breakfast. Most people slept on the truck for a good while and I am thinking most people will be keen for a early night as we headed to Iringa, still in Tanzania but heading towards Malawi.

The drive to Iringa was long and we drove through Makuru National Park. It’s a bit weird because the main highway runs through this park and you don’t have to pay to get in, but you are not allowed to stop to see the animals.

There weren’t many animals there any way, we saw some baboons, buffalo, warthogs, zebras and giraffes but very few and far between along the 50km stretch.

We finally arrived at our camp, it was a nice place based on a farm and they had hot showers so it automatically rated highly with me. One of the workers also had a gorgeous 3-month old baby golden lab that was very playful.

It was already late when we arrived so we had dinner and pretty much went to bed.

Unfortunately sleep was hard to come by as the air mattress was officially diagnosed with a puncture so I spent half the night sleeping on the ground.

We awoke the next morning and begun our journey towards Malawi.