The mighty Zambezi and those falls called Victoria…

We drove from Chipata, the first town in Zambia after Malawi through to Lusaka where we camped amongst a heard of zebra and family of baboons and serviced our beloved bike before riding south to Livingston, named of course after David himself and home to the Victoria Falls.

After months of travelling in ‘non-tourist oriented’ countries we have made it to tourist central, which has its perks as well as negatives! Whilst here in Livingstone we spent a morning (well, 15 minutes) soaring above the Victoria Falls and gorge surrounding them in a helicopter, before spending the afternoon walking through all the trails of the park that surrounds the falls, viewing them from above, under and every other angle possible. We as usual opted to not spentdthe extra to a hire a raincoat and got absolutely drenched, but had a wonderful time and the falls, well they are simply amazing…

The helicopter didn’t quite quench our thirst for adrenalin so we booked in for white water rafting on the mighty Zambezi River. As it is wet season, the river level is quite high and thus (thankfully to me!) we could only do rapids 14-25 which are apparently ‘milder’!!! We were both thrown out on a number of occasions, Tille finding himself a good 8 metres from the raft and me stuck underneath it! The whole day however was great fun and something we’d be pretty keen to do again!

To top off our tourist town weekend we booked into a sunset cruise that included all you could eat and drink – classy… We cruised along the Zambezi in a lovely small boat with about 20 other people and were told that if we were really lucky we would see elephants, hippos and crocodiles on the banks of the river – and what did we see?? All three! We clinked our gin and tonics and agreed that life is not bad…..

The olden days of Malawi

Within half an hour of crossing into Malawi, Tille commented that he felt as though he had just stepped 100 years back in time. We ride through scenes where women only wear dresses, older men wear hats, most are on foot or bicycle with very few cars to be seen (in fact the only taxis are a bench on the back of a bicycle), women are riding side saddle on the back of the man’s bicycle, with nearly always, a not-so-small-child strapped to her back.

The mountains reach up to the west and the hills roll down to Lake Malawi on the east. Most land is used for agriculture, all of which is done by hand; there is not even an ox or donkey in sight. Judging from by what is for sale in the lean-to wooden structures that serve as shops in the small villages, the lush land grows corn, tomatoes, capsicum, onion, potatoes, mangos, bananas and the biggest money maker for the country, tobacco – the lake provides all manner of fish which for the game, can be purchased on the side of the road.

We ride through village after village where life is basic to say the least, the vast majority of houses clearly have no running water, are made from mud, have chickens and children running around the yard and we are pretty sure that there is no electricity to speak of – for those that have it, power cuts are a daily, if not hourly occurrence. We start to wonder what these people are like. We stop next to one of these wooden lean-to shops to buy a coke and see if we can chat to the locals a bit – they are sitting in the shade away from the heat of the afternoon sun with reggae on – they asked us if we like to dance, here in Malawi – we like to dance they tell us, with that they laughed and went back to their conversation.

Malawi suffers from having neighbours with massive tourist attractions and whilst it has the lake, some mountains and really beautiful countryside it just cannot compete. The others rely on tourist dollars to keep their economies afloat – growing and exporting tobacco clearly doesn’t cut it. The life expectancy is a shocking 44 years old with HIV/AIDS being one of the main causes of death. We heard a government official on the TV give a presentation within which he praised the ‘one cancer specialist’ in Malawi, saying that if there were more, further lives could be saved.

It is hard to imagine that such a backward world still exists, but lying here in the middle of southern Africa is Malawi, trundling along at its own pace and outside of the issues they share with all developing countries – they are in quite a nice little bubble that the locals definitely seem to like…

101 days to Zanzibar… (literally!)

As we rode over the last few hills through the Masai region of Kenya we caught a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro through the clouds, our first taste of Tanzania. Within an hour of crossing the border the scenery had changed yet again with green mountains looming in the distance and a family of giraffe on the side of the road, looking at us as if we (well the bike anyway) was the same colouring as them but definitely not long lost cousins! We finished the day riding through the mountains to Arusha with a dusk-ish light, rainbows, rolling farming land, Masai men and women in their tartans that made me think of the Scottish highlands and a feeling that we were really going to like Tanzania.

We left Arusha and spent a night in Moshi, the village at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro where we camped at a centre that supports local educational projects. On deciding that we didn’t need to climb the mountain (at USD1500 per person!) we headed towards the Usambara Mountains and the village of Lushoto. After riding through the red and green wilds of Kenya and north Tanzania it was a treat to ride up into the mountains and be surrounded by lush, green plants, creeks and waterfalls. Just past Lushoto we found our campsite which consisted of a palm and wood structure that sat literally on the edge of the cliff with a view back down to the plains, it was aptly named the ‘Heaven Bar’. The campsite was a choice of three terraces, also on the cliff face and boasted a ‘toilet with a view’ but other than that no facilities – but it was a view we could not resist.

Although we are not fans of the big cities, there would be no Zanzibar without going to Dar es Salaam where we could leave the bike for a few days. Zanzibar is of course white sands, turquoise seas, palm trees, laid back people, reggae, beer and cocktails. We stayed in Bujwe on the east side of the island in an eccentric little place set up by a guy called Mustapha. If it had not been for Tille banging his head on a low hanging air conditioner in the street and requiring stiches (with no anaesthetic mind you!) in the Stone Town hospital it would have been 100% perfect!

On our return to the mainland Tille’s stitches were removed and we started the long road west towards Malawi, passing through the Mikumi National Park where we met with a herd of elephants on the side of the road (no more than 20 metres away!), zebra, giraffe, warthog, baboons, birds and water buffalo. The animals and landscape as a pair make Tanzania simply beautiful. We stayed in Morogoro, just outside Iringa and then at the locally owned and run Bongo Camp in Tukuyu before riding the last stretch through rolling tea fields into Malawi.

I write this from the Mushroom Farm which is a campsite on the edge of a cliff just near Livingstonia, overlooking Lake Malawi – which so far seems like a country stuck in a time warp with an innocence that is very appealing.