11.10.06 Selous NP, Kilwa Kivinje, Zanzibar, Lake Natron, Ngorongoro Crater, Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) – watch out this is a long one, so get comfortable! Hi there! Here we are again, back with more news, it must feel to you that it wasn’t long since the last lot, but it’s over a month already! We have really enjoyed all you emails and messages on the blog, so thanks a lot for taking the time to type! As we are over half way with our trip now, it’s lovely to know that you are still keen to read our travelling tales and that we haven’t lost your interest along the way! So let me get on, we’ve been pretty busy since we last talked to you, and first and foremost you’ll be very pleased to hear that Helen arrived without further delay and we were able to start her mini tour of Tan. with no problems…HOORRAYYY!!! Before Helen’s feet touched Tan. ground we whisked her off to the really fantastic beach resort called Kipepeo, where we had been staying. Don’t be fooled by my use of the word resort though, it’s not a tacky, busy Butlins resort as we know it in England. It’s a simple bar and restaurant on the beach, with a campsite next to it on one side and small, simple but effective bamboo huts on the other side with beds. Then behind all this some really gorgeous chalets with en suite bathrooms and a balcony with table, chairs and hammock!! All budgets catered for. The food is excellent and cheap too, the bar fully stocked, and the people very welcoming which all adds up to a haven for rest and relaxation, with the white sands and beautiful blue Indian Ocean finish things off very nicely! So Helen had a gentle first day relaxing on the beach watching the dhows sail past, swimming, enjoying the sun and of course chatting and catching up with us – perfect! The next day we went briefly, well as briefly as you can, in to Dar to stock up on money, fuel and food so that we could set off to Selous NP. Dar is a very busy, noisy and all together hectic city. It takes forever to do things regardless of whether they are simple or not so simple, and that’s even taking in to account the African pace of life! We went in one day to do some emailing and the round trip from the campsite (8km away from town) to the city centre and back again, including an hours internet use, took us 4 hours!!!! We were prepared for this and left Kipepeo about 9.30am, but still didn’t actually get on the road to Selous until 1.30pm, which by our reckoning was pretty good!! So off to Selous we went, better late than never! The first part of the journey was along a fairly well maintained tarmac road, ‘good good’ we said. Then about halfway we turned off towards Selous and waved goodbye to the tarmac. The road from then on was a badly bumpy sand and dirt track and we welcomed Helen to the world of 4x4 off-roading! A few hours later, with battered bums and close to twilight we arrived at the Mbega campsite about 15 minutes from the NP entry gate. It was a basic campsite with toilets and showers next to the Rufiji river, with a lovely view, and plenty of hippos to hear. We positioned ourselves next to a handy thatched open sided shelter and go straight on with cooking tea. The local men looking after the camp did say that animals sometimes walked through the camp at night, and as Helen was having the pleasure of sleeping in our ground tent, we took the time to decide where would be the best place to put it. Jas and I regard ourselves as bush-camping pros now considering the range of close encounters we have had already, and have become quite blaze about where we spend the night. Nevertheless we were conscious of the fact that not only was this Helen’s first time sleeping in the wild, but as she would be on ground level, and not up above things like us, the idea of animals moving around beside her would be a little unnerving! This in mind we put the tent under the shelter, with the river bank on one side and the truck parked close to the other and a couple of chairs and a table strategically placed around the edge of the shelter. Hopefully any bigger animals wandering around would not be able to get too close, and the smaller ones wouldn’t be a problem anyway! We went to bed with parting words of advice, ‘If you’re worried about anything shout up to us and we’ll sort it out’! As it was there were no intruders from the animal kingdom, but we were kept awake for most of the night by loud drumming music from the nearby village which we found out the next day, was having a ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony that would last for 3 days!! We spent the whole of the next day in Selous, not quite what we had planned as the idea was to spend the morning there, return to the campsite for lunch and go back in later in the afternoon until dusk. The early morning and late afternoons are by far the best times to go animal spotting. It is cooler then and the majority of animals are more likely to be moving around, and predators are more likely to try to make kills as the soaring heat during the middle of the day keeps them in shady places for much needed snoozes! Plus the light for photography is much better, a rather important point for Jas! So when I say we didn’t plan to stay the whole day, I can hear your inquisitive minds uttering ‘Why did they?’ The simple truth of the matter was that we got lost! Now let me expand on this a bit, we had acquired a map at the gate and with this to hand, eagerly set about driving around this way and that. We saw quite a lot of things, especially giraffes (more about that later) and were happily getting further and further in to the park. At one point we decided to head for a particular place on the map. However following about an hour and a half’s searching, resigned ourselves to the fact that the map wasn’t really worth the paper it was written on and the best thing to do was try and head back to the gate just in case it took us 3 hours to find that again!!! We eventually got back and made the proviso that tomorrow we would take a little more notice of where we were going and try to match the roads on the map to those in the park, if indeed they did match! Apart from the map malfunction we had a great days viewing (all the usual suspects, although no cats yet) and we were ready for a good nights sleep. The animal-free night before had lulled us in to a false sense of security, so being woken by breaking branches and loud munching was a bit of a surprise. An elephant had entered the camp and I watched as it made it’s way over to us and quickly called down to Helen to see if she was aware of our new friend! No flies on Helen, she was well aware of the ele and bravely called back that she was fine, but what should she do if it got closer. ‘Just keep still and don’t make too much noise’ I called back, easy for me to say from the rooftop tent! The ele was eating the seed pods that had fallen from the trees around us, and came quite close to the truck. I keenly kept an eye on it and gave Helen up dates on it’s exact position, attempting to reassure her that it was nearer us than her and was relieved when it decided that it had had enough of the offerings and walked away out of the camp. Phew, that was close enough for Helen, she was certainly interested in seeing the animals, but at night and through flimsy canvas was not quite what she had in mind! Just as we were making light of the ele’s late night snack stroll, the sounds became louder again and before we could say ‘Nelly the elephant’, it was back and this time closer than before! It went around the truck and down a steep bit of bank towards the river and this time was much closer to Helen’s tent. We hadn’t expected it to go so close to the river bank and understandably Helen was now concerned about it’s intentions as she was only a couple of metres away! It still seemed to be only interested in sniffing out the seed pods and so I said to Helen, ‘Don’t worry it’s not interested in you, just the goodies from the trees, it’ll soon get bored and move away’; I hoped this would be the case! After quite a few nervous minutes the ele did turn back and left the campsite for good. I was straining my ears for a long time afterwards to check if I could hear it coming back again, but it didn’t. In the morning Helen was pleasantly amazed at what happened in the night, in the comforting light of day she admitted that although she was pretty scared at the time, she appreciated that it was an amazing thing to see and it was a great experience, but hoped that the ele wouldn’t return that night as well! We had mixed luck in the park that day. In the morning we succeeded in not getting lost, but didn’t see many animals, only more giraffe. The endless giraffe encounters ended up being quite a joke. For some reason we saw far more giraffe than anything else and by the end all we could say was, ‘Is that a tree over there, on no my mistake it’s just another giraffe!’ However, in the afternoon we had a top tip that some lions had made a giraffe kill (no wonder seeing as there were so many around!) and they were by one of the roads. Off we trot to where the guide had said and we couldn’t see a thing, no big surprise, the animals do wander around a bit, and we were about to move on when we saw a couple of safari vehicles about 200 metres off the road. We strained through the binoculars and low and behold there were three lions lounging under a tree, a male and two young cubs. Now in most parks you are not supposed to go off the obvious tracks, but seeing these proper lodge vehicles over there we were very tempted to join them. Another vehicle came towards us and when it stopped we asked them could we follow the others. The guide said that they shouldn’t have gone off the road and if the park rangers found them they would have to pay a $50 fine. So we thought for a minute and decided to stay where we were. Just then 3 other lodge vehicles came along and without hesitation drove straight off in to the bush towards the lions. I’m afraid my desire to get closer then outweighed my worry of a fine and I used the age old argument, ‘If they can, then so can I’, and with a quick, ‘OK go on then’ from Helen and Jas, and throwing caution to the wind, off I went! We found when we got to the lions that there were in fact 9 of them, one male, 3 lionesses and 5 cubs of varying age. Fantastic! It was obvious they had recently had a real feast, as they all had huge tummies and were lazing around looking very contented. There were lots of vultures around which suggested that they had eaten the giraffe in that area, but there was no evidence left for us to see. The lions we not at all interested in our presence, but occasionally the cubs would get up and play fight with each other. If the vultures got too close to them they would pretend to stalk them and chase them off, which was very funny to watch. We happily stayed and watched them for over an hour, but were forced to leave eventually because it was getting late and we needed to get back to the campsite before dark. It was a great end to the day, and even better, no $50 fine!! Back at the campsite we saw some Colobus monkeys, found mainly in forested East Africa areas, so a first for us. They are quite large, black and white, and they mostly stay up in the trees, so it was cool to see them. That night there were no animals knocking at our tents, only the loud snorting and grunting of…..no not Jason, just hippos in the river. The villagers were back to the all-night partying though and it was that, not elephants that kept us awake, for awhile at least. We saw more elephants in the park the following day strolling along by the river. We drove over to get closer and positioned ourselves by a bush towards the way they were walking. They came close by, but not too close! There was a very nice lake that we went to as dusk approached, the light across it looked very nice. It was full of hippos and whilst watching them one evening we saw one of them messing around. He/she was doing complete sideways rolls in the water and appeared to be having a great time. It was very amusing to see 4 stumpy legs and feet rotating through the water over and over again! After 3 great days at Selous, it was time for us to move on. Our next stop was further south along the coast to a place called Kilwa Mosoko. It’s a small town from which you can get a boat over to the island of Kilwa Kivinje. The island was home to a very wealthy sultan back in the 13th century who came upon the island and liked it so much he made his home there. He built a palace, grand court, fort, several mosques of differing sizes and burial tombs. The island became it’s own state and the sultan was King of Kilwa, they even produced their own money. Over the years the island succumbed to invasions of one kind and another and now the buildings are only ruins, but they are amazing to see and some of them still look very majestic. We spent the morning wandering around the island (it’s not big at all) with a guide telling us all about it (how touristy!), and we met some of the people who live on the island. It was a really lovely place and well worth the 2 hour drive along one of the worst roads we have ever been on!!! We stayed in a lovely place in K. Mosoko which served some of the best food we have had so far (gorgeous lobster!), had very nice chalets overlooking the ocean (Helen stayed in one) and a campsite with a rather large population of ants (where we stayed – horray for rooftop tent again, it saves us from the little animals as well as the big, no chance of them climbing up there!). From Kilwa we went back up to Dar, again staying at the lovely Kipepeo, which as well as being very nice (as already mentioned!) allowed you to leave you vehicle there while you popped over to Zanzibar, very handy! So we found out about getting the ferry over to Zan, there was a quick one (1 ½ hours) or a slow cheap one (at least 3 hours). We plumped for the quick one (not much more in price) and booked places for mid morning the next day. There are no campsites on Zan, but plenty of places to stay with varying degrees of expense. Luckily we had some insiders already on the case to find us a good place to stay. Whilst staying in Kipepeo waiting for Helen we met a SA guy Cedric, who was travelling with a Swedish girl, Maria, and a Swiss guy, Luc. They were great and we spent quite a bit of time with them and they were heading over to Zan just before we were with Helen. They very kindly sorted out a couple of rooms for us in the hotel they were in, which was in the main town on Zan called Stone Town. All set we turn up to the ferry raring to go but were only met by disappointment! The fast ferry had broken down and there wouldn’t be another ferry until midday, and that would be the slow ferry and that meant getting to Stone Town at about 4.30pm. Hmmm, not a great start, and the thought of wasting the day was a little annoying especially as Helen was limited time wise. As we were debating what to do, the ferry guy said that for extra money he could organise for us to fly over. A great idea, but we immediately thought uh oh, that will surely cost us much more. Surprisingly not! He could get us on a flight in a hours time and it would only cost us an extra $15 each. Well on this occasion we decided to be very flash and say blow the money, we’ll fly!! Not only would we be able to go straight away, but also it only takes 20 minutes, brilliant. So without further delay we were rushed by taxi to the airport, tickets sorted, boarding passes provided and we were off; we were in Zan for lunch! We got to the hotel and met up with the others and they took us to a great restaurant on the quay where we enjoyed the first of several very good meals. We spent the afternoon wandering around the little streets of the town and looking at the curio shops and then watched the sunset over the Indian Ocean with a cool beer, very nice. The next day we arranged to go on a spice tour, as you may or may not be aware, Zan is very famous for it’s spice trade and this is how much of it’s money has been made. We went out in to the spice farms and we shown and informed about many different spices; what they look like, how they grow, what they are used for etc. It was very interesting and many of them look very different to what you would expect. They also showed us many exotic fruits as well. We had a taste of a few, but I don’t think we overly taken with their different flavours! At the end of the tour we had the opportunity to buy some spices and we couldn’t believe how cheap they were, especially saffron. To buy it here is about 50 times cheaper than in England! You can imagine that we were very seriously considering sneaking a whole load back with us to sell, we’d make a nice little profit! The next couple of days we hung around Stone Town. It was such a fascinating place that you could easily stroll around the tiny streets for hours. Many of the building have very ornately carved wooden doors which were incredibly intricate and looked stunning. They could make a fairly dull building look absolutely magical. It was lovely to walk around the town and find all sorts of nooks and crannies with things in. Helen and I stumbled upon a fantastic souvenir shop which we spent ages in, luckily for Jas he wasn’t with us at the time otherwise I’m sure he would have been bored stupid! Zan has mainly Arabic and African influences which makes for some wonderful materials, arts and crafts. Helen and I had to put a limit firmly on our spending! Zan is also famous for having gorgeous beaches which are on the other side of the island to Stone Town. As we were having such a good time in the town, and we knew that we were spending the last couple of days of Helen’s holiday in our favourite place, Kipepeo, we decided not to worry about trying the beaches on Zan, but stay in the town. So we made the most of the lovely restaurants, one night even had a traditional Zan meal in the home of a local family near the hotel which was excellent. Unfortunately time was ticking on though, and as much as we wanted Helen to be able to spend longer with us, the flight home was getting closer. We flew back to Dar and spent the last couple of days forcing ourselves to relax more, eat more and enjoy some more sunshine. At this point I must mention that we had been getting some rain whilst Helen was with us. Now this was unusual for the trip so far, if you remember we had rain in SA, but from Nam onwards we hadn’t had a drop. However, in Tan it rained the first day we got here, and has done so on and off ever since. So Helen did have plenty of sunny days, but a few wet ones too! We can’t complain too much because it is coming up to the rainy season and no doubt we will be seeing more of the wet stuff from now on until we get back to SA where the sun will be shining constantly as it will be their summer! Anyway back to end of Helen’s holiday, a very sad time! After all the moving around, Helen treated herself to staying in the luxury chalets at Kipepeo. She had a twin room and very kindly offered for me to use the other bed, so I got to stay in luxury too! We did check that Jas was still happy in the tent, and he was, and he was probably glad to have it to himself for a bit! It was a real shame to know that Helen’s visit was coming to an end and we didn’t want her to go and she wanted to stay. We had a really fantastic time whilst she was here and we managed to do a pretty good range of things in the two weeks. She was very pleased with how everything went and had a great time too, I think she would recommend the ‘Kate and Jason African Tours’ Company without hesitation. Back to travelling solo now, and our next destination in Tan was Lake Natron. It’s up towards the Serengeti and we thought we’d stop there to see the hundreds of flamingo it’s home to and also a still active volcano nearby called Lengai, which you can climb. On the way we stopped at Arusha for a day to get supplies and some maps. We went the back way to get to the lake, ie. 4x4 roads, right through the heart of Maasai country. At one point we saw a huge mountain in the distance off in the opposite direction and realised that of course that was Kilimanjaro. We planned to stop off there on our way back down to Malawi. We did pass it on the way up but there were so many clouds you couldn’t see it, but more about it later. Our journey to the lake took us past several Maasai villages and they were very happy to see us and very friendly. We had to occasionally check we were going the right way and they were over the moon to help us. The landscape around Lake Natron is very arid with not much growing there at all. It is the dustiest place we have ever been to and when were arrived at the campsite the landy was green no longer! Jas and I were now the proud owners of a dust beige TD5, with matching dust interior, roof-rack and accessories!!!! You couldn’t imagine how much dust was on the landy, in the landy, on and in us!!! I remember telling you about finding sand days after being at Sossuvlei, well this surpasses that by miles! But despite all the dust the area looked amazing. Our plan was to spend a few days here, explore the lake a little and climb the volcano. However, after everything so far going mostly to plan we should have known that glitches were only round the corner. Firstly, we had heard a funny noise under the landy on the way and when Jas looked, he found that the extra super duper suspension we had, had broken on one of the back wheels. That was a pretty big problem, particularly as we had to do more 4x4 driving to get from lake Natron to Ngorongoro, the next stop. What were we going to do? We were practically in the middle of nowhere, with no easy access to spare parts or a mechanic. ‘We’ll be here for a while’, we thought. The Maasai who was in charge of the campsite saw that we were having trouble and came to offer his help. We were pleasantly surprised to hear that not only was there a mechanic how worked nearby, but he might be able to get a replacement part from the village as well! How’s about that for luck. Only an hour later and the mechanic had been to see us, said that he could easily fix the part and new that he could get one. The down side was that it was going to cost us quite a bit, and the part was second hand, but at the end of the day, what choices did we have, we needed to be mobile again. It was around this time that Jas was starting to feel pretty ill. He was suffering from a cold for a few days, which had been getting steadily worse and now was in it’s element. That night he had a bad fever and his cough was very bad. This was the first time on our trip that unforeseen circumstances dictated our next move. We had little money left (not enough to hire the guide to take us up the volcano) and no banks nearby to get some, a temporarily fixed car that needed a new permanent replacement part sooner rather than later, and Jas was feeling terrible. So we decided to cut the stay in Lake Natron short and leave that day. It was a real shame that we couldn’t do the things there that we wanted, but all in all it wasn’t the end of the world. We did however, choose to make a quick day trip to the Ngorongoro Crater before we went back to Arusha, as we were fairly close to it. It is about 350 square km big and has a great reputation for not only being full of animals, but also a stunning scenic area too. It is one of the top highlights of Tan, and as a result has lots of visitors. They are now trying to limit the numbers of vehicles going in to the crater, to preserve it more, and to do this they have made it really expensive to get in. For a day permit, you pay entrance per person, per vehicle, and an extra $100 for the privilege of going in to the crater. So the day cost us $200!!!! This is more than we have had to pay anywhere else, but it was worth it, the crater was amazing. The place was stunning and we saw so many animals it was quite unbelievable. The range of animals was not quite as great as other places, but the herds of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo were so big we were in awe. We also saw some elephants, warthogs and Thomson’s gazelles. The best was seeing a black rhino (very rare), admittedly it was just lying around not doing much bet we saw it none the less. Then we found some lions, then some more, and then some more! In total during the day we saw 4 prides of lions, we counted 21 altogether, that’s pretty impressive eh! We really enjoyed the day and thought it was money well spent. Next to Ngorongoro is the Serengeti, another very famous place as you all know. Unfortunately it is also much more expensive to get in to and to camp there costs $30 each to bush camp with no facilities! After much debating and calculating that for a 4 day stay there it would cost the same as visiting Kruger NP in SA for at least 10 days, we made another hard decision to miss out the Serengeti. We did really want to go there, but with the landy still needing a new shock (couldn’t rely on the second hand part for too long) and still having the chance to see lots of animals in other cheaper parks, we thought it was the best thing to do. So regretfully we made a course for Arusha, but we very happy with our Ngorongoro visit, and consoled ourselves with the thought of stopping at Mt Kilimanjaro in a few days. At Arusha we got a proper ‘Old Man Emu’ (as they are called) shock for the landy, and got the landy completely cleaned and de-dusted, which was a job and a half! Back on the road and off to Kili, which we were particularly looking forward to seeing in close up. Little did we know that we would almost be denied the pleasure of seeing the mountain at all! As we approached the mountain we couldn’t believe it but as on the way up, the whole things was hidden by clouds! The weather was against us and rain was rearing it’s ugly head again. We found a lovely campsite in the foothills of the mountain which cheered us up, but we were worried that we could only stay here a day or two at a push before we had to start heading south again, and if the weather stayed bad, we would have to go without seeing the mountain. The phrase ‘So near and yet so far’ seemed to reverberate around my head! The next morning we awoke to more clouds and drizzle and the mountain remained invisible much to our disappointment. The day was spent in a little social room on the campsite watching DVDs and reading, not quite what we had in mind! We had to leave the following day, but we kept our fingers crossed that the weather would break and we could get a quick glimpse of Kili before we left. It would have been awful to say we had been past Kili twice and not seen it either time! To our great joy and relief, when we looked out of the tent the next day, there were a few clouds, but blue sky too! We had never got up so quickly, we weren’t going to miss the mountain this time and we walked a short way to a view point and sat to take in the view. Some clouds were still around the top of the mountain, but they moved along at a fair pace so you could see it in between them, and it was fantastic to finally see it all! We were not going to climb it, again too expensive I’m afraid, but just to see it close up was great (photos on next blog). Now I’ll have to finish up, after writing way too much! In a nut shell we are now back in Malawi spending a few days here before we pop back to Zambia to meet our friends Kev and Zoe who arrive in Lusaka on the 20th (Hi Kev and Zoe - looking forward to seeing you both very soon!) Hope you are really well and everything is good at home. Thanks again for your messages, take care and we’ll be back soon! Love Kate and Jas xx