Western Tanzania - Take the Ferry!!!!

Our journey from Rwanda, through Tanzania to get into Zambia has proven to be our hardest time in Africa. It has been punctuated by car destroying roads, no food and little sleep.

We are finally through the eye of the storm and can now reflect on the last week. To those who know Africa, travelling the Western route through Tanzania in the wet season is a fools errand and best avoided…. We decided to have a crack, and this is how it went.

The first day was from Kigali (Rwanda) to Kibondo (Tanzania), a total distance of 200km easy! The day started ominously with heavy rain and our GPS routing us through a 30km detour up a mud mountain before we got back on track. We were well behind time when we hit the border. From there we hit the dirt roads… which were bad, but quite acceptable and we were making fair time. Then about 20km short of Kibondo we came to a steep cutting that ran down to a bridge over a good size stream. Wedged in the middle of the cutting were two trucks, completely blocking the road….and a congregation of 30 or so Africans enjoying the moment. After much hopeless discussions and suggestions the drivers refused to try to move their vehicle until the road dried out…..probably some time next week. Our options were bleak, there was no way to go cross country to get around the block, and the only road we could find on the GPS was a 200km/5hr detour. By this stage we had about an hour of light left. Out of the blue a ‘Landcruiser full of nuns’ appeared. The driver was clearly pretty switched on as we saw him walk all the same potential cross country options and came back shaking his head just like I did. One of the nuns approached Tanya and told he she knew of a way around that was only about 30km…. we put our faith in Jesus, and followed the nuns. Now the driver had obviously just returned from rally school, and led us on the most horrific cross country dash in history, we cut through villages, paddocks, swamps and rivers… all at breakneck speeds…. And then night fell…. And we were still going. We had to keep up with the Jesus-Fangio, as we had no idea where we were, and our GPS happily chirped ‘not GPS recorded every 30 seconds. The 30km detour ended after 2 hours; we were broken, Larry was broken, and it got worse.

It was still pissing with rain, and after great difficulty we found the only lodge….which was a flea infested dump, with no food, no running water…oh, and it was Tanya’s birthday. We shut down Larry and grabbed our pack to have a fit full sleep…and saw the growing pool of oil under Larry…clearly Jesus guided our sump onto something solid. At least we could sleep on the problem, so we had a bowl of cereal and settled in. Unfortunately our neighbour was partial to fifties music… and played it all night on a crappy radio.

I got up early, and after breaking the language barrier found a gas welding set, drained the oil; and brazed up the crack… and by 9am we were ready to go. We headed off to Kigoma, whilst the road was pretty crappy, we arrived in good time and decided to treat ourselves to a nice hotel and have a good meal for Tanya,s birthday… and it was lovely by the lake, and we were filled with new confidence, sure that one bad day was no indication of what was to come.

Our next leg was to Katavi National Park, only 330km. There was no other traffic on this track.. and for good reason. It took about 11hrs to do the distance. It is difficult to describe how bad a road was, but hours were spent in low range, and I was very excited getting to third gear at one stage. Our camp outside the park (the park had just closed for the rainy season) was a dump, we still could not buy any fresh supplies…but there were some nice hippos that roamed around all night.

Next leg was a short hop, only 200km to Sumbawanga. The road was more of a swamp than a road. The short version of the day was we spent four hours in a smudge of a town welding a crack in the chassis caused by our pod trying to break free of Larry. We arrived very late in town to be turned away from lodge after lodge…as it turns out the Chinese were all staying in town as a part of a road works project (work harder and faster I say although it was funny watching the Chinese trying to work with Africans). We did finally find a bed, very late.

Our final day was an easy run of 123km to cross the Tanzanian boarded and reach Mbala in Zambia. The road was appalling. There were times I thought we were driving up a water fall. The good sections resembled fish ponds…then we hit a show stopper. A bridge had been washed out, facing us with a 250km detour….however, a nice chap with a bull dozer said if we wait two hours, he will have pushed enough dirt in to let us (not everyone else) cross. True to his word, two hours later, we selected low range and churned through the mud bridge. It turns out we were the first to cross in a week….and as far as we know the only ones to cross since.

We pushed onto the border post, and found the Tanzanian side was an unoccupied large building with virtually nothing in it. A chap appeared and after a short chat, and a look at our car to see what we could give him, he processed us out of the country…we then drove 300m across no mans land to the border gate of Zambia.. which was locked. After returning to Tanzania, and numerous illegal hops over the fence into Zambia it was discovered the customs officer who controlled the border post had hitched a lift to go shopping in Mbala…and had taken the border keys with him…so we were stuck between countries. After exhausting various ways I could try to drive around the border fortifications, we gave up, and just waited.

Fortunately it was a short shopping trip, and 2 ½ hours later the nations boarders were re-opened. It turned out the little chap thought the road was closed (or too bad) to have any traffic, so he was surprised to have been caught out abandoning his post. I politely thanked him for letting us in, and accelerated off as hard as I could to spray mud all over his new outfit (clearly the fruits of his trip to town).

We arrived in Mbala to again find all of the lodges full, and no good place to camp, so we pressed on again, cutting into the 10^th hour to cover this mega mileage, when we saw an oasis, a nice looking lodge…we checked in and settled into a peaceful full nights rest….but as it turned out the lodge doubled as an African night club, and we had the pleasure of bopping to Shakeria until 5am.

We were up and out of there first up, and made it to Kasama where we were back in civilisation, food and safety. Things have just continued to get better, and our next blog has some real highlights.

The damage to the car was two broken spring U bolts, two destroyed bushes and every nut and bolt was rattled loose. Not too bad when a lodge owner told us she drove a brand new Land Cruiser down the same route and had to have the whole suspension rebuilt.

Some photos to follow once we get into civilisation !!!!! 

Rwanda

Not a bad place to wait for a visa - Lake Banyoni Uganda

Rwanda was a place I wanted to see for no really good reason.

Our path into Rwanda however was stopped short at Kabale Uganda, as we had to jump through some hoops to get an entry visa. If we were American, French, German, etc, we would not have needed a visa, but since we were Australian, and apparently did nothing towards the peace keeping operations during the genocide (tell that to all those who had to serve here) we were on the 'make it difficult list.'

We had to apply via the new on line visa system (a system undoubtedly thought up by some idiot foreign advisor who had never travelled in Africa).We applied on line which was no small effort in Kabale as the electricity reliability was only surpassed for unreliablity by the internet access. After many failed attempts, and heated phone calls to Rwanda government officials (whos indiference did surpass the unreliability of the power and internet)...we were ready to give up. Four days at the border had rubbed off the luster of the need to see Rwanda.

We were having lunch, discussing how pleased we were with the Rwandan government, when a nice chap introduced himself and said he could help. As it turned out his good friend was the Deputy High Commissioner for Rwanda in Uganda....within 1 hour our visa was granted! Clearly it's not what you know.

The drive across the border was punctuated by me stopping head on with another car who was making all sorts of wild hand movements. It wasn't until Tanya looked in the guide book we realised we were supposed to be driving on the right hand side of the road. We politely waved to the helpful chap and moved to the correct side of the road (perhaps a helpful road sign would have been a better investment than the on line visa system).

Kigali is a pretty city, but the thing that struck us was just how many Americans and French there were. As it turns out, the biggest industry in Rwanda is Non Government Organisations (NGO's) which seem to run projects on everything from training doctors to weaving baskets. As a result, everything is overpriced and just 'not quite Africa'.To be fair, Rwanda is pretty, and the people are nice, and it is very safe (there are armed police and soldiers everywhere).

For Valentines day I treated Tanya to a trip to the genocide museum..... which was not as well recived as I had hoped.... but there you go. To pick us up after the confronting genocide museum we decided to go 'chimp' tracking at Nyungwe National Park - $100 was much more palitable than $1000 for the gorillas.

When we arrived we were told there was no more accomodation (except for the newly opened lodge which was $400 a night). Needless to say we camped however we were kindly informed that camp fees in the park were $60 US a night! After some challenging discussions, we were allowed to camp in the lodge car park...for free (tanya was estatic). Organising the trek was like trying to run peace talks on the West Bank. We hooked up with two crazy Slovinian bikers and convinced the rangers to take us. The only problem was that the start point was very far away and on what we were told were 'bad' roads. The bikers decided it would not be possible to take their bikes through such heavy mud, and asked if they could sit on our spare tyres for the drive... which I thought would be OK - how bad could the road be!!

We all set off at 5am in the dark and rain into the unknown. It is always difficult to explain how bad or dangerous a road (goat track on side of mountain range) was unless you saw it. Surfice to say the drive into the valley was two hours, and I think the highest gear at any stage was thrid gear low range. The road was mostly a washed out clay cutting with a sheer drop one side and falling trees and mud on the other....and driving back out was worse. It all went bad crossing a log bridge when a log boke under our weight and the rear of the Larry fell through the bridge, stopping when the axle rested on another log. A recovery operation swung into action, drawing on way too many local villagers, and the car was gently jacked up, and a log slipped in to place. Apart from some soiled linen, there was no damage.

All up it was four hours of outrageous driving, and I am stunned that we got out with no worse than falling through a bridge.

Four hours of relaxing driving

Oh, and the one hour with the chimps was kind of nice. The two bikers thought riding on Larry was way more fun than the trek.

To try to summarise our Rwanda experience, I would say...It is safe, clean, friendly....and you can find adventure....but if time is not built in to your itinerary, blow it off.

Mountain Gorillas of Uganda

Well they aren’t called Mountain Gorillas living in an Impenetrable forest for no reason.  After our ranger briefing we headed off with 4 others in search of our family of gorillas – the Mubare family which was only a small group but was the first group of gorillas habituated so they are very tolerant of photo happy Muzungus (Swahili for crazy white skinned foreigners).

We started up our first hill full of excitement – really it was just a banana plantation on the side of the mountain. At our second hill we entered the forest on some fairly good tracks which didn’t last for long and we literally found ourselves walking up steep mountains through thick forest (the mountains are actually remnant volcanoes up to 1,447 metres).

Our advance party of rangers who started out early in the morning from where the gorillas were the night before were having a bit of trouble locating our group so it was another mountain to climb for us. After about 4 hours of climbing mountains our gorilla family finally stayed still long enough for the trackers to catch up and we prepared for our introduction trying to remember what we had been told – don’t go closer than 7 metres and if they charge roll in a ball and don’t ever run.

Well like most things in Africa, wild animals don’t know the rule book and we found ourselves literally on the side of a very steep mountain deep in the jungle in front of two gorillas that wanted to walk right where we were standing. The gorillas literally pushed their way past us (so much for the 7 metre rule – there was nowhere to back away to except into the other very large gorilla) as we tried frantically to take photos without falling off the side of a very steep mountain or pissing off the silverback and blackback of the family.   Dave in the excitement managed to stumble virtually right into the path of the silverback and he told him in no uncertain terms to back off. Dave went into his practiced ball which the rangers found very amusing telling him to get up and start taking photos –‘these gorillas are use to muzungus’.

You are only allowed one hour with the gorillas and we spent most of that hour frantically climbing up and around the mountain ridge trying to keep pace. Only for the last 10 minutes did the gorillas settle and we could relax and just appreciate these amazing animals. Honestly an hour was nowhere near enough (I am now trying to convince Dave to trek with the gorillas in Rwanda as well). Unfortunately I don’t think our photos did these guys justice so if you want to see some better pictures of our family head to www.friendagorilla.org where you can also donate to protecting the gorillas (I think Marketing and Trading will have a new Christmas charity in addition to the donkeys). If you are really interested in protecting the gorillas (there is only about 320 mountain gorilla - one for about every 20 million people) the best way to do it is to get over to Uganda, Rwanda or the Congo (on second thoughts maybe not the Congo - when we have camped near the Congo borders the rangers have set up machine gun posts at night to protect us from the "hippos" - code for Congolese rebels) and see them whilst you still can – you won’t be disappointed.

Queen Elizabeth National Park Uganda

We have commenced our journey to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (sounds a bit foreboding) to see the mountain gorillas stopping for 4 days in Queen Elizabeth National Park (they have really hung on to the fact that the Queen visited the park in the 1950's). The park is located virtually right on the equator and bordering the Congo. Sorry but Dave insisted on a Larry photo at the antiquated equator sign.

The park has some really spectacular scenery - sitting at the foot of the Rwenzori mountains (see the movie Mountains of the Moon to get a low down on the historical significance of the mountains - something about the source of the Nile). The park lies between Lake Edward and George with heaps of hippos, crocs, buffalos and elephants living in the channel between the two lakes. We went on a 2 hour boat ride up the channel and it really wasn't hard to take some beautiful photos.

After spending a wonderful day in the park, the animal action didn't stop when the sun went down. During the day we picked out our campsite - I should say Dave picked our campsite based on the campsite that had the most animal footprints -  including hippos and leopard prints (apparently the park has a 'pet' leopard that visits the campsite every few days).  Well lets just say we weren't disappointed - that night we were visited by a herd of elephant and had the pleasure of hippos grazing under our tent most of the night (noisy fellows). We should have known something was up when as dark fell all of these safari vehicles turned up - not to camp but as part of their night safaris!!! I must say the sleepless night didn't do much to change my views on camping.

The park is also one of the few places you can see the Ugandan cob - he is very pretty but it is hard to get too excited about antelope when there are hippos and elephants around. The last 2 days we are going in search of tree lions - lets hope our luck holds after a magical afternoon trekking with the chimps.

Tracking Chimps in Uganda

All things good come through detailed planning...all things great happen by accident.

We were told once we arrived in Queen Elizabeth Park that if we wanted to go on a 'Chimp-Trek' we needed to buy our permits in Kampala (400km back). Out of morbid curiosity we drove out to Kyambura Gorge. We saw a group coming out of the gorge who made it clear they didn't see jack. We had a chat to the Ranger, and he was most happy to take our money ($100 US) and set a time for a trek.  With very low expectations we hooked up and set forth into the gorge.

It became clear early in the trek our ranger was very slick, and knew the gorge and the chimps like the back of his hand, and within a short time he was following animal signs (mostly half eaten fruit), and leading us to the chimps.

The big break came when a cacophopony of chimp noise burst through the jungle...and the guide calmy stated 'we must cross the river on a log if you want to see them....we will need to be careful of the hippos and crocodiles'. We were boldly led across a fallen tree over the river...whilst one very angry hippo positioned himself to snap up anyone who fell....I did try to give Tanya a little shove, but the guide had an AK47 trained on the hippo....and I would have felt very bad if anything happened to the hippo.

Once over the river the chimps came thick and fast. Our guide was like a greyhound leading us through the jungle at a break-neck speed to be in positioned to see the chimps...they really do move fast.

The highlight of the encounter was when the male (Brutis) put on a show of his dominance. He pounded a tree buttress and charged at us, stopping about a metre short, and let rip with a barrage of chimp abuse....we were already warned to never run when these things happen - I must say that it took quite a bit of bottle not to run. They do not look cute and friendly when they are cranky.

We were pretty well allowed to stay with the chimps as long as we could keep up, and after about 30 minutes of scampering throuh the forest, it was a sad goodbye to our friends.

For a trek that I expected to be an expensive dissapointment...... we were both mesmerised by these guys.

Bring on the gorillas!