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 !!!!!