23 minute read
Tanzania Safaris and speed bumps in the heart of Africa
ANIMAL KINGDOMS
Words and pictures: Raymond and Nereide Greaves
There are many reasons for going on an expedition. There’s the landscapes and environments you’ll see, the people you’ll meet, the sheer joy of the road… all of them go together to make overland travel one of the best things you can ever do.
Most of all, though, when your travels take you into the world’s wild places, you’re sharing them with the wild animals who live there. And this is never more evident than it is in Africa.
Now, it would be very easy to make a joke here about Nairobi. While making our travel plans, we heard endless dire warnings about the city people refer to as ‘Nairobbery.’ If you’re taking the classic route through Africa, you’ll almost certainly fetch up here at some stage, so you’ll hear the
stories too, but we spent a week in the Kenyan capital without even having our wallets lifted. It’s not too hot and humid, being at 1800 metres above sea level, and if you’ve travelled from Britain you might actually fi nd it quite comforting, because its supermarkets may well be the fi rst you’ve seen since leaving Europe.
This is all worth knowing, because Nairobi is the travel hub for overlanders heading into Tanzania. And this in turn is the nation with perhaps the best game reserves in the world.
Having stayed longer than we had planned in Nairobi, courtesy of one or two little road-related matters including the need to replace the fi rst wrecked tyre of the trip, we were running about ten days behind schedule as we left the city and headed south. We weren’t going to let that concern us, though. As well as game reserves such as Serengeti and Ngorongoro, Tanzania is also home to Zanzibar, one of the world’s most exotic tropical islands. So we had no intention of rushing through the country!
It seemed reasonable to assume that there would be a decent, signposted road between Kenya and Tanzania. But no. Heading out of Nairobi on the Mombasa Road, we looked in vain for signs pointing south to Tanzania. After much head scratching, we realised there weren’t any. No signs, and not even a junction either. Instead, we needed to improvise and do some impromptu off-roading to pick up the right road.
And then there were the infernal roadworks. Mile after mile of the road was dug up and traffi c was simply diverted into the bush on rough, dusty tracks. What was supposed to be an easy journey was becoming slow and tedious. Never mind, at least in Tanzania the situation would improve…
Ha ha.
The border crossing was fairly effi cient, but we really needed to get our skates on if we were to reach Arusha (the fi rst town of any note in Tanzania and the base for safaris) by nightfall. And we had long since learned that driving after dark in Africa was to be avoided at all costs.
But sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. The sun already hanging low in the sky as we left the border, but almost immediately our hopes were dashed as the curse of roadworks struck again. Decent tarmac frequently gave way to rough side tracks; slow, tedious and mindnumbingly dull.
One bright spot was that we got our fi rst sighting of Mount
Kilimanjaro, its snow-capped summit glowing orange in the setting sun. But then then it was dark. Really dark. The small towns we dragged through seemed not to have electricity (a first on our route so far) and as our headlights lit up the unexpected comings and goings by the roadside, we wondered how the locals could see what they were doing in the pitch black.
Thankfully, the going improved the following day. We had decided to make for the Ngorongoro Crater, and this time the road was a smooth one as we cruised through undulating savannah until the abrupt wall of the Great Rift Valley reared up out of the landscape.
We wound our way up the escarpment, the temperature dropping and the flora becoming ever more lush until we reached the entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation area. After being relieved of a fair number of dollars we continued the ascent, this time on a good unpaved road.
Then, all of a sudden, we were at the top and on to the rim of the crater. And what an amazing view! From our vantage point the entire crater was visible, and it’s beyond words to describe it; although the Ngorongoro is probably one of the most photographed sights in Africa, it still takes your breath away when you see it with your own eyes.
Almost half a mile below us, on the crater floor, we could make out hundreds of small black dots that were in fact grazing animals. We excitedly took some photos then set off for our lodge, also on the rim, to organise a game drive for the following day. The lodge was refreshingly basic, decorated with Masaai-style fabrics and well stocked with fascinating books on African animals and pioneering expeditions within the continent. Just as a game lodge should be.
We had considered driving ourselves around the crater in the Range Rover. However, while there would have been a certain amusement value to doing this, we (correctly) surmised that our ineptitude at spotting game and not knowing where to go would severely limit the experience. So the following morning we piled into our guide’s Land Rover – and literally only ten minutes after dropping down into the crater, we had already seen lions, zebras, a jackal and some warthogs!
Our driver proved to be amazingly good. There were several others in the crater that day but rather than aimlessly follow them he would strike out in his own direction and we were well rewarded. Near the middle of the crater, he suddenly stopped and whispered ‘lion!’ We looked the way he was pointing and
Right: The authors’ Range Rover overlooks the Ngorongoro Crater, a vast volcanic caldera that’s home to an equally vast array of iconic wildlife Below: The Landcruiser is king in Africa, but when you’ve travelled all this way aboard a Range Rover it seems only appropriate when the bloke you’ve hired to take you on safari turns up in a Defender
strained to see anything then all of a sudden we saw not one, not two, but three lionesses wandering through the long grass.
The next wonderful surprise was discovering that they had two cubs with them. As we watched they sauntered closer to our Land Rover and we almost burst with excitement as they walked literally right up to the car and behind it to drink at a large puddle five yards away. This was the sort of close game viewing you always dream of – and thanks to our guide, we got to enjoy this spectacle all to ourselves.
We went on to see a herd of elephants, a black rhino (super-rare) with a baby which had apparently only been born in the last 24 hours and a pod of hippos in the lake. We also saw scores of the more common inhabitants of the crater; zebras, pink flamingoes, wildebeest, buffalo. After a long, hot day, we returned to the lodge elated.
When planning our expedition, we realised that we would meet the rains somewhere as they travelled north and we headed south and we reckoned it would be in Tanzania that our paths would cross. This did indeed prove to be the case, and heavy rain was never far away as we travelled through this large country. It was, in fact, the day after our safari that they arrived – it was as we drove around the crater rim to say goodbye to Ngorongoro that the heavens opened. We had been very fortunate!
Luck was on our side again as we drove past Mount Kilimanjaro en route to the capital Dar es Salaam. As we approached, the mountain was shrouded in mist – but then, just at the right moment, the clouds parted to give us a superb view.
We were less lucky with the Tanzanian police, who pop up all over the place brandishing speed guns. They even found an excuse to stop Nereide, who had never previously been pulled over in her life. You’ll be assuming that they were after bribes, but in fact they were all very easily won over by some charm and smooth talking and we were soon on our way, wallets intact.
We had arranged to leave the Rangey at the Land Rover dealership in Dar es Salaam while we caught a ferry to Zanzibar for a week’s break. It was stored safely and washed for our return, and then the chap who ran the dealership invited us to his home for dinner with him and his wife. Now, that’s what you call customer service!
Leaving Dar after our ‘holiday’ on Zanzibar, our route now took us around 600 miles across Tanzania towards the border with Malawi. This was pleasant rather than spectacular, though we saw zebras, giraffes and elephants from the road so it certainly wasn’t unremarkable!
We didn’t intend to spend much time in Malawi, but since our expedition was named after its capital city we felt that we at least had to check in there. We crossed the border with some trepidation, though, having been warned that the Malawian police would try to extort money at every turn – even to the extent of making up traffic offences on the spot.
To avoid becoming an easy target, we needed to buy a set of reflective stickers. Utterly pointless if your car has lights, but these are the rules. We couldn’t find them on sale anywhere, so we had no choice but to run the gauntlet.
Malawi is also the name of a lake – which takes up 15% of the area within the borders of the nation. At its northern end, it also has shores in Tanzania and Mozambique;
Above left: The roads in rural Malawi are very quiet, used mainly as footpaths by women who, as is the tradition in Africa, seem to do all the heavy lifting and carrying Above right: Anyone who saw this picture being taken must have wondered why a couple of Brits were so interested in a road sign… Below: The guy in the crocodile farm near Livingstone thought nothing of jumping in to their enclosure and poking them with a big stick. Probably safer than poking them with a little stick, but there’s definitely a school of thought that says Just Don’t Poke Crocodiles
driving south, it becomes so wide that you feel as if you’re looking out to sea, with white sands, empty beaches and hot humid weather. The green and blue colours in Malawi have a unique vibrancy, the light an incredible clarity. It’s absolutely beautiful.
The scene at the first police roadblock, on the other hand, was ugly. A car in the queue ahead of suddenly lurched forward towards the barrier then, after a lot of angry shouting, a policeman dragged the driver out and welted him across the face. We realised the guy was drunk and had tried to make a run for it. The officer hit him again, hard, on the back of his head and cuffed him before dragging him away into a brick office at the side of the barrier.
We reckoned the policeman would have been charged with GBH if this had happened in Britain. But, somewhat grotesquely, luck was still on our side – because after all this excitement, no-one noticed that we didn’t have reflective stickers!
There were virtually no vehicles on the road at all, but as we drove further along the shore of the lake we saw a lone minibus with two huge fish tied to its windscreen wipers. Very African! We also saw a long, thin black snake sunning itself in the middle of the road.
Reaching Lilongwe was a big milestone for us. Not only because the city had given us a name for our expedition, but because when we arrived there we had covered almost exactly 10,000 miles since leaving London. Cause for celebration, we felt – and, in yet another example of fortunate favouring the brave, it had the best Italian restaurant we’d found since Italy!
So good was our lunch, in fact, that we were forced to stay in Lilongwe for the night rather than continuing in Zambia as originally planned. With time on our hands, we checked out an auto spares shop across the road from the restaurant – and finally found those reflective stickers! It was all going well.
The following morning, we crossed into Zambia – where we had to pay a ‘carbon tax’ of $20 at the border. Good to see a government that puts the environment so high up its agenda and obviously isn’t just using it as an excuse for raising a bit of revenue.
At least that revenue is being well spent, though. We found Zambia to be quite similar to rural Kenya and Tanzania – with the one being difference that its roads are really good, with little traffic, few potholes and no speed bumps. The latter were a particular menace in Tanzania, but here we were able to cover the 350 miles to the capital, Lusaka, in less than six hours
Some African towns can be depressingly messy, but Lusaka was a credit to its residents – who, we noticed, tended to be much better dressed than in some other cities. Even the ugly ends of town and the railway station were clean and tidy. With all the supermarkets, clothes shops and cafes we began to feel we were leaving the bush and approaching the home straight into Southern Africa.
First, though, no trip to Zambia would be complete without a visit to the Victoria Falls. Right on the border with Zimbabwe, this is one of the wonders of the natural world and there are many different ways to enjoy them. You can bungee jump, swim towards the edge (if you’re mad), take a helicopter ride, walk to the Zimbabwean side and view it from there or walk into the Victoria Falls National Park. We’re both interested in flying, so we booked a helicopter trip.
If you’re a hardcore overlander and you think adventure should cost zero and involve as much suffering as possible, you might turn your nose up at this idea. But while it’s
undeniably touristy, it proved to be a brilliant way of seeing the falls and the surrounding area. And anyway, we had driven 10,000 miles to get this far, so we felt like we’d earned it.
The same can be said for the quaintly colonial experience of taking afternoon tea at the nearby Royal Livingstone Hotel. Salmon sandwiches, scones and Earl Grey sipped from fine Royal Doulton cups. If a thing’s worth doing…
All the while, the seasonally swollen Zambezi was throwing itself over the Victoria Falls at the rate of 750,000,000 litres per minute, or 11,000 tons per second. You can’t really describe it using words, or pictures – these are man-made things, and they can’t convey the sheer sense of awe it gives you at the overwhelming power of nature.
Talking of the power of nature, after our chopper trip we visited a crocodile farm nearby. We definitely weren’t expecting the Zambian guide to jump into the enclosure with the crocs and provoke them with a large stick. These animals have amazing reactions – almost as amazing as the local approach to health and safety, evidently!
The following day, we drove back to Victoria Falls to see them from the road bridge crossing into Zimbabwe. The view really was breathtaking and we got covered in spray even this far back.
Having soaked up the falls from every angle, and in every sense of the word, it was time to move on. This was to be our farewell to central Africa, as our next destination was to be Botswana – gateway to the south of the continent.
First, though, we had to cross the Zambezi on the Kazangula Ferry – a rickety old, smoke-belching thing with enough space on its deck for a few cars at a time. With the river being in full flow following the rains, we wondered if the ferry would have enough power to grind its way across to the other side… it did, but with precious little to spare.
So, having reached central Africa via one dodgy ferry, way back north on Lake Nasser, here we were leaving it via another. From the bandit-infested wilderness of the Marsabit Road to the perfect white sands of Zanzibar, from chatting up Tanzanian traffic cops to gazing into the eyes of baby gorillas in Uganda, we had seen sights and had experiences that will stay with us for as long as we live. But as it does on an overland expedition, the lure of the road called us ever onward…
Raymond and Nereide drove their Range Rover from London to Cape Town in the first half of 2010. You can read the full story of their expedition at www.lilongwedown.com
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