Well, I started this blog and never actually shared the
address because I wasn’t sure if I would keep it up. Now sending it out to you all, I guess I’ve
made a commitment J This is a long entry since it’s been almost
three weeks and I hadn’t posted anything.
That’s my excuse. (And I'll try to put up pics later)
I set out from Dar es Salaam (clearly very well rested) with
Sabrina and Alexa who decided to join me and see me off by traveling with me to
the Mbeya, where I would then cross over to Malawi. I knew police stops would probably be an
issue so I had spent the previous weeks getting all of my papers in order. Well, we got 90 minutes outside of Dar when I
was tested for the first time. I had
overtaken a truck on an upward climb, and I crossed back over just as the
dotted line on my side ended. And then
the police officer pulled me over. To be
fair, she was very nice, complimented me on having a well charged fire
extinguisher, and promptly wrote me a legitimate ticket for 30,000 tzs ($18
USD), without even waiting for a bribe to be suggested. Fortunately, through patience, politeness and
good luck, we escaped the two next stops by police officers. This trip could be
more expensive than I thought.
The highlight of my time with Sabrina and Alexa, other than
being lucky enough to have two of my close friends begin my adventure with me,
was going to Kitulo National Park. In February,
Kitulo is known for its wild orchid displays but in August, it’s more for general
hiking. For me, we used it to test my
car (Baby Blue) and my off-road driving skills.
Between Alexa directing me where to put the wheels and convincing me
that Baby Blue was made for this kind of driving, I was able to overlook
Sabrina’s white knuckles as she clung to her seat for the better part of a two
hour trip on a dirt track (we can’t call it a road) J We only had one issue, when Baby Blue decided
she’d had enough and overheated. I now
realize that pumping the AC while trying to climb uphill for 2 hours on an
extremely hot day, may have been asking too
much of her. We waited it out and she’s
been great since.
The hiking was beautiful and our official park campsite was
rugged (a random turn-off into the bush, with no road/tire tracks, facilities,
or anything marking it as a campsite). We
ended that section of the trip with a nice stay at Utengule Coffee Lodge in
Mbeya. We said our goodbyes (or “see you
laters”, and I crossed over the border into Malawi, without any real problems. I then headed to Mushroom Farm, a camp/lodge
I had heard about near Livingstonia. It was
again, an hour of up-hill, somewhat off-roading terrain, but the campsite (my
tent overlooking a ledge with Lake Malawi below), food and staff were amazing. I hiked to Livingstonia, lounged in hammocks
and met some other travelers in my three nights there. When I left there, I had gained three
travelers with me, since we were all heading to Mayoka Village in Nkhata Bay (we
continued to travel and bump into to each other throughout Malawi).
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| The Lilongwe tobacco trading floor |
Once Sarah arrived in Lilongwe, we headed out to Cape
Maclear the following day, a tourist hotspot on a peninsula on the southern tip
of Lake Malawi. After kayaking, a little
snorkeling and trying out every one of the lodge’s restaurants, I think we’d
say that Cape Maclear was a beautiful spot, but with the lake and beach being
used as a bathing ground and dishwashing location for the locals, swimming wasn’t
high on our list of to-dos. It was a
good four days though, and through walking in the village, and driving to and
from Cape Maclear, we saw a small slice of Malawian village life. And Sarah promptly decided she didn’t think
she could live in Africa (part of this may be due to the frogs living in our
bathroom that were a surprise).
Driving in Malawi has been very easy, and while there are
regular road blocks, most of the time we were just waved through by smiling
police officers. The border crossing into Zambia took a bit of time (although
we were the only people there) partly due to a vague “road tax” we were forced
to pay for, but weren’t provided any documentation on the amount required. I
ended up paying half of what the “official” wanted, so my guess is he still got
a little tip on top of the true amount.
Ah well, into Zambia we went, with our first stop being South Luangwa
National Park.
Before we even got to the camp, Flatdogs, Sarah’s mouth was
hanging open. We had seen about 12 elephants by the roadside and a few baboons –
not a bad intro to safari life! And as
we headed to our tent with the receptionist, we were prevented from entering it
due to elephants surrounding our tent, and then felt sandwiched when we heard
hippos calling behind us, and a lion roaring from inside the park (which was across
a river). Sarah vowed, at that moment, to only wear sneakers for the rest of the trip, in case she needed to make a run for it at any time.
Day one of safari in South Luangwa National Park has been
exciting. Even though we thought the
elephant and hippos were still surrounding our tent in the morning (Sarah was
unable to sleep for fear of a large trunk breaking into our tent), we made it
to the 5:30 am breakfast only 10 minutes late.
After meeting our guide Malama, we were on our way. After a few hours in the park and seeing
giraffes, hippos, puku and hyenas, we came across a male elephant whose trunk
had been caught in a snare people set for hunting. Malama called it into the South Luangwa
Conservation team to alert them, and we tracked the elephants until they came. The conservationist (maybe that’s a real word?)
and her team came to tranquilize the elephant so that the snare could be
removed. We watched as she mixed the tranquilizer meds, poured them into the
dart, and loaded the gun. Eight minutes after
we heard the shot, we were told he was down, and we got to see them cut the
snare off, and feel the skin of a wild elephant while it was sleeping (and
snoring), and then watch as it was given the anti-body to the tranquilizer, and
got back up to join its herd. We like to
think that we saved an elephant on our first day J
That was the highlight of our morning game drive, and while
we thought it couldn't get more exciting than that, my lunch was stolen by a
small baboon as I turned for 10 seconds to talk to people. Those little guys are fast – and pretty scary. Since then, we've seen a leopard and a pride stalking buffalo, only to be run off by the whole herd. And today, day two, I waited 15 minutes for the elephants to move from our tent site, only to see that 15 baboons had broken into our tent... or so I thought. They were just playing with the outer flaps, but I'm sure my minor freak-out gave the camp staff a funny story. And now we're off to our second night safari! Wish us luck!
