Uganda

By Alex

18 - 27th September (Mgahinga - Bunyoni - Kampala - Jinja)

After the most pleasant border crossing to date, our spirits were high as we cruised into southwest Uganda heading for Mgahinga national park. The park borders 2 other national parks in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all countries doing there best to capitalise on mountain gorillas that inhabit the rainforest covered volcanoes. Unfortunately for us a chance to track gorillas was not on the cards owing to the 500 USD per person per hour price tag. I calculated aloud that it is 1000 times more costly than climbing Mt Killimanjaro, which was met with stonely silence from the Aussie tourists we met in the park who had forked out for both activities. Way to make friends Alex. Perhaps we should have taken out a loan - the price is set to rise again to 1000 USD two months from now.

We spent a day hiking through the rain forest along the DRC border, stepping around countless piles of fresh dung left by the buffalo and elephant (mountain, not savannah) that roam the forest by night. Needless to say though, we didn't see a single one. At one point our guide started to pick up bamboo shoots and told us that they had very recently been eaten by gorillas. All of a sudden the gorilla tracks were all around us, and it became clear that we were very close to a gorilla group, with a chance that we may stumble across them and get a free look! We came upon the trackers that are sent out early in the morning to locate the habituated gorilla group for the richer tourists, waiting on the path just a hundred metres from the gorilla group. To say we were excited about a chace glimpse of the gorillas would be a pretty serious understatement. We weren't allowed to step of the path to take a peek though, as this would have constituted 'illegal tracking' we were told. I guess its fair enough considering we had paid a piddly fee for our guided walk. I was pretty excited just to know that we were so close to these rare creatures.

Our second day we spent with a birding expert tracking the spectacular endemic bird Ruwenzouri Touraco. There, I've said it, its out. I have become a bit of a twitcher out here. Its hard not too really with so many amazing colourful birds to be seen everywhere. You'd have to be blind not to take even a small interest. The touraco is really quite something, about the size of a raven with bright blue and scarlet wings, a green and blue body and red and yellow head.

WARNING: The following paragraph is graphic and appears here largely for Kathy and I to have a permament record of the event. Read only if you are not squeemish.

The last event of note that took place in the park was the discovery that both kathy and I had flea egg sacks growing in our toes. The Jiggers, as they are known, burrow in betweeen the outer layers of skin on one of your toes and start to grow a sack of eggs that will eventually hatch a lovely litter of fleas. Removal was thankfully a simple surgical procedure, the campsite manager used a pin to open up the skin and squeeze out the egg sack. I have photos but will leave them out for the benefit of any children that are reading this blog.

On from Mganhinga we headed to Lake Bunyoni for some relaxation time. We headed first to the Lonely Planet recommendation only to find 3 huge overland trucks full of germans abd brits already there. Driving along the bay we found a lovely campsite where we were the only people staying. It was quickly becoming clear that we were rejoining the popular east african overlanding routes after our time off the beaten track in deepest darkest western tanzania. Notably we met our first Land Rover overlander, a Brit called Ben on a year long trip from Morrocco to Morrocco down the west and up the east, running marathons and climbing mountains on the way (http://www.afritrex.com/). It was great to have someone else to share our observations on overlanding in a landi. We decided to drive to Kampala the next day in convey. All of the next day I was whistling the convoy song from smokey and the bandit. Con-voy!

In Kampala I spent a day with a mechanic replacing some suspension bushes that had worn out due to driving with the blown shock absorber (see Tanzania post). Andi the landi also got a new set of shock absorbers. When out buying parts, I got to experience the worst traffic Jam I have ever seen. Truly, Kapala traffic is a complete mess. Street vendors make their way through the jam selling this and that. One man offered a basket holding small tied up banana leaf pouches and curiosity got the better of me. "They are flying ants" the mechanic told me. Now I had already eaten flying ants, (more correctly the reproductive cycle of a termite) in Malawi where they are dry fried with salt. Very tasty and a great source of protein apparently. I decided to buy 2 packets, one for myself and one as a thank you to my mechanic. I was half way through the small pouch and busy describing the differences between these and the termites eaten in Malawi, when I noticed that one of my snacks was moving. I looked closer at what I was shovelling into my mouth and realised that about half of them were still alive. This became the most significant difference between Ugandan and Malawian termite snacks. I stopped chewing and watched the termites deciding what to do next. At this point I felt one squirm in my mouth. I came to the conclusion that it was better to finish the snack so that these termites had not died in vain.

After Kampala we headed east to Jinja on the shores of Lake Victoria. Hailed as the adrenelin capital of east africa, Jinja is the source of the River Nile, which makes for some awesome white water rafting. Rapids are graded on a 6 point scale. In Europe and the states novice rafters have to walk around anything over a 4... not so in Uganda :) We rafted, floated and swam for about 35kms down the nile taking in 4 grade 5 rapids in the process. This was seriously good fun. Its pretty difficlt to describe with words the feelings you have as your raft approaches the rapids, invisible until the last minute, hidden by the initial water fall drop. The sound of the churning water gets the heart pumping. There was lots of falling out, and a few sprained shoulders, but no lasting damage.

On reflection, Uganda was my favourite country on the trip so far. The people really are special, and there are some great things to see and do. On our penultimate day in Kampala, we stopped at the tiny wooden stall of a vegetable seller to stock up for the road. The woman wouldn't let us pay for anything and it actually became difficult to leave, as she just kept on finding a different fruit or vegetable to try to give us as a gift. At the time I was actually a bit uncomfortable as I had never had to deal with this sort of generosity - I guess I was embarassed because I thought of all the people she sells to in a day, I should probably be paying. Afterwards though, Kathy pointed out that it was clearly making her happy to give us these gifts, so we right to accept them, which I guess makes sense. I decided to write her a thank you letter, which I dropped in the next morning, and only just got away without accepting even more vegetables! By this time our stocks were overflowing!

Onwards to kenya.

Rwanda

12^th – 18^th September (Kayonza - Kigali - Kibuye - Nyungwe - Kigali - Uganda)

by Kathy

So yes, they call it the ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’. We very quickly discovered the practical implications of this when we were caught on the back foot entering Rwanda a day early, but very late in the afternoon. As soon as the light faded a thick fog descended and the hairpin bends became increasingly hairy. On top of this we were acclimatising to a new set of road rules and conduct. Some were formalised, like driving on the right. Others, less formal, seemed to have no rhyme nor reason, nor indeed any consistency, like endlessly flashing of headlights, driving on any side of the road (in the face of oncoming traffic or obvious road hazard or not) and seemingly totally random movements by pedestrians and drivers alike. The two years of learning the language of Malawian and Tanzanian road use was pretty much out the window.

So too was our pooled collection of languages. We thought having passable Swahili, French and English between us we should be sorted for communication. Not so! In fact none of these languages is widely spoken in rural Rwanda. Furthermore, the French taught in schools in Rwanda differs from the French we learnt at school, or in France, or Senegal for that matter. It reminded me, in rural areas, of talking to English teachers in China, who took up to 10 minutes to communicate what they did for a living, in such heavily intonated English it was really only intelligible to each other.

And so after a comical first few hours negotiating the surprisingly large contrast across borders, navigation, communication and progress ground to a halt short of Kigali. We entered the small truck stop town of Kayonza at 9pm, cold, bedraggled and bewildered, hand-gesturing our way to some average food and a flea-pit of a hotel.

Luckily, this first day in Rwanda was the only real low-point! The next morning our spirits lifted, as had the fog, and we pushed on to Kigali with glorious views and weather, spurred by Nico’s assurances of crêpes, hot chocolates, omelettes, baguettes and a good selection of cheeses. True enough by 11am we were nailing various combinations of the above in downtown Kigali. ‘Splurge!’ set the tone of the weekend really, with beer, rum, football, bars, good food, seedy nightclubs and massage parlours being enjoyed in aggregate, but not by all individuals, of the group.

With Nico nearing the end of his 3 week stint he was keen to make the most of his time in Rwanda, so we set off on a near circumnavigation of the country, which takes a lot less time than it sounds. First we headed off to Kibuye, on Lake Kivu in the west and, in the spirit of not doing things by half, opted to take a dirt track following the shores of the lake south, rewarded by really quite stunning views. Once again we underestimated time and dark rudely fell long before we had planned for it, so we ended up seeking accommodation in a secondary school somewhere on the road. Busy time for the school, as we arrived during some event that seemed to be celebrating the gift of a cow (much speculation here) and it was the eve of Rwanda’s parliamentary elections, with many schools acting as polling stations. Nevertheless the school kindly put us up in their guesthouse, although it was still a rather bizarre evening all round.

Onward the next day to Nyungwe Forest National Park, via more spectacular coastline and then tea plantations, for the first time since we left Mulanje. The park itself is stunning montane on steep hills, making for tough walking. We opted not to do any of the high cost chimp or monkey related activities but instead did a nature walk with a tree-expert guide. He clearly loved his trees that man. I can’t say I can remember any of the local language or latin names of any of those trees that day, or many of their various medicinal uses, but they were certainly the stars of the show in Nyungwe Forest, the 150 ft mahogany trees crowing the top of the forest canopy.

We then completed the circuit back to Kigali in time for Nico’s flight on the 16^th. He looked thoroughly exhausted as we dropped him off and inn dire need of a holiday. Indeed I myself fell into a 36-hour coma in a hotel room as, in fact, we had not had one full day’s rest for 3 weeks. Overlanding is really a full time job.

Alex and I spent two very pleasant remaining days recovering in Kigali. Our guesthouse was at the back of a local buffet restaurant that pulled a monumentally sized lunchtime crowd. From 6am 50 litre buckets full of tomatoes, onions, garlic and potatoes were chopped and prepared, opening for business around 11am. Increasingly large streams then rivers of customers poured through the place until around 3pm, loading up EU sized mountains of sauces, meats, bananas, chips and vegetables on their plates. We reckoned this tiny 10m x 10m space had a total of 2000 customers every day. Quite a feat. And the food was damn good for about £1.

Onwards and upwards. We finally left Kigali northwards bound for Uganda.

PS I later realised that I wrote this entire blog without reference to Rwanda’s painful recent past - the events surrounding the genocide of July 1994. There is certainly no lack of reminders as you pass through the country; genocide monuments and flowered cemeteries are dotted throughout. People do not necessarily shy away from the subject as conversations flow. There is apparently an excellent museum in memory of those who suffered at the hands of the Interhamwe in the town of Butare, south of the capital, which we didn’t manage to visit. But I guess those memories we’ll take away of Rwanda as it is today will be of a proud, if quite reserved people, in a forward-looking country clearly on the move. People were well-dressed, transport safe and efficient, infrastructure worked, rural areas were buzzing. Perhaps it’s more helpful to take away a snapshot of the present, or a glimpse of the future, than to fascinate on Rwanda’s past. And I think in this regard Rwanda took us all a little by surprise.

Tanzania

1st - 11th September

by Alex

Since leaving Malawi, we have spent most of our time in Western Tanzania, off the beaten tourist route. We decided to skip the better known eastern route through the country, which takes in Zanzibar, Dar es Salam and the Serengeti, and opted instead for something a bit different. We almost bit off more than we could chew....

The plan was to visit the extremely remote national park of Mahale Mountains, on the shores of Africa's second largest lake, Tanganyika. The object was to track wild habituated chimpanzees (ie they're happy to let people watch them), in a park covered by pristine montane forest, on the sandy shores of the lake. The guide makes it sound idyllic, and so we started planning. The main catch is access. The only way to reach the park is by $3000 charter airplane, or steam ship on the lake. Needless to say the flight was not an option, and the steamship is currently busy ferrying refugees back to the DR Congo. We enquired about driving with the park management, and were told that theoretically, it was possible. The lake side villages are served by local boat taxis, as they are 150kms west of the nearest maintained Tanzanian road, but we were told that tracks did exist winding through the mountains and streams that could eventually get us close to the national park, from a point where we could hire a boat for the last 20kms into the park (since the park has no roads).

And so began toughest drive I'm certain any of us have ever faced. It took us about 5 hours to cover the 80km stretch of reasonable track, the only obstacle of note being a fallen tree, which we towed off the road. After this start, we were optimistic, but as the terrain became more mountainous, and the path more difficult to follow, we began to realise that we wouldn't make it that night. Every local villager we asked would say another 30 minutes (this continued for some hours). We eventually realised that there is no point asking for distance or time estimates.


We enlisted the help of a guide as the light started to fade, but unfortunately his 50kg rice sack proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Although in this case the camel is the land rover, and its back a shock absorber. The loud pop as it blew a cupful of high pressure oil out of its seal sent us all into our thoughts. We had to chuck out the guide and go back to our somewhat blind attempts to make it to the Lake. Eventually we gave up and camped at the house of a what appeared to be an 18 year old with 2 wives and about 8 children. An odd experience for all involved.

On the second day, the terrain became a lot more difficult, we crossed several streams which have evidently seen no vehicle traffic for a long time. The land rover was constantly bashed by branches and scraped by thorn bush. We had to use our shovel to make one of the dry stream beds passable, even then, it took 5 people to help push the landy up - I would guess the slope was about 45 degree.



So was it worth it? Since it's Alex writing this blog, I have to say yes, because I loved the challenging driving, and it was amazing to see what a 4x4 is capable of traversing. When we finally arrived at the park, the slightly surprised park manager said that since he had worked at the park, only 5 tourists had arrived by vehicle. "That makes us numbers 6, 7 and 8 then?" asked Kathy, "No. 3, 4 and 5" came the reply. The real treat, of course, was to track the chimpanzees in the forest the next day. We spent about an hour walking to find the group of habituated chimps - the trackers go out early in the morning to locate them. Once we found them, we weren't sure what to expect, perhaps watching from a distance, a photo here or there, but what happened was a surprise to all of use. For about an hour, a group of between 5 and 15 chimps played around, even showing off at times! It was amazing to be right in the middle of these animals as they fought, swung in the trees, groomed and ate. As we were about to move off, our hour complete, one of the chimps found a machete that a tracker had absent mindedly dropped. The chimp kissed the cold blade and shouted to his family to come and see the strange object. It was amazing to watch - I thought back to the opening scene of Space 2001, when the apes create fire and find the first monolith. The chimps all gathered around and cautiously touched the knife and recoiled back in shock.

After we left the park, we decided to split into two groups - Nico and I would get the Land Rover back across the 150kms of track and then onto the city of Kigoma, about 300kms north on the lake. Kathy would take the local boat taxi straight to Kigoma, saving 2 days (we thought) to try and source a new shock absorber and find a mechanic. It was an extremely hair brained scheme, hatched whilst on a (fruitless) chimp trek on our final morning in the park. Within 2 hours of planning it, before any of us really registered what was happening, Kathy was being transferred mid lake from our tiny speedboat into the lake taxi! We waved goodbye, and I wandered how her journey would be. As it turned out, her boat would take 24 hours to reach Kigoma. That's 24 hours on a tiny 40ft wooden boat completely overloaded with rice, maize and 300 people. No toilet, no food and a litre of water. Kathy, I'm not sure how you did it, but my hat is still off.


The rest of the trip through Tanzania was enjoyable, but hard work. Nico and Kathy got to chat away in Swahili once again after 4 years away from Tanzania, and met up with an old friend from times gone by (below at our 5am start...), and I was introduced to the joy of the "egg chop", a kind of reverse scotch egg. We have decided to take things a bit easier in Rwanda....

Malawi

20^th August – 1^st September

by Kathy

Funny, it’s those things that make life a little hard working in Malawi that makes it such a wonderful country to travel in. It no longer really does matter if we arrive tomorrow, or if certain planned events fail to take place, or if the smiles only last a day or two. It also, slightly cynically, doesn’t matter what people really do think of 3 strange white tourists in a flash car perhaps with more gadgets than sense, as Malawians are remarkably good at hiding their true sentiments, more so than anywhere else I’ve been in Africa. Again, tough for consensus building in an office situation, bleeding marvellous for tourists. When you’re a tourist you get the best of Malawi, because the welcome is always incredible in the warm heart of Africa where you are greeted and aided with such enthusiasm and generosity of spirit.

It wasn’t long before this warmth enveloped us once more when we were relaxed enough to let it. It had been a hard last few weeks! Some furtive last minute shopping in crazy overland shopping emporiums in South Africa for gadgetry I never knew existed was proceeded by a tough 28 hour bus trip back to Malawi. There is probably enough material from this bus trip from hell for another blog, but the long of the short of it was that Alex and I ended up exhausted, with less luggage than when we departed and some freaky flu cold virus thing that ensured we were bed-ridden for 4 days.

I probably won’t dwell on how we managed to pack up a house, leave a job, hand over a project and pack and customise an ageing Landi but we did, in 5 days rather than 10. Our departure date wasn’t really up for debate either as Nico was flying into Lilongwe on the 29^th August. However, luck seemed to be on our side in the end as everything came together. We packed up the house and sold or transferred our furniture. The Landi got some major surgery with a new clutch, turbo, injectors, bushes, fan belt and spotlights. Shelves were fitted, windows tinted, burglar bars and locks installed. Alex did a crash Landi mechanics course to boot. Then as our departure date arrived without us even really realising it was time for farewells to our work colleagues and friends.
Alex gives the windows the
presidential look

Farewell to Mulanje District Education Office

Painting roof with 'flu

The sense of freedom as we left was fantastic. We drove out of Mulanje on Monday 25^th August with renewed appreciation for the beautiful place that we had called home for 20 months, thegood friends we had made and we were not without feelings of achievement and satisfaction. Then we hit the beach.

Mount Mulanje as we left

First stop was Domwe Island, off Cape Maclear on the southern part of the lake. The islands here were a firm favourite destination and Domwe, the cheaper ‘self-catering’ option, is really a little piece of paradise where you camp overlooking the lake, drinking cold beer whilst the lodge staff go about organising fresh fish for your dinner. Alex and I sat and reflected over the last couple of years and it really began to hit home that a new chapter was beginning.

Sunset from Domwe Island

3 days later we were in Lilongwe welcoming Nico to the first leg of the trip. Nico really helped us push the envelope socially, coaching us to stay up past 9pm through his injection of now legendary wit and banter. More days unwinding by the beach at Chinteche and Usisye (which gave the Landi a taste of what was to come) and it was finally virgin territory for all of us.

Nico nails kayaking, Usisye

Our main stop in our first foray into northern Malawi was Livingstonia, famed missionary established in the 19^th century. Turns out Livingstone wasn’t even there for very long, it was some blokey called Dr Lawes who did all the groundwork, but Livingstone still managed to get his name on it for basically passing through. You might as well rename Glasgow Prestwick ‘Elvis International Airport’ while you are at it. In any case, Livingstonia was a beautiful, chilled stop with breathtaking views to wake up to. But by this time we were all a little restless given the prospect of what was to come. Tanzania ‘off the beaten track’. Sounds awesome, right?

Livingstonia Falls