We applied for our India visas in Istanbul and found ourselves with five days to kill before we had to return to Istanbul to collect them. Not wanting to go too far without our passports we opted to take a look at Turkey’s largest island, Gokceada (pronounced – we think – as ger-chee-ah-da. There are many unusual characters in Turkish script which I’m not bothering to use in this blog. I’ll give a pronunciation guide where needed so that you can chant along). Most of the islands off the coast of Turkey belong to Greece (it’s a long story), but the description of Gokceada intrigued us enough to make the trip.
We got the bus to Eceabat (pronounced with a soft ‘c’ that sounds more like a ‘j’. It’s definitely not pronounced as ‘itchy-butt’) but I’ll cover this town in more detail when I describe our Anzac jaunt which was based from the same town. We jumped on a ferry and headed across the water, the Gallipoli peninsular at our back as the jagged island of Gokceada loomed into view. Little did we know what lay in wait for us.
We were visiting in early spring which meant warm days but freezing nights. Tourists are not common on Gokceada before summer starts so we had a uniquely local experience. Luckily there were a few hotels open in the largest town on the island. Our first choice of hotel had the most uncomfortable beds of our trip so far, with hard springs poking out from every angle. We covered it with a blanket and made do. The heating didn’t come on until later in the evening so we huddled down after dinner. The price tag of $25 was the only thing warming my heart.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Gokceada is a small, rocky, hilly, windswept island covered in olive groves and cypress trees, goats, sheep, the military and a scattering of villages. The locals are lovely and the scenery is starkly beautiful with sparkling blue water, grey-green foliage and impressive hills. We were warmly greeted everywhere and had great home cooking at the restaurants. Our only bad experience was lunch on the first day when we visited the even smaller town on the coast called Kalekoy where we were the only diners. The owner sat us at a table outside in the sun and offered the local catch of the day, plonking a basket of fresh bread and salad down and making us feel right at home. We had a very enjoyable fish lunch with two cats looking wistfully on. But we had to remind ourselves when the bill arrived to always check on the price if there is no menu. The two fish cost us almost double other expensive meals we’ve had in Turkey, but to put that in context it was about $50 so we can’t grumble too much. The small town had a large breakwater, lighthouse, a lonely empty resort facing a rocky beach and a military base.
The new shoes I had bought in Dubai were aggravating my heels, causing me to hobble around after lunch as we explored the ruin hiding on the cliffs above town. There was no-one else there and it felt lovely to be buffeted by the wind in such a remote location above the sparkling Aegean sea. There are ruins lying all over the place in Turkey, so much so that they often don’t get any special attention. This ruined castle was in an amazing location but hidden behind small hotels and houses so that we struggled to find a way to reach it, which only added to its allure.
At dinner back in town it felt like we were the most exciting thing to happen in town since winter had ended. A German/Turkish man talked to us for a while about his work prospects and travelling, then two young local girls came in and wanted to practice their English. Unfortunately their English didn’t seem all that much better than our Turkish and after a very stilted conversation they blushed and shuffled off. Dinner was a beautiful chicken doner in a big slab of bread washed down with Ayran, the salty yoghurt drink that the Turks love so much. Back at the hotel we survived the night and moved in the morning to a marginally more expensive but much more comfortable hotel, which was lucky as we had quite a day ahead of us.
Sarah started her bread jihad in Turkey. With every meal in Turkey you get a basket of usually excellent and fresh bread to nibble on. It doesn’t matter what you order, you get about a loaf of bread to go with it, morning, lunch and evening. As everyone knows, men compulsively eat whatever is put in front of them and Sarah began to be justifiably concerned that I would become part loaf. My bread intake was curtailed to just two meals a day. So on this morning in Gokceada we swore off the bread for a change and ended up missing breakfast in our change of hotels. Instead we just had a banana and an orange and went looking for a bike to rent and cycle around the place, bypassing the restrictive nature of my sore heel.
We found a guy willing to lend us some bikes in exchange for money. We paid the equivalent of $5 to rent two bikes for the whole day. That price matched the quality of the bikes. We had a sore ass from the terrible seats within minutes and changing gears was always an adventure. No matter, we ploughed on with an adventurous spirit into the heart of the island to a semi-deserted Greek village called Tepekoy. When the locals told us that Gokceada was hilly they weren’t kidding. We slogged the bikes up a long hill before espying the village we were trying to reach perched halfway up a significant mountain. We had our rain jackets on to keep out the drizzle and wind as we half cycled, half walked up the hill. The village was atmospheric. Abandoned houses nestled against more modern constructions but there was no-one around but a few sheep. We saw one or two cars parked in their driveways, one woman who popped out her door and back in again, and a construction crew of four men was in the main square. This place really closed down in the off season. There were no food vendors or shops so we were forced to lunch on the eight dried apricots that happened to be in our bag. We ate them out the front of the cemetery. There was not a soul around.
More sensible travellers would have called it a day after expending a lot of energy over the previous few hours without much food, no supplies remaining and inclement weather closing in. Not us. We had planned to cycle to the coast and dammit, that’s what we were going to do. Getting back down from the village was a much simpler proposition with the aid of gravity but the bigger trials lay ahead. The road to the coast was even hillier than the route we had just taken. We started walking up most of the hills, along the switchbacks and past the rocky hills. Goats and sheep scrambled along their little paths as the occasional rain drop fell. The scenery had a rugged beauty made all the more stunning in its remoteness. We got on a downhill slope and had the entire road to roll down until we reached the bleak sea with just a lonely military outpost for company. The sentry seemed to look suspiciously at us as we cycled passed. What other reason could we have for being there other than being spies? He must have been warm in his pillbox because he didn’t come out to bother us as we cycled up the hill along the coast. Despite the grey weather the hills popped with colour as the wildflowers sprang into life. The red poppies which are so famous from Gallipoli are found everywhere in Turkey and are unnaturally beautiful in their brightness.
By judging the distance on the pathetic Lonely Planet map it looked like we had about 12 kilometres to ride along the coast then another 10km inland back to our hotel. Sounds easy enough but it was a constant up and down along the coast. Our bums had long since broken the pain barrier, Sarah had stuffed her scarf in her trousers to try to buffer the slate-like seat, but the lack of food was starting to catch up with us. To add pain to misery Sarah’s back started playing up. She lay on the road to ease it momentarily and then we struggled on.
By the road markers giving the distance I figured out that it was actually more like 16km to the empty and barren holiday resort on the coast which marked the point at which we would turn inland. Gokceada’s best beach didn’t look like much by Australian standards, but maybe judging it in the summer with a full stomach would lead to a more impartial review. The route inland from the coast was barbaric, basically one hugely steep and long hill which by this stage we were lucky to be able to walk up, the bikes acting like anchors. The clouds came lower, the rain increased, as did the traffic. Despite everyone being friendly and hospitable no-one offered us a lift. At this point Sarah wanted to strap a sheep to her saddle for warmth and comfort. I was hoping to lassoo a couple for a helter skelter ride back to town. Sarah fantasised about catching a goat and sucking the milk straight from its udder, she was so hungry and thirsty. It didn’t come to that, although it would have offered some interesting photos. We staggered around the last few corners then coasted downhill into town, limbs tingling with pins and needles from fatigue, hands freezing in the advancing evening air. When we reached the first grocery store we wolfed down chocolate and chips then hit our favourite restaurant for some life sustaining home cooking. My mouth stung from the sour cherry juice which is probably some kind of sign of early malnourishment or my body consuming itself for energy. We wearily climbed up the stairs to our warm and comfortable hotel room where we gratefully slipped into slumber.
The next morning we simply spent sitting in the sun before catching the local minibus (dolmus) to the ferry and moving on to Cannakkale across the Dardanelles in a different ferry, all efficiently linked together in typical Turkish style.
The denizens of Istanbul call it the capital of the world and for once the hyperbole doesn’t seem out of place. Famously straddling Europe and Asia, divided by the Bosphorus strait which links the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, the city previously known as Byzantinium and Constantinople has captured the imagination of travellers and conquerors for centuries, so what chance did we mere mortals have against its charms?
Even the view from the airport bus to Taksim Square in the crisp early evening, as we crawled through the terrible traffic, was spectacular. We passed the ruins of city walls and crossed over what we later learned was the Golden Horn, a smaller offshoot of the Bosphorus, from which the many mosque minarets lit the darkness and boats plied their trade under the bridge. We wound our way uphill and were ejected into the bright lights of Istanbul from where it was a short walk to the most modern accommodation we had stayed in for months. A small, perfectly formed apartment on a quiet street in the heart of the action. A delicious Korean meal later (for a change of cuisine – another benefit of large, multicultural cities) and we were blissfully ensconced in a sleep that not even the faint morning call to prayer in this secular Islamic country disturbed.
Istanbul has a cornucopia of activities. We could not hope to see everything but even just experiencing the place as you wander around has a pleasure to it. We walked up and down Istiklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue), the pedestrian heart of Istanbul, too many times to count, seeing new things each time as we walked downhill from Taksim Square to the Golden Horn and Galata bridge. Even without planning it we were drawn in by the Galata tower, an impressively old looking structure which gives panoramic views of this mighty city. Being up there at sunset, peak viewing time, we battled the crowds on the thin balcony, many of whom frustratingly rotated around the tower in the opposite direction to everyone else, causing people to be pinned against the stone as everyone squeezed past each other with shuffling steps. It was worth the hassle.
Down at ground level we popped into a fish restaurant and had freshly grilled local fish, served in a simple way with a hunk of lemon, a few sprigs of rocket and a generous slice of radish. A street cat had an ongoing battle with the wait staff. It would sidle up to our table and ingratiate itself against our legs until spotted, at which time it was chased off with accompanying water splashed in its direction from a bottle wielded by a long suffering waiter. The skirmishes continued throughout the meal We ate one of the rare hot Turkish desserts in this restaurant, hot fruit halva. Once we ordered it we had to wait an age for it to arrive, no doubt in large part because the cook had to go off to a nearby market to buy some apples. In the end it was worth the wait, grated apples and the ubiquitous, delicious halva, freshly baked in foil, which we ate while facing the street in the gathering chill of the night.
Accompanying the street cats of Istanbul are the lethargic street dogs who can be seen sleeping in all sorts of odd places. Evidently not much has changed since Mark Twain’s day, as on his visit to Constantinople in the 1860s he describes almost exactly the same behaviour, writing that he witnessed three dogs lying end to end across a street barely raise an eyebrow as a herd of sheep were driven over them. The only difference seems to be that animals are treated much more kindly in modern day Istanbul with lots of snacks being left out for them to nibble on as they pass their day.
One of the many pleasures in Istanbul is being on the water. As a city divided by waterways there are an abundance of ferry options to choose from. First we took the shorter Golden Horn ferry trip to get a taste of Istanbul from water level. The Golden Horn heads up into and splits the European side of Istanbul. The public ferry meanders its way along a series of stops. It would be faster to cycle but that would be missing the point. On board the ferry a steward bustles around delivering people their much needed small glass cups filled with black tea. Despite the strong reputation of Turkish coffee it is tea (or cay in the local language, pronounced chai) which is the universal drink here, being offered to all guests at all hours and consumed in great quantities. It was a sparkling spring day and we disembarked at the last stop for a quick look at the Eyup Sultan Mosque, crowded with weekend worshippers, before walking uphill through the cemetery and the gorgeous early spring blossoms to a famous lookout where we had a drink at the local cafe, served by a wonderfully inattentive and brusque waiter. The Turkish mentality swings more to the melancholy end of the spectrum which suits me just fine.
Along with the ubiquitous tea Turks are addicted to many forms of sweets. When they are not sucking on a cube of sugar as they drink their tea they will eat from an impressive range of desserts which Sarah and I happily succumbed to. On a rainy afternoon we stumbled into a cafe in Sultanahmet, lured in by their sumptuous window display of puddings – panna cotta-like creations, silky smooth with jellies on top. There was chocolate pudding with a raspberry covering, pistachio pudding with a vanilla jelly, lemon pudding, cherry pudding, the menu was deliriously exciting. You can add to this cornucopia baklava in all shapes, flavours and sizes; turkish delight (or ‘lokum’) in many flavours, often studded with walnuts, pistachio or other nuts; and sutlac, an oven-baked rice pudding which much to my disappointment was always served cold, even in the chilliest climates, but always made in exactly the same way across the country.
The Sultanahmet district, across the Galata bridge from where we were staying in Taksim Square, has a jaw-dropping array of tourist attractions, although to call them that diminishes their wonder. Within shouting distance of each other are the Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sofia was constructed during Emperor Justinian’s reign when the Byzantine empire was keeping the Roman spirit alive, albeit in Christian and Greek-speaking form. It is an incredible building which rivals St Peter’s Basilica in scale. It is made no less interesting by the massive Arabic calligraphy which hang from its walls, a remnant of efforts to turn this Christian space into a mosque after Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453. It takes little imagination to paint this place with its original decorations. Faded as they are enough of the original painting and mosaics remain to feed the senses.
Just a short stroll away is the Blue Mosque (which is not particularly blue on the outside but named after the blue tiles used inside), designed to compete with the Haga Sofia and reassure the faithful in their choice of religion, while restoring Islam to the pre-eminent position in the religious magnificence stakes. From the exterior it succeeds wonderfully at this, its high minarets framed against the blue sky and the waters of the Bosphorus in the background. Inside the mosque is, like many others, elegant and restrained geometric decoration, but unfortunately its grand space is cluttered by the numerous wires hanging from the ceiling which support lighting rigs for the chandeliers – making it feel a little as though people are attending a concert rather than quiet contemplation with their god.
To keep the religious theme going we attended a high-brow whirling dervish performance in a domed building called the Galata Mevlevihanesi which is no doubt vintage construction. The musicians were seated upstairs almost hidden from view and are obviously not the focus of attention. The performance begins with a lone male singer, much like the call to prayer. He is slowly joined by a lute-like instrument as the dervishes, gowned in white and capped with a tall fez, line up to be blessed by their master before beginning their slow twirling, arms extended and face calmly contemplative. How they can spin for so long with their eyes closed and face tilted upwards is a mystery to me. One of the dervishes looked a bit like I would feel doing that much spinning but his green, sweaty face was the exception. The dervishes belong to the Sufi branch of Islam and try to reach religious ecstasy. They believe they are joining the essential state of the universe through their rotation. Mark Twain also talks of seeing the ritual performed and sick children being taken up to the master for a blessing. The dervish sects were stripped of power by Ataturk (more on this impressive figure later) when Turkey was being formed into an independent nation from the ashes of the Ottoman empire in the 1920s and ’30s. The fez was also banned from daily life then and the dervishes only allowed to exist in a ceremonial role with no real power, and this is how they remain today, a novelty from a previous age. However, this was by no means purely touristic – the Mevlevi house is one of the few places in Istanbul which allow tourists to observe their spiritual ritual being practised as it was centuries ago.
For some people coming on a trip through Western Europe, Istanbul is probably where everything starts to feel a little more exotic and foreign. For us, after three months in Africa, Istanbul felt like coming home. Even the mosques and the call to prayer were familiar after our time in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Everything felt ultra modern and efficient but with a strong European feel. It boded well for the rest of our time in Turkey which everyone who has ever visited seems to universally praise.
Going from Africa to Dubai is the travel equivalent of bingeing on a big bag of lollies and feeling slightly queasy afterwards. The taxis are brand new and have meters! We got a special pink roofed taxi from the airport signifying a female driver. The lights of a modern city are dazzling, you can easily get lost in the malls and it feels like almost any experience is for sale. That this has been built out of the sand using oil money doesn’t appear to worry anyone, least of all the numerous ferrari, porsche and hummer owners.
We were staying with the very gracious Saskia, a friend from Sydney who lives in Dubai working for Emirates and her flatmates Sian and Vanessa who kindly got me drunk on arrival with the nicest wine I’d had in months. The Emirates employee accommodation is not too shabby. Just the lounge room of her apartment is three times the size of most of the hotel rooms we have been staying in. We sank into a climate controlled stupor in a very comfortable bed.
The following day it was off to the brand-spanking new Dubai mall. This is the top activity in Dubai and they have made it a super-sized experience. Inside the mall is a two-storey fish tank with the largest single piece of polymer sheet (or something like that) in the world. UAE denizens seem very keen to rack up as many world records as possible, I guess to assuage their inferiority complex at being so new at this mega-city lark. It seems similar to Australians being so obsessed with doing well on the world’s sporting stage. There is also a three storey high indoor waterfall complete with sculptures of diving humans, a large internal ice rink and, outside, a huge fountain complex which ejaculates at set intervals with a dazzling light and sound display. And not to forget attached to the mall is the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. We went up it one evening for a dusty view of the landscape. While not as exhilarating as standing on the glass floor in the CN tower in Toronto, it gives a good overview of the extent to which Dubai has expanded across the desert. The building had to be bailed out by Abu Dhabi in the end. Being constructed during the Global Financial Crisis wasn’t good for its prospects and even now it has a very low occupancy rate, not hard to believe given the overwhelming number of skyscrapers to choose from in the city, as though an architecture student’s wet dream has been sprinkled across the landscape.
We spent longer than is healthy in the mall – 8 hours – enjoying fine meals, replacing worn out shoes, cameras and pants, getting lost trying to find the exit. The taxi rank is quite an experience in itself. Leaving at 11::30pm on a Friday (the Islam holy day) we were confronted with a mammoth queue of people and an equally long one of taxis that were being slowly paired off. They have an odd system of two rows of taxis of which thirty at a time are filled by people trudging back down the centre of the cars past the taxi queue they were just lining up in. These thirty taxis are then sent off at a whistle from the attendants and another thirty are slowly filled. In the hour we were waiting in the queue we had figured out some efficiency improvements. The taxi drivers are almost all Bangladeshi, Indian or Pakistani. One that we talked to complained about the increasing cost of living in Dubai after 22 years there, and said that the rest of his family had returned home to Pakistan. He thought that his children would be educated and hopefully find jobs there. He was also enthusiastically listening to the cricket and extolling the virtues of tournaments played and nearby Sharjah.
Our time in the United Arab Emirates was not totally focussed on consumerist culture and we did make the two hour journey down to Abu Dhabi where the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is located. Ironically, this structure seems to reflect the excessive wealth in the UAE as much as the malls. It is an enormous building, built for about half a billion dollars (construction started in 1996) with opulence everywhere. The marble inlays depicting flowers on columns and the floor were designed by British artist Kevin Dean, the link with Islam being that heaven is described as being a garden, and then constructed using marble from almost everywhere in the world. The chandelier was the biggest in the world at the time of construction (it has since been pipped by an even bigger one in Doha). The carpet inside the mosque is the largest single piece of carpet in the world. The mosque can hold 40,000 worshippers and the call to prayer in Abu Dhabi is now solely conducted from this mosque and broadcast to all the other mosques in the area.
For such an expensive and big building it has an odd purpose, seeming to mainly cater to foreign tourists, a kind of Islamic outreach program where people from other countries are lured in by the bling and then given a gentle lecture on the benign and modern nature of Islam as practised in moderate countries and the overlap with other religions. Our guide was a young university student who could barely contain the words in her mouth, so excited was she to speak them. We asked about the way Muslims pray and dress. When praying Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder to express their commonality. While praying five times a day is ideal (it’s a quick five minute prayer) it is not compulsory if you have another very important activity underway, such as conducting open-heart surgery. In between praying time Muslims will often invoke the name of god 99 times, counting three sets on their prayer beads. We asked about the way Muslims pray and dress. When praying Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder to express their commonality. While praying five times a day is ideal (it’s a quick five minute prayer) it is not compulsory, especially if you have another very important activity underway, such as conducting open-heart surgery. In between praying time Muslims will often invoke the name of god 99 times, counting three sets on their prayer beads. There are 100 names of god but the last is unknowable. As an atheist I always feel like an intruder in these places, especially when Western people say “Well we all believe in God, don’t we?”. Religion and religious people are not all good or all bad, so long as they don’t push their dogma on us non-believers.
Abu Dhabi seemed a bit less excessive and less higgledy piggledy in layout than Dubai to us, but we’re basing this on a short day trip there so we can’t give the place a thorough analysis.
Back in Dubai the travel chores continued and we fairly wore ourselves out with running around doing little things. In fact Sarah got so absent-minded that on going out to the local shops she forgot that she had shoved a pair of undies in the back pocket of her jeans when sorting through the laundry, and these were now flapping about on display and spoiling her otherwise carefully chosen conservative attire. She got a few strange looks.
Dubai is the designed to attract foreign workers. The tour guide at the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi admitted as much, saying that the United Arab Emirates needs foreign expertise because they are such a young country (in some senses). Only 17% of the country are Emirati with almost half of the population originating from the sub-continent. In what can be a harsh desert environment small extravagant touches can make all the difference, such as air-conditioned bus shelters and the soft rubber running track along the beach and ultra-modern exercise equipment. Perhaps partly it’s just because everything is so new, and energy is valued so cheaply here. It would be interesting to revisit when the varnish wears off.
I’ll start with Dar es Salaam at the beginning of the end. We had been going through Dar regularly as we came and went from different parts of Tanzania. We were flying out of Dar from the underwhelming airport but first we had to trek all the way back across the country from the Southern Highlands. We decided to do it all in one horror stretch, a twelve hour bus journey. With Felix guiding us we got a ticket on the second-most luxurious bus company in Tanzania (the most luxurious was sold out). Getting on the bus in the pre-dawn was like boarding the Starship Enterprise with all the blue LED strip lighting.
The seats were certainly the most comfortable we’d had in Africa which was a bonus because we broke down about an hour out of town. At first we thought it was just a toilet stop. In Africa the bus generally just pulls over in the bush and everyone piles off to have a slash (women included) but this time when everyone got back on, the bus wasn’t going anywhere. This isn’t what you want at the start of a twelve hour journey. We lost about an hour there and I still have no idea why. To add insult to injury the bus was playing back-to-back Westlife music videos. Soon after getting underway again we got stuck in a traffic jam. A truck had tipped off the road, blocking the lane in both directions and causing a snarl-back of mammoth proportions. Our bus reversed and fed everyone a free stale sponge cake and soda. After about 30 minutes we just bulldozed our way through one of the lanes, going off the road and tilting precariously. Once through the driver tried to make up for lost time by driving at a fast clip but the damage was done. We pulled into Dar at the 13.5 hour mark, at least thankful that Westlife didn’t make a comeback and we were instead subjected to quite entertaining local movies in Swahili, for once with English subtitles. The same obese lead actor wrote, starred in and directed two of the movies where he is the romantic lead. To be fair the ladies matched him for heft but he seemed an unlikely kind of guy to be caught in a love triangle. The movies all rambled on for hours only to resolve absurdly in the last thirty seconds. So despite the luxury furnishings, this bus trip sneaks into the top ten worst bus journeys of all time based on length and noise.
It was with tired relief that we bid farewell to our final bus journey in Africa. Convenient at times they were always uncomfortable and generally hot. The memory that sticks with me are the guys selling food who would swarm the sides of the bus whenever it pulled in to a town. They banged on the side and proffered drinks and biscuits through the windows. When Sarah bought a cob of corn that was impaled on a long stick and being thrust at her this way, other eagle-eyed vendors saw their opportunity and soon dozens of corn cobs were being shoved through the window like spears. Sarah had to throw the money for the corn out of the window, and over the top of this heaving mass, as the bus pulled away.
We stayed at Jambo Inn once again, a place we were loyal to far beyond the quality they offered, but it felt like returning home, and at least this time we got a room with an air-conditioner quieter that a 747 jet taking off. Twin single beds helped as well so that, rather than rolling into each other in the sunken middle half of a double bed, we slept blissfully apart under the cover of our mosquito nets.
Dar es Salaam doesn’t have a huge amount to recommend it as a city for tourists. We really enjoyed all the Indian food. There was a great little hole-in-the-wall place that did samosas and sweet potato balls with coconut chilli. There being no sights within Dar city to spend our final two days on, we took the ferry across the harbour to the beaches south of the city and had a perfect couple of days lounging by the beach at a cheap resort. Accommodation was a banda (straw hut) right next to the beach but we spend the rest of our time reading by the azure water. It never gets boring watching cattle being herded along the beach while Maasai sit and watch.
And just like that it was time to leave Africa, a continent with experiences like no other place. Equally amazing and frustrating, it was great fun to travel through but not comfortable and not a gourmet experience. We’ll miss the friendly people but life there is not always easy. People aren’t singing and dancing in the street but they are quick to strike up a conversation, laugh and see the humour in a hard situation. So long as some worm doesn’t burst out of my chest in three months’ time, that portion of our journey was wonderfully memorable
. It was sad to be leaving East Africa as we had just got a handle on a half dozen key words:
– Mambo or jambo (surely this is where the term mumbo jumbo comes from). Mambo is the cool greeting the kids use with possible replies of vipi, poa (I’m cool), safi (I’m fine). Jambo is used for older people and gets jambo replied. Up to the end we were still saying “Mambo!” when someone said it to us but I think this is like saying “How are you,” in response to being asked that question.
– Habari and nzuri are also a polite greeting and response coupling.
– Karibu: ‘welcome’, which was uttered by almost everyone we spoke with, to welcome us to Tanzania and/or their business, neighbourhood etc.
– Asante (sana): thank you (very much) – we used this a lot, particularly when we couldn’t remember please or excuse me until the last week (tafadali and nisamee respectively, if you’re wondering)
– Hamjambo / hatujambo: ‘how are you?’ and ‘we’re fine’ in the plural, said to and by a group of people. Sarah tried to remember these words by thinking ‘a group of people has ham sandwiches, and if they’re well, they’re wearing hats’.
– Nya nya – ‘tomato’. This word stuck in our head not because we were eating many, but because it sounds a little like Nelson’s catchcry on The Simpsons.
– Poa kichizi kama ndizi: ‘cool like a banana’ – this was taught to us by Juma, a young Maasai man working in the cultural tourism program we did at Longido and said it could be used in response to ‘mambo’. Sarah tried it out with a few groups of kids who seemed confused at first but then amused. It remains our favourite foreign phrase learned on the trip so far.
We were just starting to branch out into more advanced phrases when our time came to an end. Our scant Arabic knowledge will be of no use in Turkey as they speak Turkish which has some words from Arabic (including hello), but also words found in French and English. It’s back to the drawing board.
The journey from Arusha in the north of Tanzania to Mbeya in the south was a long one, spanning a few days, but without incident, which on African roads is a blessing. As the stork flies it would be simple, just head straight south. This being Africa there were complications. The road south from Arusha is passable to Dodoma (the capital of Tanzania) but from there on south the road gets worse and takes an extraordinary amount of time on what would be, without doubt, a terrible bus. Instead we took a nine hour bus to Morogoro, just southwest of Dar es Salaam and stayed overnight. There is beautiful mountain scenery in the area but not much to recommend the town. I ended up sleeping on the tile floor of the hotel with a pillow under my head and hips. It was quite comfortable and cool, certainly better than sharing the night with bed bugs. Even with my cotton sleeping sheet pulled up to my neck the little buggers started crawling on my face. This was after intense itching on my back woke me up. For some reason bed bugs love me while mosquitoes think that Sarah is the bees knees.
After a surprisingly decent night’s sleep on the floor, and a nap in the big vinyl armchair which was hogging space in the small room, we hopped on another bus for six hours to get to Iringa. The journey from Morogoro to Iringa is lovely. First you drive on the highway through Mikumi National Park where we once again saw herds of elephants, zebra and giraffe from the bus, always a nice way to start the day. The road then winds up through the Udzungwa mountains along the Lesser Ruaha river. As mountain scenery goes it’s the equal of anything we saw in Tanzania. You then get to a high plateau and drive through a large valley full of farms with dairy cattle or maize and humongous sunflowers. Iringa itself is found on an escarpment above this high plateau. After we disembarked the bus, we climbed even further to a lookout, a large rock in this rocky valley. Luckily we met a couple of American researchers who showed us the way; signs were in short supply. We almost got busted by security as we looked at the map on my phone in front of what turned out to be a government building. I make it a rule to comply with young men holding automatic weapons but when he asked for the phone to be passed through the high wire fence I baulked and just showed him the few photos on the phone from a distance. This satisfied him that we had not taken any photos of the quite pretty gardens and nondescript building so on we went to join the local stoners on top of lookout rock in taking in the fading light. Then we hightailed it out of there lest they were not so stoned that they couldn’t mount a mugging.
Sarah had heard from the Americans that they had seen vegemite for sale in one of the local stores. Driven by an overwhelming desire to have a breakfast that didn’t involve eggs she persuaded me to jump in a taxi, as the rain started falling, to head to this shop. It turned out to be marmite which, if you have ever tasted it, you will know is a poor substitute. Still, it’s being carried around in our bags and does add some variety to what was an egg overdose.
We had a day off from travelling the highways and spent part of it crammed into the fullest dalla dalla yet. It was as though they were trying to break the world record for most number of people in a minivan. Sarah was sitting on my lap with her head in a standing man’s armpit, another man was falling asleep on her other arm which held onto the window frame for balance, while I was pinioned by about six local women in the three seats allocated to us. Needless to say, neither of us had any room to move. It was agony and the longest 20km of the trip so far, but only cost us $1. We were putting ourselves through this ordeal to get to the Iringa stone age site. This part of the world has the oldest known traces of humans so its no surprise that walking off the highway through the sunflowers led us to a small valley chock-full of stone age tools. In fact there are so many that the national park people have built a little open-air shed and just piled all the rock tools in here.
Nearby is an impressive natural structure a little like the Twelve Apostles in Australia, rock pillars formed by erosion over the centuries. They were quite impressive to wander through.
The next bus, a six hour journey from Iringa to Mbeya, won the competition for the hardest seats so far. They felt harder than a wooden bench and by the time our numbed bums had arrived in town we were over the whole bus experience. The touts didn’t find us in the best humour but a young man called ‘James Bond’ still insisted on joining us for the short taxi ride to the hotel of our choice. We demurred when pressed for firm plans and escaped to lunch, a very ordinary meal at a hotel which must have done a fact-finding trip to Cuba for hospitality pointers.
We put all this behind us the next day when we met Felix, the 30-year-old running Sisi Kwa Sisi (Us For Us), the cultural community tourism organisation recommendation for the area. As the farmers were busy farming at that time of year, a farm stay wasn’t an option but we booked in three days doing various different walks, the first starting straight away by walking up Loleza Mountain, the pretty peak behind town. We soon got great views of Mbeya below, a sprawling town of nearly half a million people at a pleasant altitude of 1700 metres. After being baked on the bus it was nice to stretch the legs in a temperate climate, even if it was another insanely steep climb.
Felix is an interesting character: an atheist (very rare in Tanzania), BBC World Service addict, small business owner and very reflective. It was an interesting exchange of ideas that we shared while walking. He would give a sing-song “o-kay” when he found a point interesting. We learned that it is a compliment to be called fat in Tanzania, something Sarah assured him that she would not take the same way. We talked about politics in Australia and Tanzania, and how young people see the future of our nations. We also learned that Felix hates sushi. His one and only trip overseas was for tourism training in Japan which was a real eye opener, all the way from the Emirates flight to the highly technological nature of Japanese society. Felix’s breakfast most days is ugali. In fact, that is his favourite food, especially with fresh yoghurt.
When Sarah asked Felix whether he was married he replied that he had two wives already and that a third woman was in love with him. When Sarah asked him was it not expensive to have multiple wives Felix said, no, he just puts them to work in the field. He was joking of course but it took a while to figure out while we were busy being culturally sensitive. Felix did say that getting married involved the whole family. If you were thinking about marrying someone they had to be introduced to the family. If anyone had a problem with the potential partner then often it’s all off. This is not a cast-iron rule, but it makes sense in a place where the social safety net is your extended family rather than the government. This makes the whole process complicated and time-consuming. On women in Tanzania he said that women have only recently started driving cars and wearing pants, literally. He saw this as a good thing, but that gender role change requires both men and women to be involved – he had never heard of a husband doing the cooking but noted that if a man heads into the kitchen in Tanzania, the wife usually herds him out saying this is her space.
The views from the top of the mountain were fantastic. We had a view of all the farms dotted through the valleys. Part of the money going to Sisi Kwa Sisi for the tour support a community farm that he co-owns. It’s certainly a fertile part of the world.
The next day we jumped in a 4WD before the sun had woken and drove for a good few hours over hilly and rough dirt roads. The reason for doing this was to get to Kitulo National Park, the newest in Tanzania. The attraction is not animals for once, but orchids. The park is a high alpine meadow, higher than the highest point in Australia but looking a little like Thredbo with grassy alpine hills, not the kind of place you expect to find in Africa when you are raised on images of lions in the savannah. Sadly the National Parks people evicted farmers to create this new park and went so far as burning down their houses in night-time raids. You can still see where the vegetation is regrowing from former agricultural land. The Parks people are not too popular here. They swan around in big cars, are on big salaries and sound a bit arrogant.
In typical African style we had an excess of driving to get everything organised. As this is a new park they are still building the headquarters. We drove past the very nice half-finished buildings and on to the town 45 minutes down the hill to fill in our paperwork for the visit, pay the entrance fee (US dollars only) and pick up the mandatory guide, meaning that we had our guide, the park’s guide and the driver in the car. At the end of the day we had to drive back to the village to drop the driver off then retrace our steps over the same terrible road once again for the four hour trip home. Not the smoothest experience but there was some stunning scenery on the way.
I discovered the macro setting on our camera which happily worked a lot better than trying to zoom in on animals in the distance. There were orchids flourishing everywhere and our guide was always ready with the Latin name, in between incessent off-key whistling. He started quizzing us after a while about what we thought the scientific name of a flower might be. I think we disappointed him. He showed us a flower that he said looked like Sarah’s hair. “You mean red?” Sarah said. He looked confused and showed us a photo from his orchid book. Here is the flower in the wild. Sarah did not take it as a compliment.
We went for a short walk down to a waterfall and the viewing platform in a cave behind the cascade. It really is a lovely area and would be a great place to camp for a few days in the dry season. As it was we just escaped the afternoon thunderstorm and crawled our way along the grassy track in a car constantly misting up. I wiped the inside of the windscreen clean for the driver as we bounced along. The rains cleared as we descended through the small villages perched in this incredible landscape. The sun came out and everything looked fresh and new (apart from the road which just looked muddy). As we drove back on the highway towards Mbeya I spotted a woman hoeing a field with a baby strapped to her back. I’m not sure the tourism money is trickling down very far.
The following day we did our final walk with Felix, this time to a crater lake. On the highway to the walk, which heads towards Malawi, Felix told us that an oil tanker had crashed here a few years ago. People came from everywhere to take some free oil but one guy was smoking and the whole thing exploded. There is a memorial there now for the dozens of people who were killed. The walk to the crater lake goes up through jungle with huge wild banana palms and vines. The variety of landscapes in this small area is amazing. Thankfully this was a shorter walk and not as steep so we cruised up to view the lake where a serpent spirit is rumoured to reside.
The Southern Highlands of Tanzania were lush, verdant and picturesque, and our loquacious and thoughtful guide Felix really added to our experience. It’s not on many itineraries and doesn’t spring to mind when one thinks of Africa, but we found it to be a gem we were happy to have discovered.
It’s what you’ve all been waiting for, over 700 photos and video of Tanzania, carefully groomed to weed out the blurred and dull. There are some hidden gems in here but I understand if you don’t have time. Dive in when you have a spare moment.
Even in Arusha Mount Kilimanjaro lurks just over the horizon, the highest mountain in Africa lurching from the flat plains that surround it. Its image is emblazoned everywhere, from water bottles to the local beer and shop signs. We were lucky not to be climbing it. If Sarah had not succumbed to the high altitude of Mexico City we would have been making a very expensive attempt on Kili. Thankfully we were spared from the ordeal of discovering Sarah’s inclination to very bad altitude sickness three quarters of the way up the mountain. Sarah also hates being cold which is the other defining characteristic of climbing Kili.
Instead Sarah’s desire manifested as a burning need to get a good hard look at Kilimanjaro and preferably a photo with a large African mammal standing in front of it. We were quoted exorbitant prices by the safari companies to drive in the area but we eventually stumbled across a community tourism venture based in Longido which offered a walking tour to the top of Mount Longido, 80 kilometres north of Arusha, which claimed good views of Kilimanjaro. Ironically we got better views of the mountain from the bus when we eventually left Northern Tanzania, but the climb up Mount Longido was a great adventure in itself.
We caught a shared taxi up to Longido. The road to Longido is new. As with much of Africa the road build is being supervised by Chinese workers. The road is good because it continues up into Kenya and Nairobi so is one of the main road links north. Strictly speaking, a good road here is smooth single-lane tarmac and only one or two detours off into the dirt as they do maintenance. On the trip we met Alias, an elder of the Maasai in the area who had visited Canada as a representative of his people to a conference during a harsh Canadian winter. He now has a guesthouse and a few cattle on a small bit of land. Despite wearing Western clothes he sees himself as still firmly of the Maasai culture. He takes the best from both worlds as he sees it.
Sarah visited a Maasai boma that afternoon, which is a traditional Maasai compound of mud houses, thorn bush fence, goat and cattle property and all. The girls there grilled her (through her interpreting male guide) about being a Mzungu, the Swahili term for a white person. The girls thought that mzungus carried babies for 10 months and that it didn’t hurt when they give birth because they have medicine. It would definitely hurt a lot less that giving birth as a Maasai woman where (according to what was shared with Sarah) female circumcision is still practiced and girls are married as young as 10 or 11. The men don’t get married until they have retired from being a warrior, some time in their thirties or forties. The men are allowed multiple wives but it was revealed in the boma that the wives often have ‘friends’ which they see behind the husband’s back. The girls asked Sarah if she had any friends and giggled like crazy when she said that she did.
We climbed Mount Longido the next day with our Maasai guide called Alisha. While no doubt a lot easier to climb than Kilimanjaro, it’s a lot steeper. You trade long drawn-out pain for short and intense pain. At 2690 metres high you climb 1400 metres from the base and go through several climactic zones. Near the base the dirt is dry and rocky, studded with thorn bushes which kept trying to steal my hat. Alisha made us some walking sticks by chopping down a couple of acacia tree branches with his machete, scraping the thorns off and whittling the end to a spike. This was our main defence if we stumbled across a startled animal such as bush pigs or buffaloes. Giraffes and elephants are not unknown in this area either but more commonly in the dry season when they climb the slopes in search of food. Alisha had a traditional Maasai spear as well which would give a buffalo something to think about at least. We saw fresh bush pig poo and older poo from a young elephant, but no large animals. On the way down the mountain Sarah was convinced that she saw a lion but Alisha was convinced it was a baboon. Either way, we weren’t eaten.
The dry savannah gives way to sub-tropical forest once you have climbed up agonisingly steep paths. The route up the mountain just went straight up the steep side and kept going. I was sweating like a bush pig in no time with a rasping breath to match. I don’t think Alisha sweated at all which made his claim not to need any water seem more plausible. He did have a mango juice at the top of the mountain but otherwise I guess he survives on the typical Maasai diet of tea as well as fresh cow blood.
Before we climb any further up the mountain I have to go into the bags. Sarah has a bag fetish, not for expensive designer handbags, but for culturally interesting bags that will match or contrast with her clothes. There is a cupboard back home stuffed with bags and new ones attach themselves to us as we travel. So when Sarah said she needed to buy a backpack to walk up the mountain I was skeptical. “You don’t need another bag for just one day!” We agreed that we would just use my backpack but when it came time to get walking we found that the bag was stuffed and we still had a couple of big bottles of water to carry. Sarah carried them in her hands until we got into the forest then came up with the very African solution of strapping the bottles to her back with a kanga cloth as though they were African babies. I like to pretend that the bag I was carrying was the reason I was sweating and panting so much more than our guide but I suspect that is delusional.
Whenever we came to a column of ants busily crossing the path the guide would tell us to carefully step over them lest they climb up our legs and make a nuisance of themselves. At one point while crossing ants Alisha took off at a fast clip up the hill and told us to run. Sarah misunderstood him and thought that he was saying that the ants were running. He looked back in disbelief as Sarah bent down to take another look at the ants. He yelled again “Run!” I was beyond running by this stage but we got over the ants in a faster walk at least. A little further on Sarah felt an ant in her pants. In a thrilling moment for me she pulled her pants down and asked me to take a look. I couldn’t see any ants but it perked me up a bit.
As we trudged up the steep, slippery muddy path the dense forest thinned in places to grassy plateaus which gave fantastic views of the flat plain below and Mount Meru piercing the clouds near Arusha, but our only glimpse of Kilimanjaro had been a shadowy presence in the early morning with the sun behind it. Now it was too cloudy but the scenery on the mountain was ample replacement. Longido is so named for all the flat rocks on it that are good for sharpening knives. I scraped my knuckle instead. It didn’t get sharper but I ripped the loose skin off with my teeth, Bear Grylls style, and carried on to the top oozing blood. We got high enough to see the bare peak of Mount Longido which we would shortly scramble up to eat lunch as we watched the clouds literally crash into the mountain and whip over the top. We could see into Kenya and over towards Ngorongoro Crater. As far as the eye could see is Maasai territory.
We impressed the guide by getting up the mountain in four hours. He seemed to be under the impression that it would take us two hours to get down but we disappointed him by taking the same time to get down, slipping over the leafy, muddy path in the forest and the loose stones lower down the slope. Of course, when we got back to town, a nine hour hike wasn’t quite enough for Sarah for one day so she headed straight out to the weekly cattle market which was a damp squib. Apparently all the cattle were sold along the road before the Maasai made it to the market, so when she got there it was just a few guys roasting goat and drinking beer. As we’re not eating meat at the moment and Sarah isn’t drinking alcohol it wasn’t really her scene.
I had two servings of red beans and rice that night with chapati and we got a lift with the cultural program director back to Arusha the next morning in his light truck. We were greeted back at the Arusha hotel by the leopard turtles. You just can’t escape the wildlife in Africa. We had lunch out in the garden surrounded by four turtles viciously munching on the grass. We gave one of them a slice of lettuce. It looked at the leaf suspiciously before extending its head and eating with great gusto until it got to the final bit which had been lying in the dirt. It made a face at this point exactly as you or I would look if you got a mouthful of dirt. He tried it again before abandoning this final morsel to wash its mouth out with some fresh grass.
We started our animal pageantry in a hotel at Arusha, the town most used as the base for the northern safari circuit in Tanzania. The hotel has a large lush garden populated by a sleepy dog, Skippy, and his unusual companion, a crested crane called Henry. Henry prances around the garden preening his punk hairdo, flapping his wings and running away from bratty French kids throwing rocks at him. Henry is the national bird of Uganda and appears on their flag and coat of arms. He’s a bit of an attention-seeker with his distinctive call which is unleashed as he inspects breakfast leftovers. Sarah tried to feed him my leftover muesli but he decided her thumb looked the tastier option and pecked her there, not strongly enough to cause any damage.
We booked into the cheapest safari we could find, not necessarily the best policy but it meant less budgetary pain further down the road. Katie and Ty were splitting the costs with us and sharing the Land Cruiser with a popup roof on a planned drive through the national parks of Tarangire (pronounced taran-geary), Ngorongoro Crater (the pronunciation here is obvious) and the famous Serengeti. We were lucky to stumble across a decent tour company among the 600 safari companies in Arusha.
However the safari got off to a rocky start when we were picked up from our hotel (where Skippy was busily urinating on all the safari companies’ four wheel drives to send his scent out into the wild) and driven back to the safari offices where we had to wait for over an hour while they packed the car with ancient camping equipment and food supplies. To be fair we had given them less than 24 hours notice but it didn’t inspire confidence. When we finally hit the road our vehicle was driven by our guide (Hugh) Heff(ner), also known as the Heffinator, a spectacled 37 year old with clean shaven head and a precise way of speaking. He was thoroughly professional, a great driver and knowledgeable guide. In the passenger seat was our cook, Juma, a quiet young guy in a leather cap who looked more like he belonged in a jazz band but turned out incredibly delicious vegetarian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. His pasties and quiche were amazing given that they were cooked under basic conditions at camp sites and his soups were always tasty. In the five seats behind these two were Sarah and Katie, Ty and I, speeding through the remarkable landscape in Northern Tanzania.
The most startling presence on the road out of town are the Maasai dressed in bright red, blue or blue shúkà and tending their herds of donkeys, goats and cows. We saw some dressed in their initiation/circumcision garbs: all black with black and white masks painted on their faces. They were waiting for tourists to stop and pay them a few bucks to have a photo taken which is either a sad side-effect of the tourist trade or just entrepreneurial on their part. Heff explained that the circumcision ceremony takes place when the boy is in his young teens. They spend the night at the top of a mountain, are then taken to a stream for a ceremonial washing in cold water, and once their nether regions are as numb as you’re going to get without sitting on a block of ice, their foreskins are sliced off. To prove their warrior mettle the initiates should look straight ahead without moving a muscle during the procedure. They are then spoiled rotten for a few days while their wound heals, and are thereafter known as Warriors. Maasai do not have to be warriors in order to fight other people. They rarely have armed conflicts with other groups. They are warriors because in tending their flock they have to fight off the assortment of carnivores common to this part of the world. In earlier times they would have killed a lion who threatened their cows. These days if a lion takes a cow of theirs they go to the government for compensation and leave the lion be.
Our first stop was Tarangire National Park, famous for its elephants. To be honest, and not wanting to come across as a safari snob, it was initially disappointing. We saw a couple of elephants in the distance, some giraffe, mongoose, foxes and more warthogs than you could poke a stick at, but the animals just weren’t there in the numbers we had been so dazzled by in Mikumi. Amends were made late in the day by a close sighting of a herd of elephants, with one male in particular standing right next to the road. He plucked up grass and dusted it off with sweeping motions of his trunk before stuffing it into his mouth. The elephants here are much bigger and darker than in Mikumi but they wear the same baggy pants. One notable absence from our wildlife sightings in Mikumi were lions. This was to be amply made up for in the coming days. In Tarangire we spotted a buffalo carcase lying under a bush, a great tear in its hindquarters. On our first drive-by we couldn’t see any lions but when we came back later in the day we joined the ten other cars lined up by the side of the road to stare at a beautiful lioness through the binoculars. She had a couple of teenager lions lying beside her. They seemed pretty happy with the world at the thought of tucking in to some fresh meat at their leisure.
We ate lunch at a picnic spot overlooking the river which was plagued by velvet monkeys who will snatch the sandwich out of your hand, given half a chance. Heff chased a lot of them away but they lurked on a nearby fence trying to look casual. The younger monkeys chased each other up and down the fence while the mothers looked a bit more serious about getting some sustenance. The velvet monkey has two odd anatomical features. The females have nipples so close together that we thought they were mono-nippled at one point. The males don’t escape biological strangeness as they literally have turquoise-blue balls which, along with their red bums, make them the most colourful animals ever to have run away from me.
We spent the night at the Panorama campsite on the escarpment overlooking Lake Manyara. The landscape was peppered with trees in blossom, hazy white against the blanket of greenery. Although we were on the budget safari, this was not camping as we in Australia know it. Our tents were set up for us while we had some beers at picnic tables watching the sun go down over the incredible view. Our personal cook was busy in the kitchen whipping up a feast for us which we ate in the dining area and the post-dinner entertainment was a local acrobatic troupe who flipped, juggled and did the limbo under a burning bar.
The next day we safely negotiated the maze of paperwork required to pass through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and headed on through it to the Serengeti. It is a spectacular drive through the highlands where Maasai cattle graze, watched over by their brightly-robed herders. This is Olduvai Gorge country and although we didn’t stop in at the gorge itself you can really feel the epic nature of the landscape as you drive down from the mountains, through the grazing giraffe and elephants, and into the savannah of the Serengeti. The big sky was filled with big clouds and the plains were covered in wildebeest, zebra and gazelle of all description. The wildebeest calve at this time of year. Their babies are light brown in colour and very cute. They are accompanied by their friends the zebra who have their own cute-as-a-button foals of their own. Baby zebra have light brown stripes and look a bit fluffier. On the afternoon we drove through the plains they were cavorting in the sun having a great old time. The adults featured clusters of two, three or even four zebra standing next to each other in opposite directions, heads resting on hindquarters – it looked very companiable but apparently is a way of watching for danger. We also saw a few elephants walk off from us after having a drink, no doubt heading for shelter from the sun which was a long way off in the distance on the grass plains. By the side of the main road we also saw a lioness lying in the shade beneath a bush. She had a radio collar on which made her look like a massive domestic cat, so she must have been interesting to the researchers in some way. We just enjoyed staring at her beautiful features.
Our campsite that night was one of the more rustic Serengeti public campsites, a scarily open square of savannah with thorn trees planted around it, an amenities block and two concrete structures for the cooks and diners respectively. It felt strange to be going from spotting buffalo just down the road to pitching a flimsy tent in what amounted to the open given any animals even half-hearted attempt to wander in. After an outstanding meal we headed to bed. Sarah heard noises during the night which strongly encouraged her to nurse her full bladder until first light. In the morning we could hear the grunting call of a lion in the not-too-distant distance. Baboons definitely wandered through the camp overnight as well.
The next morning we saw the usual assortment of warthogs, gazelle and zebra munching their breakfast amid the small thorny shrubs that punctuate the grass in this part of the world. An ostrich or two dotted the horizon. Heff pointed out a dik-dik, a tiny gazelle with improbably large eyes that look as though they have been drawn by an anime artist. Sarah misheard Heff calling them big-dicks, but this seems unlikely. Their noses are very expressive, twitching nervously as we watched it. They mate for life so generally there are two dik-diks wandering around together. Apparently when one dies they don’t remarry.
A couple of hot-air baloons rose and fell on the horizon, stranded by the absence of wind. Later we saw them packing up in the Serengeti grassland which has to be one of the more hazardous occupations on the planet. We drove slowly along a creek looking at the vultures and maribu stork perched up in the trees. We had been successfully lulled by the landscape slipping by when we nearly ran into a lion and lioness walking down the road. If we had been driving at normal speeds no doubt they would have been roadkill or at least severely dented. It is startling to see lions that close in the wild. Their eyes were calm and penetrating as they sauntered down the road and passed by us as we quickly hit reverse. A gazelle leapt out crazily in front of the male lion but he didn’t bat an eyelid or give futile chase. Lions don’t go for the kill unless they are in control. The lioness perched herself on a dead tree trunk and used it like a big scratching post. It’s difficult not to see lions as just big cats. It’s tempting to jump out and go over to give them a scratch under the chin, until you see them hear something in the bushes and lock their laser eyes on to it. Then it is easy to imagine yourself as the mouse they would pounce on. As the male lion, mane blowing proudly in the breeze, wandered into the reeds beside the river all the gazelle that had been in there leapt away with bleating and a crazy look in their eyes. Lions create a natural buffer zone around them wherever they walk. It would be kind of lonely if not for other lions. Heff thought that these lions were honeymooners nearing the end of the week they initially spend together to procreate. Typical of honeymooners, lions will go at it like crazy for the first few days, every five minutes apparently, until they wear themselves out and get back to hunting and sleeping in the sun like normal. Sleeping in the sun is what lions do best and these two soon settled down in the grass to do just this, no doubt with ears pricked for any gazelle foolish enough to come to the creek for a drink.
Seeing the lions seemed to jumpstart the day. Heff then somehow spotted a leopard sitting up in a tree branch, straddling it like a jockey with relaxed hind legs dangling casually either side of the branch. Despite strong competition I think the leopard has the nicest coat of any animal in the Serengeti. They look so sleek, smooth and content to be stretched out in a tree watching the world go by. In the coming days we saw a lioness sitting in a tree in much the same manner, so the leopard is not totally secure in its perch. A leopard will often have a partner in the area and coming back along the other side of the creek we saw another leopard sitting in a tree in the same relaxed pose. We were helped in spotting this one by all the cars parked on the road and staring in its direction. The mammoth camera zoom lenses are a giveaway as well. The men (it is always men) holding these phallus replacements often don’t look like they would be strong enough to hold it up. Lacking a masculinity enhancing telephoto lens ourselves (or in fact a functioning zoom) you will just have to imagine what the leopards looked like with that fertile imagination of yours and this helpful photo setting the scene.
Baboons are always fun to watch although I got the feeling Heff thought they were about as interesting as watching kangaroos would be for an Aussie. You definitely get a lot of monkeys outside the national park , and they can be a pest at the picnic spots, so I guess strictly speaking we should have been on the move looking for other animals but there is just something entertaining about watching toddler baboons leap out of trees into the bushes below, baby monkeys making tentative steps away from their Mum before rushing back again, and the eating, grooming, play fighting and sleeping that make up the baboon day.
We saw herds of giraffe craning to eat from the thorntrees, hippos rolling over in their ponds to keep their backs moist, crocodiles sunning themselves on the bank. It was a cornucopia of animals only broken by brunch back at camp which was a smorgasbord: crepes, spanish omelette, quiche, fruit and toast were all gobbled up gratefully. We had been rattling around in the back of the Land Cruiser since before dawn which, despite an elevated heart rate, really build an appetite.
After lunch we headed to the hippo pool. There are hippos dotted throughout the waterways in the Serengeti that are deep enough to hold their fat asses. The main hippo pool holds dozens upon dozens of hippos, and was the closest we had yet been to these behemoths. They merrily swished the foetid water over their backs with their tails which initially looked and sounded like they were doing massive farts every five seconds. Sarah loves the way their little ears twirl when the emerge for a breath, clearing them of water. Every now and then one will roll over or yawn, shoving their neighbour in the process and a jostling will ripple through them before they settle down again to some serious tail flicking action.
On the way back we struck another congestion of cars all looking deep into the bushes. Lying there hidden by the grass was a mother lion with her teenaged cubs, lounging around after feasting on some fresh meat. Lying around is what lions seem to do best, at least during the heat of the day.
The following day we spent a fairly fruitless morning driving around the plains. We saw a couple of lions in the distance and a few wildebeest and zebra but not in big numbers. It’s amazing how many stumps and termite mounds in the Serengeti look like animals from a distance, especially when Sarah isn’t wearing her glasses. The animals were hiding from us and had obviously moved on elsewhere. We packed up the camp and headed off to Ngorongoro. On the way through the Serengeti we had more interesting animal sightings that the entire morning which was unfortunate as, under the terms of the permit, Heff had to get us out of the park by 2pm and had us on a strict schedule. We saw a lioness perched in a tree: “You have one minute only for viewing.” We came across a big male with a stomach stuffed with a feed lying under a tree: “You have thirty seconds for this viewing.” He was a cool old lion with a big shaggy mane. The most agonisingly-rushed animal sighting was an enormous herd of elephants who were walking up the same road we were driving down. Elephants don’t feel a huge need to get out of the way of cars so Heff got into off-road mode and careened onto the grass by the side of the road. We bumped our way past a long line of these gorgeous creatures with their babies as they turned, with a hint of alarm, to watch us go by. The last elephant in the line looked like she was about to charge us; Sarah ducked and yelled at Heff to ‘go, go!’.
We had taken the back road out of the Serengeti which was nothing more than a muddy track with Heff sliding the vehicle around in his haste not to get fined for leaving the park by the appointed time. “The elephants are trying to make us late!” he yelled as we sped past them and the nearby huge herds of zebra and wildebeest. It was an exciting drive, especially in comparison to the 20km/h trawl through the barren grasslands we had experienced in the morning. Later on, Heff told us a story about a car that had overturned on the Ngorongoro road. A female passenger suffered broken ribs and all the drivers along the road staged a protest, blocking the road until a helicopter ambulance was provided. They also demanded that the head of national parks and road engineer address the crowd about the poor state of the road and were not satisfied until the road engineer had been fired. The roads are terrible and you wonder where all the hefty park fee revenues are going. The drivers plan another protest in the high season if their demands for an increase to their pitifully low pay aren’t met.
We drove back up into the highlands and camped the night on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater, one of the largest craters in the world at 20km across. It is also one of the most famous wildlife viewing arenas in the world. It’s kind of like a big open-air zoo crammed with wild animals with nowhere to hide. The public campsite is in an amazing spot perched on the edge of the crater almost 3000 metres above sea level. Having baked ourselves during the day on the savannah we were now buffeted in a cool breeze as the clouds skittered overhead. You can’t even relax here though. As Katy brought a plate of popcorn from the kitchen for everyone to share an eagle swooped down and snatched a clawful of popcorn from the plate. Moments later from the big tree the gladwrap fluttered down along with scraps of the half-pecked popcorn.
We heard stories from fellow Aussie travellers about their terrible driver/guide who made us thank our lucky stars for getting Heff. Their car kept braking down and he made them get out and push start it, which is not the most comfortable feeling in the middle of the Serengeti. He also got lost frequently and had to have possible animal sightings pointed out to him. He would on odd occasions try to crack on to the Aussie girl by saying “waka waka baby!” (beautiful in Swahili, apparently).
Overnight the temperature dropped but Sarah carries her little hot water bottle for just such emergencies (thank you Rach and Tone!) and got it filled up with the boiling water that was then used to cook our pasta for dinner. At some ungodly hour in the morning the heavens opened and we were buffeted by wind and driving rain. The alarm went off at 5.45am again to reveal a grim day in the pre-dawn gloom with mist and fog roiling around – not ideal animal viewing weather we thought.
The first drama of the day was enacted by the human zoo that is the safari circuit. I was enjoying a warming cup of Milo in the open-air dining area and watched a pony-tailed Israeli man have a slanging match with an American woman. She wanted to leave in the car and he refused to go before having a cup of coffee, and was waiting for his water to boil. “Just borrow someone else’s water,” she snarled. He told her that he didn’t want to talk to her. She responded that she didn’t want to talk to him either. Their driver/guide said ‘pole, pole’ which means ‘slowly, slowly’ or calm down. They broke apart and I got on with my Milo but Heff told us later that the argument had resumed in the kitchen area where the cooks witnessed the Israeli guy slap the American woman. The cooks leapt to her defence and threatened to turn the Israeli guy into a sausage, saying that they liked white meat. We saw this safari group later in the morning. They had been pulled over in the Ngorogoro Crater by the rangers for questioning and the Israeli guy was eventually taken into custody and was going to be put on a bus out of town which, given the state of Tanzanian buses, seemed like an appropriate punishment.
As we descended from the rim into the crater we emerged from the clouds to behold the fantastic site of this natural cauldron filled with wild animals. Our first interesting sighting was a group of three male lions and a lioness feasting on what looked like a zebra. As usual there was a lot of lolling around on the part of these big cats. We drove on a little further, through the hordes of wildebeest and zebra, and saw a hyena chasing a wildebeest around and around. They were circling and winding through the other hundred-odd wildebeest who looked totally disinterested in this slow speed chase, unless they had to shuffle out of the way to let them pass, as though the wildebeest being chased was the not the most popular in the herd. There looked to be no way that the hyena would catch the wildebeest, the way it was just slowly loping after it, but the wildebeest seemed to tire and then ran into another group of hyenas. This was all the opportunity they needed. They latched on to the wildebeest’s ass and just didn’t let go. It would be hard to run with four big hyenas hanging off your rear end. They kept ripping away, drawing flesh of its flanks until eventually it collapsed. Yipping hyenas converged from everywhere and they essentially ate the wildebeest alive. It was all done in about five minutes. It was shocking, but incredible to see nature in the raw.
Further on we saw another two male lions lounging around a zebra carcass. One even seemed to be using the carcass as a pillow. Jackals lurked around the kill; they are surprisingly small looking, like a small dog or a fox. Across the caldera we went. It is amazing to think that this was an active volcano that erupted with such force that it sent rocks flying out into the Serengeti where they cracked the granite shield, allowing trees and bushes to grow on these random outcrops whereas most of the Serengeti can only support grass. At a lush green pool we saw three hippos come out of the water, as the day was drizzly enough for them to risk their sensitive skin in the daylight. If they were human, we would call them obese; they look like the animal equivalent of the Fat Bastard character in Austin Powers. They trump the baggy elephant pants by a long way – it’s like they’ve shoved bags of fat down their pants, and it is amazing they can move with any speed at all. As they exited the pool they excreted and urinated, using their thick fleshy tail like a windscreen wiper to spread their waste around behind them. Heff explained that they do this to mark their scent. Inspired, we had a toilet stop at the hippo pool (no, we didn’t piss on the hippos). They had deep water to luxuriate in here so we only saw their heads pop up at random intervals.
Heading on we saw a couple of black rhinos, possibly a mother and her child, in the distance. Given that there are only 45 rhinos in the crater this was a rare animal to catch in the wild. Even with binoculars it was hard to get a sense of them other than they were big with slender pointy horns, and seemed relaxed lying on the crater floor. They are the animal that all the other animals fear because they are extremely aggressive and loners.
Further on we saw another lioness who padded along the road near us. She had a big belly which Heff put down to her being pregnant. He thought she would give birth in the next few days and was looking for a safe place to do so. Sure enough she headed straight for some bushes to lie down away from prying eyes.
We saw wildebeest calves so young that their slender umbilical cords were still dangling from their belly buttons and they struggled to stand up on their new, shaky legs.
Going on safari was a mind-blowing experience. Seeing the animals that we’re used to being in the zoo at home on their natural soil and in such large numbers was surreal at times but a massive buzz.
At the Mafia Island airport we met some fellow Australian travellers from Adelaide, Katie and Ty. Ty has a Sudanese father and Australian mother. Ty and Katie had both been in South Sudan visiting him. We generally avoid Aussie tourists but these guys seemed like good eggs and we caught the bus north with them from Dar es Salaam to Lushoto in the Usambara Mountains. While both being compulsive chatters they are a rare breed in saying interesting things the majority of the time, and they were great company on our walk through the beautiful Usambara Mountains.
We had a typical bus journey to Lushoto, and by typical I mean terrible. We were seated at the front waiting for the journey to begin when a man motioned for me to remove my feet from the raised metal floor in the aisle. He then slid the floor back to reveal the engine block conveniently located right beneath our feet. A good few litres of oil were poured in which the bus probably consumes in one journey. So, in addition to the usual crowding, we now also had a floor hot enough to fry an egg on, toasting my feet instead. The floor really started to get hot when we left the plains and started the slow trawl uphill with frequent stops to let people out and pour water on the engine.
When we finally got to Lushoto 8 hours later, we found it a pleasant town in the hills with a refreshingly cool climate. The following day we walked through the lush hills dotted with farmland to Irente Farm where we had an excellent lunch of fresh rye bread and cheese, local tomatoes (nyanya in Swahili) and cucumbers, preserves and jam, washed down with passionfruit juice. The food reflected the German origins of the farm. The scenery felt Australian in places because of all the gum trees. There were also echoes of Rwanda and the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The nearby viewpoint gave spectacular views of the sheer mountains and plains below.
We went on a three day walking tour with a group called Friends of Usambara and guide Jackson who was excellent at spotting chameleons which we could barely spot even when they were pointed out. These little lizards move in a stuttering way like an old-fashioned cartoon and change colour to match their surroundings when they feel threatened. There were heaps of them sitting in bushes as we made our way up a steep hill and through farmland, before passing a local school where Sarah was mobbed by kids giving her ‘high fives’ a little too hard for comfort. We soon entered the jungle where we spotted a few black and white colobus monkeys leaping around in the trees above us. The butterflies were also amazing, coloured with beautiful yellows, blues and greens.
We had a buffet lunch at the local University, which has one of the most picturesque campuses I’ve seen, then watched the afternoon rain start pouring down. We haven’t experienced much rain on this trip, let alone the torrential tropical downpour that we experienced here. The plan was to catch a local bus to our next accommodation so Jackson had the unenviable task of standing outside under the eaves and keeping an eye out for its arrival. When the bus finally turned up we dashed on to find no seats free so we had to stand up in the aisle, dripping on the other passengers. We’ve had some dangerous bus journeys but this one took the cake. The driver drove as though the devil was after him on this dirt-road-cum-creek which had sheer vertical drops on each side. The bus lurched from pothole to pothole as the driver stuck his head out of the window (wipers are never functional on these buses). The windows were pretty fogged up but we could catch glimpses of the fate awaiting us off the cliffs should the driver lose control. At one of the stops Katie and Sarah made a bid to get off and walk the remainder of the way, but given that we still had 15km to go before getting to the hotel, and the potential for torrential rain, we stayed on. Jackson asked the driver to please go a little more slowly, which he seemed to do. We only had one further hairy moment when the rear wheels seemed to lose traction. The driver stamped on and off the accelerator and managed to halt our slide to the edge of the road. Finally we arrived at the convent, our bed for the night.
Nestled into the hills it was a peaceful spot apart from a feral cow lowing in the depths of the hills. After washing with a bucket shower we had a fantastic vegetarian dinner that night, minty vegetable soup, roast potatoes and fresh greens. Our dinner companions were a camp German man and his “nephew” as well a perky Chinese guy who had been living in Melbourne for seven years. The cosy dining area was lit with candles and, with the statue of Jesus being crucified sitting above the table, it made for an atmospheric dinner.
The next day we walked about 20 kilometres to the small, clifftop town of Mtae. On the way we spotted another chameleon and as I came to look at it I heard a rustling in the bush next to me, as though I had stood on a stick that moved the bush, but when I looked to my left I instead saw a large snake beating a retreat up the hill. I’m not an expert on African snakes but if it was a black mambo then we were very lucky not to get some poison injected. It would not be a simple procedure to get to the nearest antivenom dispenser. We also saw more monkeys crashing through the trees with abandon. Coming out of the jungle we walked through a pine plantation not dissimilar to Canberra’s Stromlo Forest in the good old days and then we wandered though the local sawmill, bypassing the irate looking bull grazing in the open. For lunch we stopped at a local hole in the wall, a wooden hut built out over the hill in a local village with chickens eating beneath our feet. Local schoolkids kept peering through the doorway with curiosity, then glee when they saw the ‘mizungus’ (foreigners, usually whities) and got a ‘mambo fresh!’ (a cool form of hello) from us. Lunch was a taste sensation which could take off in Australian pubs: a chip omelette served with beans, rice and a fresh tomato and cabbage sauce. Simple and very tasty.
After lunch we passed through a small village where the local women make and sell rustic pottery, including animal figurines. I was mobbed by cute youngsters as I rested in the shade while Sarah almost caused a riot in giving their mothers chocolate biscuits for the kids.
The road to Mtae has stunning views of the valley below. The Usambaras rise sharply from the valley floor making it feel like you’re super high up. The town of Mtae is perched on a ridge with sheer drops on each side. It’s a fantastic location and a great place to spend the night. Locals were particularly friendly and clouds nestled below us. At night, the sky was an explosion of stars. After another bucket shower, the following day we headed back to Lushoto by car, stopping by a waterfall where local kids tried to sell us lilies they’d picked from nearby fields, and then again at Irente Viewpoint Farm for lunch before walking the six kilometres back to our hotel.
Sarah loves lying on the beach in the sun. This is a sad irony for a redhead whose complexion would be more at home in the Scottish highlands extracting the maximum solar energy from the weak light at the extremities of the globe. The tropics has a different sun which bites when you cuddle it for too long. In Zanzibar too long was about ten minutes, even with a thick lathering of suncream (which by the way is incredibly difficult to come by in Africa. Obviously the locals don’t have much use for it but what about all the poor albinos and tourists? In Rwanda when we applied suncream to our arms, the local kids asked us if it was medicine). On tropical holidays Sarah invariably gets a heat rash. We used to have a theory that it was volcanic dust that triggered it as it has flared up in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Hawaii where we visited volcanoes each time. That theory has been blown out of the water on this trip where extreme heat has been the only trigger for the bumpy rash that starts on Sarah’s thumbs and spreads, if not attended to carefully. Sarah nurses it with cortisone cream but the most effective treatment is to lie cold cans of drink on the rash. In Zanzibar Sarah bought three cans and a bottle of soft drink and rotated them in and out of the handy hostel fridge in reception. Picture her lying down for an afternoon nap or preparing for bed with her e-reader propped up on her legs and hands pinned down by cold drinks. Sarah becomes mildly obsessed by the rash, checking its condition often and scratching on occasion which brings exquisite temporary relief followed by more pain. I was beginning to get jealous of all the attention her red claws of death were getting when Sarah got a text message from her Mum, Jackie, with one line “Hi Sarah, how are the hands?”. The hands were pleased with this concern.
We now suspect that it is our malaria treatment, doxycycline, which is the issue. It has a side effect of making you more sensitive to the sun, which is a fairly large drawback for a drug that will mainly be used in the tropics. We’ve been on it since Ghana (December) and I guess the skin sensitivities are getting more pronounced. In Mafia Island the sun was incredibly harsh. Even by 9:30 in the morning it felt as though it was literally roasting the skin. Sarah just started covering herself in local cloth to try and hide but this negates the benefits of a beach holiday. We got a bit burnt on the second day on Mafia and that night it felt like light heat was pulsing out of our burns. Sarah got the staff to put wet towels in the freezer which she then placed on herself to get some sleep. It was stretching the English skills of the staff to ask “Could you get my wet towels from the fish freezer please?” I don’t think they teach that as a standard phrase in Swahili schools.
But despite spending most of our time sheltering from the sun, it was not all bad. The lodge we stayed at had a nice open-air bar on a cliff overlooking the blue water of the Indian Ocean where whale sharks frequently swim. We spent a good many hours lounging in the deck chairs there with our books. It was a shame that the lodge stuffed up our booking on the first night. We rang and booked a room with the manager Carlos, then sent a follow-up email confirming the booking which he replied to, saying that he would pick us up from the airport. When we rang to let him know that our flight had been delayed by thirty minutes he didn’t know us from a bar of soap. Sure enough, when we arrived at the airport he picked us up but then blamed someone else for giving our room away. Instead we were housed for the first night in a tent. Normally this wouldn’t worry us but the night was unbearably hot and the tent had one small hatch which did not let any air in. We sweltered through the night and stumbled out parched and tired in the morning.
The main reason for visiting was not the accommodation but the whale sharks. Mafia Island is famous for whale sharks and we jumped on a small local wooden fishing boat with two families also staying at the lodge to enact Moby Dick writ small.
The wooden boat was like a dhow with no sail, just a small outboard motor and a canvas roof. We had wisely taken some anti-nausea tablets which were miraculous in making the waters, rockier than off Zanzibar, bearable. We puttered around in lovely waters spotting dark patches of seaweed but absolutely no whale sharks. The only consolation was that we met someone in Rwanda who told us that she was on a boat that saw whale sharks but she was too slow in jumping in so missed swimming with them. We dropped some people off on the beach and travelled further south in the boat with JJ and his young son. JJ is a Dutch doctor who was working in rural Tanzania for a couple of years. He had some gruesome stories of the operating table which don’t bear repeating. Safe to say you don’t want to pick up any serious injuries in rural Africa.
We were a fair way out from shore and the waves increased in size as we went around a sandy point. Soon enough we were in sparkling turquoise water off the southern point of the island with a white sand beach. We dropped anchor and spent a great 45 minutes snorkelling around an offshore reef. There were big clams and some cute fish but, not wanting to sound like a snorkelling snob, we’ve had better (Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia tops the list).
It was the boat ride back that was the thrilling highlight of our time on the island. The swell had increased a lot while we had been snorkelling and now the small wooden boat was smacking down over the top of waves as we crested them. We were constantly being smashed by water coming over the side which was like have warm bathwater thrown over you, pleasant but annoying when it keeps happening. Sarah ran through her capsize procedure with me (strip naked, swim under and away from the boat) but my main concern was the small bag I had on board. As there were reviews of our hotel claiming that things had been stolen from the room I brought most of my valuables with me. Now my laptop, passport, kindle and wallet were being drenched in the bottom of a boat which was tilting precariously over the swells. The journey took forever with the small engine straining against the current and the boat-hand constantly bailing out water from the back of the boat. JJ’s young son was given a swimming mask to wear to stop the water getting in his eyes and eventually he got so cold that his Dad had to wrap him up in a hug.
We gratefully reached the shore absolutely drenched and waded back over the mangrove roots to the beach. My bag got damp but everything survived and we spent the next few days just nursing our burns and resting. We had been thinking about taking a boat from the island back to the mainland rather than the more expensive flying option, but the boats used for this purpose are relatively small and I’m sure jammed with people. It was also concerning that the boat mentioned in the guidebook, the MV Potwe, was lost. They were going to give us a call if it turned up but by that stage we had bought plane tickets for a flight back to Dar es Salaam. The Mafia Island airport is basic and intimate, comprising a long gravel runway and a couple of tiny, open air buildings – including a ‘waving bay’ for those bidding the plane farewell. The planes that ply this airport are necessarily small, mainly 12 seaters – well, 13 if you count the front seat next to the pilot, which we do because that is where I was seated on the flight over to the island. Sarah is a nervous flyer, which wasn’t helped by the plane’s call sign, but I think my presence in the cockpit gave her confidence, in spite of my lack of First Officer training.
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