Zanzibar, Das Es Salaam, Bagamoyo, Usambara, Marangu.
Day 127:
A massive rain storm woke me up before the sun could cast some light on the surroundings. I opened my eyes to the shock of the very pink bed trying to remember if our rucksack of choice had a rain cover. This thought was followed by a humorous giggle about encountering so much rain in Africa, in the dry season. Still not being able to remember the rain cover situation I was at least happy that the streets would be swept clean by the running water.
The rain stopped as the sun came up and that also meant that it was time to drag our lazy carcasses out of our pink bed and into the fantastic shower. We allowed some extra shower time as we did not know when our next nice shower would be. Standing under the soothing hot water and great shower head I started thinking back at smoke breaks in Army days. There was some rule about having to allow the troops a certain number of breaks per day, only they never told us what the timing was. It was erratic enough so we couldn’t work it out either. The result was that you smoked a cigarette every time you were allowed to which in turn resulted in a 30+ a day habit. Showering as many times as you could when finding nice facilities can’t be as bad for you though, but I couldn’t help but see the similarities in concept.
Breakfast was included in the room rate and consisted of the then familiar fruit, bread, jam and one egg omelette. The coffee was so fowl that I had to make my own but at least no one looked at me funny. Perhaps they were used to guests pulling their noses up at the “grim instant”. By 8:30 we were out of there and within fifteen minutes we had had our passports stamped and were waiting for our fast ferry back to the mainland. Neither one of us were particularly looking forward to being on the water again after the sea sickness of two days previous however the presence of a group of 20 Canadian tourists provided humorous and highly entertaining distraction from our imminent fate.
With a push and shove and all the western rudeness we could muster we managed to fight off the papasi (Ticks in Swahili) like crowds and spilled into the lower deck of the ferry. Our baggage was seconded by an official who were indiscriminately stacking bags on top of each other in the cargo hold. Unable to resist the steady flow of human traffic we soon found ourselves on the upper deck at the back of the vessel and outside with no available seating left. We opened a door and walked into a time warp! The “Foreign Class” cabin had white leather aircraft style seats, white walls and ceiling and came complete with 80’s porn star florescent lighting strips. It was simply marvellous! Each corner of the cabin had a small TV set which was blaring out music from a very young George Michael, Lionel Richie and Bruce Springsteen before starting the movie: Air Force one, with Harrison Ford. Our journey had begun.
Although the crossing only took an hour and a half, the sea was still quite rough and the big Catamaran was bouncing around so much that we did not dare get up and walk around. When the captain walked around handing out sick bags we simply looked at each other knowingly and declined his offer with a smile. We felt rough, but not that rough. Back at Dar es Salaam the familiar struggle started all over. In an attempt to avoid the brothers and friends who all had taxis or friends with taxis I put my sunglasses on my face, looked at my feet and with Catt leading the route march, made a quick getaway from the port and towards the ferry to the South Beaches. It was surprisingly easy to discourage touts by saying a firm “Hapana” (No) in a language they clearly understood or perhaps it was the expression on my face and the attitude I was walking with which screamed “LEAVE ME ALONE”. None the less, I was happy to get out of the city, take the first Tuk-Tuk we found to Mikadi Camp Site and get back to the comforts of our beloved Magurudumu.
Mikadi seemed like a really nice place to stay and if it wasn’t for the lack of Wifi and the salt water showers we would have looked no further. Kipopeo Beach Resort however had fresh water and Wifi and charged exactly the same rates, so we moseyed over there instead. We paid the required $10 for the two of us and took our position in between the young British couple who were there when we left for Zanzibar and Neville, our friendly Biker friend who seemed to have the same plans and time frame as us. It was almost like coming home after a holiday.
It was still early in the afternoon and we managed to unpack our gear, sort out our camping arrangements, walk to the village for a few supplies and go for a swim in the ocean long before the sun went down. I was happy that the inside of our fridge wasn’t too bad and managed to clean that quite quickly. Courtesy of the solar panel, the deep cycle battery was fully charged, so we could start the fridge up in anticipation of the next day’s filling up. I filled a water bottle from our fresh water tank and as I was about to take a sip, I discovered a foul and mysterious odour. The water in our tank was rotten! I don’t mean stale and didn’t taste nice… I mean smelling like rotten eggs or sewage. I opened the taps to let that stinky lot out before reversing close to a tap and flushing the system. We also boiled some water and poured an insanely strong solution of Milton into the tank to leave over night.
Shortly after sunset though we realized how tired we still were from diving and travelling, so opted for a meal in their well priced restaurant. A couple of glasses of wine later and we were both in bed welcoming the coma like sleep we were in desperate need of.
Day 128:
Time to leave the calmness of Dar Es Salaam’s south beaches. We intended to get up really early and make an early getaway, but as the alarm sounded the rain came again. Let’s be serious, no self respecting overlanders would leave the dry comforts of the tent to be soaked in the rain just to sit in Dar’s morning traffic! So we left at 9 ish. A quick stop at the market got us a week’s worth of veggies, fruit and charcoal for a total of about $8 before we queued for the ferry to the city. This time the queue seemed to move relatively quickly. We did not even have time to take photos of the thousands of passengers disembarking into the morning sunshine on the South Beach side.
Within an hour we were driving in between our own hordes of pedestrians off the other side. It was Saturday, so the traffic in the city seemed pretty light… compared to our previous experiences.
The 20km journey to the Mlimani shopping centre took only two hours instead of the expected four hours. At Shoprite we found everything we needed in grocery terms, managed to pay with a VSIA without an 8% surcharge were heading out of town much earlier than expected. The one stop we needed to still make was for fuel and cash. As there was an ATM at a nearby fuel station, this was the obvious choice. Diesel at the chosen BP was slightly more expensive than the other places, but we were told that the cleanliness was the most reliable and after our previous experience of dirty fuel, we did not want to take any chances. As the tank was filling up Catt came running back from the ATM informing me that it was not forthcoming with any crispy bank notes. It seemed as if it had run out of cash. I stopped the attendant well before we reached the limit of the contents of my wallet and headed north with the Diesel we could pay for. The frustration was short lived as the next available ATM obediently spat out close to a million of those Tzs’s.
Our mission for the day was to reach the northern beaches of Bagamoyo. It was a short drive in distance, a longer one in time, but we made the camp site of the Bagamoyo Beach Resort, with Neville in tow by mid afternoon. My first impression of the place was that it was just another beach resort in Tanzania which could have been on Zanzibar, on the south beaches, the north beaches or anywhere else on the coast. My particular interest was that it was a Dhow port which would get decent lighting from afternoon sun. This particular day the sun was evasive as hell. The clouds were threateningly black and heavy and apart from a short walk to the beach to scope things out, we did not dare stray too far from our camp site.
More close inspection of the resort and the facilities told a slightly different story to our initial impressions. It had a certain air of neglect and the area showed little to contradict that. The two resorts adjacent to it had closed down. The beach was littered with wreckage of old boats and drift wood and the Dhow port was almost non existent. There were some impressive boats around, but with the high onshore winds no was daring to put any sails up. Not that it mattered from my selfish photography point of view as the light was dull and boring anyway. Neville took a ride on his bike and heard that another resort; about 1km away had some live music that night. We were quite keen to see what that was all about until we heard that they would not start before 22:30.
Neville was joining us for a glass of wine over dinner when I suddenly started feeling really bad! At first I though tit was side effect from the Doxicyclone we had taking for Malaria. You are supposed to take it with a glass of water on an empty stomach. This often results in a mild nausea, so we started taking it with a glass of juice, or cup of tea which avoided this. After an hour when I did not feel better at all I started wondering if I did not perhaps have Malaria. I had no fever yet and no head ache, but I was feeling rough as anything and ready for bed.
The night was fairly restless from there on. As long as I was lying still with my eyes closed I was feeling OK. The music from a kilometre away was clearly audible and quite pleasant, but did keep me awake a little bit. Once that had stopped, the prays singing over laud speakers from the Mosque started and once that eventually subsided we had a resident fruit bat taking refuge between our tent and rain cover insisting on calling all its friends to join him. This was not exactly conducive to a fast healing environment, but hardly surprising in an African city.
Day 129:
I did manage to get some rest and was feeling much better by the time we crawled out of bed in the morning. We had originally planned to spend at least two nights in the area but because of the feeling of utter neglect and dereliction we decided to move on. Besides, there was really nothing left to do or see. With me still feeling a little rough, we left by 8:30, not bothering with the cold showers in the chilly overcast weather.
Avoiding driving the tar road back to Dar Es Salaam we opted for a 70km dirt road, notorious for being in a bad state in the wet season. For us it was a breeze. The surface was dry and although rutted some from use in the wet season, we made steady progress until we joined the main Dar Es Salaam – Moshi hi way. This road was surprisingly perfect as far as surface was concerned and fairly quiet. We only had one bus a minute pass us at lightning speed so I actually had time to relax and soak up the scenery.
It struck me that Tanzania was vastly different to other countries we had been to in terms of agriculture. Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi all had small family farms doing mostly subsistence farming and selling off the excess. Tanzania had vast plantations and fields of crops which was clearly corporately run and mostly for the market. The quality difference was not really that big, but the volume of fruit and vegetables for sale next to the roads and in the markets were formidable. Close to citrus groves you saw tons of oranges for sale and everywhere you looked you could buy tomatoes by the bucket full.
Our destination for the day was the Usambara Mountains and according to a brochure we had seen at Kipopeo, Emau Forest Hill Lodge was the place to go. This was not marked on any of the maps we had, but we had a fair idea where it was, so headed in that direction. At a small village of Muheza, on the way to Tanga we left the tart road and ventured into the mountains. The small and rough track took us some 25km uphill and through some of the most impressive indigenous forest vistas we had seen for some time. The trees next to the track seemed larger than life and when we stopped to have a look and noticed how deep the valley below was, we realized that they were even taller and bigger than what we had thought. It was truly breathtaking and we loved the sudden change in scenery.
An hour from the tar road we came to an abrupt stop at the entrance gate to Amani Nature reserve. This was not unexpected as our “always reliable” lonely planet guide talked about this as a possible camping spot and even quoted the prices. Emau was however not in the park, so we were a little confused. The representative the government had chosen to deal with foreign tourists couldn’t really speak any language apart from Swahili, so communication was a little slow. We did however understand that the charge for entering the park was $30 per person and another $30 for the vehicle. I tried to explain that we were simply transiting through to get to Emau, but he mistook that for asking about email. There was no way I was about to fork out $90 to take a little drive through a forest, so we turned around and stopped outside the gate for lunch.
I fired up a computer, used out newly acquired 3G (1.5G actually) card to connect to the internet, found contact details for Emau and tried to get in touch. The cell no wasn’t working for me, but I sent an urgent email asking for the alternative route as their brochure definitely did not mention the small matter of paying $90 to transit a park. Confident that we would get an answer back shortly, and with sandwiched devowered, we headed the hour of bad road back down the mountain.
In Muheza we fired the laptop back up, but had no email from Emau. Just as I was getting frustrated, we received a sms from them with a current phone number, so we dialled away. The phone was answered instantly and a friendly British sounding dude started giving us directions. I cut him off at some point explaining that we had found the gate already, but wasn’t prepared to pay the fee to transit the park. I fully expected him to either tell me that their guests had a special arrangement, or that was another way. I could almost see him shrug his shoulders as he said: “Yip, sorry, that’s the only way…” My parting comment was something along the lines off “and you wonder why your lodge is so very quiet?” before saying a friendly good bye and hanging up.
Plan B was to drive around the mountain range to the western Usambaras. The guidebook and our maps indicated a few places to stay there and also a national park. There were loads of villages inside the park though so we couldn’t see how anyone could charge entrance to the area. Saying that, we had also realised that in Tanzania they have an amazing talent to separate tourists from their money. I was pleasantly surprised not be charged to enter the area and after not being impressed with the first place we visited, we eventually settled on the Lawns Hotel and Camp site. The area seemed to be more expensive than what we had been used to in Tanzania. The charge was $8 per person to camp, but the hot showers, lawned camp site and privacy of the only place we could park Maggie cancelled any scepticism as to the value of the money spent. We singed up for two days.
While we were setting up camp we were visited by the local “guide” who wanted to lead us on a walk. We were not against the idea, but I was feeling rough again and explained that we would find him when we were ready to go for a walk. The hot shower was luke warm, but acceptable and after a body cleaning session, we settled around our table and started to make plans for dinner. Before the cooking could start, a couple of bikers came by for a chat and also introduced us to a couple of backpackers. We could share information about places we had been and gained valuable information about places we were heading to. This seemed to have become the way of the camp site for us and an invaluable source of current information.
Feeling slightly better and starting to suspect dodgy polony from the Shoprite as the culprit for my condition, I went to bed around 9:30 and fell into a deep and comfortable sleep without any effort what so ever.
Day 130:
It ended up being an incredibly restless night. The prayer singing on the days before Ramadan continued through the night on the loudest loud speakers you can ever imagine. The local dogs found this a fascinating tune to howl to and joined in the celebrations with great flare. I think the party eventually stopped around 3am, or perhaps we were just so tired that we fell asleep regardless. Day 130 dawned for the rest of Lushoto around 7am. For us the thick canvas of the tent provided a cave like hide away in relative quiet until 9am. It was bliss. The hiking guide from the day before made his appearance within minutes of me sticking my head out of the tent. I tried not be rude and tried to explain to him that we would find him when we were ready and that there was no need to come to our camp at all. I think he understood and hope he was not offended.
Over morning coffee we decided not to move for the day. There would be no hiking or waterfalls or view points. We had noticed the previous evening that there was unsecured Wifi and planned to spend the day doing some internet admin and relaxing. After the second mug of coffee we ventured towards the luke warm shower again.
This time it was HOT! The only way to achieve a usable temperature was to open the cold tap fully and ad hot water until your desired temperature was mixed. The only explanation was that the3 reception lady turned the boiler on as we arrived and after being on for one night it had reached volcanic temperature. There were surely no complaints fthough, it was fantastic!
The hotel offered no laundry service and there were no real facilities to do laundry either. Our last laundry day had been more than three weeks before, so we were quite desperate. While walking around the hotel I noticed some ladies hard at work doing their own families laundry. I greeted them and asked if they may be interested in some more work which was met with big smiles and great excitement. The “leader” came to see us a while later, disappeared with our huge laundry bag and soap and mumbled something about a receipt. I wasn’t worried. After the Zanzibar experience in ultimate trust that things will go your way, I was 100% confident that we would see our clothes again soon.
The morning was spent on the hotel patio abusing free wifi and after lunch the same exercise was continued. During lunch I considered the Polony again, but one small whiff inside the zip lock bag containing the beast revealed the sure source of my upset stomach. I binned it immediately. The only breaks in the monotony of hitting keyboards and reading flickering screens was the occasional trip to the bathroom or to re stock the mugs with coffee or tea. It was a blissfully relaxing day which I think we both needed very much. Afternoon rolled into evening without us noticing very much and before we knew it it was time for the ridiculously loud sermon to be hailed for all in the universe to hear. Our laundry had also arrived back, pristinely clean and fresh smelling and at a price that bordered on ridiculously low. This marked the end of the working day and with that we closed down computers, tended to dinner, played a game or two and went to bed. The loudness of the sermon stopped around 20:00 to give way for the mosque’s speakers to fill the valley with prayer. I almost found that a welcome change to the shouting and hyping up of the crowd. I decided to read a book until the noise stopped, but had to give up shortly before midnight as I lost feeling in my arms from lying in an awkward position in the tent.
Day 131:
We got up at 8am after another restless and noisy night. It was not near as bad as the first night, but still did not give us the rest we needed. We decided to go for a walk anyway.
One of the hikes on the pamphlet handed to us was to the Irente Farm and the Irente viewpoint. The brochure explained this to be a 4 – 6 hour hike and as we could use our gps to navigate, we decided against paying for a guide. I don’t think either one of us was in the mood for being nice to strangers after two restless nights. We took the road through the village, being touted only once before heading into the hills.
The cloudy day made for cool and pleasant walking conditions and the scenery was fascinating, tranquil and breathtakingly beautiful. The indigenous forests were full of life with birds and small scurrying creatures while the flooded parts of river beds offered fertile soil for farming. It was small scale farming instead of the agriculture we had become used to in Tanzania, but the produce looked amazingly healthy. Apart from the usual tomatoes, red onions and bananas, there we also carrots the size of traffic cones, avos half the size of footballs and more oranges than you can imagine. We walked passed great crops of cabbage ready to be harvested and swore we recognised some of the spice plants we had learnt about on Zanzibar.
Arriving at Irente Farm I was immediately impressed. This Biodiversity research establishment was all about preserving the remaining original forests while utilizing the deforested areas in a self sustainable way. Where had I heard that before? Seriously though, it seemed that a lot of interesting and likeminded places existed in Africa and this the third one we had come across. They offered home made jam, cheese and granola muesli for sale and came complete with restaurant offering their own filter coffee and something resembling a ploughman’s lunch. None of was expensive either. We enquired about their camping and found with a shock that the cost was less than half of the charge of the Lawns Hotel. Their camp site had a lush green lawn of its own, fresh water on tap and hot showers. No Wifi, but seriously, who needs it that bad? We had missed check out by this time so were stuck at the Lawn for one more night. That really sucked!
We invested in some Muesli and headed towards the signposted viewpoint. Finding it easily and only 2km away from the farm I was highly impressed! We found a dilapidated and seemingly abandoned little “lodge” with Bandas on the cliff sides and a wooden deck built on stilts. There was not a soul in sight, but we took in the view and took some photos from the deck regardless. At a guess we were around 5 000ft above the valley floor and if I threw a rock really hard, I could clear the incline and hit the valley. It was as if we were standing with our backs to the mountain, looking our past the curvature of the planet. At a total lost for words we just pointed and smiled.
Right next to our secret retreat was the fancy new Irente View Cliff Lodge. We decided to investigate. As we walked into the vast reception area we were hit in the face by air-conditioning, leather and luxury. It was as if we “disapperated” (Disappeared from one place, moved some distance and re-appeared in a different place) onto another planet. A friendly voice asked if we wanted to see the view from the patio. Startled, I turned to face a friendly, smiling and exceptionally well dressed young man. I told him that we were just being nosy and having a look at the hotel and started reading about the hikes and tours they offered. The one that caught my eye was the 2 – 3 hour guided hike to Irente Farm for $10 a person. We had just done that, one way in under 20 minutes. I was confused.
After reading all the literature on the wall, the young man was still standing next to me and by the fourth time he asked if I wanted to see the view from the patio I replied by saying “Maybe…” He pointed through some glass doors, indicating the direction of set patio and as I walked towards it, explaining to Catt that he was very proud of his viewpoint and that we should perhaps take a look, he called to us again. This time he explained that for us to be allowed to look at the valley from his patio, we had to spend money at the bar. Yeh right!
At that second I had decided on three things at once: One: Every time someone wanted to charge a fee for something ridiculous, or a ridiculous fee for something from there on I was going to ask them if they understood why their place of business was as empty as it was. I had noticed this two days before at the Amani Park. If we ended up paying their fee, we would have been the first people in four days to enter the park. This hotel was no different. It was completely abandoned. Two: The next time a tout called me 2brother2, I was going to ask his mother’s name and explain that my mother had a different name which meant that we could not be brothers at all. If he countered by calling me “friend”, I would ask for him to mention my name. When he failed to do so I would argue that friends would surely know each other’s names. This was not a hostile notion, but a humorous attempt to entice the tout to call me “Bwana” (Sir) as I had taken to calling local men I met. Three: Try and visit at least three camp sites per town before making a decision where to stay. For overnight stops this was not important, but when staying for a few days, it was crucial I thought.
Walking back down the mountain we had decided to take a different route. We walked through working villages and hordes of school children pointing and shouting “wazungu, wazungu” and I made another point of learning the Swahili word for “Local” so I could join in the fun. By the time we had reached the Lawns again it was just past mid day and we managed a 16km hike. It felt really good to be that active in the mountains and we felt confident that our muscles had not seized from not use yet. We were, after all, on our way to Moshi and to try and walk up that big hill called Kilimanjaro…
As compensation for the incredibly noisy nights we had to suffer we had decided to abuse their wifi once again, only within an hour of firing up the laptops, the power went down and the wifi disappeared, never to return again. I never the less stayed on the patio to at least have some brick and mortar barrier between me and speakers I envisaged to be the size of houses. I vowed not to return to the camp site before the noise stopped.
By 18:00 however we were hungry, tired and bored of looking at computer screens. The sermon had just reached the height of hysterical hypnosis at that point and I was sure that the speakers were about to blow. We braved the camp site, on the other side of the buildings and started preparing dinner without talking. It was not that we had nothing to say to each other, it was just too much effort to shout over the noise of the inconsiderate bastards with the loud speakers. By 20:00 the crowds dispersed and the noise stopped. We had our dinner and a short conversation before the prayer singing started up at relatively acceptable volume and decided to go to bed early.
Just as we though we may get a quiet night in Lushoto, the local pub started playing some Tarrab music. This however was very pleasant and at low volume and almost lullibied us to sleep… Almost. The pack of hotel dogs, no less than seven, had decided to take refuge under and around our car and boy did they love barking. By midnight I started laughing from tiredness, frustration, amusement or pure delirium, I could not tell. At 1am one of the dogs decided to start howling instead of barking, so I joined in.
Day 132:
We did get some sleep, but nowhere near enough! Getting up at 9am we decided to blow that Popsicle stand as soon as. Only in our case, we were a little slow, so “as soon as” meant an hour and a half later. We zigzagged back down the mountain to Soni, not stopping to look at the waterfall for fear of getting charged a fee and eventually reached the valley floor at Mombo before turning north and heading towards Moshi.
The GPS showed that we were some 220km away, but as the skies were perfectly clear we started scanning the skyline for a glimpse of the highest peak in Africa. Some years before we found ourselves in the Royal Natal National park in the South African Drakensburg range. This was home to the famous amphitheatre which we were desperate to see and photograph. On our day of arrival it was fairly cloudy and scanning the horizon at a 15 deg angle we were sure that this Amphitheatre was hidden in the valleys behind the first cliffs we saw. It was only the next morning when the weather was perfectly clear that we saw the cliffs, and the top of the amphitheatre at a 60 deg angle. I found it insane that the clouds were able to hide such a massive and impressive mountain. That was around 8 000ft higher than we were. Kilimanjaro was more than twice that.
At 30km to go we still had not seen anything resembling a mountain and even once we got to Moshi, we knew which direction to look in, but there was zero indication of the existence of anything resembling a hill, never mind a mountain of that size. It wasn’t cloudy where we were, but we could see some puffy clouds around and decided that the mountain must have been shy, and was hiding in the clouds.
Finding accommodation was our first mission. With the new found resolution we visited Badger camp site and lodge which I thought was a dump and then went to the Key’s hotel which seemed nice, but with a real dump as a camp site and at twice the rate. We decided to try and organise our climb first and then perhaps head to Marangu to check out the Marangu Hotel’s camp site.
In a random tourist taxi on Zanzibar we had a random chat to two British doctor/volunteers who had just completed the climb successfully. They recommended a company called “Afrigalaxy” and quoted prices we thought fair while singing the praise of the guide and porters. Apparently they limit the weight you are allowed to give to porters and have a very firm stand against overworking or abusing their staff. This sounded good to us at the time, so we set of in search of their office.
The reception lady at the Key’s gave us some direction. She told us to go either straight or right at the first or second round about (Neither one of us really understood) and then find a huge building called “Siesem” which contained the offices we sought. After driving around for ten minutes, we discovered that we needed to go right at the first roundabout and the two story building, smaller than the Key’s hotel, had the letters C.C.M. printed on its side. We had found siesem. Inside the Afrigalaxy office we were greeted by their managing director none the less. He had a group leaving for the mountain the next day and said that we could join that group, if we felt ready. We did not…
Some discussion later, we were happy and confident that this was the company for us. We had previously heard that $1 500 a person was around the going rate, but you could get it much cheaper if you walked into an office in Moshi instead or booking it before hand. The doctors in Zanzibar told us that they had paid $920 each for a six day tended climb. Our quote was $830 each for the five day Marangu Route, aptly nick named the Coca Cola route as it seemed to be the most popular and easiest. We were no surer heroes. We did not want a huge challenge. We simply wanted to get to the top of the hill, and back down again and gain bragging rights and a photo from the highest point in Africa. The easiest route suited our purpose perfectly, so we booked it, and paid for it.
From the discussions it seemed like we were going to be the only two clients with 5 porters and one guide.
We left the office happy and went in search of peanuts to take as snacks. The market in Moshi was the size of one street block and the cleanest, nicest and friendliest market with the best produce we had seen since Zomba in Malawi more than a month before. It was hard not to fill the car with produce, but we had more food than what we needed and had to once again empty the fridge before commencing our climb. So with peanuts successfully shopped, we hit the road to Marangu and the hotel with the big shady lawns as described by the man from Afrigalaxy.
We found the Marangu Hotel some five km before the town itself. It seemed colonial bliss with all the usual plants and trees you’d expect from a colonial establishment. It came complete with lush gardens, German tourists, plenty of staff and very “Ra Ra” English “twitches” barring their insanely expensive binoculars and desk reference size bird books like prized trophies won by knowing more about ornithology than the next person. The camp site itself was set in a separate, small garden at the back of the hotel, nestled in between the owner’s residence and the vegetable garden. That came compete with ridiculously hot showers, water fall like water pressure, tin roofed cooking and eating area and three avocado trees with heaps of fruit still hanging from them. We had to share with a small overland truck from Namibia, but the clients seemed to be middle aged, so we suspected that they washed every once in a while, didn’t smoke too much dope and probably went to bed at a Godly hour. The price was $5 per person per night and we could leave the car there when going for a walk, so we signed up for two nights.
It was a small challenge to find a level spot for the bulk of Maggie to park on as the camp site clearly catered best for ground tents. Our chosen parking spot had us facing the mountain, which we still could not see, but were sure we would catch in the morning.
Dinner was fillet steak. This was not because we felt like treating ourselves with something expensive, but the price of fillet was the same as rump steak, or pork chops, or chicken for that matter. It was not difficult to decide which to buy. Exhausted from three nights of little sleep and a five hour drive, we crashed into bed before 9pm and found the quietness refreshing and relaxing. The other campers were quietly chatting around their dinner tables, but there were no loud speakers, no prayer singing and no hysterical sermons. Just as I was about to fall asleep, the dog started barking. I could not believe it! Out of pure frustration I whistled as loud as I could which made everyone in the camp site freeze, but also shut the dog up. I fell asleep instantly and kept on sleeping peacefully and undisturbed through the night.
Day 133:
I briefly woke up around 6am when the overlanders were packing up to leave. I did not know whether they were amazingly quiet, or whether I was used to much more noise, but the disturbance lasted no longer than five minutes. I fell asleep again and eventually got up around 7:30, refreshed and very well rested! Catt felt the same.
There was not much on the agenda for the day. We had our usual morning coffee and enjoyed the incredibly nice showers before having a second cup of coffee. We started getting our stuff together and packing a rucksack for our climb. I was not sure if we were allowed a rucksack each to be carried by porters, but after the packing was complete, and the 85L hiking rucksack contained everything we wanted to take and weighed no more than 15kg, I was convinced that the porters would absolutely love us! Our day sacks weighed n more than 5kg each either and after double checking and triple checking that we had everything, we decided to go for a walk.
Marangu Village was a 15 minute walk up a hill from the hotel. As soon as we left the hotel’s grounds we were approached by a local. I looked at Catt and said: “Let the touting begin”. The man greeted us in a friendly way and then said nothing. I was surprised, but relieved. The walk up the hill was brisk and pleasant and everyone crossing our path greeted us as we greeted them. In the village we were asked if we wanted to go see a waterfall and the start to the climb. I declined as I could hear the waterfall and knew we would see the start of the climb the next day. I was, to be honest, a little tired of waterfalls at the time.
A short walk around the village revealed a compulsory market, a post office and an internet café charging Wazungu four times as much as locals and more expensive than we had seen anywhere else in Africa. No wander the shop was empty. I noticed that we being followed by four individuals and every time we stopped to look around one of them would inexplicably be right there to offer assistance. I remarket to Catt that the world’s secret services should come recruit in Zanzibar and Marangu. These guys would need little training before being able to follow people without being noticed.
We left town without opening a wallet and as we passed the last buildings, our shadows also disappeared. On the walk down the hill everyone was friendly again and the only “touting” was a Zain Cell Phone rep who desperately tried to sell us either a smart phone or a solar powered phone. Both seemed really interesting, but we had no use. I did help the driver to get water back into his overheated radiator before setting off though. Back at the hotel camp site we had a scrumptious lunch and went to the lounge to hide away from the light misty rain for the rest of the afternoon.
Note: I really wanted to upload this before the start of our Kilimanjaro climb, so I had stop in the afternoon of this day. I’ll edit it with the next update.
If I had to do it over again:
Mmm, interesting question. Bagamoyo was a waste of time as a destination, but we needed a stop over between shopping and driving north. I guess we could have shopped, gone back to Kipopeo and left from there the next day.
We should have phoned Emau before heading that way. We considered emailing them the day before we left, but didn’t as we saw no way of retrieving the reply. That $90 to cross the park still leaves me without words to describe Tanzania’s stupidity.
Now the Lawns. It was honestly not a bad setting and not bad facilities. I think if it was any other time of year and the speakers were absent, the place could have been quite pleasant. We did use their internet without them knowing, so karma, I guess. The Irente Biodiversity farm however would be my first choice, should I ever find myself in the same area.
Marangu Hotel is the best place for camping in the Moshi/Marangu area without any doubt and does not rip you off. The success of Afrigalaxy will have to wait for week 20’s update.
No comments:
Post a Comment