Tanzania! Famous for the premier tourist destinations of east Africa, certainly for some of the top safaris. Serengeti? Check. Ngorongoro crater? Check. Mount Kilimanjaro? Check. Zanzibar? Check. Others that you probably haven't heard of (and which I certainly hadn't until reading the guide book): the massive Selous Game Reserve and the not so massive Ruaha National Park. What would I be taking in? Pretty much none of the above except for Zanzibar and for a very simple reason: $.
Yes, a safari in Serengeti or Ngorongoro will probably set you back around $150 / day and climbing Mt Kilimanjaro costs over $1000 - easily the cheapest price - for a five-day climb and descent. Let's compare and contrast: Maasai Mara NP in Kenya (which is contiguous with Serengeti NP) can be done for as little as $90 / day for a three day trip from Nairobi. A seven day trek including assaults on various snow-capped peaks in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda costs $570. Climbing Mt Kenya and seeing its snow costs can be done for less than $100 /day, minimum of three days. Basically, to put it bluntly, Tanzania is a big country with some of the best known (and commensurately priced) African tourist hotspots and not too much else although it should be noted that park fees charged by the government are the biggest culprit: at least $600 of what you pay to climb Kilimanjaro is the park fee.
If you fancy doing something similar for a lot less then Kenya and Uganda are waiting for you and they are just as good. You'll have far, far fewer touts and salesmen following you around in Kenya and Uganda trying to sell you overpriced safaris (or underpriced safaris where you get nothing for your money). There are some exceptions: Selous game reserve and Ruaha NP are practically unknown by people without Tanzania guidebooks and are seemingly reasonably priced.
The exception to this is Zanzibar because it's not in a game reserve and there are no entrance fees. Thankfully, I also coincided my visit to Zanzibar with the Zanzibar low season: hotels were reasonably priced (I got an budget room with ensuite for $12) with food and drink no more expensive than the mainland. And so it was that, after stopping at Bukabo and Mwanza on the way to Dar Es Salaam from Uganda I headed straight to Zanzibar.
It's time for some parentheses here so here goes: (Bukabo wasn't a bad place at all, although quite small and Mwanza was big enough that a good walk around was justified. Aside from both these towns being conveniently located on the shores of Lake Victoria there really wasn't much there to hold back a traveler. One of the better ways of traveling in Tanzania is to go by train. That's fair enough: the country's huge and a lot of the stuff to see is to the north - Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Kili - or in the case of Zanzibar accessible from Dar Es Salaam. I headed by Mwanza's petit train station and asked around: nope, there aren't any trains at the moment. When do they start again? About September, a mere six months away. Apparently in January - of 2010 - there was some flood damage near Dodoma, Tanzania's village-sized legislative capital, which washed away a rail bridge. Hence all the trains coming from the north - from Mwanza - and from the west - Lake Tanganyika - were cancelled. No partial service, no trains to Dodoma and then re-connect with the train service after passing the bridge, no. Uh uh. So bus is the only option.
Unlike Uganda and Kenya, Tanzania's main towns have their bus stations outside of town, as in waaaaay out of town. At Mwanza the bus station is conveniently located with 6km of fields and rolling hills around Lake Vic between it and the town itself. The most excitement I had in Mwanza was first asking the hotel if they could help me find a taxi - I quickly gave up with them after the taxi driver started negotiations at $15 (20,000 shillings) for the 6km trip. I decided to look a little harder. The obvious place to find a taxi is at the bus station: I went there and was targeted by pick-pockets within seconds of arriving. However, as I am highly trained and like a coiled spring, I realised what was going on and rumbled them before any hands went into pockets. Good luck ensues! I find a taxi who'll take me for 5,000 shillings - just under $4. Still I can do better and end up arranging a bodaboda motorcycle taxi piloted by one Dionysus - Dio to his friends - to collect me at 5am the next day to take me to the bus station. He'll do this for 3,000 shillings. To my great pleasure he was there on time, does such a sterling job that I gave him a decent tip. The bus ride was thoroughly boring - if you look at a map of western Tanzania you'll see that it's flat as a pancake with no features of interest - and late, so that I arrived in the Dar bus station, conveniently located 10km out of town at 11pm. Not the best time to be wandering around outer Dar suburbs looking for public transport so I took a taxi: thankfully a kind local who was also on the bus negotiated the price for me so I only paid 13,000 shillings.)
The next morning I arose bright and early and went for a look around, specifically to find cheap accommodation. I had booked ahead for my hotel in Dar - the cheapest I could find was $15, hardly budget accommodation when you're used to paying less than $5 - so set my sights on the YWCA hostel. I found the hostel but they couldn't guarantee me a room for that night; not yet anyway, come back later. Not long later I found myself wandering past the port area, quite unintentionally. Before you can say 'are you are salesman?', pow, some guys are beside me: 'are you going to Zanzibar?' Sure, I guess, I want to go; what's the deal? It turns out that the deal ain't bad: $25 for the ferry ride, check in starts at 11, departure at noon. I dash off and book a night in Stone Town over the net (to save me trawling around in the evening, looking for accommodation) and dash back to the port. All is go and I'm heading to Zanzibar.
Zanzibar is all in all a pleasing place although truth be told I would hate with a passion to be there during the high season. It is quite similar to Lamu (Kenya) in history, architecture and style although if I were running a Tropical Island Smackdown I'd expect Lamu to finish off Zanzibar - perhaps TKO in a late round: Lamu is quieter, more pleasant, has fewer touts, easier access to beaches and the getting there is more interesting.
I'll let my photos of Zanzibar do the talking: suffice to say, my experience was overall very positive. I met Jens, from Stockholm, at the first hotel I stayed at (the one I booked before the ferry ride, before I hunted down a budget place) and it turned out he had loads of Swedish friends who were interested in a trip to Prison Island. As the name suggests there was actually no prison there, just a quarantine area and apparently it wasn't used. So now it's a hotel resort and tortoise sanctuary all rolled into one. We went planning to do some snorkeling too however the sea was too rough (I splashed around for all of one minute before getting back in the boat) - reports were that the sea around the coral was so cloudy as to make snorkeling pointless (and dangerous). The tortoises were interesting: feeding was allowed using the supplied spinach although signs stressed that sitting on the tortoises was most certainly not expected of us. And yes, minutes before my little plastic compact camera breathed its last I took this film of a tortoise with me trying hard to affect an Attenborough accent.
Although climbing Kilimanjaro requires a trust fund, going to Moshi and looking at it is pretty darn cheap. This is what I did and upon arrival noticed that Mt Kilimanjaro was covered in impenetrable cloud. Bugger. The next thing I noticed was the number of people trying to sell me safaris and Kilimanjaro climbing. If someone's already trying to sell me a safari that's not a reason for someone else to approach and do the same. I kept my cool, my wallet stayed in my pocket and the next morning, bright and early, I was out of bed with my camera to see an early morning Mt Kilimanjaro. I saw it, thankfully enough, and just 30 minutes after clapping eyes on it it was shrouded in cloud again. Rainy season is upon us.
An alternative to staying in Moshi is to go to the wee town of Marangu. I took the tent - camping is cheap there - and headed off for an overnighter in a small village. As soon as I'm out of the minivan, yep, I'm invited to climb Mt K or perhaps just do a tour of local villages and waterfalls and ... I eventually escape. The visit is definitely worthwhile, despite the pestering (justified on the basis that I was the only white man in the village so there was no-one else to sell to), there was enough sunlight on Kili to have a good walk, and town included a good pub.
Heading back to Dar from Moshi I didn't race there: no, the town of Lushoto, recommended by Lonely Planet as a decent place and one worth seeing was in between and so I made a point of stopping there. Sadly the rainy season came with me and, for my whole day there I spent a good part of the morning getting rained on. This shouldn't hide the fact that I had a jolly good walk through some decent scenery and had only one person try to sell to me (and even then it was all very relaxed). Sadly, the day I was tootling downhill out to the main road to head to Dar was also the day that the sun came out and bathed Lushoto and the surrounding hills in light. Bugger.
And back again to Dar, back for a stopover until I head to Iringa. Dar, not my favourite place in the world. Sadly it makes Nairobi seem like Vegas and it seriously lacks anything of interest. The presumption amongst taxi drivers is that you are here in order to find transport to leave (are you going to Zanzibar? is oft heard). The city centre is practically void of anything resembling a cafe, restaurant or bar and I've spent a long time here walking around, searching for beer. It just doesn't happen in Dar.
The next part of the trip was to head south to Malawi and there are two ways to get there on public transport: the train south to Zambia which stops at Mbeya before continuing over the border or to take the bus and stop and the delightful (says Lonely Planet) town of Iringa.
The only catch - and a mild one at that - was that the short rainy season from March to May came into play again. Yes, the mountains and hills in the south of Tanzania act as cloud magnets and the clouds oblige by crowding around any peak, laying low and biding their time. And so it was that on an apparantly fine day, one with a bit of sun, I left the relatively banal but not unpleasant town of Iringa to walk in the nearby hills. I found a path into a nearby farming area and reached maximum distance from shelter before a huge black cloud wafted over and dumped a load of heavy rain on me. I found a partly completed house - sadly one with no roof - in which to shelter before continuing again. The mountains and scenery should have been great, can't fault that at all, although frequently running for shelter from downpours wasn't such fun. In the end I was drenched from waist down (I didn't bring my waterproof leggings that day), couldn't get any wetter and decided that, heck, just to enjoy the moment and ended up with a decent walk after all.
Mbeya was for me just a stop, a place to rest, before going to Malawi. There's nothing of note there for a tourist, just shops and the convenient location. Like Iringa it's in hills - shrouded, of course, in low-flying deeply filthy black looking clouds.
Coming into Mbeya on the bus I noticed a mzungu (white man), clad in lycra, cycling towards Mbeya. Then another. Then lots of them, in fact. Something's happening, a tour of Tanzania? I decided not to chance my arm with a walk again and had an evening of quiet. Stocking up on snacks for the bus ride to Malawi (not that it should be arduous) I was asked: 'are you one of the cyclists?' for the shop-keeper had also seen huge numbers of mzungu puffing into town.
Heading to Malawi the next day, the bus again passes large numbers of cyclists this time struggling up the hills on the road to Malawi. One salient point is noted: they have no luggage, just people on bikes. The truth became apparent when a Tour d'Afrique support truck came into view by the side of the road laying out breakfast on a tressle table. These mzungu (actually 'azungu' for the plural) were cycling from 'Cairo to Cape Town: 12,000km in 120 days' according to the slogan on the truck. If you fancy doing something similar follow the link although this isn't an endorsement - why should you need a support truck, eh?
At least the had a decent route, for this part of the world at least, for the road followed a ridge line along the hills south - thankfully not obscured by cloud - giving some spectacular views, including that of a distant silver strip of Lake Malawi. To top of the good weather and great views I got a fantastic deal from the money changers who gave me Malawi kwacha at less than the interbank rate. Did I get fake banknotes? No idea, but I didn't have any problems spending them.
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