Well where to start with the past three
weeks? I have been to one of the wonders of the world, one of the top 10
beaches in the world, seen many, went to a wildlife reserve that was so very
impressive! I will try and keep my description limited on everything otherwise
this blog post will be massive. So let’s go back in time to Friday 23rd
March where my exciting adventure all begun…
After correcting all of my exams and
realising that pretty much all of my class failed (still upset about that!) we
made our way down to Lilongwe
where we would catch a bus to Zambia
on Sunday. . It was strange to be back in Lilongwe,
when we arrived (in January) I commented on how empty and quiet the city but
after living in the middle of nowhere for 3 months Lilongwe seemed amazing… so big and so
westernised! On the Sunday we left our camp at 6am ready for a full day of travel to Zambia – 15 of
us in a minibus on a proper road-trip. Once across the boarder we came across
the first difference… the transport situation. We tried to get all 15 of us in
2 cars (this would be thought of as comfortable travel in Malawi) but they
refused and only allowed 4 in each car – also seatbelts had to be worn, all
things that we weren’t used to after Malawi! Sunday was a full day of travel,
leaving at 6 in the morning and not arriving at our hostel in Lusaka until 9pm.
Riding into Lusaka was quite incredible, it honestly felt we were back in the
UK with motorways, filled roads, traffic jams, (EVEN A WOOLWORTHS!!) but
unfortunately we couldn’t explore the city as we had to be on the road again at
9am in the morning. This is where our 2nd big dfference came… we
rocked up at 8:57 for a 9am bus to Livingstone and we were
told we were late!! Being 3 minutes early in Malawi is unheard of so this was a
massive surprise. We were told that we needed a ticket to get on the bus (again
something that we have not experienced before) and the bus itself was pure
luxury… we got heaps of space, air conditioning, TVs and even food and drink
bought around – you wouldn’t even get this on long-haul buses in the UK
let-alone Malawi! Needless to say that the 8 hour bus journey went really
quickly and we had soon arrived in Livingstone, the home town of Victoria Falls!
Whilst in Livingstone we found a couple
of great restaurants, the first served crocodile which I had to try as my gran
had always talked about eating crocodile! It was possibly the nicest meal I
have had this year, so tasty and tender… more crocodile should be bought over
to the UK
however I do see some logistical problems with this suggestion! The crocodile
was washed down with a few Zambian beers that are actually quite excellent,
except I can’t remember what they were called but I went through quite a few in
the week I was there! On the first full day in Livingstone we made the 10
minute bus ride to the Victoria Falls. I don’t
know quite what I was expecting but I certainly wasn’t expecting what we got.
After hiring a silly coat to protect us from the spray we walked down to the
edge and looked in amazement! The sheer scale of the waterfall is amazing and
the spray is mind-blowing! I have never been hit with so much water at one time
and warm water too. We spent a good couple of hours walking around the place
seeing the falls from different angles, sometimes it vanished from site as the
spray made visibility so bad. Then we walked round and saw the famous Victoria Falls Bridge that connects Zambia to Zimbabwe, and
from the middle of it we could just make out a little dot freefalling from the
bridge and then bouncing right up into the sky – bungee jumping! After a bit
more exploring we made our way out and it was quite obvious that the coat I
hired hat worked as I was soaked from head to toe. Also, more worryingly, so
was my camera and when I came to turn it on nothing happened. I took the news
quite well I think and quickly sat down somewhere dry and in the sun and left
it to dry for a bit. Then, following instructions, I went back to our hostel
and put the camera in a pan full of rice – desperately hoping it would spring
back to life. It didn’t.
Whilst we were in Livingstone it was
Sarah’s 18th birthday and as you only turn 18 once we made plans to
make it quite a special one for her. On the eve of her birthday we went on a
“Sunset Booze Cruise” along the river Zambezi basically it was a 3 hour cruise
that had unlimited free alcohol and so we advantage of this and by the end none
of us were what you’d call ‘sober’. Still we managed to see some elephants,
hippos, crocodiles as well as a gorgeous sunset that evening. On the boat we
met a big group of travellers who were in an organised tour from Cape Town to
Turkey, we got talking to them including an Irishman called Gavin, 6 foot 10
guy from Norwich called George, a very talkative lady from Watford and a couple
of German students. We got chatting to them and decided to hit the town with a
few of them after we got back. Come midnight
Gavin and Anthony organised the live band to play Sarah a song that lasted 20
minutes while she awkwardly danced with some locals!!
As you can imagine, I wasn’t feeling
quite my best the next morning… even the “Full English Hangover Cure” didn’t
help! By late morning we were at the falls once again, however this time we
made our way to the bridge as today was the jumping day. I knew that I wouldn’t
be able to do the bungee but was preparing myself to do the swing from the
bridge, however once I stepped onto it I knew that there was no way I could
force my body to jump off of the bridge – all 111m high! Before everyone jumped
they had to be weighed and their weight was written in permanent pen on their
forearm… interestingly I had gained 5 lbs since I left Britain in
January (I was the only one who gained weight out of all of us!!) One by one
everyone started to jump off and come back with incredible smiles but $120 is a
lot of money to waste if I couldn’t manage to jump off. The others were
incredible, all so brave but there was no way I could do it! Instead, I joined
up with Ellie, who was also not going to do the jump, and we went on a zip-wire
from the Zambian to the Zimbabwean side. The view was great but I couldn’t get
the gutting feeling away as I couldn’t do the big jumps!
Around the site of the Victoria
Falls there is a massive hotel complex that has Acers and Acers of
green land. Roaming around at the front were around ten zebra and we were
invited in to have a look at them. At some points I was standing just a few
metres from the magnificent animals but unfortunately by this time I had no
camera. We were always shown round the rest of the hotel area which was a
strange mix of car parks, green space and giraffes… we watched an arriving taxi
have to stop for a giraffe to get out of the road, very strange! At this point
there were 9 of us wondering through the area, 8 of them with cameras
constantly taking photos and then there was me – needless to say my mood wasn’t
very good at this point and sulked back to the hostel afterwards. Once back at
the hostel it went from bad to worse for me as I couldn’t find my money belt
that contained my passport and everything important in it! 3 hours I searched
for it and I was ready to leave to Lusaka
that night to go to the British Embassy until Jess screamed my name and ran at
me with the money belt in hand. If I am honest, I broke down at this point and
for the first time in my life I cried with happiness. I decided that I was
going to by everyone from the group a drink which lead to my best ever bar bill
– 99,500 Zambia Kwacha (or 12 quid!!)
The next stage of our plan was to travel
back to Lusaka
and then onto South
Luwanga National
Park, which is close to the Malawian border. We
stopped off in Lusaka
for a night which was good as it meant we could finally explore the city that
is known as the sister of LA. I couldn’t stand being camera-less anymore and
found a nice little Sony Cybershot for 800,000 kwacha – bargain! The camera is doing an impossible job as it has to replace
my DSLR – a similar scenario to when Sir Alex Ferguson retires I feel, but the
photos from it are pretty decent. Also I went in a proper Woolworths, the
Australians didn’t understand why I was quite so excited – unfortunately I
didn’t manage to get a picture of the adventure. And then we were off again,
this time on a 10 hour trip to South Luwanga, I really did not enjoy this trip
as I was still a bit ill from the hangover a couple of nights before but we
arrived in time for dinner and spotted a hippo 40 yards from where we ate!
We were only at the National Park for a
day but made the most of it as we went on 2 safaris, a morning one at 6am which
was so incredible and then an evening one which unfortunately we didn’t see
many animals. After we had seen zebras and giraffes so close just a few days
before I was interested in seeing them properly in the wild, what they do and
where they hang out. It didn’t take long before we came across a family of
elephants in the bush enjoying their breakfast. It is strange to call such a
big animal ‘cute’ but these were definitely the cutest animals I had seen in a
long time, with the two baby elephants playing a game with each other! Then
came giraffe wondering around, over the dirt track which we had to slow down
for. Also we spotted more zebras, hippos, impalas, buffalo and hyenas – all
were incredibly beautiful and I felt so privileged to see such remarkable
animals in the wild. As said the night
drive didn’t quite match this as all we saw were two hares and an owl!!
It was at this time that Sarah and Jess
invited me to join them on their holiday to go on a train from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam and then pop over to Zanzibar for a few days.
I had heard a lot about Zanzibar
and how beautiful it was so I kindly accepted their offer. But this meant that
we had to leave that night, without the others as we had to catch the train
that left on Tuesdays. We left at 9pm
in the pouring rain without anything booked at all, no travel, no accommodation
and no travel guide to tell us what we were going to do… but it was so exciting
and seemed quite ridiculous! We spent another night in Lusaka, again it was very nice and met some
more friendly travellers.
Tuesday bought the start of our 1,860km
train trip to Dar es Salaam!
The train didn’t leave until 4pm
so that gave us plenty of time to get to the station and even upgrade to 1st
class tickets. The only difference between 1st class and 2nd
class is that you were sharing with 3 other people rather than 5 but I am glad
we made the change. Male and females aren’t allowed to be in the same dorm on
the train so I had a cabin with a very friendly Zambian student who was
travelling to Dar to see his family. Also there was a lorry driver who spoke
little English and a man that I never heard speak! I spent most of my time on
the train lying on my bed reading, sleeping or generally drifting off into the
distance! We met a nice (but slightly weird) Englishman onboard who was a
University lecturer at Kings
College Uni… he was good
to chat to and was trying to convince me to change university courses. We were
on the train until Thursday afternoon, but there was a fair amount of drama
whilst travelling – on the Wednesday morning I went to see the girls in there
cabin and left my wallet in my bag on my bed, when I came back all my money was
missing. With the help of the friendly student we called the police to do
searches of the people in my room but nothing was found. In the end I had to
stop the train for 20 minutes to go to a police station and report the
incident! Nothing like being the centre of attention, eh?
Arriving in Dar we still had
accommodation booked, no map and no clue how to speak Swahili! We could only
remember one name of a place to stay so asked a taxi driver to take us there.
We were a bit surprised that after 15 minutes of driving he pulled up by a
ferry terminal and gestured that we had to take the ferry to the other side. We
were shunted in the queue and had to pay a grand sum of 200 shillings (15p) for
the ticket. The ferry just worked from one side of the bay to the other and
only took 3 minutes to get there. Just imagine the floating-bridge at Cowes and that is what
this was like, only this was jammed full of tuk-tuk’s and people in bright
saris! The energy of the place was amazing – just like coming out of a football
match with the crowd bubbling with excitement. We got off the ferry and still
had no idea of where to go and what to do but with a bit of help from a local
girl who spoke very good English we arrived at the camp in a tuk-tuk in time
for tea. Our rooms were little “banda’s” on the beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, quite breathtaking and for 15 quid –
another bargain! Within 30 minutes of being there we spotted Gavin, George and
their fellow travellers that we had met in Livingstone a week previously –
small world isn’t it! That evening we chatted to them, I played pool against a
Romanian traveller (and won) and chilled out overlooking the sea.
We spent one day in Dar es Salaam in which we roamed around the
markets and went to an Indian restaurant which was possibly the poshest place I
had ever eaten in! Again that night was spent relaxing with a few beers, this
time talking to a Swiss girl who was volunteering as a teacher in Tanzania. .
Come the morning we decided to hire bikes and ride through some villages on the
outskirts of the city, it was all very pleasant expect the bike was miles to
big for me and I kept on falling off!! Once the girls had stopped laughing at
me we made our way to the ferry port to Zanzibar
which was an incredibly unorganised place and to this day I still don’t know if
we got on the right ferry… all I know is that after the two and a half hour
journey we made it to the island. Again we didn’t have any plans on what we
were going to do, nothing was booked and we didn’t even know where abouts on Zanzibar we had landed
(it turned out to be Stone
Town – the capital).
Luckily there was a very good tourist information as soon as we got of the boat
and they found us a cheap guesthouse to stay in. That evening we roamed around
the markets of Stone
Town which are supposed
to be among the best in the world and they lived up to their reputation. The
market went down a long, narrow twisty street that was paved with cobble stones
and felt very Mediterranean. There were hundreds of sellers, all with stalls
filled with clothes and accessories. We took a right turn into another maze of
stalls – this time they had a distinctly different feel as most of the clothes
were saris and traditional Indian clothes as 70% of Tanzania is Muslim. When the
markets started closing we headed down to the sea just in time to see my first
sunset over the Indian ocean, simply
beautiful. When it became dark we stumbled across the main green which was
eliminated brightly and filled with yet more stalls. These stalls were filled
with seafood of all kinds and we were quickly shown through the vast array of
what was on offer: crab, octopus and shark but to name a few! I couldn’t resist
the shark when I saw it however I was slightly disappointed as it was just
really fishy fish! With our stomachs full of exotic seafood and ice cream we
headed back to the guesthouse, quickly changed and then went out to hit the
bars and clubs. Unfortunately everything was a bit quiet and we were later told
that there was a “Full moon party” up north which EVERYONE was at. But this
didn’t stop us from having a good time and meeting some lovely people.
The next day we decided to head up to
the north of the island, to Kendwa. But before we did we rented out bikes for
the morning and cycled round Stone
Town and to all the
historical ruins and sites around the area. There really is so much to do in Stone Town
that we agreed that we would spend one more day there at the end. In the
afternoon we got a taxi to Kendwa, still without any accommodation booked
whatsoever but the taxi driver was very kind and drove us from place to place
until we got a room. We were quite lucky and found a room at “The Sunset Hotel”
which wasn’t really a hotel, more like a village! Unfortunately we had to get a
2 bed room between the 3 of us but the girls agreed to share so it didn’t make
a difference to me!! Anyway we arrived there just in time for another sunset…
this time was quite incredible as we went down to the beach (which is in the
top 10 beaches in the world!) and my God, it was beautiful. Miles upon miles of
pure white sand leading into a gorgeous blue/turquoise sea and the orange sun
slowly setting in the horizon – it was a scene from a Hollywood
movie and I was there living it! We all took about 500 photos each of the
sunset and then went to the bar to get some drinks in, and guess what? We met
up with Gavin, George and the crew again!! We joined them for dinner at a cheap
restaurant that they had found and while George tried to hit on Jess, I chatted
to Gavin and the German students about their plans. We stayed up well into the
morning talking/drinking/partying on the beach but I was let down by Jess and
Sarah who went for an early night (probably trying to avoid 6 foot 10,
George!!). By the time I got back to the room I had maybe a few too many and
found Sarah and Jess in different beds meaning that I didn’t have a bed!
Luckily Sarah woke and we had to share a bed, which was a story in itself as I
literally kicked her out of the bed in the night (she has been showing me the
bruise for the past 2 weeks!)
We spent a couple of days at Kendwa,
they were mostly spent lying on the beach working on our tans and occasionally
going for a swim to cool off! Whilst there we hired kayaks and sailed around a
nearby island. Also I went parasailing; the view was great as I could see all
across the island and way off into the west I could just make out the coast of Africa. We spent the evenings with an alcoholic beverage
at hand and had a pretty good time to say the least! On our last full day on
Zanzibar we went for a Spice Tour (as Zanzibar is world famous for producing
amazing spices) in which we were shown around a local spice farm with a great
guide showing us all the different types of spices and how they were grown. It
was very interesting to see how our spice rack at home is actually made. The
tour included lunch which was in a local house… all 18 of us on the tour
sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle with a great selection of rice
and sauces handed around. Finally we got a chance to buy some of the spices
(which I took full advantage of!!) and bought a lot for our house back in Malawi.
Unfortunately, on the Thursday we had to
leave Zanzibar!
I had fallen in love with the island and I am quite certain that I will be back
at some point in my life. We had yet another terribly unorganised ferry trip to
deal with and once back in Dar had a few things to sort out (including a trip
to the police station for my money). We then realised that we couldn’t get a
bus back to Malawi
until the following morning so had to spend the night in Dar es Salaam which again was quite eventful
as I had my wallet pick-pocketed! Excellent!
The bus trip home was a long 15 hours to
the border, luckily we made friends with a lovely Malawian student who helped
us find a place to stay for the night and to get back across the border safely.
Anthony had the key to our house and wasn’t back from his holiday yet so I was
locked out, meaning that I just had to go to Matt’s lodge and have a swim and a
relax before going back to Fulirwa the next day!! We are now back at school and
teaching once more which is good, at first I was suffering post-holiday-blues
but now I am enjoying life again, however there are only 80 days left until my
flight back home!
Whilst we were on holiday there was some
interesting news developing from Malawi… President Bingu had a heart
attack and died meaning that his deputy was bought in – Joyce Banda, who is
only Africa’s 2nd woman President
and Southern Africa’s 1st. It feels
pretty good to be in a country leading the way for the equality of women but at
the moment not much has changed except there is now a sugar crisis as well as a
fuel crisis! On Monday it is Bingu’s funeral which has been announced as a
National Holiday so I am currently making plans of what to do on this day off.
As I said before, the holiday was such an
incredible experience with some massive highs and some unfortunate depressing
lows. The best thing about travelling is definitely the people you go with and
the people you meet. I have made friends with some great travellers over the
past 3 weeks and will never forget the random meetings of these people. For
anyone looking to travel in Southern Africa
you have to visit Victoria Falls and Zanzibar as they are both
breathtakingly beautiful.
So for now I have to come to an end, I
could have expanded this blog further but I think 4,000 words in enough for the
moment!
