Subsequent trips – Tanzania Oct 2010

Owing to a chance suggestion by Parvinder at work, I don’t suppose it would do any harm to put details of other trips I’ve done on this site as well. So here goes for Tanzania!

We hardly blazed any trails or broke any new ground in Tanzania., but at least the people/companies/hotels info will be reasonably up to date and hopefully of use to someone.

Some asshole hacked my main ilesmark youtube account recently and deleted 100 of my videos. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me and youtube appears powerless to stop it from happening to increasing numbers of people. Thus, rather than have all my vids in 1 account, I am going to have them in lots of small separate accounts, all beginning with the name ilesmark. That way, if the hacking occurs again the loss will be capped. Shame to have to do this, isn’t it? But that shouldn’t affect the viewing of these videos as they are embedded in the site.

The videos are the large icons while the stills are the small ones.

Almost my first intro to Tanz was a frighteningly-thick immigration officer. After I had paid the 50 US and got the visa put in my passport, I proffered it at the passport control window to get stamped into the country, as one does at airport immigration. So far so good. Woman behind window leafed through passport, reached the newly-added Tanz visa page, looked at it minutely and handed passport back to me saying “go over there and get your visa”. Me – “What have you just been looking at if it isn’t my Tanzanian visa?” Woman opened passport again, looked at the same page as before, passed it to her colleague who did the same thing and then handed the passport back to me with an ‘OK’.

Met an Irish guy at the airport and shared a taxi with him into the centre of Dar. He works there. Also met Matt, another overlander (Aussie, based in the UK, driving a SA-reg Hilux through Africa) and all of us went out for a few bottles of Kilimanjaro beer at the Break Point Bar and a Lebanese meal on Thursday night. Cue some amazing stories from Matt and his partner about their experiences in a national park in Zambia. Visitors to this park are supposed to put their food in sealed containers to stop elephants coming into the campsite at night to get at the food.

1 night, Matt woke to find an elephant standing next to their Hilux, with its trunk all the way inside the cab looking for food. Me – “what a shame you didn’t get a picture.” Him “we wanted to, but the camera was in the cab!” Another time, a couple were asleep in a roof tent when a male elephant with tusks scented food in their tent as they hadn’t stored it in a sealed container. It gored their tent and took the roof off it, missing them by inches. But even if you do store food properly, the elephants have learned how to pop open the food containers ie wrap trunk around container and twist lid off or failing that stamp on the container. One night the campsite owner found an elephant doing this and waved a stick it to chase it away. Elephant went into fast reverse. Person in tent behind elephant looked out of tent just in time to see backside of pachyderm heading towards him at a rate of knots, whereupon he rolled over just as back foot of elephant trod on his tent and hit the ground exactly where he’d been sleeping.

The following night I went back to the same place and was reminded of the backside-of-an-elephant story. There was a woman doing a sort of buttock dance ie like a belly dance, but with a different part of the anatomy. Easily 1 metre across at the hips, with cellulite to match, but half the club gathered around to watch and cheer. WHY didn’t I have the camera with me???

While out for a stroll along Ocean Drive to the east of downtown Dar and near the ferry port, I discovered the fish market. These poor octopuses (or is it octopi?) need to be tenderised by having 7 shades pummeled out of them like this a minimum of 100 times.

There isn’t that much specific to ‘see’ in Dar but, as is my wont, I busied myself with random shots of people and signs I found interesting or amusing. Tanzanians mostly don’t like having their photo taken and, although it’s ostensibly for cultural reasons, the objections appear to be readily assuaged by money changing hands which I find irritating and mercenary. So there were a lot of other pictures I have to remember in my mind’s eye:-

Tanzania – Dar Es Salaam

During our time in Dar, we also visited an orphanage (www.mitindohouse.org). It’s run by a Tanzanian fairtrade fashion designer named Khadija Saad and is for children whose parents have died of HIV. To anyone who is in Tanz or about to go – they would appreciate toys and first aid kits. Also bring Khadija some current editions of Vogue / Instyle or similar fashion magazines – they use this for inspiration. We never actually met Khadija as he was in the USA when we came to Dar, but we did meet a few of his friends and Jamila, who runs it with him. She’s on +255 784 527777

In Dar, we stayed in the Safari Inn and Econolodge. Out of the 2, Econolodge was nicer for quality of accommodation and breakfast, but I have a charitable attitude towards the Safari Inn staff. They were friendly and I also know they are honest. I did a very stupid thing in hiding my passport and USD cash under the mattress and forgetting about it when changing rooms the next morning, but the cleaners returned it to me intact when I had a heart-stopping moment and discovered it was missing. A nice and reliable taxi driver we used a few times, who hangs around Safari hotel, is called Bokhari – he’s on +255 755 352121

Chef’s Pride restaurant near to the above hotels is a firm favourite with both locals and tourists in Dar and justifiably so. Lovely.

Just near to the Break Point Bar in downtown Dar is a new restaurant that has opened up…so new it’s not in any guidebook. Sited in a lovely old German building, it’s called Archipelago and is a new branch of the Archipelago restaurant in Stone Town on Zanzibar.

It’s a matter of regret that we didn’t see more of Tanz. It would have been no problem, for eg, to go up the coast to Bagamoyo, and also spend a few days in the Usambara Mountains. But no – am afraid we just went straight from Dar to Moshi on the Dar Express buses. They give you complimentary drinks, BTW, at least if you ride on the express AC buses. But they are sadly adrift on the journey time – it’s at least 2 hours more than they say and this happened each way even though there were no specific delays. The in-flight entertainment consisted of Tanzanian drama stuff with plotlines and acting that were so crap it was funny by itself…think Prisoner Cell Block H! And all with amusing babelfish-generated English subtitles. One of them I remember was about a husband and wife who couldn’t conceive. Husband was off having an affair, blaming his wife for not giving him a child. Mistress got up the duff and husband left wife. Mistress gives birth to mixed–race child and husband realises he’s been had. Husband then takes sperm count test and finds out the problem was with him and not wife. Wife then gets pregnant and husband thinks she’s cheated on him. Final scene – husband seeing doctor and being told the low sperm count was a misdiagnosis.

Moshi – stayed in the Buffalo Hotel. Very nice. Opposite the Buffalo is a restaurant called Indo Italiano. It was expensive, with mediocre food and service. You can do better elsewhere.

We had gone to Moshi intending to climb Kili, but couldn’t/didn’t want to pay the National Park fee. No doubt I will get villified for writing this, but we felt it was unreasonably high given that it isn’t spent on the park. But in the process of researching Kili, we had a chat with Shah Tours and Akaro Tours. Both these companies engendered a feeling of competence and if it wasn’t for the NP fee, we wouldn’t have worried about dealing with them. You can save a lot of ££ booking with a Tanzanian company rather than one based outside Tanzania, but you can’t save that much more by arranging the tour face to face with the likes of Shah/Akaro in Moshi as opposed to dealing with them over the internet prior to arrival.

Also on the ground floor of the Kindoroko Hotel building (but not connected with the hotel) is a good and cheap Indian restaurant – it’s called the Taj Mahal or something like that but does African food as well as Indian. It’s amazing value and also make sure you try their gorgeous Zanzibar pizzas, easily the match of anything we ate in Zanzibar!

Tanzania Coffee Lounge, almost opposite the above, does good proper coffee and not the instant sh1t you get so often in Tanzania. WHY OH WHY OH WHY,in a coffee-growing country?!

We took a little trip up to Materuni village and Kuringe Waterfall from Moshi. In Materuni, what did we see but this chameleon skulking on a stick. Funny creatures, especially the way their eyes can move independently of each other.

Kuringe Waterfall is 70 metres high. Well worth the trek. Shame we didn’t bring swimming gear!

For these 2 trips we used Tintin Tours, a little company located at the junction of New and Chagga streets, just around the corner from the Kindoroko Hotel and next to the One Heritage Craft Shop. I have lost his business card, so can’t simply give the phone no like I would ordinarily do, but from our discussions with Tintin re climbing Kili, I would say he would probably be OK to climb Kili with.

Stills of Dar to Moshi and then Moshi and around:-

Tanzania – Moshi

And so, on to Arusha. Stayed in Arusha Backpackers, a prime example of a place that has gotten fat and complacent on the strength of getting a guaranteed flow of business thanks to being in the guidebooks. It was overpriced for what it was and some of the rooms were windowless and depressing. The second floor rooms are better though. The top floor restaurant/bar does pretty mediocre food but is good for watching the world go by, as can be seen from some of these pics – all the ones of people passing the filling station were taken from here. One of the attractions of the restaurant, in an ‘amusing because it’s bad’ way is however the waitress called ‘Happy’ according to her name badge. ‘Unhappy’ or ‘Misery’ would be a better name! Also forget about using the internet there. The woman in charge of the computers works when she feels like it and not when people want to use them!

Tanzania – Arusha

Food in Arusha – Khan’s Barbecue is a must…..a car spares place by day and an open-air restaurant by night (really!) – it’s in the guidebooks and deserves to be. Also a happy accident at Cafe Bamboo, just north of the Clocktower. We’d ordered an avocado and lemon smoothie but the waitress said they’d run out of lemon. Completely randomly, she suggested passion fruit instead. It isn’t on the menu and isn’t a combination you can only get at Cafe Bamboo, but try asking for it either there or any other place that does fruit smoothies. Absolutely GORGEOUS!

Not done Kili, we weren’t going to go away completely unmountained. So in Arusha we did Meru instead for half the price. However – irony of ironies – we found out the hard way that Meru was harder not easier. The book was seriously taking the p1ss in describing Meru as a ‘gentle introduction to Kili’. Rather Kili should be described as a ‘gentle introduction to Meru’. Although 1000 metres shorter, Meru has an overall incline of THIRTY degrees as opposed to the more sedate 8 of Kili. It was disheartening in the extreme to see groups of grimly determined OAPs from France and Germany running rings around us in terms of fitness. We used Kindoroko Tours as guides (any foreigner who visits a National Park in Tanzania must have a Tanzanian guide), based on the ground floor of Arusha Backpackers. No complaints about them, and the food on the climb was excellent. One thing – clarify the number of porters. We only ever saw 3, but allegedly there was a 4th, invisible one (who we had to tip for!) Our guide was called Bertram – thanks to our own lack of fitness poor Bertram had to go somewhat beyond the call of duty for us but he was very supportive.

On day 1 of our ‘assault’ of Mount Meru (or should that read Mount Meru’s assault on us?!) we’d stopped for the night at the Miriakamba huts, the first lodge.

Or rather – the afternoon, as we got there with plenty of daylight left. So a little side trip beckoned towards Materin Lake, a seasonal lake on the Meru Plateau from which also rises the Mt Meru Ash Cone which you’ll see in subsequent videos. On the way, at some distance, one of us sighted this bushbuck. Apols for the shaky footage. Shot using the 640 x 480 crop setting on a Canon 550D but without a tripod……not even the roof of a vehicle to rest on.

After Materin Lake, we continued walking to Njeku Viewpoint. Near the base of the ash cone, the sheer immensity of it and distance between us and the waterfall might not be capable of being caught properly by this video.

Mount Meru climb day 2 saw us reaching Saddle Huts, the second lodge. Just some general footage of the low cloud shrouding the Meru Saddle and Little Meru, together with Momella Lakes in the far distance

That evening, in the communal dining area, we heard this funny “Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny HOO” being chanted over and over again. I suspect it was some sort of obscure German humour-type thing by this pair of German trekkers, who were nice enough in a smug German sort of way (and beat everyone on the trek to the top of Meru and down again, but also needed to be taken by Landrover for the last leg of the trip from Miriakamba huts to Momella Gate just like us lesser mortals did on day 3 – ha ha).

Having set off at 12.30AM on the morning of day 3, the peak was finally cracked. Here’s a 360 degree view for those not as fortunate. Little Meru comes into view from 21 seconds until 28, when the shot moves to the top of the ash cone – how small that looks from here! Kili can be seen in the distance from 37 seconds or so.

Stills of the Meru climb:-

Tanzania – Mount Meru

Saving the cost of Kili did at least allow a mini-safari once we were back from Meru. We did the Tarangire and Ngorogoro Crater National Parks, mainly because by this point we didn’t have the time to do Serengeti as well. Out of the 2, Tarangire is better for seeing wildlife but Ngorogoro Crater is obviously quite unique in terms of landscape.

You will learn very quickly in Arusha that everyone is either a safari operator or gets commision from putting tourists onto them – there is a constant pool of people wanting to find tourists to form groups, as some elements of the cost of a safari eg the $200 Ngorogoro Crater entrance fee are per vehicle not per person. The obvious rule is to only deal with ones that have offices, but you actually need to go further than that and check with the Tanzania Tourist Board that the company you’re dealing with is licensed. The TTB keeps a blacklist of unlicensed operators and we had nearly ended up dealing with one, run by a Mr Ibrahim, before thinking to check with the TTB. Mr Ibrahim, when we encountered him, was working out of a grocery shop very close to one of the Monje’s guesthouses on Levolosi street. The TTB showed us about 5 different business cards for Mr Ibrahim, all with different company names but the same Mr Ibrahim owner. I don’t think he would have actually absconded with our money (or perhaps that was because he had already agreed to take payment in travellers cheques that wouldn’t get signed until the gate of the National Park) but he’s generated lots of complaints relating to not providing the service that was agreed.

The people we ended up using were Selina Experience Africa – their office is very close to the TTB and on a little side-street near the Arusha Vision campsite. Juma Kasim, the manager, can be reached on +255 27 254 5205 or +255 755 218147. They were cheap but excellent and also are connected to the Skyway Motel – a far better bet hotel-wise than Arusha Backpackers….recently opened up and clean, modern and all-round excellent value and very convenient for the Dar Express buses. It’s just off Makao Mapya road, near a church and north of the Scandinavia/MTEI coach office. The number is +255 756 870500 or +255 682 802400.

Thanks to the practice of consolidation, other people were put in our group with us. There was an Algerian-French man – ran a building company on Lyon, who was really nice although Amanda’s French is way way better than mine so she talked to him more. And Lauro! A 47 year old Italian, who’d worked in Hard Rock Café London for 10 years (or was it more) and was now in Amsterdam, with the same co. Lovely guy, who’d worked as a photographer and was so, so funny, with his stories about his travels in South America, customers at Hard Rock and pity observations about his fellow Italians. A person born in the wrong country. If I can get the videos rescued from the virus-infected SD card, I’ll see if I can put them up. What was also really interesting was the story he told about the boyfriend of a colleague at HRC London. Months before, she’d introduced Lauro to a new boyfriend named Paul. Lauro noticed how Paul seemed rather odd when introduced to him, looking really uneasy and distrustful when he haltingly shook Lauro’s hand. Lauro thought no more about it until one night when the girl had a heart-to-heart with Lauro, telling him she couldn’t do the relationship with Paul any more. Poor Paul was doing all sorts of things like sleepwalking, smashing the flat up and so on as all this was around the time of him having to give evidence in THIS case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpacker_Murders

This Paul was the Paul Onions who’d nearly become one of Milat’s victims.

We saw lions (resting), cheetahs (gorging themselves on a dead wildebeeste), hyenas and jackals (both doing the same as the cheetahs), elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, ostriches, warthogs, Thompsons’ Gazelles, mongooses, dik-diks (a type of baby antelope), zebras, beecatchers, bustards, wildebeeste, buffalo and lots of other assorted animalia.

Driving through Tarangire National Park. See how the poor 78 series Toyota Landcruiser wobbles like a jelly over the bumpy road!

Later in the trip, we saw these Mongooses (or are they called Mongeese?) acting just like meerkats. But on this seasonal dry river bed, here they are slinking around on 4 legs.

The ubiquitous Zebras. You nibble my mane, I’ll nibble yours

Elephants keeping cool – pretty much does what it says on the tin.

Cheetahs eating wildebeeste. Apols for the shaky footage. Shot using the 640 x 480 crop setting on a Canon 550D but without a tripod……just the roof of the jeep.

Baby Elephant, part of the family that were about to be seriously pissed off!

Elephant family tree (or should that read ‘Elephant family eating tree’, or ‘Elephant eating family tree’) While driving along, we happened across a family of elephants, contentedly munching away on a tree. Mother, a diddy baby and an adolescent plus a few aunts. After we stopped, a number of other vehicles drew in behind us and everybody watched, enthralled. Then another vehicle (seen in the picture) came from the opposite direction and it stopped too. So far so good.

Then this other vehicle decided to carry on and drive past the elephants. Bad move, especially when you go too close to a mother and her young, as you can see.

Watching this with a mixture of fear and amusement, we kind of assumed our driver would be better and give them a wider berth when we drove. But having laughed at the other driver, our own one was no better! It’s on Youtube as ‘How to Piss Off An Elephant’

Tarangire stills:-

Tanzania – Tarangire National Park

See in particular the one near the end of the elephant’s skull, with a live elephant trundling slowly along in the background. Elephants come to this swampy area to die, for once an elephant becomes so old it can’t chew its food properly any more, the plants here are more succulent and, thus, easier to chew with worn-down teeth. Eventually, however, the worn-down teeth can’t manage even the succulent plants and then, to coin the time-honoured phrase, ‘nature takes its course’.

I was also amazed to hear they even allow the shooting of live animals in certain Tanz national parks. For the princely sum of I think $10,000 for a lion or $20,000 for an elephant a rich westerner can legally shoot a live one. But there’s a catch – the only ones people are allowed to shoot are the old/sick ones, as a sort of euthanasia-cum-revenue-raising exercise. But where the hell is the sport in that??!

For the second day of our little safari, we descended into Ngorogoro Crater National Park. Here’s a Buffalo herd

Not long after seeing these buffalos, we happened across a herd of other buffalo, wildebeeste and zebras etc. They started stampeding…

And then we saw the reason why – hyenas

Having crossed the road, the hyenas carried on till they were some distance away and then started gorging themselves on the carcass of a hapless wildebeeste that had been left behind by the cheetah or lion who’d had the best cuts. Watch as they snap at each other and keep the poor little jackal at a distance! Apols for the shaky footage. Shot using the 640 x 480 crop setting on a Canon 550D but without a tripod……just the roof of the jeep.

When the jeep stopped to look at something else, I thought I might as well do a 360 degree view with the wide-angle lens. Didn’t intend the warthogs to be in the picture, but there they are!

….and some more warthogs

Kori Bustard. The name of these things always amuses me, as I’m sure it does lots of people.

Civet Cat. Pretty creature, isn’t it? I could have one as a pet

Guineafowl. Comical, aren’t they, bumbling around.

Ngorogoro Crater stills:-

Tanzania – Ngorogoro Crater National Park

All the while we were dipping in, out and around of Arusha, the election campaign was hotting up:-

Zanzibar was where we spent the last week / 10 days of the trip.

Zanzibar, Zanzibar….it’s one of those inherently exotic-sounding names, isn’t it, like Marrakesh or Dushanbe. But down to the nitty gritty – only deal with ferry cos in offices – don’t buy tickets on the street. When going anywhere near the seafront and associated row of ferry ticketing offices, you will be hit with an in-your-face cacophony of screaming touts…one can easily imagine only a few degrees of separation between that and a ritual stoning. The TTB office keeps a list of operators and a timetable. Going out, we dealt with MV Seagull – possibly the $20 we paid for the ticket was a false economy, for the trip took 4 hours and there was a bit of confusion about the class of accommodation we were entitled to. They tried to get us to sit in an enclosed area that had nice seating, but also seemed to have heating rather than air conditioning! Aaaah! On the ferry over, here were boxes upon boxes of chicks:-

Coming back we had already bought our tickets for the MV Kilimanjaro from MV Seagull on the basis it was cheaper to buy them on the mainland. Not sure how much money you save by doing this, and I remember going straight to the Azam Ferry office when we arrived in Stone Town to check if the tickets were valid but they were OK. The MV Kilimanjaro on the way back is a swish 6 month old catamaran and it took 2 hours.

Zanzibar boys doing capoeira. This was on the beach in Stone Town, just south of Forodhani Gardens. Impressive, huh?

This was the same occasion as the boys doing capoeira. I thought in the beginning it was for the tourists, but no money was asked for and the locals outnumbered the tourists watching them by a factor of 20.

Tanzanians seem to have an incredible penchant for throwing themselves off things and doing somersaults. Witness the man somersaulting on the beach in Dar when I took a walk along there at the beginning of the trip, and then see the boys jumping off the pier and somersaulting on the beach in the Stone Town stills you’re about to see. In Stone Town, we stayed in the Pyramid Hotel. It’s lovely – nice staff, quaint old rooms – the business. Only drawback is the almost-technical climb you have to do up the staircase to the top floor for breakfast! Food – the Forodhani Gardens is OK but it’s a measure of the place that most of the patrons are tourists. Shop around a few stalls and bargain with them:-

Tanzania – Zanzibar – Stone Town

Spice tours are something most visitors to Zanzibar do. Ours was arranged by Pyramid – perfectly OK:-

Tanzania – Zanzibar – Spice tour

See the giant ant, exercising its princely dominion over the villeins and serfs within its fiefdom:-

And the odd curling plant, no doubt a member of the Venus flytrap family:-

Later in the day on the spice tour, we headed to Mangapwani beach. Here was a sight I had never seen before – it’s pretty much as the description shows – they are leading a cow into the sea to wash it. I am told that salt water is a good antisepitic for dealing with things like lice, ticks, mange and so on:-

For the latter part of the Zanzibar stay, we headed to the beach. The original plan was the northern tip and then the East coast, but once we got to Nungwi that was it and beach and heat-induced somnolescence set in. We stayed initially in the Union Beach Bungalows, just up from the East Africa Dive Centre and then in Baraka Beach Bungalows. Union Beach WAS a bit rustic, but price and location-wise it was better IMO and I think we were a bit hard on them in changing to Baraka Beach because the water had run out in the shower – they would have brought buckets eventually. Union Beach also has a lovely beach fish restaurant at night, with the day’s catch proudly laid out on a table for perusal. Don’t bother eating in the Paradise Beach restaurant, next to Baraka. Expensive, slow service and dishonest. They overcharged us (or tried to). Obviously in a place like Tanz the odd mistake here and there goes with the territory, but this place went 1 stage further by arguing and telling us the menu was “very old prices” when we queried it.

See the gorgeous Zanzibar sea at sunset:-

About 1/4 mile up from Union Beach is the Flame Tree Cottages. A bit pricey to stay there, but it’s got an excellent and good value restaurant as far as location and food are concerned. The chap who runs it used to be an actuary at Lloyds in London and we had a good conversation with him.

Nungwi stills:-

Tanzania – Zanzibar – Nungwi

We also did a dive, went with Zanzibar Watersports, who actually seem to share a premises at Nungwi with Paradise Beach (!) They were great and pretty reasonable value. We dived at Kendwa Gardens, a little bommie just off the coast. If you use the Kendwa branch of Zanzibar Watersports, bear in mind that the restaurant/bar across from their premises (to the left with the office behind you) is excellent.

Of course, it wasn’t just the weather that persuaded us not to travel. There was also the small matter of the election. In the run-up to this 2010 general election in Tanzania, and shortly after while the votes were being counted and the result announced, there was a tense atmosphere in Zanzibar. In 2000 and 2005 there had been some serious bloodshed and the factors leading to this then ie ballot-rigging had been replaced with the just-as-bad registration-rigging so that the ballot itself looked above board to foreign observers.

But we – or mostly I – still insisted on filming and photographing pre-election rallies. This one is comical, as the power to the candidate’s microphone cuts out while he’s in mid-spiel and yet he carries on as if nothing has happened:-

And some dancing, same rally:-

We needn’t have worried. The governing CCM party had made a pact with the opposition CUF that whichever party won ie the CCM, the runner-up would enter a power-sharing administration. The expected scenes of CCM and CUF supporters at each others’ throats when the result was announced were replaced with CCM and CUF supporters running around arm in arm and all was sweetness and light!

Odd how the longer it has been since I got around to going into my email the less and less I have felt any urgency to do so. Well – nearly the end of the trip. I have been away for a month at a time before (and even longer) and haven’t had as much difficulty adjusting as I have on this trip. I suppose it’s partly the AS (finding new situations hard to get used to) but am surprised that I have reacted this way with as much practice of travel as I have had. But now I HAVE gotten used to it, it’s time to come home again. It’s a little weird but at the same time quite nice, being able to dip in and out of a different lifestyle – in this case, the travelling one. Am looking forward a little bit to being sucked into the comforting womb of the airliner that will next Wednesday whisk me back to a different world.

We left Dar on 3 Nov at 17.20 on Emirates flight EK726, an A340. It took off heading northeast, first along the same Pugu Road we had traveled to get to the airport a couple of hours ago and then over downtown Dar and the ferry port, before heading north along the west coast of Zanzibar. Right at the end of the video can be seen a (probably futile) attempt to zoom in on Stone Town a little.