Taking It Easy In Iringa

August 19, 2014 Katie Barber Leave a comment

Although some Peace Corps volunteers we would later meet sung the praises of Mbeya, we saw no reason to linger there and headed out the morning after our arrival. One knee-breaking ride on a beer-soaked bus later, we arrived in Iringa, a Tanzanian district capital perched on a bluff.

Beautiful view, Iringa, Tanzania — Beautiful view from Sai Villa (mentioned below in “Where We Ate”).

The most popular budget accommodation in town, the Neema Crafts Guest House, recommends that you make a reservation in advance. As with so much of this trip, we weren’t sure exactly when we would be arriving in Iringa (moreover, not yet having sorted a Tanzanian SIM card, we had no means of contact), and so we hadn’t done this. Tired and still a little sick, we approached the reception desk with trepidation. Our luck held, and we got the last room in the place. The room was simple, but bright and clean, and, after months of sleeping basically outdoors¹ and/or in dire circumstances, it felt like a palace. Once we discovered that not only did our room have a television, but that The Muppets was just starting on one of the various satellite channels, we didn’t leave our room for the next few hours. Continue reading Taking It Easy In Iringa →

Malawi, Tanzania

Cashing in Our Good Travel Karma to Reach Tanzania

August 18, 2014 Katie Barber Leave a comment

Regular readers of this blog know that this adventure has not been about traveling in style. Rather, we’ve been stuck in the middle of near-revolts on minibuses, crammed onto long-distance buses full of cargo, and sold from minibuses to shared taxis like chattel. Luckily, those less-than-comfortable trips must have earned us some good travel karma because our journey from Malawi to Tanzania went surprisingly smoothly.

Pretty much since our arrival in Nkhata Bay, we Marc had been evaluating our options for onward travel. The front-runner of these options was taking a bus that passed through (but did not originate in) Mzuzu just before midnight, arriving in Dar es Salaam the next evening.¹ We changed our minds after hearing from new friends who left Nkhata Bay for Tanzania a few days before we did: When the midnight bus arrived in Mzuzu, there were no seats for them, despite the fact that they held tickets for the journey on to Dar,² and they had to take a taxi all the way to the Tanzanian border and then wait there until it opened in the morning.

Instead of rolling the dice with that bus, we decided to make the trip to Tanzania in separate stages. We started with a 5:00 a.m. taxi to Mzuzu that we shared with the Finnish couple we had met. It was a much more comfortable option than taking a minibus to Mzuzu and it deposited us at the open door of a bus heading north to Karonga just minutes before its scheduled 6:30 a.m. departure.³ You really can’t beat door-to-door service!

In Karonga, we encountered our biggest delay: finding somewhere to exchange Malawian kwachas into U.S. dollars.⁴ We eventually admitted defeat and commenced the next stage of our journey: a minibus to the Tanzanian border.

Continue reading Cashing in Our Good Travel Karma to Reach Tanzania →

Malawi

That Time Marc Got a Malaria Test in Malawi

August 17, 2014 Katie Barber Leave a comment

Our apologies for the dearth of blog posts lately. We have been traveling in some remote parts of Uganda, and I have had something of a head cold (stop worrying! I promise it is not ebola), which seemed to take up residence right in the space between the part of my brain that thinks up words and the part of my brain that commands my fingers to type. Good news: the Uganda “Day Nurse/Night Nurse” pill combination¹ that I’ve been taking is proving pretty effective in chasing it away.

Anyway, it segues nicely into the next part of our trip: that time we got really sick in Malawi.

Marc and I have been pretty healthy here in Africa. We’ve come down with the odd headache or case of sniffles (and the abovementioned instant cold), but nothing either very serious or inconvenient. A few days into our second stay at Mayoka Village in Nkhata Bay, however, Marc started complaining about feeling achy. I immediately thought malaria.

Allow me to quote Lonely Planet’s section on infectious diseases: “Malaria’s early stages include headaches, fevers, generalised aches and pains, and malaise, which could be mistaken for flu.” Perhaps you remember our post on things we will no longer take for granted, where we showcased the following warning: PRESUME YOU HAVE MALARIA UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE. Should I note that this warning was included in an informational pamphlet in our room at Mayoka Village?

Continue reading That Time Marc Got a Malaria Test in Malawi →

Malawi

Relaxing at Likoma Island’s Mango Drift (Or, Another African Power Outtage)

August 1, 2014 Katie Barber 1 Comment

Fact: Ferries are my least favorite method of transportation. In my experience, they are usually crowded, rarely comfortable, and have a tendency to make me seasick.

Alas, the only way to reach Likoma Island from Nkhata Bay is by ferry.¹ We had heard taking the ferry, named the Ilala, was supposed to be a quintessential Malawian experience in and of itself, and so we planned to take it from Nkhata Bay to Likoma Island.

The ferry only runs between Nkhata Bay and Likoma Island on Tuesdays and Fridays (see infra for additional practical information), and we boarded the Ilala early on a Friday morning for a 6:00 a.m. departure.

Continue reading →

Malawi

I Left My Heart on Lake Malawi

July 29, 2014 Katie Barber Leave a comment

Lake Malawi was everything that we imagined and more: a serene expanse of clear blue water, so large that it was difficult to see the other side. Although many places along the lake sounded nice, but, in the interest of taking a break from travel, we chose only two: (i) Nkhata Bay, one of the main ports located about halfway up the lake; and (ii) Likoma Island, an island about 70 kilometers from Nkhata Bay and surrounded by Mozambican waters.¹ Both places were magical.

But before I commence full-on gushing about Lake Malawi, allow me to share one more travel anecdote: Continue reading I Left My Heart on Lake Malawi →

Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe

You are Zambia-Malawi Bus Documentary! (Or, That Time We Bussed Across Three African Capitals in Three Days)

July 28, 2014 Katie Barber 5 Comments

After Bulawayo and Masvingo, we were pretty discouraged. Great Zimbabwe had been a nice respite, but it wasn’t enough to completely reenergize us. We set our sights on Lake Malawi and proceeded to bus ourselves across three African capitals in three days.

I’m sure that each of the three capitals (Harare, Lusaka, and Lilongwe) has its own unique character and gems that we didn’t discover during our abbreviated visits; alas, our spirits were so trampled from the rugged travel and the cold that we used the cities as merely convenient stopping points along our route to Lake Malawi. Our journey toward the lake was long and frequently frustrating, but, as a wise man told us at the start of our African adventure, you just have to see the humor in such things – and then laugh out loud at them.

first-class-bus — We only travel First Class.

Continue reading You are Zambia-Malawi Bus Documentary! (Or, That Time We Bussed Across Three African Capitals in Three Days) →

Zimbabwe

In Which Great Zimbabwe Lives Up to Its Name

July 24, 2014 Katie Barber 3 Comments

I have always been captivated by the remnants of ancient civilizations (hey, my BA is in Classical Civilizations), and the sole reason I had endured our trek from Bulawayo to Masvingo was the prospect of seeing Great Zimbabwe. The ruined city, constructed between the 1100 and 1450 AD, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and the namesake of the modern nation of Zimbabwe.

Alas, although Masvingo is the closest town to Great Zimbabwe, the ruins were still almost thirty kilometers away … which, after our previous day of travel, a distance which did not seem very inviting. Continue reading In Which Great Zimbabwe Lives Up to Its Name →

Zimbabwe

Masvingo: Minibus Shenanigans & the Worst Hotel Ever

July 21, 2014 Katie Barber 5 Comments

Bulawayo nearly broke me. I very much wanted to make a beeline for the rumored warm tranquility of Lake Malawi, but we couldn’t leave Zimbabwe without first seeing ruins at Great Zimbabwe. Alas, when we began looking at traveling to Masvingo (the closest town to Great Zimbabwe), we realized that things were going to get worse before they got better…

The minibus to Masvingo that we boarded in Bulawayo was crowded and blasting exceptionally loud music, but not unreasonably uncomfortable, and so we began the journey feeling cautiously optimistic.

Untitled — Less crowded than our actual minibus. | image credit: cfelb

Continue reading →

Zimbabwe

Hitting a Wall in Bulawayo

July 20, 2014 Marc Hedrich Leave a comment

Our train from Victoria Falls arrived in Bulawayo around mid-morning. After quickly locating a taxi to take us Burke’s Paradise, an inexpensive backpacker place on the outskirts of town, we decided to take it easy that morning and rest after our overnight travels.

Unfortunately, we could not lounge around for too long because Burke’s is a self-catering operation. Thanks to an email from the owner, we knew about this prior to arrival, but we had lacked the energy to stop at the Food Lover’s Market (the Southern African answer to Whole Foods) that we had spotted during our morning taxi ride from the train station to Burke’s. So, after a quick nap, we trekked back to town in one of the shared minibus taxis that ply Bulawayo’s main roads. We ate lunch in the Food Lover’s Market’s enclosed cafe and picked up some supplies to make dinner.

We returned to Burke’s to find that the power had gone out. At first, we were not concerned. Rolling blackouts had been a somewhat common occurrence during our travels across Southern Africa. Unlike those previous circumstances, this power outage persisted for several hours. We watched the sun set, and then sat in the dark, wondering how we would cook dinner – candlelight dining is lovely, candlelight cooking is less fun. Thankfully, the power came back just before we wandered into the shared kitchen to begin chopping up our vegetables. Continue reading Hitting a Wall in Bulawayo →

Zimbabwe

Riding the Rhodesian Rails (Or, Taking the Train from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo)

July 17, 2014 Marc Hedrich Leave a comment

One of the nicest parts of our adventure across Africa is that it largely lacks any scheduled itinerary, providing us with the luxury of making many of our travel decisions on a rolling basis. Although our journey is only loosely mapped out, we have generally already determined how, and approximately when, we will leave a given location before we arrive. More than anything else, this is simply an effort to keep from inadvertently marooning ourselves anywhere longer than desired.

Consequently, I had been trying to determine the best method for continuing our travels into Zimbabwe well before we arrived in Victoria Falls. Unless you have your own wheels, overland travel in most parts of Africa generally means long bus rides. Because of this, I was especially intrigued to read in our guidebook that Zimbabwe had a functioning passenger rail system that called upon destinations we wanted to visit. That such large-scale, state infrastructure would still be in operation, however, seemed implausible given the economic collapse that had befallen the country just a few years prior. Nonetheless, a quick check of Seat 61¹ confirmed that Zimbabwean trains were still running – or, at least they were as of June 2013, the date of the site’s most recently posted travel report. In a manner that would be frustratingly rare for the rest of our travels across Zimbabwe, the information we found on online was accurate, detailed, and current.

Victoria Falls railway station by Andrew Ashton, on Flickr — Victoria Falls railway station. | image credit: Andrew Ashton

Continue reading Riding the Rhodesian Rails (Or, Taking the Train from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo) →