Walkabout - The long way home

To anyone with that much free time (to stumble across a blog that hasn't been updated since May), I just thought I should assure you that my journey did come to a safe conclusion (I'm not still stuck in the bowels of Mozambique with only half of one leg left thanks to stumbling over an old landmine). I'll try and pick up where I left off and skim through the next few months of the trip. Having already been to Ilha de Mocambique, I opted to carry on to Nacala (which is famous for being full of "banditos"!), while Viktor (the Swede) checked out the island. Nacala was ugly and boring despite every opportunity offered by its location to be otherwise. My journey there was, in hindsight, a disaster! The cheapest place I could find was well over my total days budget - meaning I could afford no place with tables, or even chairs!  Because I arrived on Sunday however, everything was closed which was very annoying because it meant I had to stay an extra day there - it wa...

After a bit more that the usual amount of arguing with the bus conductor and driver (and entire village that appeared from the woodworks to put their two cents in!) we got to Pemba town.   Unwilling to pay the extravagant taxi fee to the backpackers place, and being in serious need of some exercise, we decided to walk most of the way, and then hitch if necessary. As it turns out that the guy who gave us directions wasn’t fully accurate in his description of the distance. He said “it is faaaar, when it should in fact behave been: “eish, it is faaaaaar! Thankfully we didn’t get all that far before a Chapa (a truck in this case) picked us up and dropped us at Wimbe Beach only faaar from the lodge!). We stumbled into “Russell’s Place” only wheezing slightly and I promptly set up my tent (after haggling the price down a bit) at the far end of a nice lawn (what seemed like an ideal spot at the time, but later proved to be flawed in one very serious way…). Pim, eager as ever to catch u...

After the utter serenity of Lamu, the classic picturesqueness of Zanzibar and the isolation and beauty of Chizumulu and Likoma islands, Ilha de Mozambique had a lot to live up to simply because it fell into the category "island". The chapa from Nampula dropped us off 50m from Casa de Luis, a nice homely sort oif place with camping (either in the courtyard, or on the wooden deck above the dorm room.) Relatively speaking, camping was cheap and since the upper deck had a thatched roof, there was no danger of getting drenched! After dropping off our things and setting up our tents, I went out to explore while Pim (the Belgian guy) took a nap. Turns out that he was more in touch with the local habits than I - the whole island was sprawled out, fast asleep on mats and mattresses on the streets! Only a few old men were (half) awake, playing some strange board game.  I immediately liked the town, though it was way too hot to see the whole thing; so I got back to the Casa and j...

Northern Mozambique: The relative luxury ends here. This after all “one of the continent’s last wild frontiers – rugged and challenging for travel” (Lonely Planet). On Likoma Island I met a Belgian chap who was also heading over to Mozambique in a dhow. Neither of us speaks any Portuguese! So off we set, starting early-ish from Mango Drift in their battered old Land Rover into the ‘town’. From there we were officially stamped out of Malawi, we changed some money then boarded a dhow bound for Cobue 7km away. When we had paddled out into the wind they dropped the sails which, much to our amusement (and yet slightly worrying), were made of a bed sheet (main sail) and a couple of sacks sown together (front sail). After a bit of joking about the unseaworthyness of the craft the wind really picked up and suddenly we were flying along at an impressive pace. Though the wind was so strong that we were at such an angle that the right hand side of the vessel (Port? Starboard? Does anyone real...

Having spent a great and relaxing time with my cousins around Iringa, I decided to make my way to Mozambique. And, not wanting to go all the way back to Dar for a visa, I decided to to the 'easy way' - via Malawi. The fact that the Malawian one month visa is free may have just tipped the scale for me. So I set off for the boarder and after two very long bus rides back to back, I arrived in Tukuyu - not far from the boarder. I stayed in yet another dingy guest house/brothel and carried on the next day to the boarder. At the immigration desk I was greeted with three grinning faces - two of which I recognized. It was a group of Israelis two of which I'd met in Zanzibar a couple of times. After greetings were exchanged their smiles vanished as they told of how they'd been held at the boarder for three days! Turns out they'd bought a car in Dar and intended to sell it in S.A when the drive down there. There were however some issues... Anyway it just so happens that...

I realise now that one of my original posts - about why I'm doing this trip and blogging about it as well has been buried deep in the menu on the right hand side. This has left at least some people with nothing better to do than read about my travels a bit lost. If you feel this description fits you, give this a read and thanks for the support! I ended up staying about a week at this horse safari place (called Ndarakwai), helping out where I could (basically sorting out computer issues - anitvirus etc...). The elephants were great - extremely intelligent things with an impressive repertoire of tricks and commands they  respond to (/understand!?).  On one of the days I was quite keen on joining one of the horse safaris but I think both Carlos and I realised that my equestrian skills would be stretched too far if we happened across a herd of wild elephants or a cheetah! I did get a chance on the last day to ride however, and did some game viewing - I saw a herd of impala ...

After the relatively expensive Zanzibar, I was keen to get back into the cheap life on the mainland. So when a family friend offered me a bed in Dar for a couple of nights, I would've been crazy to turn it down. I ended up having a really good time there, living the high life - electricity, running water and good TV - poor Chileans by the way!! And they turned out to be really nice people - very funny! Well it was really nice there, but apart from meeting up with the Brits again after they were done with Zanzibar for a couple of drinks, one crazy Mexican themed party at the Irish pub (random? yes, but the tequila made it seem perfectly natural!) and a wander around the big market full of Chinese knock-offs of famous brands; nothing major happened. After about four nights at this guy's place, I got a bus to Tanga - one more stop along the coast before heading inland. It was extremely hot, but otherwise a very nice town. I spent two nights there before moving on to Moshi. M...

Luckily Franko (the guy from the bus) did offer to show me to a cheap place, because Dar is crazy!! The matatu/ dalla dalla system is much worse than Nairobi's! Anyway his wife was waiting at the bus-stop with a Taxi (which they kindly insisted on paying). It turns out that the place he showed me to was literally next-door to his house and they invited me round for dinner after a quick but essential shower! Franko and Lucy (his wife) then insisted on taking me to see a concert, which didn't work out in the end - the band was 4hrs late and I was really tired! The next morning, again on Franko's insistence, he showed me to the ferry dock, where we'd already missed the early one and had a few hours to kill. He showed me round the fish market then we ate some soup and chapatis then he left. While waiting for the ferry I started talking to a Dutch couple - quite strange people. Like me they'd paid for the full VIP lounge on the 'slow' ferry (the man in ...

First of all sorry for the 2 weeks of no news - island life is great for many different things (mainly relaxing), but one thing it is not good for is internets! Especially Zanzibar, which has had no electricity for over 2 months now! So where am I now??? In Dar Es Salaam, just got back from Zanzibar this morning! Lamu was fantastic.. really the best place I've been so far by a long way! Zanzibar was more beautiful in the classic sense.. but Lamu had more style and was less commercialized (at least where we stayed). For the first few days in Lamu we did get hawked a couple of times a day by captains offering dhow trips.. but it's such a small town, that they all recognized us after the 3rd day! The predominance of Islam on the island does however mean that there are only about 2 places (in the Lamu town itself) to get a drink, one is called roof top bar, the other is at the police canteen! On our 1st day we went there for a beer there and ended up eating, then playing vo...

I'm now in Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya (north of Mombasa) it's a great little island with a lot to see and do... stunningly beautiful! Here's how I ended up here and what I'm doing: From Nairobi: I left for the train to late - by matatu of course! I thought I was gonna be late and was practically running through Nairobi to the station. Of course I wasn't late! In fact it would be another 2hrs before the train actually set off. Anyway I ended up in a carriage with some really interesting people - Pavel (from the Czech Republic), Wes (from California) and Vincent (Kenyan). I was really looking forward to the next morning where we'd eat a nice full English breakfast while checking out the man-eating lions of the Tsavo National Park. Unfortunately, and possibly the only time in the history of the train's operation, we were pretty much on time, and that meant that most of the Tsavo had whizzed by while we were asleep. Anyway so we ate the bre...

Be sure to check out my updated route map . The red route is obviously the one I've actually followed so far (more or less). Anyway after the first night in Mbita I decided would've liked to switch accommodation to something a little better, but stingy as I am, I'd already paid the 250 bob (about 25 sek) for both nights, so I stayed. The reasons for wanting to move were many - it was located directly underneath a noisy bar, the shared shower was a filthy bucket, the shared toilet was a really nasty hole in the ground with a gaping hole in the side of the wall facing onto the main street, and finally, the cats. A bunch of cats were screaming all night long right outside my room. When the cries woke me up at 0400 I at first thought it was a baby. Eventually after almost an hour of lying there listening to this racket there was a scuffle, a shout, a crash, then the most blood curdling scream of death I've ever heard. Then silence. As heartless as it sounds now that I...

I'm slowly building up a bank of stories from trip by writing a diary everyday but as you can probably imagine, spending that amount of time everyday blogging would kind of defeat the purpose of the trip! So anyway, since my last post, I'll just quickly run through some the highlights: After a long day walking around Nairobi with Ieuen and one of the guys who tried to sell me a safari on the first day - turned out to be a pretty ok guy, and good guide! That evening I got the overnight bus to a small town called Homa Bay - the most terrifying trip of my life!! I don't know if the fact that we left an hour late made the driver feel he had to compensate by going twice as fast, but I didn't sleep at all. Adding to the threat of death and general discomfort of the journey were the facts that: I had no seatbelt, the guy next to me was slightly obese and drooling on me, I only had a shirt and pair of shorts which made it very cold, I was suffering from spontaneous, chro...