Walkabout - The long way home

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...

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 ...

I've managed to work out how to draw my route on a google map. It's very rough, but it gives you (and me!) an idea of where I might be going.  View African Walkabout in a larger map If I get enough time at a computer along the way I'll try and add another of these showing where I ended up going to show the importance of being flexible.

      This is my first blog and was initially just going to be the story of the trip I’m going to take - getting from home in Sweden to home in Zambia with a shoestring budget and a couple of months to kill before uni starts. Somewhere in the many vague discussions I’ve had with people about this trip someone suggested that, if I’m going to do something stupid, I should at least use it to raise money for a good cause.       With stories of every man and his dog sailing solo around the world, and scaling Everest, I thought backpacking alone through Africa would be kinda easy. Then again with my complete lack of experience, money or any sense of direction I’m bound to run into adventures (problems) along the way. I’ve decided to skip the European countries and flying straight into Kenya and walk/hitch-hike/cycle/what ever it takes to get down to Zambia!         So if you want to read stories of beautiful sunsets and mis...