80 Days around East Africa – End of the Trip

Finally Home

Today is the last day I will be writing this blog, for those of you who followed us through Africa, I just wanted to thank you for all your thoughts and well wishes. We truly felt them all the way through the trip and it was partly what kept us going, knowing that you were with us in spirit if not in body.

When I read back at some of my writings, I think I may have given the impression that it was too rough but I think this was probably the best trip we have done. We got to Lake Turkana this time which was a huge mile stone for us. We had a great team and we worked together so well, we had lots of fun and I think the fact that Ernest and I had done it before helped to build the confidence of the other guys as to where we were going and what we were going to see.

There has been a tremendous deterioration in the roads and the infrastructure in the countries where we travelled but then to be fair, a lot of the time it was due to the fact that they were being rebuilt and in a few years’ time when those roads are finished, the whole experience in those countries will be completely different.

We visited 14 different game reserves, went through 10 different border posts and drove for 15,000 kilometers and did it all in 80 days. Wow, that was quite a trip!

We sat together the last night and everyone spoke about what their highlights for the trip were and we spoke about what fun the whole experience had been and how much we had gained and learnt. One of my personal difficulties on the trip was a stupid thing like making my bed when I am in it, which is what I had to do every night. You know making your bed is one thing but try making it when you are in it is quite another and then to make it worse I had to sometimes make it with  Ernest sitting in it at the same time. He is too impatient to sit outside and wait till I am done so I have to make him sit first in one corner of the tent, then the other while I straighten the sheets etc.

Oh well, I guess it was not like boarding school where someone inspected if the sheets were tucked in properly.

Then of course there is the washing…when you put those clothes in the bucket and put in the soap and water, you cannot believe the color of the water... It goes this sort of brown color and just never seems to rinse clean.

Kim said that the one amazing thing for him was when we stayed at the hotel in Moshi, he had two showers, about an hour apart and after the second shower the new white towel he used still turned a darker shade of brown.... And he was in an air-conditioned car, not like Ernest and I sitting in our dust bowl of a hippo!

We all agreed that the worst thing that you have to contend with are those dam tsetse flies, they have the most terrible sting, they are so persistent and you just don't know they are sitting on you till it is too late. We all got so badly bitten by the dam things and poor Rouvierre had the worst reaction to them,  her hands and legs swelled up and made her look like a cabbage patch doll - not for too long though as she definitely won the prize for the smartest dressed and best looking of the lot of us. We all looked scruffy and bedraggled and Rouvierre came out looking like she had stepped out of a vogue magazine- sis on her.

The mozzies are also a total pest and in actual fact probably the most dangerous thing that you come across in Africa. We did get bitten but not too badly and I do think we were also most of the time not in peek malaria time so that was good planning on Ernest's part. However as Ernest said -not every mozzie carries Malaria even though I wanted to kill him at two in the morning when he said it, half-awake while I was frantically swatting them.

We saw some really funny sights that stuck in our minds, one of which was seeing this lady sitting side saddle on the back of a bicycle with eyes like saucers being peddled at full speed down a very long steep hill by her "taxi driver". He had a grin from ear to ear and she had a look of such terror... The contrast was hilarious and they were only half way down so what her face was like at the bottom of that hill would have been funnier - I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be her. Then there was a guy on a motorbike carrying two goats. The goats had their chins resting on each of the guy’s shoulders observing the road. It just looked so funny, we wondered if they were chatting to the driver!

We saw one bicycle with five people on it - dad, mom and three children and then the motorbikes with five adults... How the person on the back actually stayed on was a mystery to us.

We saw trucks so loaded with people that there was no standing room left inside the back of the truck; so they were hanging onto the outside of the truck all the way down the side.

Then there was this one station wagon with the back door open, the actual back of the car was not more than three inches off the tar and there must have been 10 pairs of legs hanging out the back of the open boot plus another 6 or 7 people crammed inside the back that the 10 were sitting on top of, how the thing was going was a mystery as the front wheels were barely touching the ground.

We met so many new interesting people, doing all sorts of things that we had never heard of. Africa is a very harsh place and people do the most amazing things in order to survive. One of the sad things though is because of the latest spate of Somalian terrorism in the area of Lamu in Kenya plus the recent outbreak of Ebola, the lifeline of Africa, which is basically tourism, has been slashed tremendously in places like Kenya and Tanzania, so, a lot of the people who were making a very good living and doing well are now reduced to subsistence level.

However Zambia appears to be just booming, they have a President who has the support of the people, a Kwacha that is worth double the Rand and more new buildings going up than I have ever seen before. Huge tracts of land have been taken over by farmers (from Zim and South Africa I believe) and you travel through miles and miles of wheat, maize fields and cattle farms. There is so much less poverty in that country but there is also evidence of more and more Chinese involvement.

We often ask ourselves why do we do these trips and why do we brave the bad roads, dust, dirt and possible danger?

It is a hard question to answer but I think we just love the adventure of seeing all those new places, getting to see and experience all the different people of Africa, the different cultures like the Masai, Samburu, and the Turkana to see how they live their simple lives without too much interference from Western civilization.

The one thing about African travel is you have no idea what lies around the next corner, there is absolutely no predictability about a trip like this. You may have to stop in the middle of nowhere and camp and you may be lucky enough like we were, to land up in absolute luxury for a few days of bliss in five star lodges and have hot bathes in a copper bath tubs. You interact with people who are so different to anybody you have ever met before and you connect and experience very briefly their existence.

Specifically on one evening we sat for hours with the Masai chiefs swopping stories. I will never forget that little girl on Lake Turkana who put her hand in mine and would just not let go. She gazed at me with such admiration and I could just feel the pleading from her for me to somehow change the life that she had been fated to live.

I will treasure the picture that Steve took of me and all the little girls that were holding onto my hands and arms. Then there was the time where we stopped to take pictures of a breathtaking view and were joined by two Samburu warriors holding AK-47’s and who thought it very amusing that Rouvierre wanted to hold the gun and be photographed with them.

There is always the first few seconds of fear... Will they harm us?... and then comes the smile or the welcome. I don't think during our whole three months of travel we were ever in danger from any of the people that we met. They were fascinated with the “Strange White Travelleres”, they wanted to see what we did and how we lived but there was never any danger. I remember so well the old man, who looked like he was going to keel over because he was so thin, but he took the food that we gave him and sent it back to his children and ate nothing of it himself.

The vistas and vastness of Africa will forever remain in our minds, it is beautiful in places, harsh beyond belief in others and this kind of wilderness cannot be found in many places on planet earth today.

Another reason we felt this was because when you camp in the reserves, you get into very close contact with the wild life, the prices that they charge in the reserves are outrageous but you will never experience the closeness of the animals any other way. The elephant that put his trunk through the screen door and destroyed it to get at the beans that we left inside The Queen and that come walking past and graze around the camp at night to the monkey who jumped up and took an apple out of the bowl that Rouvierre was carrying.

To wake up in the morning, look out of the tent and see an elephant with a tiny baby 5 meters from the tent quietly feeding on a nearby tree, or hear the lions roaring close by and not knowing whether they are 10 meters or 100 meters away.

Steve, whose tent was on the ground frequently had buffalo, hippo or elephants feeding around his tent. Andrea insisted that Steve had a shocker with him every night, not that I think this would have done any good but it made her feel happier.

Ernest was incredible the way he planned the trip so that we were there at the right time of the year, plus he drove The Queen all the way up and down for 15 ,000 kilometers, that was a feat of note.

Ken was absolutely incredible the way he handled his body problem, he was determined to finish the trip no matter what, so he did what was needed, had the operation in the middle and continued on to finish up with all of us. That was something very few people could have done and he really deserved the support and admiration we all felt for him.

Steve our wonder boy, we could not have done without him. He kept the whole show on the road, fixing anything and everything that went wrong with the cars and roof racks and water systems and tires and shocks. The list goes on and on.

Kim was always there, right behind Ernest, he kept up the pace, bought all our veggies in the market, carried things backwards and forwards for us girls and threw water over anyone he suspected of being a wild animal! Beware anyone trying to give him a fright in the future he has perfected the technique. He was the best washer upper and us girls really appreciated that.

The girls, Rouvierre, Andrea and I work fantastically together, we had breakfast and lunch down to a fine art. As soon as The Queen stopped, the kitchen was open and the men had their stomachs filled. We know that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and we had them all eating out of our hands... Well, sometimes anyway!

The “BB” award of the trip was won jointly and severely by Kim, Ernest and Andrea.

·        Kim for taking a fridge all the way through the trip and never turning it on... How is that for dumb!

·        Ernest for bringing empty gas bottles all the way through.

·        Andrea for her secondhand boots which we’ll never let her forget. She really took the teasing well and we need to get a picture of those dam boots to prove that they did exist.

So once again thanks to all our followers - we appreciated your support; and more than that thanks to all my fellow travelers, we did it, we went, we experienced and we conquered and I am sure we will never forget the wonderful nights that we spent around the camp fires in the wilds of Africa, listening to the night sounds and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company - with a cup of coffee in hand of course!

Over and out!
Thank you for everyone that followed us on our journey!

PS  We will post more photos of the trip, so keep on visiting the blog.

The connection and sending photos was limited, so the best photos of our trip are still to come.

Day 74 to 79: Luangwa bridge en Route Livingstone, Nata and finally Shidzidzi (South Africa)

 The plan was to get Lisa, Warwick and the kids back to their car on the border by lunch time and then get to the Luangwa bridge campsite before dark. It was 460 kilometers so we were going to have to move fast once the kids were safely over the border and on their way back to Lilongwe. I must say we were a bit nervous as they would not let us through the Zambian side to off load the luggage so Lisa had packed just enough to get them home and the rest they had to leave with us to bring home in the truck. This of course put us in a permanent state of " traveling circus"  for the rest of the trip and the bed at the back was so piled high with clothes, linen, suitcases, curios and baskets that I could hardly get to the clothes in the cupboards at the back. On top of that we had had a few dirt roads so they were all covered in about an inch of dust. Oh well I just closed my eyes and stayed in the front of the truck as much as possible, that way I could pretend all was neat and tidy at the back.

So we dropped the Goosen's off carrying two suitcases plus kids backpacks and waited with baited breath to see if they got through without a hitch and if the Avis car was still there in a drivable state. It took no more than 15 minutes and Lisa phoned to say all was well and they were on their way. Car was intact and border post was a breeze. So we turned back, met the other guys at Chipata and set off for the Luangwa river bridge. The road was very narrow and winding but fortunately it was a Sunday so there were only a few trucks on the road - or should I say relatively few trucks. We have decided that if we ever come back, we must plan the trip out so that most of the traveling, if possible, on these sort of roads should be done on a Saturday or Sunday. It does not guarantee that we won't have any trucks but it certainly reduces the risk. On this section alone there were no less than 10 big truck accidents and in 60 Kms there were 4 broken down trucks just sitting in the middle of the road waiting to get smacked by another out of control truck.

We got to the campsite at the Luangwa bridge just before dark at about 6:15pm. Oh my gosh what a god forsaken place. It is right on the edge of the Rocky Mountain that climbs steeply out of the river valley. The Dutch guy that owns it started it about 5 years ago from scratch and it has about 6 little rooms built into the rocks, built with rocks and covered in this thin layer of sand and dust. You can hardly make out the rooms with their very rustic roves and one flat little place at the bottom where we could just fit the truck and the two cars.... Much toooo close to prevent everyone being woken up by everyone else's snoring. Oh well beggars can't be choosers and Ernest wouldn't hear of us just driving onto the  dry river bed and camping there, he thought we would be robbed blind by locals and I suppose he was right.

The lodge is run by this Dutch guy and his English wife who are the thinnest people we have ever seen… They could compete with any Massai that we saw in Kenya for the thinnest legs in town. They both smoked like chimneys and I think also a fair amount of drinking every night. When Ernest asked him what he was doing there, he said he loved living there with no stress and people. Well he sure looked stressed to us so it is hard to figure out what kind of lifestyle brings the most stress! Anyway he runs river trips down the Luangwa river to the Zambezi which is something that sparked great interest with Ernest and myself and I could just see us returning to this god forsaken place sometime in the future. Maybe we will get our grandchildren to paddle us down the river next.

Our next big run was to get to Lusaka so we set off real early to try and beat the trucks onto the road on a Monday morning. We shouldn't have bothered to try however as there were just so many of them already racing to get somewhere so we just had to pass the slow ones and hold our breaths when the really fast busses overtook us which is terrifying to say the least.

We managed to get to Lusaka and through the other side by 12pm so decided to push on and see if we could make the 400kms to Livingstone before dark.

It was 400 kilometers but the road was good, wider than before and there was another 5 or so hours before dark. Ernest had the bit between his teeth and he wasn't stopping. He was like one of those horses that have decided to go for home or go broke to hell what the jockey thought.

We made it to Livingstone before 6pm and found a great campsite called Maramba.... Great ablutions nice little restaurant and a flat piece of land for the Queen.

Next morning we decided to go and have breakfast at the Royal Livingstone, what a beautiful place it is but I must say the breakfast was very average and the service lousy which was very disappointing but hey, we were on our way home and looked like a bunch of scruffs so we couldn't have cared less. Steve, Andrea and Kim then went to have a look at the Victoria fall while we sat on the veranda sipping tea and saying " hurrah for Livingstone" .... Our favorite expression right now.

We were going to stop for the night in Kasani but we got there so early we decided to keep going and get to Nata, where we camped for the night.  Next day we set our noses for Shidzidzi in South Africa, where we were going to meet up with Tracy, Guy and the kids for two nights.

I don't know if any of you reading this blog have ever experienced being away from home and SA for an extended period of time and then arrive back at that SA border post. The guys who stamps your passport are so friendly  and all say  "Welcome home", you want to jump over the counter and give them a hug, the customs guys are also very helpful and welcomes you home.

The SA border post is not overrun with guys trying to change money or sell you something or see how they can help you through the chaos of the border posts. You drive down the road and the grass along the verges are cut, the signposts are not all broken and bent, there are unbroken fences along the side of the road, the maize crops are green and in perfectly straight rows and the potholes are filled up and you don't have to weave from side to side or break your suspension, you just can't believe how orderly it is compared to the rest of Africa.

We all complain so much about South Africa and yes there is certainly room to improve but if you ever have the opportunity to travel like we have, you begin to realize just what a great country we live in. You need to go and see these countries to appreciate how much better off we are right here.

Now, we flying on a beeline to Shididzi!

Until next time, few days to relax on home soil

Day 73 - Chipata & South Luangwa, Zambia

We had planned to set off quite early in the morning as we needed to get to our next camp site at Chipata before dark, but we got caught up in trying to get the papers from Avis to let us through the border with Lisa and Warwick's hired car. Oh what a performance and very annoying! Especially so Lisa had to let them know she would be taking the car into Zambia for a few days and they had told her it would be no problem. Then Avis all of a sudden changed their minds and said Warwick had to go back to Lilongwe to get a police clearance certificate to go over the border and that it would take at least 4 hours to get one. This would also have meant driving for an extra 3 hours. In the end we figured to hell with it and left for the border. We decided that we would try and get through without the papers, if not we would just leave their car at the border post, pile the whole family into The Queen and head for South Luangwa together.

So with all the delays we only left Makuzi at about 10.30 and hightailed it straight for the border. We went through some very pretty countryside climbing up and up away from the lake. The further we got from the lake the poorer the people looked and the vegetation became very sparse and more desert like with the usual herds of goats all along the road side. I must say Ernest has got the hooting down to a fine art and I do love seeing how clever those goats are, they scatter so fast, even the babies know to run for the hills as soon as they hear the hooter. This area used to be dense forest but they have just cut more and more of the forest away to make the cursed charcoal.

Eventually we climbed up higher and higher into a very mountainous game reserve called Nakotakota and the vegetation became thick and lush again... Such a contrast from what we had just been through. We got to the border post at about 4pm.  A bit late but still on time to make it to Chipata before dark - but never underestimate the surprises of African travel as there is always a detour or a delay around the corner.

So it came in the challenge of the border post and oh dear, as we had thought they were not going to let that car out of the country without all the police papers etc. try as we may we couldn't shift the guy so we rapidly packed all the Goosens luggage into the truck, parked the car outside the immigration office, hoping it would be there when they came back in a few days and set off for the Zambian side looking a little like a traveling circus.

This proved to be a very difficult crossing.  African authorities have suddenly decided that anybody entering or exiting any country must be fully screened for Ebola. Not a bad thing of course but heaven help you if you just had flu or a cold.

They insisted on seeing all our inoculation certs! Yellow fever certs, and then made us fill out big questionnaires as to where we had been in the last month and just to top it off they took everyone’s temperature. Shew! It took us at least on hour to get through that mess, especially because the lady that was doing the whole process was new and she got all the papers muddled and generally made a dogs breakfast of the whole thing, she kept pushing the button on the temperature gun and then staring at it for ages with this puzzled look on her face. Then came the usual third party and insurance etc. which took another half an hour!

So eventually it was nearly six by the time we had all dragged ourselves through and onto the road again and off to Mamarula's, a campsite that we had heard about and had on our GPS’s. - thank goodness for GPS’s as it led us straight there, in the dark nogal… (mind you)

This is the real gathering place for overland trucks and there were two of them already there, in the best spots of course and loaded with people from Holland. It is so strange we have only crossed paths with one other of these trucks in Nairobi compared to the last time we were up here, we must have seen at least 30 of them. These particular guys had started in Cape Town so the industry has changed, it seems, they are now working the southern part of Africa instead of East Africa. The worlds perception on what is dangerous has obviously shifted somewhat.

We found our spot, set up tents and went for dinner; we had been told this was where you get the best T-Bone steaks in the world. Well, ours were tough and just awful and the men went to bed feeling very cheated as they had been talking about this steak “at the end of the tunnel for the whole day" - ah well you never know hey!

Next morning up early, to the usual bank, supermarket and service station to get supplies and then we got Kim to go into the fresh market stalls to get fresh veggies. Oh the stall holders thought he was very funny as he picked out the potatoes one by one and wouldn't take the bucket that they kept trying to give him. He is the best one to send into the market as 1) he is a man and 2) he used to run a fresh fruit and veggie shop - nobody can fool him with rubbish and believe me they try and palm all the bad stuff off onto us!

The road from Chipata was such a pleasant surprise, we were expecting the worse but it was new, wide and beautiful, thank goodness as with all of us in the truck if would have been a real bad experience for the kids, or should I say the parents as the kids would have loved a roller coaster ride considering all the bad roads we have been on…

When we got to the  "Tracks and Trails"  camp at South Luangwa, where Lisa had booked, I was quite disappointed as the actual campsite was not on the river banks. We particularly wanted to be able to sit in our chairs and watch the river with its crocs and hippos, so off Kim and I went to scout out the area and see if we could find the camp site we stayed in last time. I just couldn't remember the name of it so we set off blindly looking for somewhere else where we could actually camp on the river’s edge. No luck, the one I remember has simply disappeared so we stayed put at Tracks and Trails and as it happened it did actually turn out to be a great site and the best in the area.

South Luangwa is different to all the other reserves that we have visited because the camping grounds are all outside the reserves on the Luangwa river banks and you can take daily trips across the river into the reserve itself. There are a few 5 star lodges inside the reserve where you can stay but at very hefty prices and to be honest, not one of these lodges are up to the standard that we have in SA.

It was simply beautiful sitting on the edge of the river as this camp did have beautiful green lawns and huge Pod Mahogany, Apple ring Acacia and Sausage Trees that we would kill to have in our front gardens.

Lisa and Warwick had booked a family unit and had been allocated the one right next to the pool which was the right place for them to be. The pool was built up about 12 feet above the ground, just high enough to be out of reach of the Elephants which were constant visitors at the lodge. The pool was beautifully positioned right under an apple ring acacia tree which gave incredible shade plus shed its pods every day and it was a great source of delicacy for the elephants. So we spent most of the day swimming in this cool, blue, shady pool with the Ellies picking up the pods all around us. I have never been so close to a wild elephant in my life, you could actually touch their heads if you had wanted to and believe me these animals were not tame, they were pretty used to people but if you got in their way they would chase you. We witnessed a few guys running for their lives when they got too close.

The kids could just go down a set of back steps to their room so it was much safer for them to go backwards and forwards and even Cammie who is quite terrified of the Ellies became quite brave.

Our campsite was another story! We were warned not to leave any fruit or veggies in The Queen or vehicles as the Ellie's could smell them and would get them using any means they could.... Of course we are know-it-alls and left some fresh beans in the truck and went off to swim. We had closed the screen door and figured that would be sufficient. Oh boy that trunk went straight through the screen door, into the van and found all the fruit. I think it would have had the fridge open and got to all the stuff in there as well if the manager hadn't arrived and frightened it. It very reluctantly left but the door was very the worse for wear and we knew we were beaten and moved everything into the lodge fridges.

The monkeys and baboons also proved to be a huge problem. They would jump down from the trees and actually grab anything, even out of your hands. They were total pests and I am not exaggerating when I say there were perhaps over 100 of them running around the camp. The men spent a huge amount of time trying to shoot them with Ken's catty. They would sit in the trees above the hippo and just taunt us, dash down grab stuff and dash back again.... Little crafty bastards.

What can I say about South Luangwa other than we all voted it as the best reserve we had been to. There is an abundance of game of all kinds, tons of elephants, lions and had the best Leopard sighting that any of us had ever had.... Even Warwick who has spent years in the bush as a guide! We saw two leopard cubs so close up we could have almost touched them as they were tucking into an impala kill and then later watched a hyena try and catch one of the babies before it stole the kill from them.

The open plains where you could see tons of game just peacefully grazing in the sunset taking no notice of us or the arrival of 40 or 50 Ellies. We had a fantastic guide from the lodge who was just a delight, was very knowledgeable about the area and the game. He was quite outstanding and would love to have had him at Safari lodge.

We had three fantastic days of experiencing Africa at its best with the family and friends that we have spent nearly three months with, with hardly a cross word or upset... I am sure a record for anyone traveling together for so long. We sadly packed up on day four and headed back to the border to drop off Warwick and Lisa and then start our long journey home and back to the drudgery of everyday life in Joburg.  

Sigh……signing out!