11th August 2013

More Lakes!

As I write I am listening to the waves on Lake Malawi. We have left Zim and travelled through Zambia for a few days and then entered Malawi.

But first a few more words about Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is truly beautiful, diverse and has some outstanding places to visit.  The people that we met, were too, a diverse mix, all of whom put themselves out to be kind, friendly and hospitable. There are many who we will always remember for their friendship.  So what’s wrong?

Well, from a tourist point of view most of the ‘must see’ places, with the exception of Victoria Falls, were overpriced, badly neglected to an unacceptable degree. As we mentioned in the last blog, travelling in Zim is punctuated by frequent police checks.
I am guilty of repeating myself but this is so that I may emphasise a point which I did not make before. These checks often result in little more than a delay.  Often the officers go through a ritual of checking brake lights and number plate light. If one is not working then you will get a fine. One traveller we met told us that he was fined for not displaying his car radio licence on the windscreen! Only small but still a fine.

In the event that they find something ‘more serious’, they will make a meal of it, sometimes simply fabricating an offence that they have little evidence of. I know, as I was done for careless driving. When I asked what evidence they would provide they had no real answer. They were, however going to summons me to court. This would involve me having to wait several hours to be taken to the police station to be ‘processed’ and of course the vehicle would be seized. I said, ‘ok, if you have to do that then I can’t stop you’. The shameless reply of the officer was ‘well, what can you give me?’ I feel that his display of theatrical outrage at my supposed offence is entirely negated as he lost any moral high ground when he asked to be paid off.  

This well rehearsed routine of course was ultimately rewarded with the only money we had at the time - $20. I am not proud of this but perhaps unsurprisingly I didn’t fancy spending any time in the pokey. I guess that will be the case for a lot of people. A lot of Zimbabweans believed that this not corruption that it is all official as a form of raising taxes. This is because you get an official looking receipt entitled ‘Admission of Guilt’ which you have to sign. In our case, they were quite happy for Ping to sign the form even though she was not the driver. This oppressive behaviour is unacceptable in a country that professes it is a freely elected democratic state. They have cottoned on to the idea that people ask for a receipt so that they are not giving a bribe but the receipt is just smoke and mirrors.

The reason that I have gone on at length about this is because I am glad rather than outraged that they treat tourists this way as they are the people who can take the story out of The country. The poor old hard working Zimbabwean is not so able to do that.

Still stinging from this experience we decided that would be glad to leave the country  before the election got under way.  We left via the Kariba Dam which should have been such a great experience but  the customs people decided quite arbitrarily that our van is a heavy goods vehicle and not a private vehicle and we had to pay $30 to cross the Dam rather than $2 and of course we got a receipt. Nevertheless I am sure that we paid for the officers lunch that day.

I loved Zimbawe and the people we made friends with but I will not be returning any time soon as long as this government remains in power. I write this the day after the election and although the results are by no means in yet, already it is looking like a replay of the last one. I am no political agitator, I have no interest other than fairness and freedom of sorts, I am just glad to make a statement.

So back to the travels

Beauty and engineering The amazing  Kariba Dam

The Kariba Dam  and the Lake is spectacular. The Dam is really a thing of beauty as well as an engineering marvel.

The lake is the largest man made lake in the world and is truly vast.  I found a book that had overlaid a map of the lake over one of the South of England  It stretched from the north of Kent right up to the Bristol Channel and London was entirely engulfed in the wide body of the lake. Absolutely mind boggling!

A couple of notes for other Overland travellers regarding the Border with Zambia

The first is to say that despite the beauty and interest of crossing from Zim into Zambia at Kariba, it is probably worth avoiding for two reasons. One, is that the Revenue people who work there are a corrupt bunch of bastards and the second reason is that you can buy the COMESSA Yellow Card Insurance  at Chirundu, whereas at Kariba it is not available and you end up buying Zambia only insurance, which while not expensive is not very helpful and will leave you with another issue to deal with later on. So we recommend that you cross via Chirundu about 60km away.

There are a number of taxes and charges to pay at the Zambia border. They are not terribly expensive, apart from the visas but some have to be paid in Zambian Kwatcha which you can easily buy with US dollars only and some have to be paid in USD so make sure that you have a good supply of USD  before you arrive. We had all our dollars taken from us by Zimbabwean revenue officers and it caused us a lot of grief.

Enough moaning!

We only planned to stay for a short time in Zambia so we spent the first night on the shore of the lake and it was really pleasant, the next morning we moved on to the capital Lusaka. This was quite a difficult drive as there was extensive renovation of the road into Lusaka resulting in some long and complicated diversions, in addition many Zambian drivers  demonstrate a startling degree of aggressive incompetence. 

I generally drive quite defensively but any skills I have in this way were sorely tested out. A couple of times I almost got into conflict, not good.

Our own personal Zebra

As we came within just about 2or3 km of the capital we found our camp which was so surprising as it was in a semi urban location and as we entered we found ourselves in a sort of private park complete with a small herd of fairly tame zebras, a lot of deer and rather amazingly we found half a dozen giraffes munching happily on some yummy acacia trees by the roadside they really didn’t seem too bothered about making room for us in their park.  

                     A crude suicide attempt or a cry for help?

 Oops! I almost forgot to mention we had another puncture on the way in to Lusaka !

We only planned to stay in Zambia for a couple of days as we are starting to give serious consideration to the time we have left in Africa. There is so much of Africa to experience, some pretty tedious, and some absolutely mind blowing. We never intended to be continual travellers, to some extent we are already feeling the effects of travelling for so long, and we still have far to go.

High Street Lusaka

Moving on, we stayed at another camp along the Zambesi and there we met among others a South African vet. He gave us a free consultation. We have been able to give our friend John an appraisal of the treatment for Bilbo's cataracts. I have sent him the details but of course we must respect Bilbos ‘patient confidentiality’ we shall wait to hear the outcome. We had a lovely evening with the folk we met at Bridge Camp and the next morning we were on our way once more. 

We had such a lovely surprise, we went to camp at a site near the border with Malawi. When we drove in we were once again greeted by our friends Oyvind and Sheelah who we have travelled with on and off throughout our journey, it was a lovely reunion.

Oyvind and Sheelah united once more

Malawi

Malawi is a small, a lovely country, though very poor.

Our first night was spent in the capital Lilongwe, which was unremarkable except for its market which we had to get to by way of an unpleasantly rustic toll bridge which had every appearance of being made of sticks. It was unbelievably rickety with a steady traffic of punters trotting happily across some of whom were carrying things like 60kilo sacks of meal and such like. When one of these heavily laden people went over you could feel the bridge move under the weight. 

The market sold a bit of fruit and veg and few bits of ironmongery and the rest was devoted to clothes; a labyrinth of stalls all selling second hand clothes from the west. A bit of deduction backed up by a fair bit of guesswork led me to think that a lot of clothing came from the huge amount dumped by charity shops as scrap and lots of labelled gear which has presumably been dumped by well-known makers, who want to avoid creating their own competition. This makes it all sound a bit dodgy and I guess to some extent it is, but this market ensures that a few more people make a living and nothing is wasted.

Expert technicians at work. 5 heads is better than one

We had a brief pit stop for a repair at Iveco in Lilongwe.

We left Lilongwe for the reasonably short drive to the edge of Lake Malawi. We stayed at a nice though idiosyncratic campsite run by a remarkable woman who not only does this but is also the backbone of a lot of important community initiatives. It seems that Malawi is a little more open to foreigners taking part in community stuff than a lot of places.

Oh i do love to be beside the lakeside! Lake Malawi

While there we also met a remarkable American couple who have evolved a charity that helps to start up projects but will only assist with those programmes that have been locally instigated. This charity will only continue to work with them as long as they are locally run. It may seem obvious but many if not most projects receive a much higher level of intervention. However what is really remarkable is the sheer magnitude of what they do.  They manage to secure all kinds of medical supplies, machinery and materials to support a large number of projects all locally managed with minimal input from The malawiproject.org

Repetetive Strain Injury

We then drove along the lake for quite a long distance it was quite lovely.  Once again this lake is impossible to regard as anything but the sea.  As we continued it was a dull overcast day and it had rained during the night. We became aware that the scenery had changed dramatically from dry brown to a lush moist green.

As we drove, right from the start we were struck by the realisation that everyone we passed waved at us. It was really quite nice and surprising. The down side is that each of them has to wave just once, but we spent the entire morning waving like royalty at the adults and vigorously at the kids, I have a sore wrist now but even then it is impossible to resist the coy smile from the young kid who is too shy or unsure to wave!

As we went on we realised that this practice had ceased almost completely. It is hard to know why, maybe as there are various tribes around the country. Maybe they have different ways of doing things. I don’t know but it was quite noticeable.

We stopped at another camp on the shore of the lake very lovely right on the beach. There were quite a lot of people staying there nearly all of whom seemed to be very religious. It turned out that most of them were Jehovah’s Witnesses who had just arrived  to start a project translating the bible into Tonga one of the lesser local languages. Apparently this has never been done before! We wish them good luck with it. Whilst I don’t have a religious bone in my body, I  am filled with respect for yet another example of astonishing commitment to a cause. We also met a white family who live in Malawi teaching theology, they were on a camping trip in a little minibus with their six children. A charming family and so well organised it should be seen to be believed.

This is the contents of the mini bus

Another interesting thing about Malawi is that they have strictly enforced speed limits which are kept to 40 or 50 kph. For long tracts of road the villages are strung together quite closely which means that driving is quite slow.  I am sure that it does ensure that accidents are reduced. I do hope that is true.

One of many victims of the apalling driving in East Africa

Just the same it is not uncommon to see a big truck overturned in a ditch. Even on one occasion a minibus completely destroyed.

Our intended destination was the town of Livingstonia mostly because it sounded interesting. We had made quite limited research. Toward the end of our drive we had to turn left for about 20 km to get to our recommended destination. We saw what looked a lot like a motorway sign pointing to Livingstonia! So we turned left and there was another big green motorway type sign telling us that we are en route to Livingstonia.  At that point the tarmac ran out!  

Ah well, on we go we have had worse, at least we know we are going the right way.  It became a quite difficult road but we continued and we were pretty committed when I looked at the GPS and saw that the line of the route had become a squiggle I realised that we were climbing up the side of a mountain!!! 

Thanks To Bernard our man at Garmin This the road to Livingsto

We still had 15 km up a steep escarpment very narrow no rails and no safety net. It was starting to get dark and in the dying embers of the day we were able to have a stunning view of The lake. As often happens it continued to get darker and this narrow track got rougher. I am so glad that it was dark so I couldn’t see down it was quite lonely dark, long and I think dangerous.  As soon as we arrived the owner said ‘Ah you have an Iveco! The last Iveco that came here fell off the track and down the side of the mountain!’ Apparently he had no more than a little bruise, but it took 4 days to recover the van.

The camp, I didn’t like it much to be honest and I wouldn’t have bothered with the drive if I had known.  I will commit herecy here and say that I have come to realise that the camps that are most interesting and welcoming to me do not have the work ECO in front of their name! I don’t like muesli!!!!  There now I have said it! I just find that this type of nomenclature is often accompanied by a level of self righteousness which I don’t really care for.

On the way down it was a different matter, as we could see  everything. This is not especially good as I really don’t like heights. We crawled down all the hairpin bends with a sheer drop forever! 

This really is as steep as it looks!

Narrow, rough, unmade road. As we gazed out with a fantastic view of Lake Malawi, the Ipod played ‘I can see for Miles ‘ by The Who’ nice touch eh? 

On the way down we picked up hitchhikers, 2 Dutch students Isobel and Anouk ( I thought it was the name of an eskimo) who very nicely blagged a lift from the top and then about halfway down a Japanese woman who is working in Malawi had enough of hiking and asked for a ride. We had such a nice drive with some really lovely company

Anouk and Isobel

We did not spend as long as we may have liked in Malawi which is a very nice place with very few cars and most people get around on bikes. In fact nearly every town has a group of taxi cyclists who will carry you and/or you 60kg sack of maize on a seat that is on the back of the bike. Many people in Malawi are very poor.

Once you get used to it the country is governed by quite strict speed laws, which means that on open roads you are generally restricted to 80Kph and in the villages it is down to 50. However the villages are strung along the main road with very little space between them.  This means that most of the time you cruise through the country at about 50kph waving vigorously at nearly everyone it can be very pleasant.

However we were starting to get quite preoccupied with the fact that  our vital documents, Carnet de Passage (which is passport issued by The RAC that allows the vehicle to pass in and out of any country without paying duty) and our health insurance,  are due to expire at the beginning of November and we may have too little time to take a leisurely pace for the remainder of our time in Africa. 

 So we left lovely Malawi behind and crossed into Tanzania.