2011 » 2Taylors » Page 18

Nairobi …..again

Posted by Elizabeth at 8:42 pm

Aug 112011

Once again we are back in Nairobi and Jungle Junction and once again we have the pleasure of visiting Toyota. We arrived on our appointment day to be told they had it booked in for the day before – they had failed to update the appointment when we rang them before we left for Egypt to change the day. Finally they agreed to look at it today. When you book your car in they just do not want to hear what is wrong with it no matter how hard you try to tell them, so we proceeded to tell them the issues we were having (no power, heaps of smoke etc) to be told they could not look at the fuel system. What???? This is Toyota, the car is a Toyota, but they can’t look at the fuel system???? Maybe if it was the gearbox and required a specialist, but the fuel system? They told us we would need to go across the road to another place, so not impressed we took the car across the road and thankfully were met by people who were incredibly helpful, understood that we needed our car back today and said it should only take a few hours. They could do our service as well. Thank goodness! They even fixed our external light for us which had decided to stop working. It only cost $120 for them to fix the problem with the injectors and service it (we did supply parts), a definite bargain compared to home.

So finally our car is happy again and we don’t have to worry that we won’t make it up a hill. We are heading off to Mombasa and the coast tomorrow and finally leaving Nairobi for the last time.

To the Kenyan Coast

Posted by Elizabeth at 6:03 pm

Aug 152011

Finally we left Nairobi for the last time and headed for the coast. We had originally planned to try and make the coast the same day, however we left Nairobi later than expected, so instead we stopped at the Red Elephant Safari Lodge at Voi on the edge of Tsavo National Park. It is a lodge that allows campers in a spot near the pool, supplying a room key for the shower and toilet. It was a pleasant enough spot to stop over for the night and as a bonus we spent some time sitting at the national park fence and managed to see some waterbuck, giraffe, zebra, elephant and impala without having to pay a national park fee.

Leaving Voi we headed for Mombasa and then up the north coast to the Gede Ruins. The ruins are from the Arab trading days with a palace, mosques and houses. Only the bottom parts of the walls are left in most places but it is an interesting place to have a wander through if you are passing by. From there we headed to Malindi where we were hoping to spend the night, unfortunately though all the campsites have been replaced by more lucrative hotels. Instead we headed back south, through Mombasa and down to Tiwi Beach where we spent the next 3 nights at Twiga Lodge. Our campsite was literally on the edge of the beach with some trees to provide shade. The locals come by each day allowing you to buy fruit, veges, fish, prawns, newspapers and the usual tourist things such as sarongs, baskets and necklaces, they did not hassle you though and moved on if you told them no thank you. We bought some fruit and one guy went and got a fresh loaf of bread for us for very little extra than we would have paid anyway. The camp has a restaurant with cheap meals and drinks. The showers are cold, but it was warm enough that they weren’t an issue. All in all it was a very relaxing and pleasant place to stay and an absolute bargain at only $US3 each per day.

To Zambia

Posted by Elizabeth at 2:18 pm

Aug 192011

As we were no longer going to Uganda and Rwanda we needed to get to Zambia and continue on from where we would have been. That meant we had 3 long days of driving and 2 border crossings ahead of us. We left Tiwi Beach and headed for the Kenya/Tanzania border, crossing quickly and without any hassles.

Back in Tanzania the road instantly turned to dirt, the first part of which was OK, getting a bit worse as you got closer to Tanga, taking about 90 minutes from the border to Tanga. From Tanga on it was good tar. We managed to make it to Mikumi and stopped over once again at Tan Swiss knowing we could eat in their restaurant.

From Mikumi we headed for Mbeya. Once again we encountered the Tanzanian police. We were pulled over by a very arrogant officer who advised us we were doing 52km/h in a 50 zone. There was no way – we had just come to a complete stop behind a turning truck and our car will not get to 52 in 150 metres! We told him that the speed on his radar was not from our car (and as if their guns are calibrated well enough to pick you up 2 km over the limit). He then tried to tell Wayne it was an offence to drive in bare feet – yeah right. Wayne just kept telling him he was not paying a fine. Wayne had to get out to go and talk to him and after about 5 minutes the guy told him that if it was not the speed of our car to leave, so of course we did! We spent the night about 20km south of Mbeya at the ICC Mission for about $6. They will let you park on the grass and give you a room key for the shower and toilet.

From Mbeya we headed for the Zambian border. Once again the police were out in force. This time we were doing 67 in a 50 zone. Wayne kept asking where the 50km sign was as there was none. There was one arrogant officer again who just kept telling him he had to pay a fine and another reasonable guy who Wayne spoke to. Eventually Wayne was told that every village is a 50km zone whether there is a sign or not – makes it pretty hard when there are houses almost the entire length of the road to the border. Do we do 50km/h the whole way just in case? As it turned out we didn’t have 20,000 Tsh for the fine anyway as we spent the last of our money on diesel. Once we explained this we were given the option of paying without a receipt, surprise surprise. In the end we gave them 10,000 Tsh as we wanted to get going as we had a long day ahead of us. It is so frustrating though when you see so many unroadworthy vehicles being driven at ridiculous speeds. No one wears a seatbelt, half their lights don’t work, nobody obeys road markings or signs, yet it is more important to raise money by sitting with a radar than it is to make the roads safe. Oh well, this is Africa!

Next was the most confusing border crossing we have encountered yet. Leaving Tanzania was fine, but getting into Zambia was ridiculous. It went something like this:

Complete Tanzania departure form and get exit stamp in passport
Go to Tanzania customs office, find the guy in his office as there is no one at the counter and get him to complete our carnet.
Leave Tanzania and drive to Zambian side.
Go to immigration, complete entry form and pay $US50 each for a visa. All straightforward.
Now the fun part with the car begins.
Go to the exit gate and have the carnet completed but not stamped ((imagine completing it AND stamping it at the same place!)
Walk back to the building beside immigration and find the office where the guy will ask you to hand him the stamp (as he is so busy) so he can stamp the carnet. Tear off the slip yourself and hand it back to him.
Go to another office beside immigration (all of which are unmarked) and fight your way to the front of the 30 odd truck drivers that are also waiting in there, to be told he is busy counting up yesterday’s money and to come back when he is finished.
Go back when he has finished, hand over carnet and be told you need to pay 200,000 Kw for carbon tax and it has to be paid in Zambia Kwatcha which we have none of.
Find a moneychanger and argue about the exchange rate as they try to rip you off (the few other times we have changed money at a border the rate has been more than fair and we have not had to bargain with them). Finally get them to agree to a fair rate and change money.
Return with the kwatcha and pay the carbon tax. You will be provided a receipt and your carnet returned.
Try and find the office (a shipping container past immigration) in order to pay road tax $US30 (which had to be paid in $US). Once again fight your way to the front of the queue, which is worse than the other queue. You must know which border you are leaving Zambia from as it is recorded on the receipt. Get your receipt.
After about 2 hours of running around you finally drive to the exit gate where they will check your receipts and carnet.
Finally you are in Zambia!

The first part of the road south is a mixture of good tar where you can do 100km/h but with huge potholes and road edges crumbling away thrown in just to make it interesting. There are heaps of trucks, once again travelling at speed, so it is a road requiring concentration, lots of braking and swerving around holes. Needless to say we saw several truck accidents along the way.

By mid afternoon we reached Kapishya Hot Springs where we are staying for 2 nights. It is a lovely campsite beside the river as well as having a crystal clear 40C hot spring that has no sulphur in it. We even washed our hair in it this morning. They have excellent, really hot showers, flush loos and heaps of free firewood.

Having made it to Zambia we are now back into our more leisurely mode of travel thank goodness!

North Luangwa & Luambe National Parks

Posted by Elizabeth at 4:58 pm

Aug 212011

We filled our car with diesel at Kakalantekwe which is the village on the main road at the turn off to Kapishya. The owner of Kapishya gets his fuel here and phoned them to order our fuel so we thought it should be ok even if you do buy it from plastic containers. There are definitely no fuel stations in this northern part of Zambia, so the locals have an “arrangement” with the truck drivers, which we think means the truck drivers’ siphon off part of their fuel to sell to the locals and then the locals sell it on. The diesel was cheaper than the fuel stations and we haven’t had a problem with it. I guess you do what you need to.

We entered North Luangwa National Park and took the road down past Buffalo Camp and back up to the pontoon. The road in goes down the escarpment and is a little rough, but was perfectly fine in the dry. There are very few roads through the park so the options are pretty limited. There is not a lot of game to be seen here, but we decided we would take the scenic route down to South Luangwa rather than sticking to the boring tar. We did though manage to see puku for the first time this trip as well as elephant, zebra, hippo, impala, kudu, baboon, warthog, bushbuck, waterbuck, reedbuck, crocodile, buffalo and squirrel.

To exit the park you need to cross the Luangwa River via a pontoon. First you need to cross about 150m of sandy river bed. You then arrive at a ramp thing made of small wooden logs. The pontoon is made up of metal drums with some wooden planks on top with folding ramps on either end to allow you to drive on and off. It is hand propelled by pulling on a steel rope suspended across the river. The passengers must get out of the car whilst the car is driven on to it, which wasn’t too bad and then the driver must also get out. You then stand on the planks whilst you cross the river and they did not ask for any payment which was a surprise.

We spent the night at Chifundu Camp right next to the pontoon. It is in a lovely spot, right on the river edge with hippos in the river in front of you. The showers and toilets are quite good and they even heated some water for us and filled the drum that supplied the shower. After dinner we had an elephant come quite close to our car. As the nearest campers were a few hundred metres away I was a little nervous but the elephant just ate and walked through the bushes around us and left us alone. During the night we heard hippos and a leopard numerous times. Early in the morning we could hear a lion to our right, another one across the river and what sounded like several lions to our left all roaring at the same time – very cool. (The other campers saw them and said there were 10 of them).

We then headed for Luambe National Park. First our GPS told us to take the road along the riverfront, but after a few kilometres we were stopped and told this was a hunting area and we needed to go back and take the other road past the airport (read dirt strip). We had been having issues with our GPS for some time and it decided that now was the time that it was going to completely die, right when there are no signs and numerous tracks to follow. Luckily we have a GPS receiver and software to enable us to use it via the laptop, so we pulled that out and I spent the next bit of time trying to remember how to use it. Eventually we sorted it out and headed off in the right direction. The drive is quite scenic, winding through trees, a few animals and numerous dry river crossings. It is not though something I would like to do in the wet, particularly as some of the rivers had quite steep entry or exit points that would not be fun in the mud.

The park is free to transit through but we decided to break the journey and spend the night there. It is a small park with very few roads for game drives, but we did see more puku, impala, waterbuck, elephant, hippo, baboon and squirrels. We spent the night at Luangwa Wilderness Lodge which is also in a lovely spot right on the river edge. Directly in front of us there would have been 200 hippos all making one hell of a noise, making a peaceful night’s sleep impossible. The shower was hot and had plenty of water, a real luxury. The camp cook baked an enormous loaf of bread for us which was lovely.

Unfortunately there are tsetse flies everywhere in this area (although not in the camps) and once again I was bitten, this time several bites on both my feet. I ended up with both feet red, hot, extremely itchy, swollen and painful for a few days – not much fun. If it is any reassurance I was told that someone did their PHD and determined that none of the flies there carry sleeping sickness. Once again Wayne barely got a bite and did not react whatsoever to them. To say I am now paranoid about any fly in the car is an understatement!

South Luangwa

Posted by Elizabeth at 6:05 pm

Aug 242011

We continued our scenic drive from Luambe to South Luangwa National Park. We checked out Wildlife Camp but we were not allowed to park the car on the grass which meant we would be camping in the dust and it was full of overland trucks. Next we took a look at Croc Valley Camp and this is where we ended up staying 3 nights. Our campsite was grassed, shady and right on the river’s edge with a great view both up and down the river. From the comfort of our chairs we could watch hippo, the elephants drinking, eating and crossing the river as well as a variety of other wildlife as they came down to drink. (The first 3 photos below were taken from in front of our tent). The camp is an excellent place with a bar, restaurant and pool and frequent visits from the elephants and hippo. Each day we were there the elephants would visit at one time or another, either a male alone or a family group that included a baby. As you can see in the photos below the elephants ate right around our tent, both during the day and night – and at night they kept waking us up! One night they even came into the bar until they were scared away. They look so cute and placid but you have to keep remembering these are wild animals and will trample you in an instant – in fact a woman was killed by an elephant in the rice fields nearby just a few days earlier. Unfortunately some people staying in camp seemed to think they were like pets and walked to within a few metres of them, just asking for trouble.

South Luangwa National Park was quite a nice park although we did not see the same concentration of game as we did further north, but it is definitely worth a visit. One of the highlights was finding a leopard eating a kill in a tree. The other was stumbling upon a lioness who in the morning tried to take on a waterbuck and then in the afternoon chased an impala and then found a buffalo who was weak and stuck in the mud. We sat there for some time watching the lion and buffalo eye each other off. The buffalo ever so slowly struggled out of the mud and once out the lion attempted numerous times to move in. At times they circled each other with the lion just waiting for a moment to attack, which it did once but failed. After about an hour unfortunately a game vehicle turned up, got on the radio and within minutes there were 10-15 vehicles surrounding the poor animals. The game vehicles harassed the animals, moving around constantly whenever one of the animals moved. In the end the lion half gave up and the buffalo managed to get out of the open and into the bushes. From then on it was impossible to see what was happening as they moved further into the bush. The lion probably won eventually if it had the patience, if not, the buffalo would surely be someone’s meal before long as it definitely was not well.

South Luangwa also has the Thornicroft Giraffe which is a lot smaller than the other giraffes. We did a night drive that was pretty uneventful, although we did see 2 porcupines which we have never seen before, well we have seen a dead one but I don’t think that counts. Our game sightings included:

buffalo	zebra	puku	warthog
hippo	elephant	kudu	crocodile
leopard	lion	waterbuck	Thornicroft giraffe
impala	hyena	genet	vervet monkey
white tailed mongoose	baboon	bushbuck	porcupine