Allthegobro

The new day brought a change of pace. A day of looking into the lives of the local people rather than the animals.

First up was a visit to a Masai village. A bit of an eyeopener into the lives of these nomadic people who are adjusting to a more permanent village lifestyle.

Small round houses around a circular thicket fence line with a central animal enclosure. An interesting chat and visit to a house, two small rooms (just big enough for a bed). One room for Mum and Dad and the other for how ever many kids there were.

To finish it off there was a small kitchen area with an open fire place. All very squeezy, the loo was some where outside, bathroom not sure. After a wander through the craft stalls it was back in the trucks. Wasn’t allowed to get the 5 ft giraffe for the lounge room.

We then drove to a village and were escorted around the local community and introduced to village life.

Had a look at rice farming and banana plantations. These are undertaken on landholdings passed down from previous generations, we would call it small lot farming. We paused for a short time to enjoy a cup of locally brewed banana beer, not much can be said about this but the locals do seem to enjoy it.

Enjoyed a ‘traditional’ lunch in the village setting. Open hearth cooking of slow cooked meats and vegetables. A bit like our camp oven cooking over open fires.

One interesting feature of the lifestyle was the great number of partly completed block homes. Apparently, families will build a basic shell and will only complete additional rooms as they can fund them. Little borrowing! A variation of the Aussie extension idea. In some cases they will have initially built a mud house and will then move on to a block house.

This absorbed an interesting three hours or so of interaction with the locals, who all seem to have a smile and a happy disposition. Very welcoming.

Back at the lodge we had some quiet time ahead of the next leg of the Tanzanian section of the trip taking us through Ngorongoro crater and into the Serengeti.

We have left Tarangire NP and moved north to the area around Manyara NP. It is in the low land area below the foothills of the Ngorongoro Crater. Here is a mud map of our journey, distance wise we are about half way through.

Manyara NP and the lake are known for a couple of things. The first is the tree climbing lion and the second is the flamingos of Lake Manyara.

We entered the Park at one end and worked our way around the lake edge to the exit, enjoying a picnic box lunch along the way.

We found this game drive a little disappointing as the climbing tree lions did not appear. Sam, our guide, had not seen one for a couple of years and said they were very elusive. Maybe moving further into the park and away from the tracks.
The flamingos were also no where to be seen, had cleared out of the area. Sam noted this appeared to be the result of the expansion of the lake due to increased water inflows. Water was advancing across the lower areas of the park, submerging former wading grounds. Many of the tracks were also underwater and new ones were being cut.

Despite this disappointment we found that Africa seems to give up something new to see and the landscape always surprises. A multi coloured lizard adorned a rock and a blue monkey swung among the trees.

Some of the usual suspects, elephant and antelopes, found homes in the thicker vegetation. Warthogs enjoyed the wetter environment.

We made it out of the park late in the afternoon to our next lodge for a couple of nights, higher up the foothills of Ngorongoro Crater.

From Arusha we made our way south to Tarangire NP. Bit of a rat race getting through the Arusha CBD and out the other side. Mini buses, motor bikes, bicycles and three wheelers all jockeying for position. Road rules?

Once out of the town outskirts the traffic thinned out and we made good time to the Park arriving mid morning.

The weather continued to be overcast with patches of blue and sun from time to time. The park is famous for two things. Its very large elephant population and the numerous boabab trees, we call them boab trees in Australia.

We came into the park at one end and meandered to the other end for the rest of the day, stopping for a picnic lunch along the way.
In the park we had an introduction to the tsetse fly. A small but aggressive fly that is attracted to the colours blue and black. It has a painful sting, delivered in a boring action rather than a prick (like a mosquito). It can cause debilitating sleeping sickness. Blue and black ‘flags’ adorn the park as a control measure.

The night before we had been warned not to wear blue or black clothing, and to put some insect repellant on. Along the way a couple of the flies got in the truck and caused a bit of onboard agitation and fear for lives. Settled down eventually.

Strangely, we didn’t see many elephants. Boabs though were plentiful, from small to large. The acacia, umbrella like trees, dotted the grasslands. Quite a spectacular landscape.

The usual suspects made regular appearances; giraffe, zebra, antelopes of various types. There was a good sighting of a warthog enjoying a mud bath and ‘galloping’ away as we appeared.

After catching sight of two lions away in the distance we rounded a corner to face a male and a female drinking from muddy water puddles on the track verge. Not disturbed they had their fill and then wandered off as if we weren’t there.

There was also a great variety of colourful bird life waiting for their pictures to be taken.

We made it to our lodge for the night late in the day and enjoyed a drink and chat with the others before brief shower sent us in for dinner and bed.

Half way through breakfast a small family of elephants arrived at the waterhole 50 metres or so from the pool area. After nosing around in the muddy water they headed our way and partook of a clean water trunkful, several times, from the pool. Apparently, a regular visitation.

It was a one night stop over at Tarangire and we were to head off for Manyara NP, the centre piece of which is Lake Manyara.

Our first day on the road started with a game drive through Nairobi NP. The park is on the outskirts of this 5 million people thereabouts African city. It is almost an urban park but holds lots of animals. The idea in going here is to try to see a rhino. Our guide, Julius, tells us we are unlikely to see Rhinos on the rest of the trip, so that is why we have come here! Having seen Black Rhinos at Victoria Falls it was good to hear that it is the White Rhino we might see.

So, not long after we started, sure enough some White Rhinos put in an appearance for us. They are bigger than Black Rhinos and have a wider squarish jaw line rather than the more pointed one of the Black Rhino. We are told that the name ‘wide rhino’ has morphed into ‘white rhino’. Who knows but it is a good story.
Following the short drive around the park we stopped at the nearby Sheldrick Animal Orphanage. This was established in 1977 and rehabilitates orphaned elephants and rhinos, ultimately reintroducing them back into the wild. The organisation does a lot of other conservation work.

We saw an impressive parade of inmates. First was a baby rhino, followed by 20 elephants in two groups. The MC gave us a potted history of each animal, by name, without drawing breath. Pretty impressive!

After this we returned to the hotel for lunch before departing for Amboseli NP for two nights. The drive was slow down the highway towards Mombassa on the coast, truck after truck in both directions. Ultimately, we turned off towards the south, still slow as we navigated through numerous small townships and villages. Some hectic passing manoeuvres as well. It took us 5 hours, getting to the lodge around 6.30pm in time for dinner!

Next morning we were off on a 6am game drive through the Park, famous for its elephant population and Mt Kilimanjaro that looms large over the landscape. Unfortunately, it is shrouded in mist and cloud while we were there. So, couldn’t get that classic photo of the elephant in front of the mountain in clear blue skies. Had to settle for a herd of elephant massing beneath the shrouded table top of Kilimanjaro. Not bad!

The other animals, I’ll call them the usual suspects, were in abundance; but no lions came our way. Hippos grazing were a standout.

We left Amboseli for the lengthy slow drive to Arusha. This involved the Tanzanian border crossing and a change of vehicles and guides.

We had no dramas. Our party of 9 was split into two vehicles, travelling mostly in convoy. Along the way we stopped for a short walk to the Kilimanjaro Falls, pretty but not spectacular.

A short break for lunch in Moshi before resuming the trek and arriving in Arusha. Arusha is a major centre in the country. The Tanzanian Vice President was in our hotel, The African Tulip, a fair bit of security was around.

It had been a long day as we settled into the hotel. In the morning we would be leaving for Tarangire NP.

We duly rose for our 5.45am game drive out into Chobe NP. When we asked what we might see our guide replied, whatever nature dishes up. The usual response!

It was a rather bumpy ride in the very sandy environment, almost sandhill like in parts.

We were not disappointed! A great range of animals were seen.

A Sable and a Kudu were standouts. Numerous Impala. Some vultures feasting on the carcass of a small elephant.

A number of birds. Some giraffe and baboons.

The highlight though was coming across a pride of lions devouring their breakfast, a big Kudu. What a sight, only about 5 metres away from our truck! Memorable.

And so you can get a feel for it, there was quite a smell, here is video of the show!

Not much more to say! Back at the lodge for a late breakfast and then the transfer to Victoria Falls Airport for our flight to Nairobi. We did have the $US 60 for the Zimbabwe visa, so no dramas at the border. We did have a temperature check for Monkey pox, all clear. The Kenya Airways flight was running nearly an hour late and we didn’t get away till nearly 7pm. Got to our hotel in Nairobi about midnight for a good sleep. It had been a hectic couple of days.

The blog is now in real time and today we head off on a safari through Kenya and Tanzania. We may be off the air for about two weeks, depending on the internet.

We have left Victoria Falls and found our way to Cresta Mowana, a lodge bedside the Chobe River in Botswana. Once we got going the road transfer took about an hour and a half. It involved a crossing of the border between Zimbabwe and Botswana.
Australians need a visa to get into Zimbabwe, but not Botswana. We had got a single entry visa for Zimbabwe before leaving Australia and had used it when coming in on the train from South Africa to Victoria Falls. It was a quick rubber stamp job exiting Zimbabwe.

Getting into Botswana did though involve a bit of paper and foot work. We had to complete a two page questionnaire to self declare that we did not have Monkey Pox symptoms, we didn’t seem to have any. We then had to walk through a shoe bath to disinfect for Foot & Mouth disease, as well as dunk the soles of any other shoes we had. We were told Botswana was a big exporter of beef to Europe and were somewhat focussed on keeping the disease out, ‘like you in Australia’.

The slight issue we had though was we did not have a visa to get back into Zimbabwe, we needed to do that for a flight from there to Kenya the next day. Told there were no worries in getting a visa at the border on the way back, just had to have $US60. We would have to wait and see!

The local Chobe tourist info centre.

’Mowana’ means ‘tree of life’ (Cresta is a hotel chain) and there is a big boab in the courtyard of the hotel. An even bigger one is at the road entrance into the property. Our room has a great view out over the river and the Namibian flood plains on the other side. The Chobe River is a tributary of the Zambezi and forms the border between Botswana and Namibia.

The trip here is go go. On arrival we have a quick late lunch before departing on a sunset boat cruise on the Chobe River into the Chobe NP. Botswana has the biggest concentration of Elephants in Africa, in excess of 80,000 and a lot of them are here in this park. So we hoped to see some.

Crocodiles abound as does the Hippo, and we see one open its jaws, in the video below. It goes for a little while, the action is towards the end.

The Cape Buffalo is also plentiful. This Big 5 member is not a water buffalo like Crocodile Dundee subdued in the movie. The Cape Buffalo is considered the most dangerous animal in Africa.

Also quite a lot of bird life, this one is a bit like a sea eagle back home, but here by the river.

But, back to the elephants, here is a baby beside the mother.

The whole herd then commenced a crossing of the river. They all lined up and away they went. Why? The guide suggested it was to get to the other side to feed on the shrubs and trees, where they had been was all grasses and they needed woody stuff for their diet. It looked spectacular, about half way the baby decided to turn back and all the other elephants circled around and ‘encouraged’ him/her on! That is what all the commotion in the water is about. All made it to the other side!

After this performance we headed back to the lodge as the sun went down.

In the morning we have 5am rise to join a morning game drive in the Park.

We have had a couple of excursions at Victoria Falls to check out the local wildlife.

The first was boarding a river cruise on the Zambezi, above the Falls. It was one of those drifting experiences where you have anticipation of seeing a few animals but at the end it is the sunset that gets all the oohs and ahs! There were numerous boats out on the river, all shapes and sizes. Lovely warm weather.

We did get our first hippo sighting. Heads protruding out of the water away in the distance.

There were a couple of elephants at the water’s edge having a drink, their trunks can hold up to 15 litres of water. Quite a gulp!

A small crocodile lay on the river bank, blending into its space. Very easily trodden upon! And the sunset of course!

The water that the sun sets over appears to be slowly moving down stream to spill over the Falls, mist rises in the distance. Tempting to drift with the current, but no we head back to the dock before deep dark sets in.

Our second excursion took us out on a game drive in a private park. Hopefully, to see a fourth member of the Big 5. A Black Rhino.

Our guide can make no promises. But, away we go in the late afternoon. We come across a few of the usual suspects.

A stork was a magnificent colourful sight in the brown earthy background. Earthy coloured Guinea Fowl were also hanging around a waterhole.

We did have a couple of sightings of Rhinos in the scrub but couldn’t quite make any details out. We then came across a cleared patch of ground. There were two rhinos here. An old lady, thought to be 39. She showed her age with bony shoulders and hips pressing through her tough hide.

Our guide thought she was not long for it. Life expectancy is in the early forties.

Nearby, was the much younger son, far fitter! A great sight.

Our time at Victoria Falls has drawn to a close and our next stop is in Botswana at a Lodge on the Chobi River.

We have our last dinner at the Jungle Junction as the night draws in and bed beckons!

We strolled down from the train into the Victoria Falls Hotel, we are here for four nights, not far from the Falls on the Zambezi River that David Livingstone stumbled over on the 16th November 1855. There is much referencing of him as the ‘discoverer’ of the Falls. The reality being that he was the first European to see them. The local people have been here for generations and the Falls were spiritual places.

We are here to visit this special place, known these days (in local lingo) as Mosi-oa-Tunya, although there are variations, being ‘The Smoke that Thunders’. Livingstone named them Victoria Falls, after the then British Queen.
Livingstone was a bit of an enigma. He was largely unsuccessful in his Christianising efforts, which the locals vigorously resisted. But, he was a leading force in the anti slavery movement and was greatly respected for that by the locals.

Despite independence the name ‘Victoria’ has stuck, very much for entrenched tourism marketing reasons. The Zimbabweans, where Livingstone is not as revered, from time to time push for renaming. The Zambians are resistant due to his opposition to slavery.
The original Victoria Falls Hotel was built in 1904, largely replaced with the current central structure after WW1. Additions then followed and the Sables wing where we are was built in 1997.

Spacious rooms and colonial memorabilia adorn the public areas. Great big paintings of King George V and Queen Mary are in the foyer. It would have been an outpost for the very well to do.

We had a prearranged excursion to the Falls with a guide and few others. This was a 3km round trip along the rim of the Falls looking to the Zambia side. Took us about three hours, There are sixteen (?) view points along the way. Photographers dream! The water coming over the Falls at this time is much reduced, still plenty of mist and the rock formations visible. At its peak in May it is thunderous and difficult to see anything.

Back at the Hotel there is a great view of the Victoria Falls bridge, originally constructed in 1904 but strengthened and rejigged to take today’s rail and traffic volumes.

The food at the Hotel was good rather than being outstanding. Fed the hungry stomachs after a day out! Some energetic entertainment too! Homealone tackled the mini burgers, swapped the crocodile one for another beef one. Allthego stuck to a more traditional one, but did enjoy a warthog skewer one evening.

That is all for now, a long catchup and I will leave the next animal instalment to next time

Our train plodded on through the evening and into the early hours before stopping in a siding at Thompson Junction a couple of hours or so (as it would turn out!) to the south of our destination.

The Ravos Rail journey has been excellent. Travelling through a dry sun burnt countryside towards the end of the dry. During the wet it transforms into greenery and we are told views from the train are hampered by thick trackside vegetation.

The local kids are keen train watchers, appear from no where, wave enthusiastically and follow us down the line. The photo above shows a wavy track line. Zimbabwe is not great on maintenance and tends to fix problems rather than try to prevent them through maintenance!

In Hwange NP the wet also means that the animals roam further from the waterholes, the grasses are higher and it is harder to get close to them. In East Africa from mid August it seems is a good time to be here.

The meals on board have been as promised, locally inspired dishes, with some English trad thrown in, complemented by South African wines greet us each day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Eggs on onion parmesan scones and stuffed chicken breasts were rather good examples.

In between a lot of looking out windows and seemingly endless chatter. Some are louder than others! Our cabin is big enough for us not to want to be in there all day, the sofa converts to a double in the evening.

During the early hours there is some shunting around a ‘triangle’, or is it a ‘bubble’ track (?), to allow the locos to swap train ends as the carriages ‘turn’ around. There is no facility at Victoria Falls to facilitate a carriage turn around.

So, we complete the journey into Victoria Falls with the locos pulling the carriages ‘backwards’ into the Victoria Falls station. Allthego needed a bit of paper and pen to see how this all worked, and even with the help of Homealone, still can’t work it out. Not an engineer.

The train station at Victoria Falls is a bit of a throw back to colonial times. An abandoned water tank symbolic of steam train days.

We alight here, to a welcome party of locals in traditional garb, and stroll the short distance down to the Victoria Falls Hotel for a four night stay in this ‘relic’ of bygone days.

The locos still point north but will again swap ends and leave at 5pm for the journey back to Pretoria with the observation car at the end, as it should be!

The journey north from Beitbridge towards Bulawayo passes through more baobab country before starting to transform into denser thickets of the acacia, extremely spiney. There continue to be the occasional small agricultural or grazing operations alongside the railway. Also, an occasional settlement. We finally reach the town of Mpopoma to the south of Bulawayo sometime late in the night (or early morning) and we go off onto a siding to see out the night. The train set off at sun up with a lot of shunting and backtracking in order to change lines for the journey beyond Bulawayo. Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe after Harare (the capital) and is the industrial centre of the country. Those who have read Wilbur Smith’s African novels might remember Bulawayo as an oft mentioned locale. We seem to bypass the city and travel past on its outskirts.
Further north, there is at 114km one of the world’s longest stretches of straight railway line. The longest is 478km across Australia’s Nullarbor.

This section of the track passes by the eastern edge of Hwange NP, the largest in Zimbabwe. It is estimated to be home to in excess of 40,000 elephants and to protect the other members of the Big 5, although Rhino numbers are small and infrequently seen. I have heard someone say that the rhinos have been moved out in order to protect them from poachers.

At 3pm we stop on the edge of Hwange and go off onto a siding near the town of Dete. Everyone alights the train and form groups to board game drive cars, converted Toyota Landcruisers. Our guide’s name was Divine, and he was! Great driver along the bumpy/sandy tracks and he knew his animals. We saw three of the Big Five (lion, elephant and water buffalo) and numerous others: giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, mongoose, impala and few other antelope species. Some birds as well for good measure.
Here are a few of the creatures of the plains….

We were back on board at around 8pm and set off for Victoria Falls which we would reach early morning and then disembark at 10am.

After a quick breakfast at Castello di Monte we transferred by a mini bus, with some other guests, to the Ravos Rail train station on what seemed to be the other side of Pretoria. We arrived around 8.30am for a 10am departure.

Plenty of time to look around the complex, including the railway museum. ‘Ravos’ is a contraction of the name of the fellow who owns the company…….Rohan Vos. The whole operation is based around the principle of ‘slow’ travel, no internet to distract from the late 1800s early 1900s train travel experience. Good food, conversation and wine in comfortable surroundings as the train and its carriages meander north to the Falls.

We had a quick look through the railway museum, a lot of colonial memorabilia of steam travel in southern Africa. Ravos has some short steam experiences but generally the locomotives are diesel, with some diesel electrics. The infrastructure for long distance steam travel has been dismantled. Along the way we saw a number of derelict water towers. Not unlike the Ghan in Australia , the operator owns the rolling stock and is charged for usage of the track infrastructure.

Rohan Vos is now in his late 70s but still performs an overview tour of the facility explaining various aspects of the operations.

The outfit has over 400 staff and runs tourist trains over various routes through southern Africa. Quite impressive chap and seems to have encyclopaedic knowledge of train engineering and operations.
We headed off north east a little late and made our way through the outer ‘suburbs’ of Pretoria and past light industrial complexes. All a bit messy with plenty of rubbish strewn around. We finally get away from the city scape and start the plod (the train does about 35km ph most of the time) north to Victoria Falls, about 1400km.
We are towards the end of the dry season and much of the thorny vegetation is leafless, boab trees are a common sight beside the track.

It is rocky sandy environment and looks a little like outback Australia. Small villages and some larger towns sit beside the railway line, small scale agriculture and cattle rearing the main activities.

We stop for some time overnight at Musina, not far from the Limpopo River. The Limpopo forms the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and in the early morning we cross over into Zimbabwe.

We are reminded by the itinerary that the Limpopo features in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’ when the ‘Elephant’s Child’ departs his family for the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner”.
I am sure my readers will remember this well so there is no need to dwell on it further.
After crossing the river we have a lengthy stop at Beitbridge for visa checking before we trundle further north towards Bulawayo.

Beitbridge has a very long platform so Allthego takes the opportunity for a head shot of the train, with the 500m of carriages disappearing into the hazy distance.

We now head for Bulawayo, where we will stop for the night, or at least for some hours before morning.

We have arrived without incident in South Africa and are staying the night on the outskirts of Pretoria at the Castello di Monte. The flight from Brisbane to Johannesburg via Dubai went smoothly, no turbulence encountered. The flight path from Dubai to Johannesburg first took us unevently over the troubled lands bordering the Gulf of Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. It then turned south and tracked the African coastline before heading inland for Johanessburg.

In Pretoria the staff at the Castello di Monte, located inside an extensive gated community, proudly showed us to our room. Some room indeed! Spa, bathtub and shower, an extensive lounge and bedroom area. Fully stocked mini bar complimentary…..Allthego went to it and used the bathroom. He had an underlying feeling of unease though and examined the introductory letter carefully.

Two nights it said but we were only staying one. Mmm, the booking names were not right either. We had been mistakenly given the honeymoon suite! Our real room is below, pretty good anyway.

After being fixed up with the right room we enjoyed dinner and had an early night ahead of joining the Ravos Rail journey to Victoria Falls in the morning.

It’s 6pm and we are now sitting at Brisbane International awaiting the 9pm Emirates to Dubai, arriving at 5am their time. A wonderful night flight arriving at sunrise! We have a five hour wait there before leaving for Johannesburg, arriving there at 4pm.

There is to be no lurking around in Johannesburg as we have a quick bus transfer to Pretoria for our first night in Africa. The next morning we board the Ravos Rail train for a three night journey north to Victoria Falls.

Leaving Brisbane with the colours of spring in full bloom for the end of the dry season in eastern Africa. Until Pretoria!