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After 2 full days of travel (3 mini buses, 1 taxi, 1 half bus and 1 eleven-hour long distance bus) I made it from Nkhata Bay, Milawi to Dar Es Salaam on the Tanzania Coast. On the ‘luxury’ long distance bus (no isle seating and with a bathroom) to Dar I reacquainted myself with a lovely Australian couple who I had met the first night in Nkhata bay the week before. Arriving at night in one of the more sketchy cities of Africa we quickly hopped into a cab to be taken to a hostel. The next morning after breakfast I said goodbye (they were off to Ethiopia) and walked to the bank on my way to the wharf where I boarded the fast ferry for Zanzibar (for the exorbitant rate of $35 for the 90 minute trip). In Zanzibar I managed to extricate myself from the hounding taxi touts and walked with all my bags (about 70 lbs or 31 kg).

[June 13 update: To be continued in the next 24 hours with info on Stonetown and Mungwi beach and the long-term power outage.]

After some serious road travel I arrived exhausted in Nkhata bay the next morning after the 1 ½ hour mini bus ride from Mzuzu (they strive to pack 19 people plus luggage and kids in a tiny mini-van). Getting off the bus I was swarmed by boat touts asking to escort me by boat to my chosen lodge, Myoko Villiage, but I tried to decline them despite their claims that the transportation was free (I later learned it was free and so needlessly missed out on the boat ride). I did accept a ride by truck and after riding for 15 minutes over a brutally rough dirt road I arrived at Myoko and was warmly greeted by the locals working there. They were mostly full but I arranged to get their last room which was very dilapidated under the promise of being upgraded to the nicest room with bathroom the next night (only $15 in Malawi what would have been $40 in any other Southern African country). Finally settled I had a snack and got to resting up from the road travel, reading, and catching up with my journals (which I had been a month behind on without a laptop). From here I will travel to Dar Es Salam, Tanzania and on to Zanzibar but that journey will take 2 full days to get there over some of the worst roads in Africa so I rationed I had better rest up for 4 nights here before heading out.

After an 8 hour bus ride to Lusaka, Zambia, then 2 nights in Lusaka, a successful computer find/purchase, a 10 hour trip over the border into Malawi to Lilongwe I arrived on May 22 exhausted and in a very shady part of the city. Fortunately I had found a Zambian guy to cross the border with and we were able to share a taxi to the boarder, and 2 more on the other side of the border to head to Lilongwe (110 Km from the border) and also fortunately I got the taxi driver to drive me to the nearby lodge without having to walk alone after dark in an area notorious for muggings. After a pleasant night sleep in a clean but cheap lodge (Malawi is the only cheap country in Southern Africa), I was shown to the open market and “bus station” which other than the presence of 2 parked buses offered no other resemblance to any organized transportation. I made the mistake of getting on the bus and paying the driver at the suggestion of the lodge woman who led me there, but not yet realizing that the buses only leave when they are full (I was the 3rd passenger on an 80 person bus). But I was entirely entertained over the next 2 hours while the bus gradually began to fill at the luggage that was loaded inside the bus in the passenger space, including 4 truck tires, numerous sacks of corn/flour/sugar, bushels of bamboo, spools of cable, cases of fluorescent bulbs, and a stack of bicycle tires. For some reason the driver started the engine a good hour before we departed, perhaps to give the would-be passengers the illusion it was about to depart and lure them into boarding this bus rather than finding another or boarding a 12 person mini bus.

On the morning of the 17th I slept in then said goodbye to the Spanish Armada and the Aussie Woman as they headed off for the airport, then I took a taxi to the border, which crosses an old steel bridge that goes over the Zambezi River just below the falls and just at the edge of the cloud of mist. After unsuccessfully haggling with the rip-off artists / taxi driver for a ride across the 2 Km bride (0.9 mi) I decided it would be more interesting to walk across the bridge with my heavy but manageable bags, much to the surprise of the taxi drivers who finally and too late came down in price. On the Zimbabwean side of the border there is a line of 3 or 4 miles of trucks waiting to cross over but since the bridge is almost 100 years old they only let 1 truck drive on it at a time. Apparently some drives have to wait for more than a day to cross, inching their rigs forward 1 truck length every 10 minutes or so, which seems to me to be huge incentive for drivers to drive AROUND Zimbabwe, but perhaps these were coming from Mozambique in which case driving around Zim would be an ordeal. I also crossed the Bungy Jumping platform and reflected fondly to my jumps in Berlin and in New Zealand though I felt no need to repeat the experience here when my funds could be conserved for other opportunities.