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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.

The next morning we awoke at 7AM (that’s considered sleeping in for an African Overland Tour), packed up camp and ate breakfast before heading the last hour to the Zimbabwe border. Apparently this border can be somewhat unpredictable based on the whims of the Zimbabwean officials and even the political climate, so we were lucky it only took us 45 minutes to cross (many other borders take 5 or 10 minutes) and soon we were driving into the town of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe – on the Zimbabwe side of the Zambezi river and the largest waterfall in the world by water volume. Vic Falls seemed such a peaceful town one would never know that the country was undergoing a major election crisis that could easily erupt into civil war were it not for the press coverage on the Internet. Part of that peaceful feeling comes from the fact that it mostly deserted by tourists these days and while Vic Falls was once the Tourist Capitol and Extreme Sports Capitol of Africa, the Zambian side town of Livingstone has taken over the past year or two since Western Governments has placed Zimbabwe on the Extreme-Caution, No-Travel list. Like most of the Governmental Travel Warnings the Zimbabwe Warnings seem highly over-blown and end up hurting the people mostly and not Mugabe. Maybe my opinion would change were I to have visited Harare (the capitol), but I would recommend visiting Vic Falls to anyone who asked. But because of all the restrictions Zimbabwe is in crisis and there are massive shortages of gas and food (entire grocery stores have only 8 or 10 items to choose from and most of supplies are only available on the black market). These shortages make Victoria Falls an even more expensive experience than it probably always was, with most prices for food, lodging, and transportation even more expensive than in any Western City. Money is also a huge problem since the inflation rate is higher in Zimbabwe than anywhere in the world (something like 180,000 % in 2006/2007). Because inflation is so ridiculously high, no one wants to hold Zim Dollars since they will be worth less even a day later and thus the local currency in Victoria Falls runs on US Dollars but tourists are forced to bring them in with them since ATMs only spit out worthless Zim Dollars.

After leaving the Okavango Delta we spent a night in Gweta before heading North to Kasane, along the Chobe River that divides Botswana from the Namibia pan-handle. Arriving in early afternoon we quickly boarded a 4×4 safari truck (a bit larger than those in Kruger) for an early afternoon game drive in Chobe National Park, Botswana’s premier game park. The game drive was supposed to have been 3 hours but had to be cut short to 2 due to the evening cruise that had already been booked along the river. Most of the game drive was fairly uneventful with rare sightings of only the most common animals except for a 30 minute excursion where the driver drove slowly and non-aggressively along the sandy bank of the river literally into a herd of 35 or so Elephants of varying age and gender. I did not know what to make of this because on the one hand it occurred to me that this might not be the best thing for the animals, but on the other it provided us with epic views of the herd, many elephants that were within 6-10 feet of both sides of the truck (one bull elephant stared us down but did not make a mock charge thankfully).Of all the Elephant viewing in Kruger and Etosha this was the closest vantage point to the most animals and we delighted in being privy to the seemingly natural behaviors of the herd. The Elephants wandered along the banks drinking while the juveniles and babies stayed close to their mothers and the elder elephants kept their bodies between the truck and the young. After the Elephant excursions we drove around for 30 more minutes or so and saw surprisingly little (again the luck of the draw I guess) except for one massive Hippo sunning himself on a far bank (normally they do not leave the water until the night.

After Etosha we drove to the Namibian capitol of Windhoek, in the central-Eastern part of Namibia where we had another night in a bed and where we had a farewell party for 9 of our tribe who were departing (3 new members arriving). After Windhoek we said goodbye to the wonderful country of Namibia as we crossed the border into Botswana.

One of the main highlights retold by other Southern Africa Overland veterans was the trip in the Okavango Delta of Northwestern Botswana, so this is something all of us who were remaining were looking forward. The Okavango River originates in Angola, flows across the pan-handle of Namibia and into the nearly perfectly flat plains of Botswana, where it breaks up in a 16,000 square Km maze of marshes, lagoons, channels and islands, which are in turn surrounded by the barren Kalahari Desert. The plains is so flat that the water takes 90 days to move maybe 150 miles from one end of the Delta to the other.

We continued on North from the Himba region to Etosha National Park, Namibia’s renown game park. I found Etosha to be different than Kruger with very flat terrain, more trees, much shorter grass and with a much less visible variety of animals (I guess the latter difference is more the luck of the draw than any scientific conclusion). The experience was also different because we made the game drive in our massive truck, rather than in the smaller 12-seater vehicles at Kruger. Even so, most of the wildlife we saw was quite far off than at Kruger and less apt to stray close to the road (the road was much more open and visible at a distance due to the flat terrain and short grass so perhaps that made all the difference).