9 SEPTEMBER 2010 - Slogging away in Southern Tanzania
Tanzania started in unique style. Crossing over the recently built Unity Bridge connecting Mozambique with Tanzania, night time had fallen as we collected our visas and we were nowhere near a sizeable town. So we spent the night camped in the parking lot of the Tanzanian customs and immigration compound. Only in Africa.
The new Unity Bridge comes complete with beautifully smooth tarmac along which we joyously travelled after the horrors of northern Mozambique roads. A full 2km of joy later, we were unceremoniously dumped back upon a bumpy dirt track accompanied with the usual chickens, goats and pigs. The tarmac, we learned, was laid for the President’s visit to open the bridge. He was then helicopter-ed out prior to hitting the dirt.
South-west Tanzania sees little in the way of tourists due to its poor transport connections and general lack of sights, sites, tourist attractions or amenities. As such, accommodation is tough to come by. And so came our streak of Christian Missions and Seminaries serving up great accommodation at the cost of a donation. But 100% smooth sailing it was not.
Diesel engine’s blow some smoke. But not that much black smoke! Worn injector nozzles saw us spending another day at a Toyota dealer only to see them crack the windscreen, wrongly install rear brake pads, incorrectly clean the air filter, reassemble the windscreen wipers so they fell off the windscreen, and give us an air conditioning and idle problem once we had left town. A handful of angry phone conversations led us to another garage where we walked the ‘approved Toyota mechanic’ through the process of fixing our own vehicle.
All of this pain and 6 days of heavy driving to see two national parks - Katavi National Park and Gombe Stream (Jane Goodall’s Chimp Park). We are exhausted, so we really need them to deliver!
MR
Tanzania started in unique style. Crossing over the recently built Unity Bridge connecting Mozambique with Tanzania, night time had fallen as we collected our visas and we were nowhere near a sizeable town. So we spent the night camped in the parking lot of the Tanzanian customs and immigration compound. Only in Africa.
The new Unity Bridge comes complete with beautifully smooth tarmac along which we joyously travelled after the horrors of northern Mozambique roads. A full 2km of joy later, we were unceremoniously dumped back upon a bumpy dirt track accompanied with the usual chickens, goats and pigs. The tarmac, we learned, was laid for the President’s visit to open the bridge. He was then helicopter-ed out prior to hitting the dirt.
South-west Tanzania sees little in the way of tourists due to its poor transport connections and general lack of sights, sites, tourist attractions or amenities. As such, accommodation is tough to come by. And so came our streak of Christian Missions and Seminaries serving up great accommodation at the cost of a donation. But 100% smooth sailing it was not.
Diesel engine’s blow some smoke. But not that much black smoke! Worn injector nozzles saw us spending another day at a Toyota dealer only to see them crack the windscreen, wrongly install rear brake pads, incorrectly clean the air filter, reassemble the windscreen wipers so they fell off the windscreen, and give us an air conditioning and idle problem once we had left town. A handful of angry phone conversations led us to another garage where we walked the ‘approved Toyota mechanic’ through the process of fixing our own vehicle.
All of this pain and 6 days of heavy driving to see two national parks - Katavi National Park and Gombe Stream (Jane Goodall’s Chimp Park). We are exhausted, so we really need them to deliver!
MR
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14 SEPTEMBER 2010 - Scared, stalked, and swamped in Katavi National Park
And didn’t Katavi National Park just deliver!
Katavi was, for me, extraordinary. Extraordinarily remote, extraordinarily untouristed, extraordinarily wild, beautiful, and crammed with extraordinary wildlife experiences.
On our first night in the park, we had what came to be known as Epic Campsite No 1. Just back from the bank of a river that was crawling with more hippos than we had seen in all the other parks put together (and some massive crocs, one of which charged Corrin & Glenn during the afternoon), we took shelter in our flimsy homemade kraal (pathetic excuse for a thorn fence), made a big fire, and sat listening to the grunts, growls, howls and giggles of passing hippo, lion, hyena, and who knows what else. This was truly wild Africa.
It seemed an appropriate time to interview Glenn about his travels, and his first 10 days travelling with your favourite maxtreme duo: us. What Glenn didn’t know was that I had tied a rope to a log that was just behind his chair:
And didn’t Katavi National Park just deliver!
Katavi was, for me, extraordinary. Extraordinarily remote, extraordinarily untouristed, extraordinarily wild, beautiful, and crammed with extraordinary wildlife experiences.
On our first night in the park, we had what came to be known as Epic Campsite No 1. Just back from the bank of a river that was crawling with more hippos than we had seen in all the other parks put together (and some massive crocs, one of which charged Corrin & Glenn during the afternoon), we took shelter in our flimsy homemade kraal (pathetic excuse for a thorn fence), made a big fire, and sat listening to the grunts, growls, howls and giggles of passing hippo, lion, hyena, and who knows what else. This was truly wild Africa.
It seemed an appropriate time to interview Glenn about his travels, and his first 10 days travelling with your favourite maxtreme duo: us. What Glenn didn’t know was that I had tied a rope to a log that was just behind his chair:
We had hyena, piles of hippos and mountains of crocs, 2 lionesses, crazy bird life and so much more all to ourselves. This place is spectacular.
There are so few self-drive tourists here that they clearly haven’t bothered updating the maps in years: most of the tracks didn’t exist, and we were waaaay out of the reach of the Tracks 4 Africa GPS data now. Several faded tracks later, we found ourselves chopping up a large tree that had fallen over the route, and dragging the bits off the road.
Soon after, we had pulled up for the night next to the road in a forested area, well away from the major game areas (we thought). Mark, Glenn and Corrin all crashed out; I sat up by the dying fire.
Until I got a feeling. And it wasn’t that it was gonna be a good night. There was the odd sporadic, very faint, rustle of grass across the track, maybe 30 metres away. It was spooky in a way that the normal night noises weren’t. I packed up and got into the rooftop tent in record time.
In the morning we found lion spoor - what looked to be a sizeable female or juvenile male - emerging from that grass, facing our camp, and then turning back into the bush. We will never know if that’s what I heard, or if the lion came by some other time during the night, but it pays to pay attention to that itchy feeling in Katavi...
Soon after, we had pulled up for the night next to the road in a forested area, well away from the major game areas (we thought). Mark, Glenn and Corrin all crashed out; I sat up by the dying fire.
Until I got a feeling. And it wasn’t that it was gonna be a good night. There was the odd sporadic, very faint, rustle of grass across the track, maybe 30 metres away. It was spooky in a way that the normal night noises weren’t. I packed up and got into the rooftop tent in record time.
In the morning we found lion spoor - what looked to be a sizeable female or juvenile male - emerging from that grass, facing our camp, and then turning back into the bush. We will never know if that’s what I heard, or if the lion came by some other time during the night, but it pays to pay attention to that itchy feeling in Katavi...
It’s funny that Glenn and Corrin’s blog makes no mention whatsoever of the events of the next day...
We decided to camp on a sandbar next to a river. To get there, we had to drive up the creek a ways. That was fine.
Then we decided to keep going up the creek, to the next sandbar. Our Cruiser, 2 tonnes lighter than the big camper, with heavily deflated 33’’ mud tyres, didn’t make it up the lip and out of the river on first go, and barely pulled back across the creek to safe ground without bogging.
Glenn wasn’t deterred. He set out to prove that he would succeed where I had failed.
To their credit, neither Glenn nor Corrin flipped out when they sank into the quicksand of the river bottom, but I do seem to recall some fairly wild eyes and urgent pleas for assistance as their Cruiser sunk deeper and deeper into the sand.
Glenn was furiously trying to build a small dam while we set up the winch and got into position. But alas, they were stuck fast, and no amount of our winch plus their low range power could free them.
Glenn was furiously digging sand while we set up the snatch block for a double line pull. His luscious hair was everywhere, eyes wild, almost sobbing in his urgent pleas for assistance (Note: minor poetic licence taken by author).
After about 30 minutes of maxtreme action, the big camper was finally part winched, part driven, free.
We decided to camp on a sandbar next to a river. To get there, we had to drive up the creek a ways. That was fine.
Then we decided to keep going up the creek, to the next sandbar. Our Cruiser, 2 tonnes lighter than the big camper, with heavily deflated 33’’ mud tyres, didn’t make it up the lip and out of the river on first go, and barely pulled back across the creek to safe ground without bogging.
Glenn wasn’t deterred. He set out to prove that he would succeed where I had failed.
To their credit, neither Glenn nor Corrin flipped out when they sank into the quicksand of the river bottom, but I do seem to recall some fairly wild eyes and urgent pleas for assistance as their Cruiser sunk deeper and deeper into the sand.
Glenn was furiously trying to build a small dam while we set up the winch and got into position. But alas, they were stuck fast, and no amount of our winch plus their low range power could free them.
Glenn was furiously digging sand while we set up the snatch block for a double line pull. His luscious hair was everywhere, eyes wild, almost sobbing in his urgent pleas for assistance (Note: minor poetic licence taken by author).
After about 30 minutes of maxtreme action, the big camper was finally part winched, part driven, free.
The adventures continued the next day, when the track to the southern border of the park simply ran out. No one had been here for a long, long time. We spotted lost remnants of the track from time to time over the next 45 minutes, and then - "what the hell is that?" - a steep-banked river barred the way. Not even that was going to stop us, so we powered down a sand hill, across the bank, through the river, up a clay ledge, used our bridging ladders to get up another ledge, through a thorn thicket and past some vehicle-sized animal holes. At last: road!
Onwards and upwards! Katavi has been amazing, but its time to go chimp tracking!
SC
Onwards and upwards! Katavi has been amazing, but its time to go chimp tracking!
SC
17 SEPTEMBER 2010 - GUEST ENTRY BY CORRIN PHILLIPS: Jane Goodall's chimpanzees
From Katavi we headed north to Kigoma on Lake Tanganika. Glenn and Steve negotiated a water taxi to take us (and 100 other passengers) north on lake Tanganika, eventually depositing us on the banks of Gombe Stream NP; the nature reserve where Jane Goodall conducted her breakthrough research into the behavior of our closest living animal relatives, the chimpanzee.
Gombe was fantastic. Now Glenn and I have been exceptionally charmed nearly every single mile of our adventure, but being the first tourists to see (and photograph) a baby chimpanzee that had been born just hours earlier, was over-the-top. Sharing the shade of a mango tree with Fifi’s descendents was an incredible experience for all of us.
For more from Glenn and Corrin, check out http://glennandcorrin.blogspot.com
From Katavi we headed north to Kigoma on Lake Tanganika. Glenn and Steve negotiated a water taxi to take us (and 100 other passengers) north on lake Tanganika, eventually depositing us on the banks of Gombe Stream NP; the nature reserve where Jane Goodall conducted her breakthrough research into the behavior of our closest living animal relatives, the chimpanzee.
Gombe was fantastic. Now Glenn and I have been exceptionally charmed nearly every single mile of our adventure, but being the first tourists to see (and photograph) a baby chimpanzee that had been born just hours earlier, was over-the-top. Sharing the shade of a mango tree with Fifi’s descendents was an incredible experience for all of us.
For more from Glenn and Corrin, check out http://glennandcorrin.blogspot.com
