Monday, January 31, 2011

Saturday, 29 January - Monday, 31 January 2011

Monday, 31 January 2011
A relaxing, laundry day for the two. Tomorrow they plan to go to Iringa & Mikumi National Park & stay the night at Tan Swiss, just outside the park.




FACTS - MIKUMI NATIONAL PARK

The Mikumi National Park is a national park in Mikumi, near Morogoro, Tanzania. The park was established in 1964, currently covers an area of 3230 km² and is the fourth largest in the country.
Mikumi is bordered to the south with the Selous Game Reserve, the two areas forming a unique ecosystem. Two other natural areas bordering the national park are the Udzungwa Mountains and Uluguru Mountains.

The landscape of Mikumi is often compared to that of the Serengeti. The road that crosses the park divides it into two areas with partially distinct environments. The area north-west is characterized by the alluvial plain of the river basin Mkata. The vegetation of this area consists of savannah dotted with acacia, baobab, tamarinds, and some rare palm. In this area, at the furthest from the road, there are spectacular rock formations of the mountains Rubeho and Uluguru. The southeast part of the park is less rich in wildlife, and not very accessible.

The fauna includes many species characteristic of the African savannah. According to local guides at Mikumi, chances of seeing a lion who climbs a tree trunk is larger than in Manyara (famous for being one of the few places where the lions exhibit this behavior). The park contains a subspecies of giraffe, that biologists consider the link between the Masai giraffe and the Somali giraffe. Other animals in the park are elephants, zebras, gnu, impalas, eland, kudu, black antelope, baboons, wildebeests and buffaloes. At about 5 km from the north of the park, there are two pools inhabited by hippos. More than 400 different species of birds also inhabit the park.

FACTS - IRINGA:
Iringa is a city in Tanzania with a population of 112,900 (as of 2004). It is situated at a latitude of 7.77°S and longitude of 35.69°E. The name is derived from the Hehe word lilinga, meaning fort.
Iringa is the administrative capital of Iringa Region. It has many established industries, including manufacturing and food processing. Most of its electricity comes from the nearby Mtera Dam.
Iringa was built during the 1890's by the German Army as a defensive base to be used against the Hehe uprising lead by Chief Mkwawa. The town stretches along a hilltop overlooking the Ruaha River to the south, and spreads along ridges and valleys to the north. The altitude for the town's environs is more than 1550 meters (5000 feet) above sea level. The months of June, July, and August can see low temperatures near freezing. The Tanzam Highway passes through the valley below the town; the highway distance from Iringa's limits to Dar es Salaam is 502 kilometers (312 miles), via Morogoro. The Isimila Stone Age site, which lies about 20 km (12 miles) to the southwest, contains archeological artifacts, particularly stone tools, from human habitation about 70,000 years ago.
Iringa is famous for its woven baskets, made from local reeds. The baskets are used across Tanzania and also exported internationally.







Sunday, 30 January 2011
They are sleeping tonight at Old Farm House - about 600km from Dar es Salaam. Sharon is starting to feel better.


Ralph arrived safely back in Port Alfred! From the time they all left on the trip, Bacu stopped eating and Cleo ate all her stress away - did I mention she's .. hmmm .. a female! :-) (Bacu & Cleo - the two beagle children)

Facts:
The Farm is a gracious old farm homestead with some thatched guest cottages. Rooms are available in the farm itself or in these self-contained cottages. The home of the Ghaui family for over 70 years, Kisolanza remains a working farm providing beef and vegetables to the surrounding markets as well as further afield in Dar-es-Salaam.

The farm is 50km south-west of the town, Iringa and between Mikumi National Park and Ruaha National Park. The farm is at an altitude of 1600m ensuring a pleasant fresh climate in one of the most scenic areas of Tanzania- the southern Highlands. Activities on offer include swimming and fishing on a nearby lake, visits to the colonial town of Iringa and trips to Isimila Stone Age Site- Tanzania’s combination of Stonehenge and the Grand Canyon.

Nicky Ghaui is the hosts and according to several websites, they serve lovely fresh, organic farm-produced meals.



Saterday, 29 January 2011
Larry & Sharon are at the north end of Lake Malawi. They only did 190km and Sharon is suffering from flu. They are watching her closely for malaria.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

More pics

 This tree was hit by lightening just 20mins before we got there!!


 Roadside lunch of bread peanutbutter, chips and water!
 Upgraded to a room!  Larry working hard to get the blog done.
 Camping on the hillside

 Lunch with the Dutch riders, Tom on the left and Johannes and Mariann on the right.
 The waves in the lake have been very big.
Restaurant at Moyoka Village

27 Jan 2011

 Shopping at Salima, bought the toughest beef fillet we have ever had!!  Stewed for two hours!
 Camp site at Steps, Senga Bay

 Approaching Storm - Senga Bay
 The main bridge was not operational so we crossed on a foot bridge


Larry took Ringtingting across for me!

27 Jan

Africa is Dead!!!!!  Or so it Smells.  The smells and aromas that we have passed through, have sometimes been sweet, rotten, flowery, dead – fish, sewerage, forests, cooking, frying, baking, chilly, spicy etc etc.  But, mostly bad! And it keeps changing.  Every village we pass through has a variety of smells, depending on the distance from the sea, lake, fields etc. Maybe we are just more exposed to them, than in a car??
But actually, Africa is thriving.  Since we left the Eastern Cape, we have seen only lush, green, tropical environment.  Admittedly, this has been the rainy season, and we have experienced our share of that.  Everywhere we go, everything is growing, whether planted or wild.  The crops along the roads have amazed us – it seems as though anything will grow, wherever it is stuck in the ground. Maize, Casava, Tobacco, bananas, lots of mangoes, potatoes, sugar cane, rubber tree forest.  Unfortunately, very little of the natural environment remains, EVERYWHERE we go, there are thousands and thousands of children / people.  It is difficult to find anywhere to stop along the road, for a picnic or P.  It is very worrying to see how many children there are, and realize how overpopulated Africa seems to be.  In Malawi, there seems to be sooo much aid – Everything runs on aid, schools, clinics, vehicles, so many signs say EU this, or project that.  Surely this must be the country in Africa that receives the most foreign aid?  We heard that 21 000 classrooms have or will be built by the UK????  Although we still frequently pass groups of school children, being taught under a nearby tree.
I am sitting on a small balcony, outside a small bedroom – no tent – about 8 m above the edge of the lake, listening to big waves crashing on the rocks below.  Today we rode 330 km, from Steps Campsite at Senga bay, to Moyoka Village, at Nkhata bay.  Took us about 6 hours, so we travel very slowly, due to constant people and villages along the road.  About an hour after leaving, we arrived at a detour – for bikes and people only.  Cars had to go back, and detour 50km to the north.  The bridge on the road was being re-built, and there was a small wooden footbridge a bit lower down the stream, which we managed to cross with the bikes, amidst being hassled, pushed and shoved etc by the touts, all trying to help, and charge some sort of fee.  Further on, a huge storm was passing in front of us, and we neared it with a bit of trepidation, only to find that it had passed towards the lake in front of us, leaving some destruction.  A very large tree had fallen across the entire road shortly before we got there, and the locals were just starting to try to trim branches etc to get it cleared.  We managed to pass, by going off the road, almost to the nearest hut, and passed just beyond the top branches of the tree – again while be hassled by hundreds of locals, and the usual touts wanting to extract a toll fee! A few roofs had also blown of some of the local houses – surprisingly, the thatch built houses seemed to have survived better than those with corrugated iron!
When we eventually arrived at Nkhata bay, we drove around slowly, to find somewhere to stay, and stumbled onto Moyoka Village, where we set up our tent, pegged it down on the steep slopes, and watched a big storm approaching.  Then, a luck!  Gary and Katherine (owners )offered us a room, at the same price as camping!  Couldn’t turn down such an offer!  This place is fantastic, little stone huts built onto and into the steep, rocky hillside, with two or three small patches left open for tents.  Camping is 850 Kwatcha per person, and the rooms are normally 2300.  This equates to about R35, and R100!!!  Tonight we will test the restaurant!!
At Steps Camp site, we had met a variety of other travelers, including 3 Dutch people – two guys and a girl (about our age) who flew their motor bikes from Holland to Cape Town, and are making their way to Dar Es Salaam.  There were originally 5 of them, but the group has split a bit, but they will all meet again in Dar, to ship the bikes back home.  We also met the German people in the overland truck, that we met at Fat monkey.  And, a girl whose parents live in Grahamstown, her mother is in the same Rotary club as Sharon – Pauline Mitchell. She and her Zim boyfriend have travelled in a Toyota all the way down the West Coast of Africa, and are now zig zagging a bit, for the next three months.  Also in Camp, where some French people, who had had an accident in their Pajero, and were waiting for new front end spares – significant damage.
We are now a bit more than halfway up the lake, and will move to another stop near the top, before crossing into Tanzania in a few days time.
27 /1 /11
Today we will take it easy, as we both have upset stomachs, and Sharon has a very sore throat.  Have put her onto an anti-biotic, and will watch carefully to see if she possibly has malaria.  We certainly encountered enough mozzies is Moz to make this a possibility!  Hopefully, we will have the energy to sort some pics, and find and internet cafĂ© a bit later, to keep everybody posted.
Wish you were here!!!
L


27 Jan

Africa is Dead!!!!!  Or so it Smells.  The smells and aromas that we have passed through, have sometimes been sweet, rotten, flowery, dead – fish, sewerage, forests, cooking, frying, baking, chilly, spicy etc etc.  But, mostly bad! And it keeps changing.  Every village we pass through has a variety of smells, depending on the distance from the sea, lake, fields etc. Maybe we are just more exposed to them, than in a car??
But actually, Africa is thriving.  Since we left the Eastern Cape, we have seen only lush, green, tropical environment.  Admittedly, this has been the rainy season, and we have experienced our share of that.  Everywhere we go, everything is growing, whether planted or wild.  The crops along the roads have amazed us – it seems as though anything will grow, wherever it is stuck in the ground. Maize, Casava, Tobacco, bananas, lots of mangoes, potatoes, sugar cane, rubber tree forest.  Unfortunately, very little of the natural environment remains, EVERYWHERE we go, there are thousands and thousands of children / people.  It is difficult to find anywhere to stop along the road, for a picnic or P.  It is very worrying to see how many children there are, and realize how overpopulated Africa seems to be.  In Malawi, there seems to be sooo much aid – Everything runs on aid, schools, clinics, vehicles, so many signs say EU this, or project that.  Surely this must be the country in Africa that receives the most foreign aid?  We heard that 21 000 classrooms have or will be built by the UK????  Although we still frequently pass groups of school children, being taught under a nearby tree.
I am sitting on a small balcony, outside a small bedroom – no tent – about 8 m above the edge of the lake, listening to big waves crashing on the rocks below.  Today we rode 330 km, from Steps Campsite at Senga bay, to Moyoka Village, at Nkhata bay.  Took us about 6 hours, so we travel very slowly, due to constant people and villages along the road.  About an hour after leaving, we arrived at a detour – for bikes and people only.  Cars had to go back, and detour 50km to the north.  The bridge on the road was being re-built, and there was a small wooden footbridge a bit lower down the stream, which we managed to cross with the bikes, amidst being hassled, pushed and shoved etc by the touts, all trying to help, and charge some sort of fee.  Further on, a huge storm was passing in front of us, and we neared it with a bit of trepidation, only to find that it had passed towards the lake in front of us, leaving some destruction.  A very large tree had fallen across the entire road shortly before we got there, and the locals were just starting to try to trim branches etc to get it cleared.  We managed to pass, by going off the road, almost to the nearest hut, and passed just beyond the top branches of the tree – again while be hassled by hundreds of locals, and the usual touts wanting to extract a toll fee! A few roofs had also blown of some of the local houses – surprisingly, the thatch built houses seemed to have survived better than those with corrugated iron!
When we eventually arrived at Nkhata bay, we drove around slowly, to find somewhere to stay, and stumbled onto Moyoka Village, where we set up our tent, pegged it down on the steep slopes, and watched a big storm approaching.  Then, a luck!  Gary and Katherine (owners )offered us a room, at the same price as camping!  Couldn’t turn down such an offer!  This place is fantastic, little stone huts built onto and into the steep, rocky hillside, with two or three small patches left open for tents.  Camping is 850 Kwatcha per person, and the rooms are normally 2300.  This equates to about R35, and R100!!!  Tonight we will test the restaurant!!
At Steps Camp site, we had met a variety of other travelers, including 3 Dutch people – two guys and a girl (about our age) who flew their motor bikes from Holland to Cape Town, and are making their way to Dar Es Salaam.  There were originally 5 of them, but the group has split a bit, but they will all meet again in Dar, to ship the bikes back home.  We also met the German people in the overland truck, that we met at Fat monkey.  And, a girl whose parents live in Grahamstown, her mother is in the same Rotary club as Sharon – Pauline Mitchell. She and her Zim boyfriend have travelled in a Toyota all the way down the West Coast of Africa, and are now zig zagging a bit, for the next three months.  Also in Camp, where some French people, who had had an accident in their Pajero, and were waiting for new front end spares – significant damage.
We are now a bit more than halfway up the lake, and will move to another stop near the top, before crossing into Tanzania in a few days time.
27 /1 /11
Today we will take it easy, as we both have upset stomachs, and Sharon has a very sore throat.  Have put her onto an anti-biotic, and will watch carefully to see if she possibly has malaria.  We certainly encountered enough mozzies is Moz to make this a possibility!  Hopefully, we will have the energy to sort some pics, and find and internet cafĂ© a bit later, to keep everybody posted.
Wish you were here!!!
L


Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tuesday, 25 January 2011




Larry & Sharon are at Senga Bay with 3 dutch peoples also on bikes. And as we all know the McGillewies - one of the dutch people needed a back tyre and Larry started getting quotes to help them out. Express freight (4 days) would have costed them R1875 to get the tyre to Lilongwe... They decided to rather push through with their exciting tyre to Dar es Salaam.



They experienced a huge storm at Senga.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

23 January 2011

 This is just a photo taken from the surface, imagine what it looked like from underwater!
 I think you get the idea!! No toilets.
 Boat and view.
Feeding the fish eagles

23 Jan 2011

23 Jan
Well, we have been gone just over two weeks now, and are still having fun.  This morning we hired a small boat, and went out to one of the islands, and to Otter Point, where we had the most amazing snorkeling.  Vis was about 15 m, with thousands of small cichlids, of all sorts of colours, blue, gold, white, green and everything in between.  I only wish we had an underwater camera, to share this!  I rate it as better than a lot of the snorkeling we did along the Moz coast.  Water temperature was slightly cooler than the sea in Moz, so more pleasant, and fresh.  Daytime temperatures are also a bit cooler, although maybe its just that the humidity is a lot less.
From the snorkeling, we went around the island, and fed a pair of Fish Eagles, and hopefully we got some pics.
This afternoon I will talk to a local guide, about some bird watching, to see if I can find any new species.
We have a little over 4000Km, with very little trouble to speak of.  The border post into Malawi was the slowest so far, which was a bit unexpected.  The bikes are running well, although we saw yesterday that Sharon’s rear sprocket is not looking too good, after about 6000 km, and we had been told that this was very good quality, and would do 30 000 km!  Will probably need replacement long before that!
Tomorrow we will probably move up the lake, probably to Cool Runnings.  We will keep asking as we go along, what we should see ahead of us.  We met a group of people from Czech Rep here, that proved to be interesting.  The leader is a tour guide, who travels with groups of people throughout Africa, and he was able to give us some useful pointers about Turkey, Croatia and some of those places. We might try to visit them once we reach Europe, and might even be able to tie in some tourism / hunting business.  There is also a German couple in camp that have travelled with an overland truck all the way down West Africa, and are now heading up the East Coast, to Greece.  They will cross from Port Sudan – Sudan – to Saudi Arabia, via ferry, as they say it is a lot cheaper than crossing Aswan dam, from Wadi Haifa. They will also then skip Egypt which they don’t like.  We might think of doing the same thing, as we would then get into Jordan and Syria more easily, by skipping Israel.  Time will tell.
L

Saturday, January 22, 2011

22 Jan

 A room with a view, Fat Monkey Lodge, Cape Maclear


The veiw from our tent, water lapping gently, about 10 m away!

 The inside of Villa Hapsburg, very refined, lots of antiques, old furniture, paintings, all of European origin.

   A wet roadside lunch, sandwiches courtesy of Aguia Negra.  Great place to stay, very well and                 professionaly managed!

22 Jan

A very wet crossing of the Save River, between Vilanculos and Chimioi
Larry in comfort mode
All the rivers are flowing strongly, after all the rain
Getting roadside fuel- Sharons bike doesnt have the same endurance as mine.  Generally she can get 350 km, where I seem to get closer to 500 km per tank.  Although she gets 23 - 25 km / l, and I get 18 - 20 km/l
T
Sewerage road!!!!  Please dont fall!

22 Jan

22 January 2011
Our last night at Aguia Negra was very short as Johan and Ralph were up and gone by 4am, we got up to see them off and then started packing and we left at 5am with the sky just getting light and the clouds starting to clear.  We were heading north hoping to get as far as Tete some 900km away.  As we got onto the main road, we could see the thunder clouds building and before 6am we were in very heavy torrential rain, we thought it was going to be a small patch of light rain so we did not put on our dry suits!  How wrong we were, we eventually got out of the rain at about 10.30 and we had been wet to our underwear for that entire time!!   We had stopped and put on warmer clothes as this was the first time that we had been cool during our trip and it was great to be cool but not great to be wet all the time.
Northern Mozambique is very developed once you get past Chimoio with one village after the other, making our trip very slow.  The scenery was fantastic, lush tropical growth and all the rivers running.  The roads were reasonable, some patches of new road and some of the old pot holed sections, these sections were really bad with traffic swopping over onto the wrong side of the road.  There were plenty of big trucks heading for Zimbabwe and Malawi most of them driving at incrediable speeds.  My bike was running low on petrol in a small village about 90km from Tete and we stopped to try and find a filling station, nothing there and so we were reduced to buying fuel out of containers at an inflated price!  (See pics)
We arrived in Tete about an hour before sunset, which we thought would be fine for putting up our tent and sorting out something to eat.  The bridge over the Zambezi is being repaired and traffic only goes one way for half an hour at a time, we managed to get the time right by pure luck and after lots of pushing and shoving to get onto the bridge we were over fairly quickly.  The signs for a camping site directed us onto the road running next to the Zambezi, we were on this road which got worse and worse with huge pools of raw sewerage and my favorite sand, I just kept thinking what a lovely smell and sight I would be if I managed to fall off into this mess.  (Smokey Joe I managed to negotiate all this on sand and mud and did not fall off once!!)  Once we got to the camping site we realized that it was definitely not operational and the locals pointed us down the road to a big house at the end of the road.  We arrived there dusty, exhausted and I am sure a bit smelly from the sewerage which we probably put our feet into.  Granny Monika came out of the house, took one look at us and told us that she runs a fine establishment and it is not cheap!!  I think that she took pity on us (me especially) and offered us a reduced rate!  What a wonderful stay we had, once we had had a shower and washed the dust and smell off we looked more or less respectable. Villa von Habsburg was one of the highlights of our trip so far and we definitely made a friend with Granny Monika!  Thank you Monika. 
After a very good breakfast at Villa von Habsburg we set off for the next village, we rode through the village and tried to avoid Sewerage Road and landed up in some of the poorest areas with really bad roads and filth and rubbish laying all over the place.  We needed to re-fuel again and found a very small filling station and without local knowledge (thanks to John Jones) we would have driven past this without finding it, we now headed for the border between Mozambique and Malawi.  Getting out of Mozambique was a pleasant experience with the officials extremely friendly and helpful, this was not the case on the Malawian side, immigration was a breeze and then the customs started, first they wanted us to fill in a form and they would only deal with the fixers so I had a fixer with the worst case of halitosis I have ever had the bad luck to experience helping me, and we had to work on African time, two Fantas, a bottle of water and a packet of biscuits consumed by the customs officials before the very tedious task of filling in the form could start and then out to the auto teller and then into the bank to deposit the import duty and then back to the customs (an hour and a half later and USD10 to each fixer) we managed to get out of the border post.  We had to pay KT10 000 for third party for both bikes which Larry purchased while waiting for me to complete the process.  We were now ready for our trip to Cape Maclear on Lake Malawi.  Driving through Malawi it is just wall to wall people, lots of small villages and police road blocks (very friendly and just let us through) and the roads are really good. We were told that there would be no problem with fuel in Malawi, but found that many of the filling stations have no fuel.  My bike was running low on fuel about 30km from Cape Maclear so we decided to head for Monkey Bay, a detour of about 10km to refuel only to find that they had no fuel so we decided to push on and when I ran out to siphon some from Larry’s bike, once we turned off the road onto the gravel / sand we found a filling station which had fuel and my bike took 15,99 liters and it has a 16l tank!!  The road was really terrible with lots of corrugations and a little bit of soft sand.  We arrived at Fat Monkey camping site just as it was getting dark, just enough light to put up our tent and get set for the night.  Camping is really cheap here, costs about R20 per person per night.  We will be staying here for about 3 nights, weather is great not so hot and camp nice and lots of things that we can do around here and we can get our laundry done as well!! And we have internet that works!!!!
S

Friday, January 21, 2011

20 January 2011.... From 4 to 2!

Everyone had a hard day! Ralph & Johan left at 4am for Nelspruit and covered 900 km. Ralph went on to Hartbeespoort to spend time with Winandi and Johan stayed behind in Nelspruit to get repairs done on his bike.

Larry & Sharon left Vilanculos at 5am and by 13.30 covered 590km already and still had another 310km to go. They encountered heavy rain again and got very wet - 4 hours of rain! They reached Tete at 18.00 and found a nice B&B, Villa Habsburg. ( http://villahabsburg.com/)
The lady took pity on Sharon, who was really exhausted, and gave them a good rate!

Some hard riding done by all!!















View from Villa Habsburg


FACTS:
Tete is the capital city of Tete Province in Mozambique. It is located on the Zambezi River, and is the site of a one-kilometre-long suspension bridge.


Population of 152 909 (2007 census). It was a Swahili trade centre before the Portuguese colonial era. Tete continues to dominate the centre-west part of the country and region, and is the largest city on the Zambezi. Tete is a word for "reed".


Tete Province receives many travellers due to its strategic location. Aside from being the capital, Tete is also arguably the hottest town in Mozambique.