The man-eaters of Tsavo National Park

Tsavo Park reconciles us with East African National Parks. Although the staff at the Malindi’s Kenya Wildlife Office were neither pleasant our helpful, the rangers at Sala Gate were cheerful and welcoming. The park itself is well maintained and the game plentiful.

We arrived at noon and drove along the Galana River for a few hours, and even though it was midday we saw waterbuck by the dozen, elephant, impala, dik-diks, hippos, zebra, crocodiles, a Goliath Heron and an Egyptian Vulture. We stopped for a picnic of bread, cheese and tomatoes next to the river, being careful that there were no crocs, hippos or lions near us. We had been out of the car a few minutes when we heard a rumbling sound and saw dust rising about one hundred metres away… buffalo! Fortunately they were actually running away from us, and not towards us.

Lunch spot by the Galana river

40km of uneventful tracks took us south of the river to the Aruba dam where we soon spotted a lioness under a tree. As far as we know it could have been a lion. We are not sure because the male Tsavo lions do not have manes. It is said that their higher than average testosterone level causes them to be less hairy. It also makes them more aggressive than average, and the story “the man-eaters of Tsavo” known from the movie “Ghosts in the Darkness” illustrates the point. It tells of 2 lions that ate their way through 147 workers of the Ugandan railway at the beginning of the 20th century!

The Ugandan railway line on the edge of the Tsavo National Park : 147 of the workers who built it where eaten by 2 lions ("the man-eaters of Tsavo") at the beginning of the 20th century!

Of course, we stopped the engine to look at our lion at leisure. When she stood up for a stroll, we tried to start the car again to follow her…but the car wouldn’t start! Oh oh… it has happened before: the immobiliser. Simple enough to fix, but in order to do so Steve has to get out to open the bonnet and disconnect the battery. With the lion less than 20 meters away it is out of question….
The lioness finally taking a stroll... thus allowing Steve to get out of the car to fix the immobiliser

After sometime the lion walked a bit further away. Then two safari vehicles arrived from a nearby lodge. They were too busy watching the lion to imagine our situation and the lion busy watching them. Steve decided to get out of the car (with Caro keeping a worried watch over the landscape of tall yellow grasses) and fixed the car!

Quite an adrenaline rush!

The rest of the day was more peaceful, with the highlight being the sight of hundreds of red elephants and buffalo on the Kwanderi swamps and a giraffe scratching its ear.

Red elephants

Rush hour in Tsavo National Park

VIDEO of the giraffe scratching its ear

PHOTO of Steve removing the immobiliser in Nairobi.

Lamu

Lamu’s remoteness is a huge part of its charm. The archipelago is close to the Somalian border and no cars are allowed on the islands. As a result the town is quiet, the streets very narrow, and there are donkeys everywhere; carrying materials and people in the same way it must have been for centuries.

We left Scarlet at the small but busy harbour of Mokowe. After spending the night we boarded the first small ferryboat departing in the morning, which took us across the Lamu Town in 30 minutes for Ksh50 each.

The small but busy harbour at Mokowe

We walked the streets slowly for hours, watching people going about their businesses, visiting beautifully refurbished old Swahili houses (now mostly hotels) and the interesting ethnological museum. We ate coconut rice, chipatis, pilau and fish curry in local canteens (where Caro was the only woman) and wondered about the quality of the tap water while relishing the conversations and atmosphere. What we enjoyed the most was siting for hours on the fort’s steps and watching town life on the main square.

VIDEO of people passing by on the main square.

Lamu's main square

View of the main square from the fort

The fort's entrance

Lamu's streets

Shella beach

One evening we went to the local cinema to watch a Bollywood movie. The pirate DVD was scratched and kept skipping during the first song. People started complaining loudly and eventually the disc was changed and the movie carried on. The seats weren’t very comfortable and people laughed out loud or commented on scenes while smoking their cigarettes. There were a few other women in the audience, although it is the afternoon screenings which are reserved for women.

We also met a local, really an expat from Yemen, who invited us for a drink followed by a visit to his shop. He was selling perfumes and bui-bui, the black robes and veils most Lamu women wear in public. He got Caro to try one on. The shop assistant was very helpful helping me put it on, but I wondered what she thought of the whole scene.

Caro's new clothes - the bui-bui

Our new friend then invited us to his house for a modest dinner of bread, honey and sweet tea. His home he shared with his aging mother and the two shop assistants. He spoke a lot, and although his English was far better than our Swahili or Arabic, we struggled to really understand each other. We gathered that he was busy refurbishing his house and transforming it into a hotel, which we believe will be very nice when finished. We suspect he may have been practicing his English with us, as well as advertising his future guest house. He had also quite obviously been chewing miraa, a legal narcotic, and was becoming very animated and obviously in for a long sleepless night. So when he invited Steve to share a miraa mastication session we had to use treasures of imagination and diplomacy to refuse politely. We felt bad refusing, as he had been so generous with us, but this miraa seems a bit hectic . It is a root chewed by many people in East Africa (mostly men it seems) and it seems to be quite a potent drug judging by our new friend’s glazed eyes and his strange stories of being transported to the White House and chatting with Barak Obama and a golden eagle…

We are amazed at how popular Barak Obama is in Tanzania and Kenya. There are stickers of him on every matatu (bus), prints of his portraits on women’s kangas (sarongs), etc. It seems that people’s expectations are huge, although we haven’t found out yet what these expectations are…

Encounter with a Masai in the Serengeti

On our second day in the Ngorongoro/Serengeti National parks, we stopped in an apparently empty plain for lunch. An older Masai man materialised a few hundred meters away. He walked straight up to us and sat down on a nearby rock. He didn’t say a word. We prepared a rice salad, and gave him a plate, which he ate with gusto. He thanked us and then asked us for tea (chai) and sugar to bring back to his manyatta. We gave him some and Caro took the opportunity to make a short video of the exchange. He knew exactly what was going on and mimicked someone filming with an old-style video camera.

VIDEO

He also tried to exchange his stick for Steve’s Leatherman, and laughed heartily when Steve refused. Then he used car’s side mirror to check his teeth, hair, ears etc. He was a very good-humoured and we all had a great time together.

Hippos and crocs on Lago Niassa (Lake Malawi)

When we first arrived at Lago Niassa, we basked in its peace and beauty. Little could we imagine that a few days later we would be joining a hunt for hippo and crocodiles.

It just so happened that the government had approached Keith, and asked him to help rid the village (Meponda) of a hippo that was causing extensive damage to people’s crops. And this was the weekend that he and his neighbours (Warrick, an ex-hunting lodge manager, and his father, also Keith) had chosen to go on the hunt.

We joined in the Friday night festivities to get into the swing of things. We all jumped on the boat and motored along the lakeshore looking for crocodiles. We spotted one amongst the reeds. It was small (about 1m) and our hosts leapt fearlessly from the boat to apprehend the little guy barehanded. Somehow, the snorkelling we had enjoyed earlier that afternoon felt like much more of a dangerous adventure than what we had thought it to be.

Then on Saturday afternoon, men, women and children, all jumped on the boat again. This time we were going to drive down the river mouth and look for the hippo so that the men would know where to find him in the evening. It had rained over the past few weeks and the river was brown with mud. It was difficult to spot a hippo in those conditions, but the reeds and river banks showed evidence of the hippo’s presence. We travelled as far as we could up the river, asking local fishermen on their tiny dug-out canoes if they had seen the hippo.

Yes they had. Some said there were 5 hippos. Others said there were 30… Eventually one motioned for us to go back towards the river mouth. He had just seen a hippo in the river!

We started carefully back down the river, looking for eyes or bubbles in the water, when suddenly the boat hit something big! The jerk shook the boat quite strongly and Steve fell over board in the muddy water. We all held our breath as he re-emerged. We were expecting the hippo’s charge. Steve couldn’t decide whether to swim or run back to the boat, but somehow made it back on board. Then we realised that we had just hit a big log.

It lasted for just a few seconds but we all got a serious fright. One of the girls soon started singing and the mood lifted. They sang the song again for us as we parted, and we recorded it:

VIDEO of the song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frtu11EIozY



The “smoke” in the background is actually swarms of lake flies which hatch periodically from the lake. The locals catch them in nets and eat them.

The road from Montepues to Lichinga

We left the Mozambican coast at Ibo and ventured inland to the west. Our goal was to drive across Northern Mozambique to Lago Niassa (Lake Malawi) before the rains make the road impracticable. There we could rest there before heading North to Sanga and across the new bridge to Tanzania.

But first we had to get to Marrupa! It was to be quite an adventure: two full days to do 500km, a slow difficult road, dodgy wooden bridges, two breakdowns, and two nights in the bush in very isolated areas.

General view of the main road

Detail of the main road Dodgy bridges (Caro scouting one of them)

Curious villagers (Scarlet is an attraction)

Warning: elephants crossing Cooking in the bush

Caro shot some videos en route:

One to give you an idea of what the main road across northern Mozambique is like (approx 300km between Montepues and Marrupa) …and we were lucky that it was relatively dry!

VIDEO of the road
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY7bqOVYYXU


… And one about what happens when a branch jumps up of the road and lodges itself under the car.
Fortunately there was no serious damage to the brakes or fuel lines, tanks etc.

VIDEO of the breakdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQgvDMVfJ9M



Fortunately, once we got out of the forest at Marrupa, we found the best tarred road yet in Mozambique! It took us straight to Lichinga across stunning landscapes of high plateaux.

Images from the high plateaux

Namibia - Route D707 with Madonna - Oct 2008

Our very first video - test...

Scarlet

She's a Toyota Hilux (1991) 2.2l petrol engine.
She is a 4wd with a front diff lock.
Oh, and she is red and tired of being referred to as 'the fire engine'!

"Have you ever seen a burnt down Hilux on the side of the road ?", Jaque, our mechanic, once asked.

Would you like to know why ?
Watch this video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhoOkMccPZo

We chose an earlier model Hilux because they are renowned for being tough, simple and reliable. They are foundly widely throughout Africa , and we should have no problems (touch wood) finding mechanics with the spares and knowhow. And we needed a bakkie/pick-up for all the home renovation leading up to the trip !