Leshoto, Tanzania

Africa: Week One

We are camped at a lovely campsite at an elevation of 1400 meters, with grass campsites and a cool breeze. It’s such a nice change from the sand, heat and humidity of our previous campgrounds. Jeff and I have pretty much agreed that we probably joined this Africa tour at about the worst point possible. The leg from Livingstone to Dar es Salaam, is long and the time to travel it short, so we spent the first week of our Africa trip watching the country go by out the window of the truck.

This is a camping trip, which means we set up a tent and tear it down every day we’re traveling. The tents are heavy canvas jobs with a huge rain fly, which is good, since we have had so much rain (we are here during the rainy season and it rained every night). That first week it began to feel like all we did was get up early, tear down our wet, sandy tent, haul it to the truck, and then every evening reverse the process. Everything was stinky and damp and full of sand. There was never enough sun any of the days to properly dry anything. Some clothes that I washed one of the first days never did dry and they rode around damp for a week. It was absolutely depressing and nearly did me in.

When we signed up for this tour, I’m afraid we were so busy looking at the fact that we would be traveling through four countries, that we didn’t look closely enough at exactly what that would entail. We did, indeed, travel through Zambia and Malawi, but I don’t feel that I got to experience either of them. From Livingstone we pretty much made tracks for Malawi, so all we saw of Zambia was Victoria Falls and what we could see out the window of the truck. In Malawi the drive days were often 8 to 10 hours (and we’re not talking an air conditioned luxury coach, here. We’re talking a big crowded truck that bounces over every speed bump and pothole on the road). We did have two campsites along Lake Malawi where we stayed for two nights each, so we got a break from the driving on those days. We were able to upgrade to a cabin at the second place and that improved my mood considerably. I was so exhausted and achy and depressed about how the trip was going that I just couldn’t face setting up that tent and rolling around in sand for another night. I’m afraid I wasn’t enjoying Africa very much.

Fortunately, things have improved quite a bit since then. We’ve crossed into Tanzania and enjoyed a trip to Zanzibar Island that was a great change of pace from all the driving we had been doing.

The balance of this trip will be in Tanzania, wrapping up with our trip to the Serengeti. I’ve been assured the weather from here on out will be not as hot, and that we are done with the sand. Thank God. I’m looking forward to the next leg of the journey.