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Safari Safi

December 2022 - January 2023
Auf bird-watching-Tour mit Franziska Read more
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  • Safari Safi
    2
    Day 38

    Last hours in nature

    January 12, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Fish Eagle Point is closed! Anyway, as self-contained and independent campers this does not distract us from staying, having the whole campsite and lodge compound just for us! We go bathing in the lukewarm sea. We devour our refreshing, fridge-cooled pineapple. We watch bush babies and giant pouched rats sniffing around our table (the latter are famous for their ability to detect land mines 😅). And we watch a fancy bark mantis snacking a juicy flying termite in the light of our camping lantern. Let's see how we manage to deal with the warm and humid air after having been crouched under thick blankets in the Usambaras the night before ...Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 37

    Spicy ginger chai mixed with coffee

    January 11, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    At Mtae we descend from the western Usambara mountains and drive the northern route to the coast. What a wonderful and underrated road! No traffic at all and full of beautiful landscape views. We spontaneously stop at a place with lovely gentlemen in the shade for a spicy ginger chai mixed with coffee. As we continue our drive to the coast, passing the eastern Usambara mountains, heavy rain hits us and the dirt road turns into a soapy washboard within seconds.Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 36

    Shagayu Forest

    January 10, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    I finally manage to introduce a beloved person from far back home to Mambo View Point, yay! Two nights we spend in a cosy cottage and Franziska is fascinated by the magic of this place. Now, at least she can follow what I am always talking about, juhu 😁! The mornings are filled with great views down into the valley before rain clouds turn everything into thick grey mist. I kidnap her for a day's bush walk through the dripping Shagayu cloud forest to Kidhege Falls. In the evenings we chill out near the lodge's fire place.Read more

  • Safari Safi
    2
    Day 34

    Lunch power nap algonside the road

    January 8, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Every trip to Tanzania has to start and end with a visit to Mambo View Point in Usambara Mountains where I spent a quarter of the year 2020. Our time is running out so we speed up a little and try to get as many kilometres northwards out of this driving day as possible.Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 33

    Hululu Waterfall

    January 7, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ 🌧 24 °C

    It is generally difficult to move around freely in Tanzania. We should have been more determined on hiking up alone to Hululu waterfall but instead find ourselves being escorted along unmistakable tracks by the campsite's local guide 🙄. He does a good job though, showing us a tree nursery, plucking locally grown peaches for us and even finding a super-camouflaged chameleon! The scenery is beautiful but not much of pristine forest is left on the way up to the waterfall. Back in camp we want to tip the guide for his unasked service and are retorted by a grumpy, unhappy face: The money we offer is not enough, he wants twice as much. Congratulations! Again, lack of transparency from organisational side and miscommunication from our side lead to a rather disillusioning experience. These impressions are additionally shaded by the camp's managing ranger who keeps asking for money and loitering around the car. Mäh. Why did we pay those official camping and forest service fees if he doesn't get paid adequately for maintaining this camp?

    After our hike we jump into the refreshing river, have a lazy afternoon tea and prepare a tasty curry dish with mango and those peaches. In the ford of the river I see locals washing recently harvested cassava roots for market sale. I approach them and see that they simply peel and eat them directly. My curiosity gets rewarded with a fresh, juice-dripping root which I chew on in a similar way. Doesn't taste too bad but neither too good. A little bit floury. Later I will be reading that consuming raw cassava might actually be quite poisonous, depending on the variety. Apparently I survive unknowingly because a few hours later I manage to bring a bun baking experiment in my Trangia multi-fuel stove to great success! Fluffy wheat sponges are waiting for being breakfasted!    Read more

  • Safari Safi
    2
    Day 32

    Bunduki community campsite

    January 6, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C

    At 5 pm we finally head off westerly to Uluguru forest reserve and find ourselves grinning from left to right while meandering up tiny mountain roads deep into the valley until we reach the juicily dripping community campsite in Bunduki. In this region the people are slightly different. Not necessary over-exceedingly friendly but surprised and friendly enough in a way that they even forget to charge us Muzungu prices for their vegetables. We get the impression that not many tourists are finding their way here.Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 32

    Standard one-way procedures

    January 6, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

    Our plan of heading into Uluguru Mountains gets delayed by the Nature Forest Reserve's administration office being closed. An officer from a different booth helps us by getting the responsible person on the phone who finally initiates the permit creation process. While we are sitting on a sofa and waiting, a random unfriendly lady in uniform passes by the open door and mocks Franziska for her shorts being too short and inappropriate for a visit to this highly formal governmental office. Sure, it's just 35+ °C in here ... Luckily we can proceed to the bank where we have to pay our permit in cash. But prior to that, this first friendly officer leads us to a gorgeous lunch place with wild ladies beaming with joy when serving us superb mango-passion juice and a tasty plate of colourful spicinesses.

    The permit payment turns out to be an adventure of a full hour of being caught in "standard bank procedures". Holy crap! So many stupid regulations. The best one is that in order to pay cash I have to leave the bank to grab my passport from the car. But because we already exceeded the bank's opening hours (there are still 50+ people inside), I have no permission to re-enter the bank. The door guard insists on this "one way" rule even though the sending officer behind the desk gestures that I will have to be coming back in again. In the end, Franzi helps resolving this issue 🙏.    Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 31

    Mordor?

    January 5, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    Still at Hondo Hondo campsite, after a wonderful and astonishingly cheap three-course dinner and a calm night in the open car, we start lazily into the day. Our half day's ride takes us zig-zagging around herds of broken-down trucks through Mikumi national park to Morogoro.

    On my former visits I avoided Morogoro and expected it to be the most evil town in the world, just like Mordor in Lord of the Rings. But now is the first time I dare to take a step into the inner centre with Franziska guarding me and fighting away my fears of being eaten alive by beasts. What a surprise to encounter a rather calm surrounding with a heart-opening mountain scenery! Young students on racing bicycles. The first time in Tanzania I see this happen! Smiling pedestrians. Young students playing football. Young students jogging in sweatshirts along the road at 35 °C outside temperature. A big tobacco company at the entrance to town. First traffic lights after three weeks.

    Unfortunately, we do not find any camping-suitable spot in town, but, once arriving in the outskirts at Simbamwenni campsite, a true portal to nature opens in front of us with beautiful palm-tree-speckled pitch sites. We end the day with an adequately chilled Anlegerbeer on the elevated bird watching platform next to the overgrown river, from where we watch African Golden Weavers fluttering around noisily in the reed. Unknowingly, we are being observed by a giant Verreaux's Eagle-Owl from the palm tree right next to our car when the first rain since Malambo lets us rush under my awning for dinner preparation. Our next morning is looong, relaxed and again full of birds.    Read more

  • Safari Safi
    Day 30

    Sanje Falls

    January 4, 2023 in Tanzania ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    After being victims to the unorganised registration process at the national park gate we start a 4 km hike up to Sanje Falls with a young apprentice guide. National park fees are to be paid separately from the "guides association fees". But, our guide tells us that he will not be seeing any cent from these fees! At the end we will have to tip him for his service. While they are in training, apprentice guides are considered to be "voluntary guides" but nobody informed us about that in advance. What a strange, non-transparent and unfair system.

    The hike takes us from 300 m up to around 800 m and the falls fall around 170 m down a bare sedimentary rock formation which can be nicely pictured from the lower bathing ponds. From the top of this rock we get wonderful easterly views over the swampy plains of huge sugarcane plantations. We continue higher up and reach yet another bathing pool at a smaller waterfall. Some locals are chilling out here. After a lunch snack and a bunch of show-off push-ups our foreheads also turn into waterfalls and we decide to descend back into the lower pool for a refreshing swim.

    Interestingly, we do not see many birds in the pristine forest except for giant hornbills. But, what lacks of bird variety is compensated by different kinds of colourful butterflies, dancing on the paths in front of us and copulating. In the distance we hear the call of a Livingstone's turaco. Red colobus monkeys keep their distance but observe our actions curiously and – from time to time – throw chewed fruit peels down at us. There are no chameleons around today but, instead, a brown scorpion is hiding under the leaf of a bush. Very scaring because we could have easily touched it with our shoulders when passing by unknowingly!

    Our hike ends with a thought-provoking situation: Shortly before, while sill within the boundaries of the national park, our guide picked up a plastic bottle in an exemplary manner while quoting one of the sign boards "Trash in, trash out". Here, back in the village, just a few steps outside of the park boundary, he opens his backpack and throws all of his neatly collected trash back into the bush. Our bewildered looks he counters with "Somebody will pick this up and burn it later, for sure".    Read more

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