No planes, just trains & automobiles to the Victoria Falls

The bus to Dar es Salaam was a 10 hour journey from Moshi, give or take an hour or two for accidents or traffic. The bus also doesn’t wait for anyone, even the conductor had to chase the bus down the road when she got off to show the police our bus registration. In the bus throughout the entire ride they played a combination of Christian gospel music, Christmas carols, and in the late avo, pop music. It was so loud that we had to shout to each other. Juliet hates Christmas carols so when Jingle Bells came on, she had enough and asked the conductor to turn the music down; she was ignored, everybody likes Jingle Bells.

When we got to Dar es Salaam it was significantly hotter, and there was a noticeable Arab & Indian influence in the city. The food was amazing, one night we went out for dinner and ate at a middle eastern/Indian restaurant and it was a nice change to have some flavor in our food. They had such nice food that we bought extra and put it next to our air conditioning unit to keep it cool, like a ghetto refrigerator.

Dar es Salaam National Museum, unfortunately it was a real let down, nowhere near enough information

We had to catch our train from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi at around midday. The train was terribly organized, the cabins and carriages that were on our tickets didn’t match the real thing; I felt like a muggle trying to find platform 9 ¾. Eventually we were helped by the conductor, and split into separate, neighboring, gender specific cabins each with four beds. The train kicked off on time, and for the most part was smooth, however sporadically, there would be an almighty lurch causing items as well as people to slam off their beds or into walls; it made toilet trips exciting. Train travel is a pretty awesome experience, you see parts of the country that you wouldn’t see by the road. We even went through Selous National Park and enjoyed a free safari as we meandered through the jungle spotting elephants, giraffes, and antelopes. I played a lot of cards with Patrick, a local guy who was travelling to Mbeya, which is a biggish town near the border with Zambia.

Patrick & I drinking the train ride away

Sunrise on the railway

We reached Mbeya at around 10pm on day 2, we were meant to only stay there for an hour, and my cabin had cleared out so Juliet came and joined me. We had dinner by Juliet’s headlight which is a romantic alternative to candlelight. The Tanzanian Immigration officer came through and stamped our passports as having left Tanzania so we were kind of in No Man’s Land. While waiting for the train again at the station we heard the strangest noises outside the train, it sounded like someone was playing an iPhone game that involved popping bubbles, but it was real life, and only when we started moving did it stop and was interrupted by an ear-splitting screeching and an almighty crash. No one really tells you anything when there is a problem, and you kind of have to play Chinese whispers between cabins to get all the answers, and luckily one of Zambia’s main languages is English. We had hit a truck and the delay was the inspectors separating us from the truck and making sure the train was in working order.

Romantic headlamp chicken and chips dinner

After an hour or so we started moving again, and in the dark, we passed the truck that we crashed into, it was in seriously bad shape. I have no idea if the driver was ok, but we were off again. We were woken up about 2am by people moving outside our cabin, we had been warned that the border was a dangerous part of the trip because people can get onto the train so we locked the door. The problem was we were also worried that we were going to miss the immigration officer from Zambia if we slept through, so I had to keep an ear out while drifting in and out of sleep.

Around 3am the train started to pack out and there were heaps of people getting on board in the dark, there was an occasional knock on the door and people trying to open it, but we just kept quiet hoping they’d go away. Eventually the conductor, who was actually a really nice guy, knocked forcefully, identified himself and then kicked Juliet back to her room, and replaced her with 3 new guys. Getting them unpacked etc took about an hour, they had a good yarn to other passengers for 30 odd minutes and just as the light turned off the immigration officer from Zambia turned up, and we had a whole lot of forms to fill out. At 5:30 we all got checked for tickets, and then around 7 a guy came in to continue an earlier conversation with one of the men in our room and say his goodbyes. As a result Juliet and I slept in and missed breakfast, and because we’d eaten all our snacks we were starving. On the train the only thing they don’t run out of is beer, so we ended up getting a beer and a sprite, which of course is a nutritious start to any day. For lunch and dinner the only eating option is boiled chicken and chips, now that might not sound too bad, but eating it for every meal without any vegetables or flavor was tough going, and after the 6^th in a row we were over it.

Once in Zambia, as you will notice from the photos, the differences were drastic. Like the Kenya border at Lake Challa, things just change so rapidly. One of the things we did notice was the architecture of the mud & straw huts did quite significantly change from rectangular houses with sloping roofs to circular houses with conical roofs (this isn’t represented in the photos). One of the most enjoyable part of the trip through both countries was driving through little villages, and when the little kids hear the train coming they sprint out, falling over themselves to wave to you; they still seem shocked when they see a white (but very tanned) face.

A richer village in Zambia

Zambian woman & children selling fruit & veges when the train stops

Approaching a town called Mpika on our 3^rd day on the train there was a tremendous rattle and screeching noise that shook the train, I thought we’d derailed and each cabin was slowly tipping over, but we found out through my roommates that the axle of the locomotive had jammed, probably as a result of the earlier crash, and we were stuck. They had to get another locomotive from Mpika to replace it. We knew we were running late but we were surprised to find out we were going to be 12 hours delayed. This meant instead of arriving at 2pm on our 3^rd day we were destined to arrive at 2am in Kapiri Mposhi, our destination, but a town that has nothing but a railway station. The guys in our cabin told us the best thing we could do would be find a well lit spot in the station, which has a policeman patrolling and just sleep there until 5am, then catch a taxi to town, then a 3 hour bus to Lusaka, then once in Lusaka a 6 hour bus to Livingstone. So we slept there, well Juliet did, I kept watch; it was freezing and concrete doesn’t make for much of a mattress.

Train Station Hotel selfie; got our room for free

At 5:30 we started our journey, and as planned we got to Lusaka around 9:30-10, and then on an expensive “air conditioned” bus at 10:30 to Livingstone. The ride was shocking, there was no aircon whatsoever, it was stinking hot outside and the bus was heating up like an oven as none of the windows could open. There were engine fumes wafting through the cabins from the start, but after driving for about 4 hours the smell started to get stronger and the engine eventually gave out. So everyone got off the bus, sat in the shade, no one looked all too bothered, but no one told us what was going on. We waited for about 45 minutes, and then asked a passenger who said a bus was coming and it was about an hour away. So we waited another hour or so, nothing. So there were a couple of people who were talking to the bus conductor, they said the driver had buggered off, that they weren’t sure if another bus was coming and that we were still closer to Lusaka than we were to Livingstone.

That godforsaken bus

We’d seen some locals hitch a ride, so Juliet and I, and a couple Toby (American but lived in Queenstown for 7 years) and Florence (Swiss and spoke 7 languages) hitchhiked, in a minivan all four of us (+ our bags) in the back jammed in for another 3 hours. Our dinner consisted of one piece of rock hard corn on the cob which was a jaw workout. Some of the other passengers in the van included a man with a chicken in a duffel bag and a hysterical toddler. The van offloaded us onto a big bus for another 2 hours, the final hour of which Juliet spent vomiting and passing me the bags to throw out the window. Once finally in our room at 10:30pm in Livingstone, we collapsed.

Duffel bag chicken man

The main reason for visiting Zambia is Victoria Falls, the seventh wonder of the world. I can agree it is very wonderful, spectacular even. The sheer magnitude and length of the waterfall is mindblowing. The pictures have to really speak for themselves, but what they can’t capture is the noise generated that sounds like thunder. The local name for the falls is "Mosi oa-Tunya" which actually means "the smoke that thunders". I just learnt that on Google. 

You also can’t stay dry, even if you wanted to; there is so much water in the air it is like being in a torrential downpour. 

I decided to baptize myself in the Zambezi River at the bottom of the falls; it was pleasant if not a little scary as I was being sucked into what is called the “boiling pot”.

Looking over the edge of the Victoria Falls

Eastern cataract, Victoria Falls

Me taking that National Geographic shot

Devil's cataract and the Devil's Armchair (right) 

The Victoria Falls and the Boiling Pot

It's pretty self explanatory at this stage

Water crashing at the bottom of the falls

Victoria Falls Bridge built in 1905

More falling water, 625 million litres a minute and is 1700m wide

Cooling off in the Zambezi river at the bottom of the falls

Overall we have travelled a fair few kilometers over the last few days somewhere in the realm of 3000km. The travelling is not over however as we are off to Windhoek, Namibia tomorrow, and then wherever the wind takes us.

We've been moving a fair bit lately as you can see