Africa 1987 Chapter IV

It was “back to work” (travel) on Monday morning and we boarded a bus to Moshi, a town that turned out to be duller than Arusha. Kilimanjaro was hidden by the rainy season clouds. We had lunch at the “Y” and then determined that the train to Dar es Salaam didn't leave for another two days and with Easter approaching, we bought bus tickets for TSH500 each. By 4:30pm, we were on a Dar bound bus that seemed in fairly good condition with 2X3 seating. We stopped to take on a massive load of plantains, strapped to the roof. We were breaking all our previous African transport speed records, and we were a third of the way to Dar by 8:00pm when the bus broke down. There was a general passenger evacuation with many jumping on the back of a truck. When we realized what was happening, we boarded an ancient slow moving, but half empty  bus. It broke down soon after and the driver tinkered with the engine for a couple of hours before we got going once again. It was a rough night, and at dawn, we descended from the plateau onto the lowlands. We figured that we were almost there, but it took a further 7 hours to reach Dar es Salaam at noon. The 550km journey took 20 hours.

We were feeling shattered and checked into the YMCA and a spotless double room. After lunch, I went 5km from town to the Tazara Rail Station for tickets going south. The trains were fully booked later in the week and we would have to wait a week, but I could get 2 seats on the train leaving the same day at 4:30pm. We had to move fast, changing money at a curio shop, returned to the hotel, packed our things and board the train at 4:20pm. Glenn was in a male compartment and Sheila two doors down in a female compartment. The two night trip on the Chinese built rail line was to take us to the centre of Zambia. We passed through the Selous Game Reserve at night. Our couchette compartments worked out well the first night. The train meals of chicken & rice for dinner, and chicken & chips for lunch were quite good. They ran out of soft drinks 3 hours into the journey (I am not sure why that was important, but it made an entry in the journal).

We reached the Zambia border and passed through formalities quickly but, for some reason, we had to change trains and walk to the Nakonde Station in the rain. The Zambian train arrived several hours late. We had met Stuart, an American and he anticipated further drink shortages, so he bought 10 Pepsi Colas at the station. Of course, beer and soft drinks were plentiful on board in Zambia, selling for 3 Kwacha (15 cents) a piece. The second night was marred by a party in the woman's compartment, so Sheila didn't get much sleep. We were five westerners, in total, riding the train and we were all escorted to a separate compartment for interrogation. The loud talking Stuart had earlier pulled out a golf card on which his Nairobi friend had sketched some places of interest. So “ here is my map of Lake Kariba” must have caught someone's attention. The Zambian police demanded our passports and maps, and wanted to know who our ringleader was and what our mission was. We all resisted the temptation of  humorous replies.  It was uncomfortable but the police zeroed on Stuart and although we were all dismissed. Stuart was to report to the local police station when we reached Kapiri Mposhi.

The 1800km took 42 hours and we arrived at another Chinese rail station at Kapiri Mposhi. We had the choice of a bus into Lusaka or a slow train leaving at midnight, that went right through to Livingstone (Victoria Falls). We opted for the train and we took a hotel room. We stuffed Stuart in our hotel  room to keep him out of trouble with the local authorities (he was ready to march  into the police station, until we talked him down). The midnight train arrived at 3:00am, packed solid with passengers. There was no way that we were going to board the train, holding 2nd class tickets (general admission) and we decided to stay on in Kapiri Mposhi, but the last car was half empty and we procured seats. It was too good to be true. A couple of hours later, our car was unhitched from the train and we piled into the one of the upright sardine train cars. We somehow found space in the crammed hallways and endured an uncomfortable 5 hours. Crowd surfing was the only way to pass through the cars. It was awful. We never saw Stuart again.

Most of the passengers disembarked at Lusaka and I convinced the conductor to allow us  to upgrade to a first class compartment for the remainder of the journey to Livingstone. We shared the compartment with four young hip Zambians and we had a good time. We arrived at Livingstone at 11:00pm (20 hours from Kapiri Mposhi, 4USD). It was Easter Friday and we knew hotels would be full, so we headed straight for the campground.

Daylight revealed the beautiful area of Victoria Falls or Musi-oa-Tunya, the smoke that thunders. The falls were surrounded by vegetation without concrete. There were no cable cars, no amusement parks, no revolving restaurants but hippos, crocodiles and elephants lived just upstream. We were there at peak water season and the falls were often obscured by mist. I had the urge to jump in the water and go over the top, but didn't. It must be great to be a water molecule going over. It is an amazing geological formation; 1.4km wide, 120m wide, formed by volcanic rock that cooled leaving cracks, filled in by limestone and the Zambezi River changed course through cracks, leaving a spectacular gorge and falls. We were able to stand in bathing suits right in front of the falls and get completely soaked. A New Zealand tourist did  the same and he soaked his passport and airplane ticket. Oooops.

We took a boat cruise on the Zambezi as a pleasant way to see elephants. We also took seats on a safari to the nearby game reserve to see animals that were new to us including white rhino, kudu, Cookson's wildebeests and Thornicrofts giraffe (who knew there were different giraffe species?). We went back and forth across to the Zimbabwe side of the falls during our most enjoyable six nights at Victoria Falls.  The Zambia government had allowed the Kwacha to float from a fixed rate to a rate determined by auction and consequently, it made Zambia one of the cheapest places we had been to. The 20 Kwachas to the USD meant that we could rent a rondavel (circular) cottage for 5USD/night. Beer was 15 cents, T-Bone steaks at the Inter-Continental Hotel were 3USD, the safari 1.50USD and so forth. The auction was discontinued and the Kwacha reverted to 8.50 to the USD soon thereafter. 

We did a passport switch going into Zimbabwe and we were then travelling on our British passports. We were heading for South Africa (RSA) and we knew that  on our anticipated northbound trip, if Tanzanian immigration officials got a sniff of a RSA visit, we would be refused entry. We caught the train from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo. We had our own compartment with wood panelling and a steam locomotive was out in front. We were impressed by a supermarket visit in Bulawayo where we changed trains for an overnight train to Gaberone, Botswana.

We disembarked at Gabarone in the early hours of the morning and we tried our luck at hitchhiking. Botswana and South Africa had strong economies and currencies, so we tried to keep the costs down and hitching also provided more contact with people. We had four hours without luck and a long distance bus heading for Johannesburg pulled up and we jumped aboard. The conductor said that it was a cheap ride (20 Pulas or $20). We only had 20 Pulas between us and the bus later stopped at a bank in South Africa so that we could change money. It was a new bus service direct to Johannesburg, running just twice a week. We were lucky.

Johannesburg was the biggest city of our African journey and we did not see it at its best. It was a Saturday afternoon, the streets were quiet, leaving just drunks and garbage for us. A rail strike was in progress and 16,000 workers had been fired two days earlier. We were let off at the third class station that was a real mess. We were told there were no buses to Swaziland, so we shifted over to the 2nd & 1st class station. We took a ten hour train, sitting in a "whites only" car to Nelspruit, arriving there at 5:00am. A fellow white passenger offered us a lift to Barberton. Along the way, he proudly pointed out the various segregated neighbourhoods;'whites live here", "blacks there" "Asians and coloureds, over there". We didn't even know what coloureds were until we asked. 

Barberton is 40 kms NW of Swaziland and we waited on the R40 on the edge of town. There was no traffic. We were wondering what to do next and then a bus carrying black passengers appeared out of nowhere and stopped for us. We got plenty of stares from the passengers. The road climbed through the hills to the border and then turned to dirt. The Swazi immigration official at the Bulembu Border Post didn't blink an eye. We arrived at the tidy, little Mbabane bus terminal on the Sunday afternoon. There were a mix of well dressed church goers and others in tribal dress milling about. There had been a festive occasion that weekend so there were lots of furs and clubs to be seen. We strolled over to the shopping centre and called Glenn's parents from a public telephone. No answer. 

It was on to the Catholic Mission for a small clean room for the night. The cheapest lodging in Mbabane, at $10, was the most expensive of our almost three years of travel. We were in need of rest after our marathon trip from Victoria Falls. From Nairobi, our journey extended 5,000km , totalling 140 hours of travel for 80USD. Average speed was 35km/hr.

Glenn’s parents returned from a short trip to Lesotho the following day. Glenn’s father had completed a contract for CESO and was now the CESO rep for Swaziland and Lesotho. We spent 2 weeks with them in Mbabane, ate well and caught up on our journals.. We visited a number of folks and went to Milhwane game park and watched a couple of necking giraffes and our first gemsbok. The pizzas were good at Continental in Mbabane. Swaziland was comfortable but a little on the dull side for us.

There wasn’t much in the way of public transport to Johannesburg and  hitchhiking kept the costs down. In those days the Rand was a powerhouse (1 Rand = CDN 1.35) and the cost of travel much higher than the countires from which we had come through. Glenn’s dad dropped us off at the RSA border. Once we had cleared the border, the immigration officer asked us if we needed a ride. He waved over a flash looking BMW and we were off.  Our driver, Gerald, was the South African manager of the Pikes Peak casino. He was somewhat hungover and wanted one of us to drive. My drivers license had expired and before we knew it, Sheila was cruising well over the posted speed limit and on the wrong side of the road. She re-calibrated and did a fine job. Gerald took over the wheel after a nap. At one roadblock, the police  asked if we had firearms or anything illegal. We were waved through.

We stayed at the very quiet Johannesburg Youth Hostel for three nights. There were only four other guests so we got our own room. We stocked up on Traveller’s Cheques at American Express (card holders could purchase cheques with personal cheques). We did some shopping for outdoor gear, and purchased a Karimor rucksack to replace the small external frame pack we had purchased in Nairobi. At that outdoor gear shop we met Gordon who was looking for two people to accompany him and his wife to Botswana. We were originally going to Namibia, but we changed plans to leave for Botswana two weeks hence. He was apprehensive about travelling outside of RSA and felt that there would be increased security in numbers. We weren’t overly impressed with Johannesburg. Many of the shopkeepers carried guns, but were quite friendly to us, as tourists. It was time to move on.

We didn’t have a good hitchhiking day out of Johannesburg. At one point, a uniformed policeman offered us a ride and motioned for us to join him in an undercover agent’s car. He had a chuckle; “welcome to the police state”. They went out of their way and got us out of town but their effort didn’t amount to much. We left at 8:00 am and reached Heidelberg, 50kms away by 4:30pm. We threw in the towel and took the train to Durban.

In Durban, we contacted  Jonathan G, a young guy we had met in Turkey and later we had harboured him in a pension room in Greece. His family was kind and we stayed with them for  the night before hiking the Transkei (Wild) coast. Jonathan‘s family (English South Africans) held liberal political views and were dismayed by the recent national elections that moved the country further conservative and supported the government’s tightening of apartheid controls. Johnathan and a group of 40 students had stood by the roadside, carrying anti-apartheid placards on Election Day. They were hauled off in yellow paddy wagons and charged under the decrees of the State of Emergency. Their case was to be heard that July. He drove us around Durban to show us a black township, Kwa Mashu, for a quick look at living conditions in a township. Some shacks were  made from scrap wood and cardboard and rubbish was everywhere. There was no sewage, electricity or running water. We had all seen worse but as Jonathan said, “it does not have to be like this”. 

From Durban, we caught a 10:00am casino bus that took us down the coast for R25, but R10 returned n coins to play the slot machines. We left the casino (Wild Coast Sun in Port Edward) behind in the afternoon and followed the Transkei coast south. We knew that drinking water was hard to come by, so when we came across water dripping down a moss covered rock cliff, we stopped for the night. I made a spaghetti dinner over an open fire on the sandy beach with no one in sight. It was looking good. We woke up in the morning to high tide, almost at the tent door. We walked the beaches barefoot and made an amateur attempt at our first river crossing. The tide was only halfway out, so the current and water level was challenging. A large wave rolled in and floored me; Sheila helped me get back on my feet.

We continued along the untouched coastline, low tide crossings were a snap. We encountered the occasional local. Towards the end of the day, we reached a small stream and sat down for the second of four spaghetti dinners. We then carried on to a dramatic camp spot next to a large river that we intended to cross at midnight, at low tide. We consulted the map and factored in the tide times and figured that we had some long, complicated walking days ahead of us. So, we decided to take it easy and return the same wonderful way we had come in. The return hike was lovely, except on the last morning, I was avoiding an incoming wave and managed to stub my big toe on coral to tear half the nail off. Ouch. 

We returned to the casino, cashed a couple more R5 coupons for coins and embarked on another slow hitchhiking day, 200km in seven hours back to Durban. We met up with Jonathan in the university library at 7:00pm.  We enjoyed a family dinner with Jonathan‘s family and spent the following day in Durban. Sheila went for a swim while Glenn nursed his toe. One of the other beach goers got upset with us for taking a photo of the “whites only beach” sign. Our departure to Johannesburg was delayed a day with unseasonable heavy rain.

We made a last stab at hitchhiking in South Africa. We managed 230km in 8 hours and resorted to writing Canada on a piece of styrofoam. Although Canada was not well like by the government of PW Botha, it helped some, but rides were typically of 20km. Later, we met another traveller who had similar slow hitchhiking experiences. We took the train for the remaining 360km from Ladysmith. We had a day in Johannesburg. We found apartheid South Africa deeply unsettling. We felt mistrust wherever we went. News was tightly controlled by the state and we had seen the considerable police presence enforcing the will of the minority.  An Asian driver had told us “you get used to apartheid “; we didn’t and we were just tourists. 

We had never intended to stay in South Africa as long as we did, but we had a date with our destiny in Botswana.