Some Walks in the Jungle
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2006
1
38
80
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Tukuyu,
Tanzania
Saturday, February 3, 2007
We were fresh off the bus from Mbeya, and heading for the hotel we had picked out when a local alcoholic took it upon himself to be the town's goodwill ambassador. Usually telling such folks that you don't have money to give them causes them to go away. But this fellow didn't, insisting on escorting us all the way to the hotel while talking at top volume about how he knew martial arts. Once we got a room at the hotel, he decided to take up residence in the bar, ranting about how he was a soldier, and we had to hide in the room until he had left. On the bright side, this room wasn't a bad place to be holed up in. Most of the places we've stayed recently could be described using the word "hole", but actually this one was quite nice. The owner, Allen, took to us and brought us down to his house so we could meet his kids, see his cows, and most importantly, pet the dogs, 3 lovable mixed breeds who were all over us. With Mikey ailing, it's perhaps more sad than happy to see dogs right now. The staff of the Langiboss Lodge was friendly, teaching us a new game called "Last Card" that's much like Uno.
When we felt brave enough, we ventured back into town, stopping at two places that offered guided tours of the local nature areas. After careful consideration, we decided on two day-long itineraries, one from each company.
The next day, we did a walk with Japhet, another guide with the same grassroots organization that gave us a great hike in Mbeya, Sisi Kwa Sisi, or "Let's Do it Ourselves". Japhet proved to be a very talkative guide, and there was no chance of the conversation running thin with him around. A Rastafarian who loved to expound on Tanzanian politics, that's the perfect person to take you through a local army base to see some naturally carved river features in an incredible valley. Fortunately, he kept his more radical thoughts under control while the Sargent was escorting us through the base. The first natural river feature, the "cooking pot", was where raging water fell into a tight hole in the rock, then emerged from upwelling holes farther downstream. We also got to see a natural bridge carved out by the river and used by locals as a river crossing, called "The Bridge of God". In order to get to and from these places, we took a dalla-dalla a little ways from town, then walked 10 kilometers from the main road down into a remote valley. So by the time we walked back out again, we were really tired... or so we thought.
You see, the next day we would discover what being tired really means. The other guide company had a masochist tour by bike to a local village and waterfall, rated as very difficult. Naturally, that one was the one that Cierra wanted to do. I had reluctantly agreed to this torture, despite a sinking feeling when they told us it was around 40 kilometers round-trip and that it was all uphill on the way back.
They weren't kidding. Our guide David was a kindly ex-boxer who had settled in Tukuyu after traveling the world in competition. He took us straight to the local bike rental place, where we got a hard lesson in what renting something in developing countries can be like. Cierra's bike was stuck in extreme low gear, my brakes only half-worked, and all the seats were hard as rocks.
Imagine riding a jackhammer hooked to a bicycle seat for a few hours and you'll have an idea what the ride down this mountain was like. I was noting the almost constant slope downwards, wondering how my already bruised legs would get me back up this tortuous course. David's bike broke down continuously, causing us delays every kilometer or so while he stopped to fix it. We were hoping for a catastrophic breakdown which might trigger a rescue operation, but no such luck.
By the time we rolled exhausted into the yard of the local medicine man, my butt hurt so badly I considered asking for his help. Mr. Didas was a kindly old fellow who took us around his yard and pointed out some of the plants that he used to cure various ailments, mostly different types of stomach pain. Next came a long hike down into a deep valley that sapped our remaining strength. This was so we could walk across some hanging bridges that the Germans strung across the river in 1900. Wow. These things looked that old, too. Large sections of the wooden planks were missing, and some had been replaced with old tree branches. I felt like I was in the middle of a set for an Indiana Jones movie. We hiked back up in a sweaty daze, then biked over to Kaporogoro Falls. In the process, my failing brakes gave up, sending me crashing down a slope past Cierra and David. The stunning beauty of the huge falls and massive cavern behind them was nearly worth all the effort it took to get there. The cave was cooler than the sunny outdoors and we sprawled gratefully on some benches inside and ate our lunch.
I shouldn't have worried so much about biking up the mountain, as a thunderstorm whipped up while we were inside the cave and turned the dirt paths we came down on into a mess of sticky mud. Our bikes bogged down after only a kilometer and would pedal no more, gobs of dirt having invaded the brakes and stuck fast to the inside of the wheel guards. We tried to clean them and get back on, but it was no use. Pedal another 50 feet, then stuck again. Even getting off and slogging through the mud while rolling the bikes in the grass beside the trail wasn't a complete cure, and we were continually stopping to clean the bikes. We thought that surely David will call for help now. But he continued to urge us forward, insisting that the mud would cease around the next bend. We marched onwards like this for 4 and a half hours, and when we finally arrived in Tukuyu just after the final rays of twilight faded, we took David to dinner for getting us back in one piece. Or in the case of my pelvis, maybe more pieces than that.
I'd spent part of the ride back up fantasizing about the next time I'd be able to eat something that wasn't chicken or old dried out beef and rice. The other part of the time, I dreamed of a nice hot shower. The cold showers we'd been taking at our lodgings were rather like electroshock therapy. You never enjoy it in the moment, but in the long run, it might be better for you than nothing at all. Fortunately, I discovered a bucket of heated water near the shower area that night. By pouring some of this water into a smaller bucket, then spooning that out onto my head, I was able to take a deliciously warm shower. Ahh...
The next day was relaxation and recovery time, with both of us wincing and whimpering whenever we sat anywhere, and generally feeling like we'd been beaten like an old rug at spring cleaning. We bought bus tickets back to Dar on the luxury bus for 2 dollars more, hoping for a bit more comfort on the return trip.
We had time for one more hike before leaving, and we chose a half-day walk up to Ngozi Crater with our friend Japhet. The flies in this jungle setting were extraordinary, crawling all over you, buzzing about, and occasionally biting. We were driven a bit batty by them, but the view into the crater of the completely undisturbed lake within was so peaceful that we were able to shut them out and just sit and enjoy once we were there. Okay, so we spent several minutes sitting there slapping them to death too. But you can't kill all the flies in the jungle, so we eventually had to muscle up and hike out of there again with our hats on and our heads down. That night, as I showered before bed, I found a dead fly in my hair that must have been hanging out all day.
In the morning, we woke up so early to go catch our bus that we found all the exits to our little hotel were chained and locked. I'd hate to find out what would happen if the place were to catch on fire in the night. We rousted the help, they unchained the doors, and we were off to catch our luxury bus.
