Hiking in the Usambaras
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2006
1
42
80
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Lushoto,
Tanzania
Thursday, February 15, 2007
We got off the bus and were immediately tailed by Saidi, a member of a local guiding organization. He was very determined not to leave us be, and we eventually decided to use the information he was giving us to find a cheap guest house. After an exhaustive search, in which we walked Saidi around for an hour, we settled on one a few yards from the first house we looked at.
Saidi was hoping to sell us a tour and asked us to come by his office. The tours sounded nice but were far too expensive, so we decided that we'd just do what we could on our own in the next few days.
How welcome the altitude's effect on my night's sleep is! No more waking up drenched in my own sweat here. In fact, we used the blankets on our beds to ward off a chill, while music from a bar down the street failed to keep us up.
A rooster crowing outside our window roused us slowly the next morning. We set out to hike to the Irente viewpoint, from which there would be spectacular views of the Rift Valley floor below. Following the signs for the lodge at the viewpoint, the hike was a no-brainer, and we used our limited Swahili to chat with friendly locals on the way to and from.
What a reward at the end! The mountains just fell away from the viewpoint in nearly a straight line. A thousand meters below, the valley floor, and the Moshi highway we'd been on the day before, complete with tiny speeding buses. After ten minutes or so, clouds began to drift in below, and then the view changed to a feeling of being at the jagged end of the world, and below you only clouds, air and endless abyss.
We looked around the lodge, easily the nicest place we've been since getting to Tanzania. Prices here start around 60 bucks, more than reasonable in the States for this view, but since we're staying in town for less than 4 dollars, it smacks of insanity to us.
On the way back to town, we stopped off at Irente Farm for a delicious picnic lunch. Now, the local food has been excellent, but it's pretty basic, and once you've been here a week you've pretty much had everything twice. Rice, Ugali, dried fish, stringy beef, and vegetables cooked nearly into paste. So imagine how we felt when the server came out with fresh rye bread, chopped organic vegetables, whole bowls full of just churned butter, plum jam, and peppered goat cheese. To drink? About a liter of fresh-squeezed passion fruit juice. We were in heaven. At least an hour later, we dragged our swollen bellies back down the road to Lushoto.
It didn't take Cierra too long to realize that eating a gigantic amount of goat cheese in one sitting is not the best thing you can do to your digestive system, and she was forced to return to the room for a little lie down. She's having a rough time of it lately, with our anti-malarial medication causing her hands to become more sensitive to the sun. In the African sunshine, this means a red rash and little blisters. Then her lower lip blistered in the sun. It's now healing, but like all lip injuries, has a tendency to reopen when she eats, smiles, or breathes too hard.
The next day was slated to be a "rest day", which of course meant we would go on another long hike. This time we just got on a road going north of town, figuring we'd just see where it went. Cut into the mountainside, and lined with eucalyptus that we're guessing are left over from colonial times, the road was a strangely stately way to stroll to the very head of the valley we've been staying in. At the top, we found a massive planted line of trees, marking the boundary of a national forest or large estate. But we'd walked far enough for the day, and shambled back down with dusty feet.
A visit to the Internet cafe brought more good news of Mikey's progress from home. His ulcer medication was starting to work, he was eating much more, and his weight was back up over 8 and a half pounds. A long way from out of the woods, but he was feeling better, so we were glad to hear that.
For lunch, a new dish- the African pizza. Eggs, beans, tomatoes, and cabbage, on a toasted tortilla. Yummy. Afterwards, we returned to our hotel for a quick game of cards and ended up staying most of the afternoon in the lobby with another guest, a Tanzanian named Gregory. He loved card games, so we taught him two of ours, and he showed us two more that we'd never heard of. One of them is called Casino, and we immediately began playing it obsessively during our downtime, of which we have a lot.
We've been told by several people that we should always be in our hotel by sunset, because muzungus can be a target for muggings after dark. That's sensible, but after 4 weeks and the types of hotels we've stayed in, it was beginning to feel like we were prisoners with day privileges. Card games, rapidly dwindling reading material, and mosquitoes humming about kept us company.
Our last day in Lushoto, we decided to try a much more impressive hike, 16 kilometers down the road to Soni. The downhill grade was a much gentler slope, and we passed the time talking about the aspects of home that we missed. I'm not sure if it's the amount of time into our trip that we are, or if it's the fact that the culture that we've slowed down to enjoy is so different from our own, but we're thinking about home more while in Africa. Mostly, we talked about the variety of food that we miss so much. The food here is just fine, but the repetition! You can't go 2 days without having the same thing. It's bad, but we started looking forward to the airplane food we'd get on the flight to South America. We're also looking forward to the in-flight entertainment. Television here in Tanzania has rather accurately been described as "Wack" and "Swill" by several locals we met. Horrible sound and picture standards... it's clear that the professionals in the business here have not a clue about how to run the equipment. Dubbed Spanish telenovelas, music videos, WE Raw. I watched WE wrestling with Phillip in Moshi and, what's worse, found it entertaining.
Back to our walk. We brought no food along, so 3 hours in at the twelve kilometer mark we turned around and walked back. Still, it was a mostly pleasant stroll through mountainside cornfields, as schoolchildren walked behind us giggling. Cries of "Muzungu, Jambo!" reached us from unseen homes down the hillside, causing us to peer down and try to locate the greeter. Life here in the country seems more innocent and happy than in the cities and towns.
In town they have expectations of tourists. I keep getting mistaken for a teller at the First National Bank of Muzungu. "Give me my money!" I'm sorry, but our records show that you're not an account-holder with us.
Somebody started this giving away money on the street thing, and I suggest that anyone traveling to Tanzania do their best to turn it around. It creates a group of people who do nothing but ask others for money. It also degrades the experience for the tourists who do come to see Tanzania and meet its people. I find the fake conversations and the lies about what the money is for to be really repulsive, and this, more than the nightmare bus rides, is the main reason I probably won't return. That's a troubling sign, because Tanzania, more than any other country on our travels, desperately needs tourists to come and spend money.
Well, we're done with Lushoto, at least, and though our thoughts have begun to wander towards home, this has really been one of our favorite places in Tanzania. Stunning views, a cool mountain climate, and friendly locals. Anyone coming to Tanzania should make sure to visit. We bought a ticket on the 6 am bus to Dar the following morning and headed to our hotel to be there by sundown curfew.
Waking up early to catch our bus, we find all the doors to the hotel are locked again, and we have to rouse another staff member to let us out. Our bus is idling in the dead center of town, and before departure lets go with a minute long blast on its horn, an ear-splitting cacophony that resembles trumpet practice at a school for the deaf. Anyone doing this in the States every morning in the middle of a residential area would get a well-deserved legal beat-down, but apparently they tolerate it here.
Cierra started to turn green as the bus curved its way down the mountain road, but held it together to the bottom and then just felt mostly miserable as we kept moving on the main highway. Fortunately for her, that wasn't as long as expected. Our bus shuddered to a halt in an obscure village, hemorrhaging oil. Passengers filed off with their baggage, signaling to us that we'd be hanging out for a while. I walked to a nearby "restaurant" and got us breakfast, 2 dusty chapati. We sat down in the dirt and played Casino. An hour passed, then another one of the same company's buses pulled up, a later departure, mostly full. We were slow to react and one of ten or so people that didn't get packed aboard, but the density of the crowd inside made me glad to wait for the next option. Another hour gone, then I went to talk to our conductor. Our bus had blown its head gasket and wasn't going anywhere. We finally flagged down another bus and got seats in the very last row for the remaining 3 hours to Dar. Once there, 2 dalla-dalla rides, each nearly an hour, before we would make it to Bagamoyo.
