I arrived at Nkhata Bay harbour at 9am an hour before the departure time I’d been told the previous evening. I wasn’t surprised to find that the cargo boat was less than half loaded and that there was still a lot of sugar to be loaded, but this boat is notorious for leaving early when it’s ready to make the most of daylight/ good weather.
I sat patiently in the shade of the customs building until the boat was ready at 12.30, then had to wait another half hour for the immigration man to turn up to give myself and the other half dozen local passengers an exit stamp.
It was a calm day otherwise I would not have taken the boat, sitting so low in the water I’m sure it would struggle with large waves, there are plenty of stories from locals to confirm that this is not the safest way to cross the lake, but with the MV Songea not running it’s the only way to get to southern Tanzania without a huge detour.
I’m not that tough when it comes to boat journeys, I can get sea sick lying on an airbed in a swimming pool. Once on board I quickly negotiated with the captain about the price, so that the business was done and I could relax and avoid lengthy discussion later after the trip when tired and grumpy. Though not really into men (sorry boys) I thought the captain had the most beautiful diamond like eyes I’ve ever seen, eyes that have obviously stared at the horizon for decades, giving me a little faith in his ability to get me safely to the other side.
A couple of hours out the hills of Malawi disappeared into the haze behind us, everyone including the crew started looking nervously towards the horizon hoping that the hills of Tanzania would soon come into sight. My initial sea sickness (yes the water was flat as a pancake…) had subsided so I thought this would be a good time for a snooze, I found a bed of tonnes of sugar very comfy and soon drifted off in my own little dream world where boats and large areas of water don’t exist.
Sometime later the captain started singing a song in Swahili and the other passengers and crew seemed a little excited. I woke up and looked around, the captain caught my eye and pointed at the vague outline of a hill on the horizon, “Mbamba bay mountain” where is only words, backed up with a smile of relief, about 2-3 hours later we landed on the beach just after dark. The whole journey had only taken about 7.5 hours, 4 hours quicker than the boat some Swiss cyclists had turned up on a fortnight earlier.
My bike, gear and self where soon shuttled to the beach by dugout canoe, immigration was already closed and the whole village in darkness due to no power, not an ideal way to enter country nine. After 20 minutes riding around I found a hotel and had an early night.
Immigration went easy in the morning, paying my $50 for the 3 month visa, outside I was able to find someone that spoke English that had a “friend” that could help me change my remaining Malawi Kwacha, and despite the ten minute walk around town looking for a changer he refused my offer of a little cash for drink for his trouble “Welcome to Tanzania my friend”. If only fixers in all border towns where so friendly and selfless….
The next two days where a tough climb to Mbinga, where I had to rest for almost a week (and later another few days in bed in Songea) due to a nasty cold which didn’t mix well with the dusty roads of Southern Tanzania. The road reminded me a lot of Southern Uganda which also has steep hills, dirt roads and beautiful scenery.
These roads bring me back in my element, tough roads with beautiful scenery are what it’s all about for me, preferable with a nice wild camping spot from time to time. The road from Mbamba to Mbinga had a lot of villages so wild camping was difficult, the places where there were no villages the road was on the side of a mountain with so spot for a tent.
I know many cyclist choose to camp at churches or schools at such times, but I try to avoid this because I just don’t want the attention in the evening of a whole village or school, instead I’ll often creep into a disused farmers’ field just before sunset knowing that I’ll get spotted by a couple of people in the morning while eating breakfast.
From Mbinga to Songea the road became a building site, here too the Chinese are busy upgrading the roads in exchange for mining rights or whatever else they want to plunder. This made the road a lot more dusty than it had already been, but at least it was graded so not too steep.
Malawi is now behind me and I had plenty of time in Nkata bay to recover most of my marbles and I’m now pretty much back in the game for the month of cycling to Bagamoyo just north of Dar el Salam where I plan to try and get an apartment for a month or so to take a proper break, have some friends visiting and just maybe start some writing for my book (release date Dec 2034……). On that subject…….I plan to devote a chapter of my book to “Shane Says……” which will be an A-Z of tips for other cyclists planning on cycling in Southern Africa, so please feel free to leave a comment on which tips or info you’d like to see in this section.
During my time in Bagamoyo I’ll make a plan of how I want to continue this journey, my route into East DR Congo is now blocked by unrest, I’m not sure if its possible to pass through Sudan yet and I don’t want to go through Ethiopia because of the abuse cyclists get there. This may be a convenient time to take a longer break and take the opportunity for a rest either in Africa or Europe and earn some more freedom credits. My mind is not made up yet what my next step is in this journey but I’m certainly ready for a break.
Great stuff. My feeling is that your red route is going to have a gap in it, you will probably need to skip some bits, why take unnecessary risks with other people’s wars?