Along South-East Coast of Tanzania

Dar es Salaam – Kilwa Kivinje: Did Someone Say ‘Sand’?

[Distance: 198miles; 3days]

In the afternoon of my last day in Dar es Salaam I managed to make contact with Riaan Manzer, a South African man who has almost finished circumnavigating Africa (i.e. going round the entire continent) by bicycle – and you thought I was nuts! He is about a week ahead of me on the coast, and had just rode into Lindi (about 500km’s south) when we spoke. According to him, the road from Dar was mostly pretty good dirt. “But”, he said, “watch out. There is 50km’s of sand before a place called Mohoro.”

“Five zero?!”

“Ja… Ag, but don’t worry, you’ll handle it.”

To be honest, I don’t think I really absorbed the significance of what he said. Partly because on my map there are two possible routes to Mohoro, and I thought that perhaps he had ended-up taking the secondary rather than main road. If I realized the full import of this information I might have changed my route….

Still, I didn’t have much of a detailed idea of the road quality going south even after this conversation, and so I started out from Dar with 3 possible destinations for my first day that should have guesthouses (i.e. rooms with beds, shared hole in the ground and bucket showers). Leaving Dar was only slightly less hairy than entering despite it being a Saturday, but the road was fairly good tar for the first 40km’s which helped to speed me up a little. From there it was ‘under construction’ – which has apparently been going-on for at least ten years – but at least that meant fairly decent stretches of dirt and gravel for much of the way. As it happened the second of my possible destinations (74km’s down the road) didn’t have any ‘gesti’ but I was making fairly good time and so I pushed on to the very small settlement of Bungu; after 114km’s I arrived at just after 5pm. I had been told that there were better guesthouse further on in Kibiti, but there was little chance of my making it before nightfall so I decided not to push my luck.

I managed to set-off fairly early the next day after picking-up some chapatis (having bought some bananas and the previous day). I had also loaded-up on water the night before (in Dar I made a strategic decision – based largely on my starting to run out of water purification tablets – to start buying bottled water. This is not too expensive if one buys in large quantities, which I generally do unless stopping for something cold). Other than some mistakes on my map, such as distances in miles being given in kilometers – not for the first time either – and bad dirt road for the 17km’s to Kibiti, it was fairly good going until about 40miles. After passing the Mkapa Bridge – named after the current President, though nobody seems to be bothered by the signs saying “Danger: high winds” – the road became rough again until I reached the village of Nyamwage. There the cycling stopped. For the next 20km’s I had to push the bike through thick sand.

Let me just take this opportunity to reflect on what pushing a loaded bike through thick sand is like (I have had lots of time to do so myself). At best it is hot, sweaty, tiring and not very rewarding work. At worst, it requires adopting something like a rugby scrumming position just to get the wheels to move under the glare of a burning hot sun with a steadily diminishing water supply; then becoming completely bogged-down when you have to move-off the centre of the road for a passing vehicle. What goes through one’s mind at such moments? Well, expletives, self-doubt, anger, songs (all kinds of strange songs have come into my head on this trip, from Britney Spears to the Beatles, national anthems and a song from Sarafina), more expletives, thoughts of death by dehydration, and slowly but surely a kind of meditative calm. More to the point, what stops one from taking a lift with a passing truck or bus? I don’t know; perhaps because it would be admitting defeat, but it was a question that I asked myself a lot for the first 5 or 10km’s.

Anyway, after that I reached Morohoro. Of course, one can’t rest on one’s laurels and after that 60mile day I still had to get out and buy provisions for the next day. In doing so, I discovered why there was so much sand, because on my way to buy fruit I had to cross a small wooden bridge over a partly dried-up river-bed in which I saw a number of small sailing boats. Taken aback, I remembered that this was the Rufiji region which becomes completely flooded during the wet season and is the main obstacle to completing the road south from Dar (they haven’t even started on that section yet).

Nevertheless, I went to bed feeling optimistic that I would reach the famous Kilwas the next day and that at least things couldn’t get any worse. I assumed that Riaan had misheard me and meant 15km’s of sand. Ah, what folly… Because of course a cyclist is less likely to forget a distance than, say, the name of a town. So it was that the next morning I realised, after pushing through sand for over an hour, that he must have meant 50km’s before Somanga, which is the first settlement 30km’s south of Mohoro. Ah well, no doubt it was penance for past sins. I reached rideable (in fact, good tar) road 30km’s and about 6hours later. Despite what you might think, I was in rather good spirits after reaching tar and so I decided to still try and make Kilwa Kivinje (62miles from Mohoro), stopping in the junction town of Nangurukuru only if absolutely necessary. To cut a long story short I made it to Kivinje (beating off a competitive local teenager on a last, long hill) though the stretch to Nangurukuru had been more difficult than I thought, and I arrived not long before sunset.

The Kilwas

Kilwa Kivinje could have been a fairly pleasant, very small, place to hang-around in, with its ruined German colonial and Arab buildings, small dhow harbour and reasonably relaxed atmosphere. However, it was very hot and humid, the guesthouse was rather basic, and I was bloody tired and a bit tetchy so I decided to cycle – on to Kilwa Masoko 26km’s further along the coast (though one has to go back inland first). It was all I could to do pull myself and the bike out and get on the road, but it turned out to be the right decision as the Hilton Hotel/guesthouse (yup, pretensions of grandeur) was better equipped – fan and running water in other words. There I basically just collapsed in a heap – other than a short foray out to the market to buy fruit, and where I was pleased to also manage to sniff-out some fresh granadilla (everyone calls it passion fruit here) juice by exploring the shops around a pile of husks.

In Kivinje I had met an English girl who I then met again in Masoko who had just finished 6months of volunteer work, and had come to Kilwa via Mtwara and Songea – my route! She was able to give me a lot of information on pretty much everything (guesthouses, internet, etc.) other than road condition, which most passengers never really pay much attention to except to the extent that it disturbs them so that wasn’t surprising.

The next day I went-off with Rosie (the English girl) and a young couple from Madrid, after much hanging-around to get permits that we only manged to get on the island in the end, to visit the highlight of the region: Kilwa Kisiwani (‘Kilwa the Island’) and its Omani Arab ruins. Although the day hadn’t started well, with my having to begin a course of antibiotics I’d brought along for severe stomach complications – I wanted to keep them for use in a more remote area, but I had no faith in the nameless pink pills proffered by the local medical store attendant – the ruins were amazing. Aside from the fact that they are scenically situated on a small island reached only by dhow, this is essentially because they are not as ‘ruined’ as other ‘ruins’. My personal favourite was the Great Mosque, with its multi-domed roof supported by stone pillars still intact and the roots of a giant fig tree growing through one of the walls of the adjacent ‘Great House’.

Kilwa-Mtwara: Mozambique or Malawi?

[Distance: 200miles; 3days]

Apparently it is possible to camp amongst the ruins, which must be incredible, but I had to keep moving. So the next morning – stomach only slightly improved – I set-off once again. This time heading towards Mtwara, the largest town in south-east Tanzania, via Mtandi and Lindi. As it turned-out I ended-up stopping in a place called Mandawa, about 8miles before Mtandi, because it turned-out (I asked people along the way as always) that there were no gesti in Mtandi. Other than being the first place where I can remember hearing Swahili rap – and very popular it was too – there was nothing particularly remarkable about this small, truck-reliant place.

I set-off a little late from Mandawa because I had trouble finding chapatis early enough, which was a little irksome as I had asked the previous evening what time they’d be available. I soon hit road ‘under construction’ and it was fairly good going until I got to Mchinga, other than becoming intimately acquainted with a new kind of powdery white sand that I haven’t seen before as I hit some at speed and took my first fall for a while. This time I landed on the other side, and hit my knee not my hip, but this only troubled me the next day. At Mchinga I finally saw the sea again, and was almost tempted to go in for a swim. Because it was being used as a base by the road constructors I also managed to get a soda baridi (cold) by virtue of the presence of a small generator – they even had Redd’s! – after cycling through soda moto (hot) territory for the previous 40miles.

During my descent into Lindi – which was very rewarding at the end of the day, with the sun going down and the town sprawling next to the sea below (when I was able to glance-up from the incredibly rutted road) – I was pulled-over for the first time at a police roadblock. One of the three policemen had the kind of expression on his face that suggested they might be thinking of shaking me down for some cash, but if that was their intention they soon became more interested in hearing about what I was doing and who I was.

At this stage I knew I had decided to try to go across the wild route to Malawi (see below) for which Lindi would be a better starting point than Mtwara. However, running short of money I knew I was obliged to carry-on to Mtwara where Rosie had told me I would be able to do this (I’ll find out tomorrow morning). Though Lindi was a pleasant enough place, except for the presence of lots of road construction vehicles at work, I carried on the next morning.

Other than the first 10km’s the road to Mtwara was almost without exception very good tar or gravel. My body however was more interested in the distance and started to flag the further I went. It was the usual day of small villages with screaming children, curious locals and either interested or competitive cyclists. The terrain was also quite undulating, with some very large hills. The highlight was cycling into Mikindani, 10km’s north of Mtwara, where the sea actually laps against the side of the road, rustic dugout canoes bobbing on it, and passes underneath into the small mangroves that stretch up to the local village. After some trouble finding accommodation – the recommended guesthouse was full – I ended-up at the rather good Lutheran Centre, where I collapsed after a brief foray to look for food and (unsuccessfully then) internet. I’m feeling completely exhausted, even though I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, and at the back of my mind I suspect that I’ll have to hitch some of the route to Lake Malawi (or Lake Nyasa as it is apparently still called here).

The REALLY Tough Leg

My last day in Dar was used productively, getting information on the intended route to Lake Malawi via Mtwara and Songea from the Tanzanian Tourist Board (although the first person I spoke to there told me that the road to Mtwara had been completed and was tar all the way, which I knew was almost certainly untrue). A rather jovial elderly gentleman who I was then directed to and had traveled the said route gave a wry chuckle when I told him that I was intending to do it by bike. “Yes, well, it is a very interesting region. But from Tunduru ask for local information; there are wild animals there you know.” The Bradt Guide does call the route in question ‘wild’, but that is often just a way of saying that the author hasn’t taken it. However, in this case it is apparently an apt description because the road runs through what is referred to as the ‘control zone’ for the Selous Game Reserve. What that basically means is that there is nothing physically preventing the animals (including the ‘big five’) from roaming in that area, just that mostly they stay further north. This is only a problem because I am almost certainly going to have to camp for at least one night on the way to Songea. However, I gather that it should be okay provided I am in my tent at night if/when any animals do come prowling. If I can do the 200km’s to Namtumbo (75km’s east of Songea) within two days water and food shouldn’t be a problem.

(Incidentally, I just spoke to a Peace Corp volunteer in Mtwara who had taken that route and told me that it was so bad from Tunduru to Songea that people were throwing-up in the vehicle. They also saw a lot of animals including wild dogs…What am I getting myself into?)

So, from here I need to get to Mbamba Bay by Wednesday (or is it Thursday the 13th) to catch the ferry to the border on the north of the Lake. My intended route runs via Newala (2days), Masasi (one day, where the President is from), Tunduru (2/3days), Namtumbo (2/3days), Songea (1day) and Mbinga (1day). Add that all up and you get a very tight schedule; never mind the lions, extra 10kg’s of food and water. Now this is what I call an adventure!

Don’t bother waiting-up…