Overland Travel With KMcGee

Although I am re-entering the country of Mozambique for the second time on my African overland journey, the first entry was a brief pass-through the northwestern corner en route to Malawi, so I delayed my welcome overview to this second and longer visit. Again, as with the other countries I have visited, it is worth sharing a few factoids about this country to put things in better context and to educate myself (and you, if needed) a little about this corner of the world. Here is what I learned from my research.

• As you can see in the map above, Mozambique is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the southwest between the latitudes 11-27 degrees south, which in terms of distance from the equator is the southern hemisphere equivalent to most of central America in the northern hemisphere.
• Roughly 3 times the size of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah combined.
• Roughly 34 million people, compared to ~332 million in the U.S..
• Portuguese is the official languages, but only about half the people speak it; the remainder speak a variety more than 40 tribal languages.
• Government is described as a unitary dominant-party semi-presidential republic under an authoritarian government, with both a president and prime minister appointed by the president, an elected legislative assembly, and a judiciary, so in many ways similar to the US form of government, but with more power invested in the president – unless Trump gets elected and has his way!
• Currency is the Metical.
• Major exports include aluminum, coal (in the form of briquettes), coke, and natural gas (particularly liquid nitrogen gas).
• Like most of the region, it was occupied by humans for probably 10,000 years until it was “colonized” by the Bantu people in the 5^th century from west Africa. The Kingdom of Mutapa Empire or “Wene we Mutapa” (Shona) was a medieval kingdom (approx. 1450-1629) which stretched between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers of what is now the modern states of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Its founders were culturally and politically related to the Shona kingdom of Great Zimbabwe. The empire was mostly peaceful and built their wealth through trade. Imports included such luxury goods as silk, ceramics and glassware. Exports included cotton cloth, gold, copper, salt and silver. Trade was centrally regulated, with weights and measures controlled by the court. The Mutapa also regulated “the volume of local produce on the international market” to maintain “a favorable balance of trade.” Because the Mutapa had access to gold, they were able to buy livestock and luxury goods like beads. They mostly traded with the Portuguese, who had a growing presence on the coasts of Africa. To protect their trade network and growing economy, the Mutapa relied on a well-trained military force to maintain the security of the empire.
• Suffered the sad, but typical, European colonization history. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore and colonize Mozambique between 1500-1700. After that, the Portuguese continued to rule, but their rule was continually challenged by the Arabs, mostly from Oman, through the mid-twentieth century. Eventually, the native people rebelled against the Portuguese in a sporadic war that eventually, by 1975, ousted the Portuguese and left control of the country in the hands of a communist regime supported by Russia and China. Soon after, however, between 1975-1992 a prolonged bloody civil war ensued between the communists in rule and the capitalist reform party, resulting in over a million people killed. The civil war ended in 1993 and a democratic government was created that has remained in place to the present. Like most East African countries, it should be noted that Mozambique was heavily involved in the East African slave trade under the rule of the Portuguese and Arabs. Although slavery was legally abolished in Mozambique at the end of the 19th century, the chartered Portuguese companies enacted a forced labor policy and supplied cheap—often forced—African labor to the mines and plantations of the nearby British colonies and South Africa.
• Remains one of the poorest and under-developed countries in Arica.
• In 2013, the last rhinos in Mozambique were killed by poachers making them extinct in the country. Additionally, Mozambican poachers regularly cross into Kruger National Park in South Africa to kill rhinos.
• Roughly half the population is under 15 years in age. Bodes well as a potential work force but without better education it means dire poverty in the future.
• Bearing the brunt of unprecedentedly fierce cyclones in recent years. Climate scientists are not in doubt that the warming climate played a significant part in creating these mega-storms which the Mozambicans had never ever experienced before. In 2019, torrential rains and flash floods caught many people by surprise and more than 1,000 people died as a consequence. Mozambique will bear the brunt of the climactic changes that come with global warming. The sad truth is that the people who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are the ones who will suffer the most from it.
• Fossil fuels have now been discovered off the northern coast of Mozambique and big oil companies are now scrambling to secure rights to extract gas (LNG, liquid natural gas) there to make a pretty penny. The projects are still in the exploration phase, but already thousands of people are being forcibly relocated. Important habitats like the Quirimbas National Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve that includes areas of pristine coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds are under severe threat. Ironically, extracting gas from these deposits to help the economy will also serve to accelerate and exacerbate the climate change crisis that is so adversely affecting them.
• Has ~30% of its total land area devoted to national parks, reserves and wildlife management areas. This is truly impressive and hopefully the wildlife populations and ecology of these areas can be recovered and sustained after being decimated by is the countries long civil war. But at the same time, don’t let this impressive figure impress you too much, because we saw at Mwabivi, some of the Reserves are little more than a line on the map. If this 30% was all managed like Majete and Mwonde, then this would indeed be impressive and bode well for the future of wildlife in this corner of Africa.

My last stop in Malawi, the Mwabvi Wildlife Reserve, established in 1953 and expanded in 1975, and covering an area of 52 square miles, is Malawi’s smallest national Park or Reserve, and its least visited – it turns out for good reason.

Mwabvi is located at the southern tip of Malawi bordering Mozambique. Like most of the other Parks and Reserves in Malawi, this one too is managed through a cooperative arrangement between the Malawian government and a private nonprofit trust called Project African Wilderness (PAW), which was formed to protect and restore the Mwabvi Wildlife Reserve. I suspect that Mwabvi was established originally because it was the last natural home to the black rhino in Malawi. However, as with the rest of the country, both wildlife and woodland have been heavily poached over the years, and thus there are few animals left today. Black rhino were hunted out many years ago and there has been no effort to reintroduce them given the management status of the Reserve (see below). As far as I can tell, and what little information I could glean from the Reserve entrance gate ranger (the only Reserve staff person I saw), there are only a few species of antelope left, such as kudu and duiker, but I saw none during my brief stay.

The reserve is situated in the Shire River valley, but it does not abut or straddle the River like Liwonde and Majete, so there is no riverside floodplain or riparian habitat. Instead, Mwabvi straddles a seasonal tributary (now dry). They claim that this Reserve has a wide variety of habitats, but all I could see was unbroken woodlands and the dry riverbed. Perhaps the most notable feature of the landscape is the occasional sandstone outcroppings that provide some relief. Here are a few photos of the relatively uninteresting landscape:

The story of Mwabvi is a sad one. Unlike African Parks, which manages Liwonde and Majete and has done an amazing job of recovering the wildlife populations and improving the infrastructure and facilities, PAW, as far as I can tell, has done absolutely nothing to protect and restore this Reserve. There is no obvious investment in infrastructure or facilities and, so far as I can tell, they have done nothing to protect and recover the wildlife populations. Consequently, there is almost no wildlife to speak of, and as a result, no one visits this Reserve. It appears as though the Reserve is simply a common area for the locals to rummage wood, grass and poach the occasional antelope for meat. It’s a shame, because given the location in the Shire River valley and the woodland habitat, this Reserve could be as successful as Majete with the right investment and management. Fortunately, I only had to pay $13 USD for the one-night stand.

I camped at the public campsite (Migudu) in the Reserve. This was the one redeeming feature of the Reserve. There are just 5 sites, but each are private and nestled up against some minor sandstone outcrops with both shade trees and – surprisingly – a water tap at each site. Amazing! There is no toilet, which is shocking, and it looks as if no one, including the Reserve staff (if there is any) has visited the campground for some time. Nevertheless, the campsite suited me just fine for my brief stay. Moreover, there were two very short trails leaving from the campground, one to a viewpoint and one to the dry riverbed. Note, I had planned on staying 3 nights in the Reserve, thinking there would be more to see, but after arriving and doing a little reconnaissance, I decided to bail after the first night and give myself more time elsewhere. Here’s my campsite:

I took a short video of my campsite and one from the viewpoint to share for those followers that just see my videos and don’t actually read the blog. Here it is:

Mwabvi Wildlife Reserve video (3 minutes)

Ok, I am off to Mozambique. See you there.

After my grueling, but extraordinarily rewarding, trek on Mount Mulanje, I headed west to Majete Wildlife Reserve:

The reserve, established in 1955 and covering 270 square miles, was African Parks’ (the nonprofit organization managing many Parks throughout Africa) first mandate, signed with the government of Malawi in 2003. Prior to this, Majete was an unknown reserve where almost all its wildlife had been hunted out – only a few antelope remained. Just 12 scouts were employed, and not one tourist had visited the park in three years. African Parks immediately began creating the necessary infrastructure and establishing a collaborative relationship with local communities. In 2003, they reintroduced black rhino, followed by elephant in 2006, lion in 2012, giraffe in 2018, cheetah in 2019, and wild dogs in 2021. The Majete law enforcement team maintains the remarkable track record of not having lost a single rhino or elephant to poaching since their respective reintroductions. Thanks to these introductions, along with effective park protection measures, wildlife numbers increased significantly and by 2016, Majete was able to supply wildlife to other parks in Malawi.

I am told that Majete now provides hundreds of jobs and supports thousands of community members with education, health and socio-economic opportunities. Apparently, the communities around Majete number more than 140,000 people who, before 2003, received almost no benefit from the reserve, except the occasional poacher’s meat. Today, however, Majete’s community engagement programs have apparently reduced the incidence of malaria, helped thousands of children attend school, and supported critical enterprise development, cementing the value of the reserve within the community. Like Liwonde National Park, Majete offers some hope for the future of African wildlife. I was very impressed with the state of the Reserve. The major roads were in great shape and the facilities, such as the campground and the observation hides, were in excellent condition.

Like Liwonde National Park, Majete straddles the Shire River, Malawi’s largest river and the only river outlet of Lake Malawi, which drains into the mighty Zambezi River. The landscape is primarily woodlands and some riparian vegetation along the Shire River. Here, the Shire is a fast-moving series of rapids with lots of in-channel boulders and islands, and virtually no floodplain to speak of – quite a contrast from Liwonde where everything centered around the extensive floodplain, as shown here:

In Majete, it is all upland, hilly woodland bisected by lots of seasonal riverbeds – all dry during my visit, as shown in these photos:

Because it was mostly woodland, it was rathger difficult to see lots of wildlife driving around, but I could sit at one of the waterholes, a couple of which have observation hides on platforms – and let the wildlife come to me. Indeed, Majete is mostly a Park of woodlands and waterholes. I spent about half of my time simply sitting at the waterholes:

I ended up seeing quite a bit of wildlife, mostly at the waterholes. Some of my observations where from one of the waterholes with an elevated hide, and at times I had to share the hide with a number of other visitors (as you will hear if you watch the video below), while others where from a waterhole without a hide that I had all to myself. In fact, I took a drive into the interior of the Reserve to one of the waterholes, where I sat for 2-3 hours and filmed a variety of wildlife (see the video if your interested), and I saw no other people the entire morning, including the drive to and from. Apparently, just about everyone goes to the two waterholes with hides, and that is where the safari guides take their clients. SO, going to the interior was awesome. Not only did I see lots of wildlife at the waterhole, as seen in the video below, but on my return drive I ran into a pride of lions and spent some intimate time with a young male – see the video for the experience. Here are a few wildlife shots to wet the appetite:

I camped at the Game Capture Community Campsite in Majete. The first night I share the campground with two other parties; the second night with just another couple, and on the third night the South Africans arrived. In case you don’t remember from last year, South Africans – white ones that is – do love to camp, but they almost always travel in big conveys with lots of people and set up huge elaborate camps, often times with big lights and the works. They sometimes send advance parties to secure the site(s) and get the compound started, as was the case on my third night. Fortunately, the bulk of the convey arrived after I left so it was bearable. It’s actually quite annoying for someone like me that cherrishes the serenity of nature.

The campsite was actually pretty nice. I had a corner and shade trees, and there was a fully-equipped indoor kitchen, covered dinning area, and, most importantly, hot showers with great water pressure! I took advantage of the kitchen to cook a big pot of curried pasta with potatoes, onions, green beens, peas, carrots and tomatoes, and some of the homemade cheese that Nancy and I bought at Mambo ViewPoint in Tanzania – declicous! I will be eating it for 4 days I suspect. Here’s the campsite:

On my second night I heard a male lion roaring just outside the campground during the early morning hours, and I subsequently learned and saw that he had killed a waterbuck at the waterhold right next to the campground. I only saw the remnant carcass after he and the scavengers (including side-stripped jackals, spotted hyena, vultures, and even the warthogs) had their turn at it. See the video for the gorey detail.

Here’s my composite video. Sorry, but it’s rather long since I had lots of wildlife observations, so it’s only for the most dedicated followers. There’s extensive footage of lions from two different observations, one shared with a crowd of other visitors and one private viewing. There’s also footage of Nyala, zebra, elephant, buffalo, eland, ground hornbills, and even some warthog thrown in for good measure:

Majete Wildlife Reserve composite (37 minutes)

Ok, I’m off to my last stop in Malawi, the Mwabvi Wildlife Reserve, where I am told nobody visits, so it should be interesting.

New Species:

1. Eastern (yellow-spotted) nicator
2. Village indigobird

First, somehow the short video of my cheetah sighting in Liwonde National Park didn’t make it into the composite, so I uploaded it separately here:

Liwonde National Park addendum (1.5 minutes)

After leaving Liwonde National Park I headed southeast to the Mulanje Massif, also known as Mount Mulanje, which is a large inselberg or monadnock (i.e., isolated mountain rising up from the surrounding plains) in southeastern Malawi. Mount Mulanje actually contains several peaks, not just one, and is more akin to an isolated mountain range. I climbed Sapitwa Peak, the highest point on the massif at 9,849 feet, which is the highest point in Malawi.

Here’s what the Mulanje Massif looked like as I approached it – a bit intimidating realizing that I was goint to ascend to the top of that beast and beyond to the hidden peaks (note the tea farms on the lower slopes):

Mount Mulanje is essentially a huge mound of granite formed by subsurface magma bubling up to form one giant massive, along with several places where the magma broke through to form the distinct peaks. I was extremely relieved to find out that the entire massive was granite, which forms a really nice surface for traction, otherwise I would not have been able to ascend the steep slabs of rock or safely hop from boulder to boulder along the ridge to the summit of Sapitwa. My route took me up the main valley shown in this photo:

Prior to the trek, I camped near the trail head outside the village of Likhubula while I got myself organized for a two-night backpacking trip into the high country. Day one involved passing by some beautiful waterfalls on the way up to a high mountain basin and then over two passes before descending to a mountain hut at the base of Sepitwa Peak – a total climb of 5,000-6,000 feet over 7 hours. Needlesstosay, I wasn’t in the greatest shape for such a climb after having been mostly on my butt for the past two months, so I suffered a bit – mostly because I let myself get dehydrated. I had a great night stay in the hut, enjoying the company of Aiter and Natalya from the Basque Region of Spain, and then did the grueling 2,000 foot slog up a 45 degree slope on bare rock slabs followed by boulder hopping, squeezing through rock tunnels and eventually making it hand over hand to the summit. The weather was perfect for the hike and the views were stunning – except for the dense smog from all the wood burning both from brush fires on the Massif as well as every household in the region burning wood for cooking and heat. We descended the peak, did a litte R&R at the hut – sorely needed after the 5.5 hour summit excursion – and then trekked for another 3 hours back over the same 2 passes we climbed getting to the first hut and then on to the head of another basin, where a delightful hut awaited my tired feet and legs – not to mention the cold pool in the stream next to the hut. Had another great night with my spannish friends, and we were even entertained by our guides with music and dance. Next day, I did the gruelling descent from the massif. I will include a few slides of the mountain landscape and the huts here, but see the video if you want to see the progression of my trek and hear me give a few side notes about the landscape:

Here’s a video following the progression of my trek in case you want to see a bit more of the trek and here my commentary:

Mount Mulanje trek video (15 minutes)

Ok, I’m off to Majete Wildlife Reserve and back to my usual safari lifestyle.

See you there.

New Species:

1. Mountain wagtail

After leaving Songea in southcentral Tanzania, I headed 300 km south across a very remote border crossing into Mozambique. The crossing took perhaps 15 minutes top and $11 USD, and I was the only one crossing. Apparently, they don’t get many overlanders at that remote post. The 300-km long track was all native surface and extremely slow going given all the bumps and holes and stream crossings, etc., so it took me about 11 hours – argh! The first 100 km in Mozambique was through a Game Reserve – which is basically just a large patch of ground that native people mostly didn’t want to settle and where rich people, mostly from South Africa and the U.S., pay a lot of money to shoot big things. The second 100 km was through almost continuous villages and heavily used land – the only cash crops being charcoal and maize, so far as I could tell. I spent the night in the relatively large town of Lichinga at another iOverlander site that turned out not to be a campsite afterall, but the owner let me stay anyways, and then drove a few more hours southwest to cross into Malawi, where the border crossing took perhaps 1.5 hours and cost $70 USD – there is just no consistency in border crossings. All the border crossings in Africa have been easy, but some take a lot longer and cost a lot more.

My first destination in southern Malawi was Liwonde National Park, established in 1973 and covering 212 square miles, which has a sad history like most the natural areas in Malawi (and elsewhere in this part of Africa), but also has been an inspiring example of what can be done to recover the ecology of an area if there is the will and the means to do so. Liwonde has been the site of some significant wildlife translocations and reintroductions, transforming it into a sanctuary for Malawi’s wildlife. When African Parks assumed management of Liwonde, in partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) in 2015, the park was riddled with tens of thousands of wire snares – more snares existed than large animals – and it had some of the highest human-wildlife conflict levels in the region and almost no wildlife. But since then, Liwonde has established one of the most effective conservation law enforcement measures and training in southern Africa, integrated advanced technology to protect and monitor wildlife, removed more than 40,000 wire snares, and orchestrated a number of historic animal reintroductions. The Park was entirely fenced to reduce the potential for poaching and to reduce human-wildlife conflicts, and all evidence that I saw suggests that it has been very successful. Moreover, the Park has collaborated and cooperated with some 31 local communities neighboring the Park to accomplish their mission.

The Park straddles the Shire River, which drains Lake Mwombe, which is connected to Lake Malawi (Nyassa) by a short stretch of river. Lake Malawi is one of the largest Rift Valley lakes. The Park is evenly split between bottomland floodplain and upland woodlands, with a few tall hills thrown in for diversity. I spent most of my time in the floodplain where most of the wildlife is concentrated. The floodplain is a mosaic of openings and Mopane woodland, but much of the floodplain is now under water. Like all the Rift Valley lakes, water levels have been rising over the past several years. The unusually high rainfill this year (recall the massive flooding in Kenya, Tanzania and elsewhere, which cause the loss of ~2,000 people in Malawi) has exacerbated the lake level rise and the consequence is that much of the floodplain is now under a few feet of water. What used to be extensive floodplain grasslands (providing food for the grazing animals) is now water. Most of the remaining dry surface is either bare ground or grass stubble, as the extensive and huge termite mounds, some of them truly ancient, keep the ground almost completely free of vegetation. Termites in this ecosystem are truly a keystone species as their mounds serve as habitat islands for a variety of plant species, including several tree species that seemed to be found only on these mounds, because the plains are seasonally flooded or at least very wet, making it unsuitable for a lot of plant species. These mounds also provide I homes for a wide range of species, including most notably mongoose. Moreover, their role in decomposition of plant matter and nutrient cycling is immense. Termites are truly amazing! Here are a few shots of the varied environments in the floodplain:

It was quite evident that African Parks has really turned this Park around and made it into a true wildlife sanctuary. On my drives I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of waterbuck and impala, hundreds of greater kudus and warthogs, a couple harems of sable antelope, a smattering of bushbuck, several elephant family units, and lots of waterbirds. Clearly, African Parks is doing something right in only 9 years. Here’s a few shots of some of the wildlife:

In 2017, African Parks began re-establishing Liwonde’s predator population by bringing back cheetah, which had been absent from the park for a century. This was followed in 2018 by a founder population of lion, and wild dog in 2021. The lion population now contains 3 large prides. Unfortunately, I only saw one lion on my drives, but wasn’t able to get any decent photos or videos. Apparently there are many cheetah now (they told me, but I forget the number) and on my second morning drive I came across one of the GPS-collared individuals. He/she was almost 100 meters off the road lying at the base of a big tree in a sunny patch, and then at one point it got up to stretch and look around and then suddenly got startled by something and bolted away into the woods beyond. I had probably 10-15 minutes with this beautiful animal. I wish I could have watched it for longer, but I’ll take what I can get when it comes to cheetah (and leopard) See the video, which is not great given the distance, but here’s a photo taken through my spotting scope:

Tragically, the established wild dog pack was all killed when some low-life poisoned a water hole within the Park. This year, they reintroduced another 7 dogs and one wildlife trust volunteer I talked to said they saw a pregnant female a few days earlier, so that means they the population is reproducing. In 2019, 17 black rhino were relocated from South Africa to Liwonde in one of the largest international black rhino translocations in history, and I believe the population has doubled since then, so you can bet I was on the look-out for rhino. In fact, on my afternoon boat ride we spotted a single black rhino on the edge of the flooded plains, but it was too far away to photograph.

One of the reasons I decided to visit southern Malawi was to see this recovery effort in action and to support the effort through my visitor fees. I think if there is any hope for the long-term sustainability of wildlife populations in eastern and southern Africa, it is going to take efforts like this.

One of the innovative strategies implemented here to reduce human-elephant conflicts prior to the electric fencing of the entire Park was to encourage local farmers abutting the Park to plant red hot chiles to create a sort of deterrent fence. The “Spicy Farmers” project has harvested nine tons of chillies, which has also resulted in a decrease in human-elephant conflict thanks to the ‘chilli elephant barrier’ created by the project. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any evidence of the “chilli fence” now that the Park has a contiguous electric fence, but it is a cool idea similar to the beehive fence I talked about and showed last year.

I camped in Liwonde Safari Camp located just inside the Park fence. I was suppose to camp in the campground at this lodge by prior arrangement but before I arrived a few other parties showed up unexpectedly according to the owner, so they set me up on the other side of the compound in a wonderfully private setting overlooking a large wetland and a tributary of the Shire River – and with shade trees to boot. Within an hour of setting up camp, I had 4 handsome waterbuck bulls, 2 big warthogs, 1 delicate bushbuck, and one bull elephant on the penninsula across from my campsite (see video for footage of all but the elephant who was too far away) and a pied kingfisher (Mary!). And on the following day, a hippo showed up grazing during the middle of the day. Here’s a photo of my campsite:

Here’s a composite video of my visit to Liwonde National Park:

Liwonde National Park composite (18 minutes)

OK, I am off to backpack in the Mulanje Mountains. Should be interesting!

New Species:

1. Bohm’s bee-eater
2. Eurasian hoopoe
3. Eastern paradise whydah

First, ordinarily I would welcome you to Mozambique, as that is the country I entered next after leaving Tanzania, but since I just spent a day and a half driving through the northwestern region en route to Malawi, I will delay the introduction to Mozambique until I re-enter for an extended period after leaving Malawi.

However, I will post this composite video of my drive through the northwestern region of Mozambique between the Tanzanian border and the Mozambique town of Lichinga, where I stayed for a night before going on to Malawi. Note, this video is solely footage taken from the driver’s seat as I drove along 200 km of dirt track and through small villages in Mozambique, so if that is not what interests you, do skip the video:

Northwest Mozambique composite video (8 minutes)

I am entering the country of Malawi for the first time on my African overland journey, so it is worth sharing a few factoids about this country to put things in better context and to educate myself (and you, if needed) a little about this corner of the world. Here is what I learned from my research.

• As you can see in the map above, Malawi is a land-locked country bordered by Tanzania to the north, Mozambique to the east and south, and Zambia to the west and located between the latitudes 9-18 degrees south, which in terms of distance from the equator is the southern hemisphere equivalent to most of central America in the northern hemisphere.
• Rough the same size as Pennsylvania.
• Roughly 20 million people, compared to ~332 million in the U.S..
• English is the official language, but Chechewa is the national language spoken by more than half the population. And there are numerous other tribal languages spoken as well.
• Government is described as a unitary presidential republic with a structure much like the United States, except with a functioning senate in the legislature.
• Currency is the Kwacha, although US dollars are accepted in many places.
• Major exports include tobacco, gold, tea, ground nuts, and dried legumes.
• Like most of the region, it was occupied by humans for probably 10,000 years until it was “colonized” by the Bantu people in the 5^th century from west Africa. Between 1600 and the end of the 19^th century the Portuguese exerted a strong influence over the native peoples in the area and promoted the slave trade. In 1891, the area was taken over by the British as the British Central African Protectorate, and it was renamed as Nyasaland in 1907. In 1953, it became a protectorate within the semi-independent Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The Federation was dissolved in 1963. In 1964, the protectorate was ended: Nyasaland became an independent country as a Commonwealth realm under Prime Minister Hastings Banda, and was renamed Malawi. Two years later, Banda became president by converting the country into a one-party presidential republic. Declared President for life in 1971, Malawi’s next few decades of independence were characterized by Banda’s highly repressive dictatorship. Following the introduction of a multiparty system in 1993, Banda was defeated in the 1994 general election. Today, Malawi has a democratic, multi-party republic headed by an elected president and has continued to experience peaceful transitions of power.
• Malawi is the fourth poorest country in Africa and over 40% of the population live on less than $1 a day. Sadly, it has one of the highest rates of Aids orphans in Africa
• Lake Malawi (also called Lake Nyassa) is 350 miles long from its northern to its southern tip, making it the ninth largest lake in the world, and the third largest and second deepest in Africa (eclipsed by Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika). It is, according to UNESCO, home to more species of fish than any other lake on the planet, including some 700 types of cichlid – the little, colorful, finned creatures which flicker and flutter in its shallows.
• Has ~23% of its total land area devoted to national parks, reserves and wildlife management areas. This is truly impressive given the undeveloped and poor state of the country, but the wildlife populations were decimated throughout the entire country until relatively recently when reintroduction and recovery efforts were taken.

After leaving my little gem of a campsite at Kilwa, after being delayed by my primary car battery failure, I made my way south to the southern most point on the coast of Tanzania:

My destination was the Mnazi Bay-Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park and the Msambiti Penninsula. The road was a pothole nightmare once again, but I wont sour this post with more whinning about that. The Park, established in 2000, encompasses a narrow sliver of coastline along the southern coast bordering Mozambique. The area covers 251 square miles, of which one-third is on land. The marine environment within the park is exceptionally diverse and includes mangroves, rocky and sandy shoreline, mudflats, salt pans, fringing coral reefs, lagoonal patch reef, seagrass beds, three islands and numerous small rocky islets.

Interestingly, close to 3,000 or 30,000 people (depending on the source) live within the “Park”, depending mainly on marine resources for their livelihoods; the park includes in its boundaries 11 villages and 8 sub-villages. There are few opportunities for development, hence poverty is rife. This has created an over dependence on marine resources and the persistent use of destructive fishing methods. Indeed, between the ubiquitous human development on the penninsula and the unconstrained fishing that I observed, there really isn’t any “Park” to this Park other than a name on the map and an opportunity to extract money from non-resident tourists like me. This is another pet peave of mine: Parks that don’t really protect the environment from human uses and yet charge an arm and a leg for non-residents to access. This Park is a classic example of this. To make matters worse, natural gas was discovered in Mnazi Bay in 1982, and wells were brought into operation in 2006. Gas from the wells all over the penninsula within the Park is now piped to the mainland within the Park where there is a big gas processing plant. If I had known it was going to be this un-Parklike, I probably would not have made the extra drive to get down there.

On a positve note, I camped in another delightful beachside location at a private lodge and it cost only $8 USD. I had the place to myself except for a nice German family with two young children and a grandpa that stayed in one of the cottages. Unfortunately, as with my previous campsite, I didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy the site other than an evening, as I was off early morning to go on a whale-watching boat ride with the German famil – despite the fact that they were christian missionaries. You will have to watch the video to see my campsite, as I forgot to take a picture. The target of the whale watching trip was humpback whales, which come to these nearshore waters beginning this time of year to give birth before heading back south to colder waters for feeding. Apparently, the whales had been seen recently were almost certain to see them – according to Park staff and boat captian ???? – but we saw none after about 2 hours of looking. We did see some spinner dolphins but I suppose the highlight was the gorgeous sunrise:

My purpose on the Penninsula was actually not whale watching – that was unexpected – but rather snorkling on the nearshore coral reefs. After the boat trip I spent a couple hours snorkling on beautiful coral heads just off the beach. Unfortunately I don’t have underwater pictures to share as I don’t have an underwater camera, but the reef was in moderately healthy condition (patchy) but there were lots and lots of colorful fish and the water was shallow and clear so visibility was great. Needlesstosay, I had the entire reef and beech to myself. Here’s the beach where I snorkled in the waters just offshore:

I was planning on spending two nights on the Penninsula but then realized that my drive the following day would have been 10-12 hours. No way could I handle that with the often stressful driving, so I left the Penninsual and headed west towards my destination, Songea, before then turning south to enter western Mozambique. After driving several hours I stopped before sunset at a “wild” campsite identified on my trusty iOverlander app. It was a rock quarry next to a rocky hilltop right off the highway. Looked good, so I started to set up when a local showed up on the rock above. I later learned that the locals come to this high point in the evening to make their cell phone calls as the reception is good there. Before long there was probablly 8 men looking down on me from the rocks. OK, probably not the safest and wisest place to spend the night since technically I was tresspassing. Fortunately, the first man there was a secondary school biology teacher at the community-based school in the tiny village of Lumesule just over the hill and we got to talking and he invited me to spend the night at the school grounds. So, I packed up and we headed to his school.

I met several of the other teachers and staff and was surrounded by hundreds of young boarding students for a while before a couple of the teachers walked me into the village center to show me around. Not much to the village center other than one small fruit stand selling only banana’s, and a pool table for the young, mostly jobless, 20-year old men to spend their evenings. In 2-3 hours of discussion, I learned a lot about the community-based school, local, national and international politics and economic challenges, and of course football (i.e., soccer). The English teacher, who barely spoke English, tried to get me to stay through the weekend to talk to the students in proper English, but I simply couldn’t comply given my plans ahead.

Overall, the school is a sad and depressing situation, and it would be easy to want to help out financially and otherwise, but then you realize that there is a school just like this one every several kilometers down the road and it feels hopeless. In this case, for this tiny village, there are 300 students, half of whom board, and 17 teachers. The students have to help with all the capital improvements and facility maintenance on top of their “studies”. They even have to carry water by buckets up from the nearby river to meet their water needs. Most of the parents don’t support sending their kids to secondary education but fear government repercussions if they don’t, so they do, and the kids treat learning and using English as a form of punishment, so nearly all of them lose all English skills once they leave school – as was demonstrated in our visit to the village. Worse, only about 10 out of 300 kids will go on to any form of higher education because the parents and community largely don’t realize the benefits of doing so. So 90% of them are stuck in the same poverty-striken life of their parents with no aspirations to change that. It’s heartbreaking because the kids simply don’t know any better and they are getting no incentives or encouragement to improve themselves and their livelihoods through higher education. Instead, 100% of them (I learned) simply fall back on their religious beliefs (75% muslim, 25% christian) to justify their lot in life. Religion as an escape goat to justify suffering in this life is one of the great lies of religion in my opinion.

Here’s an early morning photo of my site before the students got up as I left early in the morning:

Here’s a composite video with a clip of my Msambiti campsite, snorkling site and the school grounds at Lumesule:

Msambiti and beyond composite (4 minutes)

OK, off to Songea for a night in town and then south to Mozambique. Cheers.

After leaving Saadani National Park, Nancy and I headed south to the metropolis of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city and economic hub located on the central coast. We spent two nights in Dar and then I headed south alone to the small coastal village of Kilwa:

Regarding Dar es Salaam, have you figured out yet that I don’t much like big cities – indeed most cities, large or small – but some are tolerable, such as Nairobi, but others are hell on Earth for me. Dar clearly falls into the latter category for me. It is total choas from the outskirts to the interior: an unorganized mass of humanity, exhaust-filled air, traffic congestion and patterns that quite frankly boggles the mind (i.e., there is no order to the traffic pattern, just chaos), and, as far we could tell, no redeeming attractions to compensate for the above. The video below has a couple minutes footage of me driving in the tuk-tuk and bus-filled streets of Dar as I was leaving the city on my own, but this was only a moderately chaotic scene as I could not video while driving in the truly chaotic scenes. No polyanna attitude on this one (sorry Sherry).

We stayed in a hotel in the downtown section of Dar which may have contributed to my opinion, as I expect there are some nice sections on the waterfront. We took care of some important shopping business on the way into the city and then chose to chill in the hotel for the next full day. Nancy got a pedicure and a massage while I used the fitness center, and we both caught up on some Netflix episodes. The following day, I left the city alone without my foremost partner and companion, Nancy, as she went to the airport for the long journey home. Sad day for both of us!

Driving south down the coast, I had no particular destination in mind. I simply wanted to get far enough south so as to get to my coastal destination the next day. I found a place on iOverlander and checked it out online and it looked great. It was a small beachside lodge and campsite outside the small coastal village of Kilwa about 6 hours drive south of Dar. Just before the turn off I pulled off to the side of the road to have a snack and turned off the engine. When I finished and got back into the Green Dragon and turned the key, I heard clicking and saw lights blinking on the dash, but no engine start – SHIT! It was clearly an electrical problem, not mechanical. I checked the batteries and filed down all the wire leads connected to both the primary and secondary battery. Nothing doing. The primary battery voltage was down a bit so that seemed like the most likely culprit. Anyways, some workers walked by and one of them spoke some very limited English and I had him phone the village ahead and have an auto electrician/mechanic come out and help. He came on a motorbike after an hour or so and checked all the wires and battery connections as I did, and tested all the fuses (there are many of the them in probably 4 or 5 different locations) and then speculated that the primary battery was bad. I was suspicious of the diagnosis at firest because it had been fine all along showing no signs of failing. So, he went back to town and an hour later came back with a couple of spare batteries. After messing around a bit, we started the Green Dragon with one of his spares and put the original back in, drove to the village, turned off the engine and tried to start it again, but it failed completely. This confirmed that the battery had simply failed – argh! So, I purchased the best new battery available, hoping that it will prove to be a decent battery, and went on my merry way about 5-6 hours after stopping for my snack.

That’s the bad news of the day; here’s the good news. The Kilwa Beach Lodge was another hidden gem. I was the only guest and I parked the Green Dragon under palms facing the beach, tidal flats and breakers on the offshore reef. Cool offshore breeze, waves gently rolling in, and a nearly full moon made for yet another sublime tropical beachside campsite. Unfortunately, I only had the evening to enjoy the site due to my battery delay. Here’s a couple of photos but there is also footage in the video below:

Here’s a very short composite video that contains two snippets: one of driving in Dar and another of my Kilwa beachside campsite:

Kenya south coast composite (3 minutes)

Next stop is the southern most point on the coast of Tanzania bordering Mozambique, see you there!

We left the Usambara Mountains and headed back to the coast to Saadani National Park.

We took a different way back than the way we came (up that steep escarpment if you recall) and it was an absolutely delightful and spectacular drive. The road was packed dirt, perfectly graded, and smooth driving – so nice when you encounter these roads unexpectedly. The road wound through the mountains, climbing and descending hillsides carved up into small farms with perfectly terraced gardens and traversing valley bottoms with rice patties and vegetable crops covering the floodplains. Everything was green and lush and so colorful. Often the backdrop included rugged mountain slopes with rocky outcrops. Unfortuntely, we were too mesmerized by the scenery and keeping an eye on the winding road with lots of blind corners to take any pictures or videos, so you will have to use your imagination.

Saadani National Park, encompassing 410 square miles, was officially declared a National Park in 2005 from the former Saadani game reserve. Saadani has been one of the most heavily contested Parks in Tanzania since the National Parks Authority designated the Park. Most of the local communities surrounding the Park, and formerly residing inside the Park, have fought the Parks Authority over the declaration and continue to dispute the authority of the government to declare the area as a National Park. However, apparently once the area was designated an official Park, the wildlife populations began to recover from overharvesting by both the big game hunters and poaching. Indeed, few visitors go to Saadani to see the wildlife, but rather to enjoy the miles of beaches and undeveloped coastline. Any wildlife observations are considered a bonus. As expected, we observed that the Park still has very low numbers of large mammals; we figured that it probably hasn’t been long enough for the populations to build. Indeed, we saw very few animals on our drives except in one location where the grass was short and the young shoots were sprouting from a not-so-long-ago prescribed burn. There, we saw lots of waterbuck, bohor reedbucks, impala and giraffe, but not much else. We did spend some time in the evening for sundowner at a small reservoir where we were rewarded with a troop of Angolan black and white colobus monkeys and a family unit of elephants, not to mention the beautiful malachite kingfisher. Overall, howover, the animals were quite shy still due to their long history of being hunted, so I only managed to get photos of a few animals (sorry, but they are rather grainy given the zoom I had to use):

The habitat in the Park is sufficient to support lots of grazing and browsing animals, so perhaps it is only a matter of time before the populations fully recover. It could be another 50 plus years or more before there could be numbers enough to fully occupied the available habitat. Interestingly, Saadani is the only National Park in Tanzania, and all of East Africa for that matter, that harbors both marine and terrestrial habitats. Moreover, Saadani is one of the few breeding site for endangered Green Sea Turtles and the only Tanzania Park to protect mangrove forest. The coastal forest in this unique park also harbors the rare Black and white Colobus Monkey but we didn’t see any. Here are a few shots of the varied habitats in Saadani from our drives:

Like many of the Parks in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, the Parks do a terrible job of maintaining their roads. Many of the so-called “major” roads either turn into brush-encroached trails or are interrupted, without warning, by impassable barriers, such as washed out stream crossings. And even more frustrating are the road signs that direct you to a destination but there is no road; e.g., “Park headquarters ->” and you turn and look that direction and all you see is tall grass and bush- go figure? I am sure many, many years ago there might have been a track leading in that direction, but it has long since been rewilded, yet the Park keeps the signage to frustrate the self-drivers like us. Sorry, this is one of my pet peaves (Sherry, I can’t be a polyanna on this one, sorry). We encountered both of these situations on our drives:

On a positive note, we camped at the beachside public campsite. Actually, the campground was no longer in use and supposedly being repaired (all evidence to the contrary), so we were allowed to set up camp in front of the nearby Guesthouse. It was a beautiful setting right next to the beach, which we had almost to ourselves. There were a couple local fisherman using their nets in the near-shore waters on occasion and a few Park visitors to the adjacent Bandas, but we saw almost nobody on the beach. We took advantage of the situation and had a refreshing dip in the warm Indian Ocean waters each midday. Here’s our campsite and sunrise view:

OH, and let’s not forget the sandy beach covered with sand crabs at night, and the African civits and genets in our campsite at night (see the video for footage of the civit):

We took an evening boat ride on the Wami River on our last evening. We saw lots of hippos and crocs and several bird species, including the beautiful mangrove kingfisher, but the river didn’t have the character of other big rivers we have been on:

Here’s a composite video of our visit to Saadani National Park:

Saadani National Park composite (6 minutes)

Unfortunately this was Nancy’s last safari. We are off to Dar es Salaam for two nights and then she flies home – argh!

New Species:

1. Lichtenstein’s hartebeast
2. Bohor reedbuck
3. Blue-breasted bee-eater
4. Long-tailed cormorant
5. Dark chanting goshawk
6. Long-tailed fiscal
7. White-fronted plover
8. Caspian tern
9. Common sandpiper
10. Mangrove kingfisher

We left Amani Nature Forest Reserve in the eastern Usambara Mountains and headed west, albeit in a circular route as there is no direct route through the mountains, the mountaintop villages of Mtae and Mambo in the western Usambara Mountains.

The drive to our destination skirted the edge of the Usambara Mountains and allowed us to observe one interesting land use I would like to share. A large portion of the land was dedicated to growing Sisal, which we learned is a type of Agave plant (that we are familiar with in the southwestern U.S.) that was supposedly smuggled here from Mexico in 1893 by a German (remember, Tanzania, then named Tanganyika, was a German colony back then) in the stomach of a stuffed crocodile. Sisal is grown for the leaves, which are harvested, dried and processed for the strong fibers which are used to make rope/twine, clothing, and a variety of other products. At one point, Tanzania was the largest exporter of sisal in the world, and apparently it is still producing a fair amount of it. Anyways, we new nothing of sisal until seeing it on our drive and found it interesting to see all the sisal plantations and small processing “plants” (in quotes, because some aren’t more than a big shack). Here’s a photo of small-scale sisal plantation and one of live sisal plants with the shredded leaves hanging on drying racks:

We also found it interesting and impressive that on at least some of the smaller, more rural sisal farms, they were planting beans and corn in between the rows of sisal – which reminded us of planting the “3 sisters” of beans, squash and corn of our southwest – as shown here:

Our drive to our destination also involved a climb of about 4,000 feet over a distance of perhaps 10 km up an incredibly steep winding road with numerous hairpin turns that the Green Dragon could just barely make. There’s a short piece of footage that doesn’t do the drive justice at all, as we both forgot to video the drive during the worst part of the climb since we were so focused on staying on the road and listening to the Green Dragon strain. Put it this way, I was in first gear for 95% of the drive up the escarpment owing to the 20-25% grade on most of it. Here’s a view down to the valley below the escarpment – and you have to wonder how they put a road up that hillside:

We stayed in a luxury cottage at Mambo Viewpoint Ecolodge perched on the edge of the Usambara Escarpment that drops off precipatously about 4,000 feet to the valley below. We were booked for a standard cottage – as a treat for Nancy after several days of camping in the Green Dragon – but they upgraded us to the honeymoon suite to accommodate another group – we didn’t protest, and I took credit for the upgrade claiming that it was for our belated 40th anniversity! Here’s a photo of our cottage and our sunset view (but see the video for a tour of the cottage inside and out):

Here’s a photo showing MamboViewPoint lodge (on the high point above the cliffs) and the precipatous cliff face of the escarpment below our cottage:

Our lodging was “full board”, which meant all our meals were included. Here’s a shot of our breakfast view from the restaurant veranda. Not a bad view to dine with, hey! And the food was excellent. After the first night we also had the lodge almost to ourself; there was just one other guest the second night, but some bikers joined for the third night.

We spent a fair amount of time just enjoying the views and watching the bird life in front of our cottage. The most notable and beautiful species was the Malachite sunbird, which I happened to get a decent photo of, even with my phone camera:

On our first full day, we hiked from the lodge along the escarpment on what was advertised as the “cliffside trail”. However, we quickly found out that the trail quickly disappeared and turned into a network of steep footpaths used by the locals to access their plots of land on the hillside. We meandered on footpaths until we reach a significant trail/road and then made our way into the center of the village for market day. We negotiated for some fresh produce that would not perish quickly, including some yams, carrots, onions and green peppers. Note, you haven’t really experienced Africa until you have mixed it up in an open street market and purchased items:

On our second full day we did a 7 mile trek through Shagayu National Forest Reserve, which is a partially protected montain cloud forest. Part of the Forest is industrial forestry; i.e., plantation forestry. The trek started out as a bird walk, but we quickly realized that not only did our guide not know the birds very well but that the vegetation was so dense that we couldn’t see the birds that were there, so we transitioned into what turned out to be largely an ethnobotony trek as our guide was extremely knowledgeable about the various human uses of many of the forest plants. Most of the trail was a wild and steep footpath that was created by local women from the adjacent villages accessing the forest for firewood and medical plants. Along the way we visited a beautiful waterfall that is in the video below and saw the striking black and white colobus monkeys:

Along the trail we also encountered a couple of tradional ritual sites that were quite intriguing. Apparently, many of the locals still believe in the spirit world and go to these sites to perform rituals to please the spirits. The ritual can involve cooking and leaving food for the spirits to eat and leaving money for them to spend (?????). These sites are also used by the “healers” to perform a bit of “black magic”; e.g., to bring people luck in the coming days. In fact, we met a party on the trail on the way to one of these sites, including the healer and a man and woman with two chickens that were going to be sacrificed, presumably to bring this supposedly already very rich man (according to our guied) more luck. Here’s a photo of one of these sites:

Here’s a composite video of our visit to MamboViewPoint Lodge and surroundings in the western Usambara Mountains:

MamboViewPoint composite (13 minutes)

OK, we are leaving the mountains and heading back to the coast to visit Saadani National Park, and Nancy’s last stop before Dar es Salaam. See you there!

New Species:

1. Malachite sunbird
2. Northern grey-headed sparrow
3. Bar-throated apalis
4. White-necked raven
5. Hartlaub’s turaco