Riding the Tazara Rails

When planning our trip through Africa, we had always kept a little gap in the 'how are we going to get from Zambia to Tanzania' column. The information online is scant at best with a combination of horror stories about busses, chicken buses and trains. The basic gist of our earlier research into the (in)ability to get from Lusaka to Dar Es Salaam was the each mode of transport would breakdown or crash. Every time.

So, we figured we would wait to ask the locals for advice. Luckily, the word on the street was that the train, while slow, was actually pretty nice. So we booked passage on the Taraza 'express' line for a two-day ride on the rails. But, when we got to the train station, we were informed that Kristi and I could not stay in the same 4-person cabin. Seems the rule is that a brother and sister are the only mixed gender pair allowed to cohabitate. No aunts and nephew, No grandfather and granddaughter, No husband and wife. So we slept in seperate rooms with people not related to us. Thanks Zambia for keeping everything tidy.

Once we got on the train and settled in, we discovered what would be our home for the bulk of the 46 hour journey, the lounge car. The lounge car was appointed with red couches that would have looked at home in any college housing, fake wood paneling and the nicest bartender-waiter combo-team ever. After settling into the coed lounge car, we met up with some fellow travelers, Libby and Matt, who had recently been asked by the Peace Corps to kindly leave Kenya for their own safety. Glad we changed our tickets out of Nairobi. We spent the next day and a half playing cards, looking at the beautiful scenery and chatting about our travels. Seemed a lot better than a 50 hour bus ride with no A/C and our luggage on our laps, that's for sure.

During our research prior to the trip about the train, the chief advantage was that the rail line passed through one of the better game reserves in Africa. And so, on the day that we pulled into Dar, we got our free 2 hour safari. Watching eland, ibyx, antelope, aardwolf, water buffalo, warthogs, baboons and, Samango monkeys, without ever getting up off of the couch was pretty darn amazing.

-d

Lusaka, J-town, No Pictures Allowed

Lusaka, apart from being the capital of Zambia and containing the tallest building in Zambia, is the only place to get a guaranteed Tanzanian visa. Getting one on the train at the border seems, by all accounts, “difficult.” So, we decided to spend a few days here getting our paperwork sorted and exploring the city.

As we have discovered all along this trip, it helps to know a local to get out of the Lonely Planet rut. Enter Jonathan Kays from couchsurfing.com. He graciously invited us to stay with him for as long as a month . Although somewhat short of a month, we spent five days with the ever-busy Jonathan showing us around the city and even introducing Kristi and I to his family. We have had the opportunity to hang out in compounds with Jonathan, go to nightclubs, meet many new people and generally have a city experience unlike any yet on this trip. The opportunity to see the full range of the city experience, from ghettoes to shiny new shopping centers and feel welcomed everywhere has been quite heartwarming. Plus, in a strange turn of events, I ended up seeing a gentleman that I met playing pool in Linda compound the night before at the bus station (15 km away) the next day. So, even in a city with over a million people, sometimes it can still operate like a small town.

One note of caution for visiters to Lusaka, DO NOT try to take a picture of the tallest building in Lusaka from the parking lot of the Citibank building. A bullying, yet unarmed, man will drag you to a sweet man with a submachine gun to let you know (after perusing your goofy vacation photos) that pictures are off limits. Nothing like a grinning man with a shiny gun cutting you a break for photographing landmarks.

-d

Victoria Falls, It’s Outta Sight (or The Zim Zam Shuffle)

When planning this trip, one of the places both Kristi and I were most excited to see was Victoria Falls. I'll get one thing out of the way first, it is amazing. We were lucky enough to arrive in the middle of an especially bad rainy season upriver along the Zambezi. The upstart of this is that the experience of the falls is less about just looking and more about being in the falls. Any attempt to prevent a full soaking is a joke. The ponchos, they do nothing. The falls split Zimbabwe from Zambia which affords the opportunity to get two distinct views of the falls.

Zimbabwe Side: First off, Zimbabwe has not experienced the best political, social run in the last few years. Strong arm/corrupt leadership combined with a staggering 6000 percent inflation rate has made the town of Victoria Falls into a ghost town. What once served as the hub of tourism is now a crumbling small town with children attempting to sell or barter crafts with the few tourists who do come through. Not that there is a upside of political and fiscal turmoil, but one of the effects is that the park that contains the falls view is nearly empty allowing a particularly unhurried experience.

The Zimbabwe side allows more unobstructed views of smaller parts of the falls. But when I say smaller part of the falls, here that measns the equivalent of, say, half of the horseshoe section of Niagara Falls. The Zim experience of the falls is much more about short walks through the woods to various viewpoints. At least two of those viewpoints provide a royal soaking from the the falls spray. You would think that there is no real difference between types of soakings. But Zambia would teach us how wrong that is.

The Zim Zam Bridge Shuffle: So to get to the other side of the falls, you have to walk about 2 km across a bridge (with its own wonderful view) to get to the actual border. The experience is truly unique due to the line of trucks caught in limbo between the two countries for-we found out-up to 3 weeks. That's right. If you are transporting, say, a truckload of wicker lawn furniture from Zimbabwe to Zambia, you may be sleeping at the edge of a bridge for 21 days while officials decide whetther or not to allow your wicker bounty to pass.

For Kristi and I, this over-officiousness manifested in a rather protracted border crossing. Because of our country's recent ability to piss off the entire world and make it impossible for others to visit the US, other countries have begun to exact revenge by raising Visa fees by insane amounts. Entry to Zambia used to be free (mere months ago when we budgeted our trip) but is now $135. And, no matter what the Zambian information website says, they do not take South African Rand. They only accept payment in US dollars. We did not have enough US dollars to get both Kristi and I into the country. So, after briefly thinking of ditching Kristi at the border, I had to go into town and change money from South African Rand into Zambian Kwatcha and back into U.S. Dollars (the only way they will do it). Once I sprang Kristi we could make our way to Livingstone and later the Zam side of the falls.

Zambian Side: On this side of the falls, there are far more vantage points to see the entire falls. And, rather than going from viewpoint to viewpoint you walk along the edge of the falls. Because of your proximity to the edge, the spray is like being in a torrential downpour. Just at the point when you think no more water can possibly hit you, you come to a bridge that goes over a small portion of the falls to an island in the river. To give an idea of the insane spray, the water flowing down the incline of the bridge was at leat 4 inches deep and absolutely rushing past. There were moments on the bridge where I thought that the falling water would physically push me backwards. But honestly, the euphoria of being in the midst of such awesome natural power makes it all worth it. As Kristi said, it was like being in the most insane thunderstorm without the fear of being struck by lightning.

Either Zim or Zam, the falls have been one of the most amazing things we have seen on our trip. And unlike Niagara Falls (which has its own sleazy appeal), there's not a casino or laser light show in sight (and likely won't be for the forseeable future).

-d