“Hakuna matata” is Swahili for no worries – that’s what we had in Tanzania.
This holiday was a little bit different to most of our other long trips because we were almost always in company of either Edgar’s family or Verena’s friend Petra.
The first week we spent together with Edgar’s Family of whom Edgar’s mother and her siblings have grown up in Tanzania. In total we were eight people and on our second day we started our 5-day-Safari Trip in the north of Tanzania. Everything was organized through Bush2Beach who did an excellent job. They provided two Safari Jeeps including drivers/guides. We spend the first three days mainly in Tarangire National Park where we also had our Tented-Lodge within the park. We had a very good time there and of course saw many many animals.
After Tarangire we changed accommodation to Isoitok Camp which is located in the Maasai area. One morning we met a Maasai and he showed us a Boma (Maasai village), explained their traditions to us and we also did a medicine walk with him where he told us about natural medicine they use.
We spent our last full day together in the Ngorongoro Crater. The landscape is beautiful there and again we were lucky and saw a lot of animals.
After the Safari we said goodbye to the others and took a plane from Kilimanjaro Airport to Mbeya where Verena’s friend lives and works in a hospital since four years. We had not seen her since 1,5 years and it was really nice to finally visit her. We spent two wonderful days around Mbalizi with a delicious BBQ at a beautiful view point near hot springs, went to the Ngozi Crater Lake and of course also visited the hospital she works in.
Together with some other friends of Petra we drove down to Matema situated at the Lake Nyasa (also called Lake Malawi). We had a wonderful time there together and enjoyed the laidback atmosphere – there are hardly any tourists. We did a beautiful hike to a waterfall, had a stroll through the town, enjoyed the African food and the relaxed atmosphere at the beach with daily campfires in the evening.
After being with Petra for one week our last adventure started. We took the Tanzania-Zambia-Railway from Mbeya to Dar es Salaam. After the train left Mbeya with a 3 hours delay we only lost one more hour on the whole ride. Because the cabins in the train are normally gender separated we booked an entire 4 person compartment for us. We enjoyed driving through many little villages and even through a National Park where we saw wild animals from our train window. The train was shaking very hard all the time but we still managed to get some sleep at night. After 26 hours we arrived in Dar es Salaam from where we had to leave back home the next evening.
NOTES & ANECDOTES
for approx. 830km our train took 26 hours. That’s 32 kilometers per hour. The maximum speed of the train was approx. 65km/h. This was probably our slowest train travel so far.
this is something we recognized in many poor countries: people possess much less and smile much more and seem to be much happier than first world people…
We drove past one village were one man lives with his 10 wives and 164 children. All children are his and he even has an own school for them.
Tanzanians hardly smoke – during our entire trip we only saw 4 (!!!) people smoking. There is no advertising for cigarettes.
for Verena Matema had the perfect combination of a beach – sand, waves and fresh water – no salt which sticks on your skin
one of our drivers called the memory ability of animals “GB” (Gigabytes)