Leg 17 of 18 · Days 264–296 · Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda
300 Days:Beaches, Balloons & Gorillas
After Victoria Falls we had just over a month left in Africa, and it turned out to be the most varied month of the whole honeymoon. We swapped the deserts and deltas of the south for lake beaches in Malawi, turquoise water in Zanzibar, a hot air balloon over the Serengeti, chimpanzees and gorillas in the Ugandan jungle and a very different kind of Christmas on the River Nile. It was also a month of very long driving days, so grab a cup of tea, this is a long one!
Zambia: Flour Thieves and Riverside Camps
We crossed the border into Zambia and spent our first day on the road to Lusaka, watching market stalls, villages and miles of green countryside roll past the lando window. "View from the lando" became my most used Instagram caption of the month, which tells you everything you need to know about how many hours we spent on that truck!
Our reward for two long days of driving was South Luangwa. Our campsite near Mfuwe sat right on the banks of the Luangwa River and we spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool, looking out over a wide sandy riverbed where hippos and crocodiles were lazing about in the water. Vervet monkeys ran around the trees above us all afternoon.
On the way into Mfuwe we stopped at a textile workshop where the local artists hand paint and screen print fabric. Watching them paint bright elephants, rhinos and lions freehand from little tins of paint was mesmerising.
The monkeys weren't the only troublemakers in camp. Overnight, 4kg of flour went missing from our food supplies. Later that day Stephen found the culprits in the woods, sitting around a big white pile and, as he put it, "snorting white powder". Cheeky baboons! Preparing dinner for 24 people by torchlight that evening (with whatever flour we had left) was another highlight of camp life.
Lake Malawi
Another two long days of driving took us into Malawi and down to Kande Beach on the shores of Lake Malawi, the ninth largest lake in the world. Sitting on the beach you would never guess it was a lake. It has sand, waves and a horizon that goes on forever and after so many hours on the road it was exactly what we needed. We spent the day in our bikinis with a cocktail in hand and the evening watching the moon rise as the sun set over the water.
Further north we drove through a rubber tree plantation where we learnt how the sap is collected. Each tree has a spiral cut in the bark and a little cup underneath to catch the white latex as it drips down, which is then turned into rubber. Malawi was also where Stephen learnt to play Bao, a traditional African board game with stones and lots of little pits, and where we discovered that forget the Big 5, it's all about the Small 5! One evening we were shown a rhino beetle, wings and horn and all, and at our next campsite in Chitimba we found a stick insect so well camouflaged that it took us ages to spot it.
Our time in Malawi ended with a 5am start for the long drive into Tanzania. There aren't many good things about getting up at 4:30am but the sky over Lake Malawi that morning was one of them. It went from black to a deep red, then orange and purple, all whilst we were packing down our tent.
Zanzibar
After a night near Dar es Salaam we caught the early ferry to Zanzibar and before we knew it we were walking past the "Karibu Zanzibar" sign at the port in Stone Town. We were straight into a minibus heading north to Nungwi and I honestly think I squealed when we first saw the water. We had finally reached paradise!
Nungwi was everything you imagine Zanzibar to be, white sand, palm trees and the clearest turquoise water. At low tide the sea pulls right back, leaving huge sand flats dotted with starfish and sea urchins. We had never seen so many starfish in one place! We spent the next day and a half on the beach doing absolutely nothing, which was bliss.
On our last evening in Nungwi we took a sunset cruise on a traditional dhow. The crew played drums and sang as we sailed along the coast, and the sun put on a fiery show as it dropped into the Indian Ocean.
Back in Stone Town we joined a spice tour, wandering through plantations learning how the spices Zanzibar is famous for are grown and spotting huge jackfruit hanging from the trees. In the afternoon we got lost (on purpose this time) in the ancient alleyways of Stone Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Stone Town is famous for its carved wooden doors and I could have spent days photographing them all. We watched one last Zanzibar sunset with a promise that we will definitely be back one day.
The Serengeti & Ngorongoro Crater
Back on the mainland we drove north towards Arusha and said a sad goodbye to Stephen's wedding jandals (flip flops to the British, thongs to the Australians). They survived our wedding on the beach in Mexico, four continents, deserts, rain and snow, but they couldn't survive Tanzania. If you squinted really, really hard from the lando window you could just about see Mount Kilimanjaro hiding in the clouds.
In Arusha we swapped the lando for safari jeeps with pop up roofs and headed into the Serengeti. "Open that roof driver!" was Stephen's catchphrase for the next two days. The Serengeti is enormous, an endless sea of golden grass with the odd acacia tree, and it didn't take long before we found a pride of lions lounging in the shade, completely unbothered by the jeeps full of excited people staring at them.
The next morning was the moment I had been waiting for. We were up before 5am to take a sunrise hot air balloon flight over the Serengeti with Serengeti Balloon Safaris. Watching the balloons being inflated on the plain with the burners roaring was exciting enough, and then we slowly rose into the sky just as the sun came up over the horizon. Floating silently over the plains, with our shadow drifting over the grass and animals below us, was magical.
After a gentle landing we were greeted with a glass of bubbly and a full cooked breakfast at tables set up under an acacia tree in the middle of the Serengeti. I'm not going to lie, I may have balanced a bottle of champagne on my head to celebrate. It was one of the best experiences of the whole 300 days and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Our last stop in Tanzania was the Ngorongoro Crater. We camped right on the rim of the crater and woke up to a view I will never forget, a huge flat topped tree glowing against the orange sunrise, right outside our tent. Down in the crater we spotted ostriches strutting across the grass before we drove back to Arusha and on to Nairobi.
Nairobi marked the end of our Cape Town to Nairobi camping trip and we said goodbye to the friends who had shared the last six weeks with us. It's amazing how close you become to people when you put up tents, cook and travel together every day!
Kenya: Lake Naivasha
After a couple of days relaxing in Nairobi, we celebrated the start of our last adventure in Africa with a glass of bubbly and met our new group for the Kenya and Uganda gorilla trip. Our first stop was Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley. The views over the valley on the drive down were incredible.
That afternoon we took a boat ride on the lake. Hippos popped their heads out of the water all around us (Stephen managed to capture a classic hippo death stare) and we watched an African fish eagle swoop down and snatch a fish out of the water right in front of us. Stephen was very happy with his photo!
The next day we drove to Eldoret, where lunch was guacamole made with the biggest avocados I have ever seen, they were the size of melons! That evening we sat around the campfire, which is what I love most about camping.
Uganda: Chimps & Gorillas
Crossing the border into Uganda was an experience in itself. The line of lorries waiting to cross stretched for over 2km and apparently it can take almost a week for a truck to be processed. Once we were through, the road took us past fields and fields of pretty papyrus. The next morning we stopped at the Equator, where we each stood with one foot in both hemispheres.
Our first primate trek was an early morning chimpanzee trek in Kalinzu Forest. We were up before sunrise and walked through the forest with our guide listening for their calls. It didn't take long before we found them high up in the trees, swinging between branches and having breakfast. In the afternoon we drove through rolling tea plantations to our camp near Lake Bunyonyi.
The next day was the one we had been dreaming about since we first planned this honeymoon: gorilla trekking in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. And impenetrable it was! We hiked up and down steep, muddy slopes through thick jungle until suddenly, there they were. A whole family of mountain gorillas, munching on leaves just metres away from us.
You are only allowed one hour with them and it went far too quickly. The youngsters swung from the vines and showed off whilst the adults just sat there eating and occasionally looking up at us as if we were the strange ones. Looking into their eyes, they are so human like that it is impossible not to feel a connection. There are fewer than 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the world, so to see them in the wild was such a privilege. Stephen and I couldn't stop talking about it for days, and we spent most of the next driving day sorting through the hundreds of photos we took.
Rwanda
From Lake Bunyonyi we crossed the border into Rwanda for a day trip to Kigali. Our first stop was Camp Kigali, where ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed on the first day of the genocide in April 1994. The walls of the building are still covered in bullet holes. We then visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where more than 250,000 people are buried. One room is filled with photographs of the victims, donated by their families, and it was impossible not to be moved by the faces looking back at us. It was a sobering, important day and I'm glad we went.
On the drive back we passed through the beautiful green tea fields of Rwanda. We learnt that the workers are paid only around 5 cents for every kilo of tea leaves they pick. It definitely makes you think about how lucky we are.
Christmas on the Nile
The run up to Christmas was spent on the road to Jinja, the source of the River Nile. The lando was decked out in Christmas lights and turned into a party bus for the drive, which made the long day go a lot faster. On Christmas Eve Stephen rode a zip line out over the Nile and in the evening we all went on a booze cruise down the river, with a feast on board and the sun setting over the water.
Christmas Day felt very strange without turkey and crackers. Instead we had a lazy day by the river and toasted Christmas with a Nile Special beer as the sun went down. Different, but definitely one to remember!
Lake Nakuru & Goodbye Africa
Our last stop in Africa was back in Kenya at Lake Nakuru National Park, after putting our tent up for the very last time in Eldoret (I won't miss that part). Lake Nakuru was a lovely surprise. We saw baboons and Rothschild's giraffes, including one we named Jimmy who strutted past our jeep like he was on a catwalk, and we finished the day with a beautiful sunset through the acacia trees.
And just like that, our 54 days of camping through Africa were over. We drove back to Nairobi and said goodbye to yet another G Adventures family. Over the last two months we had seen the Big 5 in South Africa, climbed the dunes in Namibia, glided through the Delta in Botswana, felt the spray of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, fed the baboons (unintentionally) in Zambia, played Bao in Malawi, walked the beaches of Zanzibar, ballooned over the Serengeti, sailed the lakes of Kenya, learnt about the past in Rwanda and finally met the amazing gorillas of Uganda. We met so many awesome people, discovered so many amazing places and definitely put up too many tents, but this is a part of our adventure we will treasure forever.
Next stop... Thailand, for the last four days of our honeymoon!