Usambara Mountains, Vicky hits Phil!

And so began the trekking chapter of our travels. Recognising that after two months on the beach we were not quite in form to leap up Kili straight away we decided to go village trekking in the Usambara Mountains which is in north east Tanzania.

We used Lushoto as our base. We stayed in a nice lodge in it's own little forest with monkeys jumping around the grounds and after the hustle and bustle of Dar the calm was very much welcome.

After a day of chilling we started our village trek. Our guide book recommended taking a local guide with you on the tour. We looked into this and thought that was an unnecessarily expensive option so decided to do it ourselves, mainly relying on our GPS, Phil's ability with a compass, the directions from our trekking book and a tourists guide to Swahili. Not many tourists venture off on their own and this kind of added to the appeal for us.

The trek unfolded as follows:

Day 1

Lushoto to Lukosi via Forest Commission

We set off and walked up hill. We carried on walking up hill pretty much all day with a slight detour to the forestry commission. It hurt! We were right about the effect of lazing on beaches had on us - our bodies weren't used to it and after 19 k we were glad to arrive at our first night's lodging. The moutain scenery during the day very much reminded us of trekking in the himalayas and in asia. The colours, vegetation and the way the villagers cultivated their land looked just like the views we saw in India.

We were starving when we arrived at our first lodge. Not much english was spoken so through sign language and our dodgy swahili we communicated that we needed lots of food and that was certainly delivered - we had a banquet! It's amazing how far a smile and I want to eatsign language can get you. Got a room too, the swahili book had the word for room in it. Sadly it didn't have the words fro dust free matress in it and we spent half an hour sneezing.

Day 2 - Lukosi to Rangwi

Whilst Lukosi is quite small it is famous for it's market and people come from all over Northern Tanzania to have a shop. The atmosphere changed from the previous day where the road had been busy with vehicles to a much more rural self reliant environment. So, as we left the village the road was very busy with people carrying their produce and pottery, usually on their heads - until you saw it you wouldn't beleive the size of the stuff the women carry! Sadly we were told by a doctor doing her out here that the older women all have arthritic necks as a result.

As ever, we were a novelty and people would crane their knecks trying to get a look at us. The children's reactions were particuarly funny. They were either very enthusiastic or petrified of us. They identify us as 'Mzungo' which basically means 'white person'! When ever we entered a new village it was usually accompanied with a chorus of 'Mzungo' 'Mzungo' with lots of children pointing at us - not very PC! The clever ones would also say to us, 'Mzungo - how are you?' or 'Mzungo - where are you going?'. The naughty ones (in the minority) would say,'Mzungo - give us money'. May not be a surprise to know that 'white person - give us some monry' did not induce us to put our hands in our pockets! Sometimes a child walking opposite us with his head down would only look up and notice us when we were right in front of them. The fear in their eyes when they saw how close they were to a Mzungo was very funny. They then seemed to perform an assessment of whether they would be safer throwing themselves off the mountain side rather than walking any closer to us. A game we developed when the children followed us (they would never turn their backs on us!) was to let them get close then suddenly turn round and say 'Boo'! Until they realised we were playing there was almost tears of fear from some!!

This kind of reaction happended throughout our tour. Adults would also stare at us but people are very courteous out here and nearly every conversation is started with asking how you are. So, when people stared we said hello and asked how they are. This always elicited a huge smile and a return of pleasantries. When we were lucky this ended the exchange and they were left with the impression that maybe Mzungoes aren't quite such uncultured, odd, heathens as they can speak a bit swahili. (7 words to be exact!) Adults were also keen on introducing their young children to us. Pretty much every people were curious about us but were very warm and welcoming, particualry when you had a go at their language.

Anyhow, back to the trek. This was a beautiful day's trekking. We passed through beautiful mountain village scenery and lovely cool forests easily finding our way even when leaving the road.

We were however glad when we reached our second nights stay -Rangwi. Here we were staying in a nunnery and it was lovely! We were very well looked after, had clean rooms and had masses of food. The nuns were very friendly and were very impressed with us for finding them without a guide (smug Bennetts). They were even nice to us after we got the 'grace' rituals wrong during the two meals we had with them (once my fault, once Phil's fault)! Strange, but the whole place was full of white lace coverings, tables, windows, bookshelves, seats, I think it must be a rule for the nuns to get as close to their steriotype as possible.

Day 3 Rangwi to Mtae

Another morning's beautiful trekking through villages in the mountains. The afternoon however was the highlight as we had views over the plains, a national park and the mountains.It was really stunning. The mountains just drop off 1500m into the plains within a mile or so and then the plains stretch out flat to the horizon with mountains occasionally pock marking them along the way. Unfortuantely our batteries ran out so we are relying on a nice couple we met to send us their pictures before we can add them here!

Day 4 Mtae to Mlalo

We decided on this day to find a different route rather than retracing yesterdays trail. It was all going well until we decided to ignore the directions from a local and instead follow the pointers on the geko (GPS thingy). This led us on a narrow path through thick forest where you needed a stick to waft spiders webs out of the way and defend yourself from the forest beasties (ok - a complete exaggeration but it had that feel).

The geko stopped working due to the tree canopies so we were left choosing direction based on instinct. We got lost...The picture of Phil below was taken just after we had left the forest. At that point we were feeling rather pleased with our navigation...... Phil said he knew exactly where we were.

Yep, we got it completely wrong and ended up doing a 360 degree circle through the forest and ended up coming out pretty much at the same point as we went in!! Phil did know exactly where we were, we were back where we started. We would have got it even more wrong if some surprised locals we had seen in the forest hadn't pointed us in the right direction. We did have a compass with us but for some reason we decided to ignore the fact it was telling us we were going in the wrong direction and go with our instinct! Good lesson learnt there!

When we came out of the woods and carried on down the path, following the route a local had pointed us on earlier and one i'd recommended to phil we should follow....we found we had been 5 mins away from where we had wanted to be all along. Oh how we laughed!! (I despute this, but as Vicky hit me! and told me I'd taken her the wrong way, I figured it must all be my fault after all and took the huff, Vicky just laughed at me, life is so unfair, HUFF HUFF HUFF, PB)

The route for the rest of the day was beautiful but quite hard on our legs. We were glad to arrive at our final destination and I was even glader when the local hotel was booked out and we had to splash out on a very western guest house out of town!

Whilst we had big blisters and our legs were sore we thoroughly enjoyed our trek, meeting the villagers and trying out our swahili. The phrase book was completely useless by the way. Whilst it enabled us to ask things such as "is there any post" "be quiet and listen to me", "this food is over cooked' it didn't tell us how to ask, for example, for a room for the night, or a meal! The swahilli language is very blunt, the reason the kids say "give me money!" is that they have one word for 'please can I have' in Swahilli and it's mis trasnlated as 'Give Me'. As a result of this culturaldifference, we've been unable to offend anyone, the street touts that you tell to 'get out of the way,' or 'go away' just translate this into Swahilli and hear 'you wouldn't mind moving asside would you?' and 'I'm a little busy right now, maybe later.' Phil tried taking a card from one of them and throwing it immediately away, that didn't work either. (hoping to learn 3 more Swahili words so I can say, "piss off twat", to the street touts, which might do it, PB)

The next day we got the bus back to Lushoto. On the bus there was a family taking their clearly very ill son to hospital. The differences between our two cultures was very apparent.

On return to Lushoto we walked to a local farm for their home made brown bread, cheese and jam. Was a very yummy treat!

We have now left Lushoto and are in Arusha. We've change our plans somewhat (due to blisters and sore feet!) and are booked on to do a safari tomorrow (Sunday) for four days followed by trekking up the Mighty M (Meru) and the Big K (kilimanjiro which we've had our first sights of and aer already in awe!!