No Stopping for Lions (19 page)

Towards the end of our stay on Lamu I finally have a meal that's good enough to write home about when our major–domo, Kombe, serves chilli crab. His meals have always been good, prepared with care and a subtle touch, but this night is different. The stars have come out and angels sit on his shoulder. It's a feast, a feeding frenzy, with blood-red sauce on our hands and broken shell and body parts discarded over starched white linen. I haven't enjoyed a meal this much since the time in 2002 when I left a trattoria in Milan to a standing ovation. That night, at a table by the kitchen door, I had rabbit stew with polenta and it was so good, so perfectly cooked and so subtly flavoured, that I couldn't stop eating. I didn't want it to ever end. The waiter brought me a second helping, then a little more, and when Neil and I finally got up to leave the kitchen staff came out and farewelled me like the celebrity I'd proved myself to be.
Bravo signora! Arrivederci! Buone notte e bravo signora!

On our last evening in Lamu we sit on the public terrace of Peponi's, looking out over the dhows in the channel. The bar is surprisingly deserted and the waiters bring us our usual without being asked. The light is mirror-sharp and the air is still. The water is so clear that the boats' rudders are visible and they make barely a wake as they slide past.

On the boat that takes us to the airport we fall into conversation with a young couple returning to Tanzania after a week's R&R on the island. They've loved it here and I have too, so I'm confused and disappointed when Neil says that he's glad to be leaving. He explains that he found the heat and humidity debilitating and the noise, closeness of the houses and narrowness of the laneways claustrophobic. I'd never suspected that he wasn't totally comfortable here or any less enthusiastic than me, as I'd come to believe that we were now so finely attuned that my likes were his likes, and his mine. I didn't even think to ask if he was loving the place as much as I was, and he'd been far too good-hearted to tell me.

From now on we're going to be anti beachside cottages that come with staff. Initially Malindi was fine and Lamu was paradise, but down the coast at the town of Watamu we find ourselves in a neglected, musty cottage that neither of us likes. It's an old lady's holiday home, with an ageing houseman who can't cook and a proprietary Burmese cat that swipes at my ankles when I walk past. Spiders nest in the sagging shelves where sun-bleached books gather dust, and hornets drone around faded curtains. There's an open verandah across the front of the house, but no fly-screens and no through-breezes to ease the stifling air. One room has been locked off — Neil thinks to hide a skeleton, but more likely just the detritus of an old lady's life.

On our first night Neil spends a long time rigging up power boards with extension leads so that our internal bedroom is surrounded by oscillating fans. He puts mosquito coils under my bed and pegs the mozzie net in place after it billows all over the room with the force of the fans. Before he climbs under the net he Dooms the moths, cockroaches and strange scaraby things that creep around the floor. After 30 years of marriage he is still my protector, my knight in shining armour.

The drive down the coast is long, with the border crossing back into Tanzania tiresome and slow. The weather is very steamy and the road gets progressively worse the further south we travel. In the absence of liquorice allsorts and wine gums we've taken to eating Cadbury Eclairs while on the road. These we buy in 1-kilogram bags and a handful each makes a good lunch. From time to time we pass roadside signs for shops and institutions with names to rival the best Uganda had to offer. We've seen the Mamma Mercy's Home of Little Childrens and then, showing more confusion than originality, Them Bulls Pork Butchery.

Neil and the Troopy have forged a bond made in heaven. After initially sharing the driving equally, we reached a happy compromise way back in Zambia: Neil drives and I navigate. I drive too fast for Neil and when I'm behind the wheel he's constantly checking the speedo and telling me the speed at which I should overtake. He's so nervous that he forgets to look at the map, and when he does he's forgotten the name of our destination. On the other hand, I'm an excellent navigator and only when the sea is to the west of me do I get confused. As we progressed northward and the state of the roads deteriorated I was intimidated by their condition and would tackle them at speed, whereas Neil learnt early on to read their trickery and deceptions and how to coax the Troopy through them.

Roughly 80 kilometres down the coast from the Kenyan border we find Capricorn Beach Cottages reclining on a stretch of quiet, palm-fringed beach between the towns of Tongoni and Pangani. We fall in love with the place as soon as we drive in. Sitting on a grassy slope beneath flowering baobabs and strangely scented frangipani, the little estate of just three cottages and a residence is the extended home of the owners. Apart from a wave and a
jambo
in greeting, everyone keeps to themselves. Ladies deliver freshly baked baguettes and homemade yoghurt in the mornings and saunter across to clean the cottage later in the day, but otherwise we're left in peace. This is more like self-catering as we know it. There is a small, low-key lodge to the north, and a fishing village on the southern side. In the evening, the fishermen go out to sea in boats crammed with crew, maybe a dozen in one vessel, and when it gets dark their lanterns settle on the horizon like fairy lights on a Christmas verandah. Then just on dawn a flotilla of small dhows heads out to the day's fishing, their sails elegant and angled into the wind. Men with dilly-bags wade out through the low tide to hunt for octopus, while on the beach, garden boys with slow, distracted strokes rake up seaweed brought in by the tide during the night.

Without the restrictions imposed by set mealtimes and socialising it's easy to fall into the rhythms of the sea. At low tide we gravitate to the beach, the only place where there's a wisp of a breeze to relieve the heat and humidity. It's also the best time to look for shells and to watch the daily life of the villagers, who use the exposed beach as a walkway and the outgoing sandy water to scour their pots and pans. As the tide comes in a cooling breeze comes too so we lounge about on our terrace, reading and writing and talking about nothing much. Shooting the breeze. The freedom is wonderful without houseboys and neighbours to consider. We get dressed when we feel like it, take cold showers whenever we get too hot and sometimes I only get around to combing my hair in the afternoon. The only sour note comes at breakfast one morning when we have to acknowledge that the jar of Vegemite is finally running out. Like life here, I'd hoped it would never end.

Despite this comfortable beach-combing existence I determine that we should go on a little outing, so one day we set off in the Troopy to explore Pangani town and Ushongo, a beach resort 20 kilometres or so further down the coast. There's a ferry crossing to negotiate at Pangani and this turns out to be the funniest car ferry I've ever been on.

With a maximum vehicular capacity of two, it's compact and a jaunty red and it looks seaworthy enough. We follow a pick-up down the alarmingly steep concrete ramp but, just as we're about to embark, the ferry drifts out so that its boarding ramp is hovering 15 to 20 centimetres above the shore.
Hakuna matata
, no problem: two men jump up and down on it until it's low enough for us to mount. We quickly do so and it's just as well because the ferry has now drifted to an angle at odds with the shore and it's only some fancy driving on Neil's part that gets us safely on board without one or more wheels dropping off the edge. We nestle in behind the pick-up; a few pedestrians come aboard then we're off — straight into a 180-degree turn, so that the ferry crosses the river backwards. At the other side we have to egress in reverse, off and up another steep concrete ramp that is accommodatingly wide. Our return crossing is more exciting still, as we do a 180-degree turn on the entry side of the river and then again on the opposite side, so this time we can drive off pointing in the right direction having enjoyed a panoramic 360-degree view of the entire river in the meantime.

Since our first day on the coast in Kenya Neil has forbidden me to pick up large shells or buy any shells at all from the guys on the beach too old to go out fishing. Firstly, it is illegal; secondly we have no space to be carrying them around; and thirdly, they're fragile and wouldn't make the journey home in one piece. However, at Ushongo we have coffee at a deserted resort on an isolated stretch of beach, and seeing no opportunity for the waiter to make a living from tips, Neil relents and allows me to purchase shells from him. While the waiter and I laugh and ah-ah-ah at his daring, Neil climbs up the branches of the most majestic of baobab trees, the crowning glory of the resort, to pick the perfect flower. I come away with a bag of big and fragile seashells, surely illegal, and a beautiful dusky baobab blossom that has discoloured and withered by the time we're back at the cottages.

Christmas is a week off and we are forced to move on after five days because all the cottages have been booked for the festive season months in advance. Our plan had always been to find a quiet place which we could settle into over Christmas and now, disappointed that it can't be Capricorn, we'll have to find someplace else. There looks to be quite a selection of seaside towns further south, closer to Dar es Salaam, so we set off optimistically.

First stop is Bagamoyo, a place written about in glowing colours and spoken of enthusiastically by other travellers. They must have been here in their hippie days because all we find is a jetsammed beach crowded with rowdy students and abutted by rundown ‘resorts'. We choose an upmarket-looking place but looks can be deceiving. The picture on their brochure of an elephant in the savannah should have alerted us to the confused persona of this beachside establishment. We're in a brand new wing, the room large and light-filled and adorned with expensive European fittings, but this place has been built by non-builders. Windows, way too small for their opening, are kept in place with thick globs of plaster. Cut, sharp-edged tiles protrude at corners and the bathroom floor drains away from the plughole. Then the children on the beach could have come up with a more professional construction. But the odd thing is that the owner, a tall, dignified Ethiopian, loves the place and is as proud as Punch of it. Can't he see that he'll soon be sued by a guest with a great gash in their leg? We get talking to his son, who is home for Christmas from studying law overseas, so perhaps it has crossed his mind.

Christmas in the Hotel Sea Cliff, Dar es Salaam. If you ignore the Maasai doormen and the cheery black housekeeping staff, this hotel could be in a capital city anywhere in the Western world. There are classy rooms with up-to-the-minute décor, restaurants with international menus, and efficient front-of-house staff, and the clientele covers everyone from tourists, expats and country residents in town for the festive season to diplomats and wealthy locals from the surrounding suburbs. It's a convivial, cosmopolitan place that we can see, after a few days of exploring, mirrors the city's personality.

I'm up early on Christmas morning to phone home but only get to say a few quick words before the satellite connection drops out. Lunch for us is to be low-key, so we opt for a sandwich on the terrace rather than the gala Christmas buffet. The tables around us fill up with locals in their Sunday best. Families, sweethearts and couples — they have all made an effort. The women are beautifully groomed, some wearing hats, and the little girls are in their special dresses, new for Christmas. Most sit at their table with a bottle of Sprite or Fanta, sipping slowly to prolong the occasion, and the hotel staff treat each with the respect due a big spender. A group of Taiwanese men sit at a table close to us and all four light up cigarettes while they drink and talk loudly. Neil is getting tetchy but reaches breaking point when cigarette smoke hovers over our food like nuclear fallout. He leans toward them: ‘No smoking!' They apologise and stub out their butts. I whisper to Neil that this is a smoking area as it's outside, but he's unrepentant. ‘It's no smoking
around me
!'

Neil has been fascinated by Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve for years, and the more he's read about it the more interested he's become. It's a place of superlatives: the largest single game reserve in Africa; the heart of a huge ecosystem of uninhabited woodlands, the largest on the continent; considered to be the greatest surviving wilderness in Africa; home to the largest populations of large mammals but also a sanctuary for endangered ones, in particular the African wild dog. Add to this the fact that the southern sector, 90 per cent of the reserve, is all hunting concessions with just half the remaining land given to photographic tourism, and you have a pretty remarkable place. At first glance the number of private hunting concessions is alarming, but Neil has read that their introduction has been a successful experiment in game management, as their anti-poaching ethos has allowed decimated animal populations to regenerate. He has to see this place.

The reserve is hard to access at the best of times, so we've been advised to fly in now that the rainy season has covered roads and flooded rivers. We leave the Troopy surrounded by admiring workers at the offices of the company managing the Sand Rivers Selous. This lodge, the most isolated of any in the photographic sector of Selous, is where we're to stay for the next four days before flying directly on to Zanzibar to see in the New Year. The flight is great fun. The New Zealand pilot dips over herds of elephant and buzzes giraffe off the airstrip before we land. We're met by Goodluck, who remains with us as our personal guide throughout our stay. He's charming and keen, and has a good knowledge of the local flora as well as the fauna. We're lucky to have been allotted him. Sand Rivers Selous is situated on a bend in the Rufiji River, which at this time of year is overflowing and swift moving. Because of all the recent rain it's even more bloated — a 2-kilometre-wide infinity swimming pool reaching right up to the lodge and lapping at the open sitting room.

Game drives with Goodluck are stymied at every turn by flooded and boggy roads, so he takes us on a trip upriver to cruise through Stiegler's Gorge, a narrow neck in the river where the water flows swiftly between boulders and overhanging branches. But the strengthening current is too much for the motor on our little boat and it struggles to make headway. Just a few hundred metres from our goal we're forced to admit defeat and turn the struggling boat around. With the motor turned off the boat planes on the current at breakneck speed back the way we came, bouncing over rapids and whizzing past sun-baking crocs. A startled hippo lunges at us, giving Neil a fright and making both Goodluck and me laugh, and the turbulence caused by swirling water and loose sand creates Rotarua-like boiling and bubbling all around our little vessel.

Also staying at the lodge are a Dutch family and a Scottish family, both good company and lots of fun, and an elderly Belgian couple who spent many years in the Congo and who have been on 26 safaris subsequently — or so they inform everybody. They see themselves as experts on all things African and quickly dismiss the adventures of others. In no time they have alienated themselves from the staff as well as the other guests and by their last meal at the lodge they sit alone, impressing only each other with their vast knowledge.

The canvas and stone chalets are open-fronted and a beacon to every mosquito in the Selous. The Dutch suffer badly from night attacks, but the Scots don't seem to mind the minefield of bites on their ankles and legs. Neil and I have stuck to our anti-malarial plan of protection rather than taking a prophylactic medication, and although it's now more a philosophy than a regime, we've suffered only a few bites. After Goodluck takes us to the lonely grave of an English researcher who recently died from malaria, we have a flurry of slapping on repellent and wearing long sleeves and trousers at night, but that only lasts a few days.

The Scottish family is on the same flight out as us and we share a few anxious moments when we arrive at the airstrip to find it wet and sodden, and with an alarming patch of boggy black cotton soil right in the middle. The jolly pilot is unperturbed by this — after all, he says, he just landed here — and he taxis at full throttle down the strip then at the last moment veers off the runway, around the cotton soil and over tussocks and holes, and back onto the strip before lifting off at an acute angle. We're all a bit dishevelled from the bumpy detour but when the Scots father has gathered his wits he announces that he is ‘right pleased', having had to pay no extra for a ride more exciting than the dodgem cars at a theme park.

Our next port of call is Zanzibar, and we are interested to see how much it's changed since we were here 30 years ago. Stone Town is the same but different. The same narrow alleys and crumbling buildings, but now crowded with European tourists, curio shops and touts, and reckless drivers behind the wheels of cars going too fast.

We stay in a small hotel just out of town, and once we get used to the room facing a rubbish-strewn tidal channel, we settle in well. I eat tiger prawns or lobster for every meal and Neil convinces the staff to chill his beers in the freezer every evening. Not everything falls into place, however. I go into town on a shopping expedition for cheap clothes and in search of Freddy Mercury's real home, which I am desperate to have my photo taken in front of. Both ventures draw a blank.

A dhow trip over to Prison Island on our last full day in Zanzibar seems like a good idea, so early in the morning we head into town to organise a boat. At the little cove where the dhow touts hang out, we do a deal but so involved are we in the negotiations that we don't notice we're the only tourists there. Around at the boat harbour, the fact that all the dhows are anchored offshore should have said something as well. There's a shouted Swahili exchange and the first two boats approached decline to take us out, but then an old sailor in an even older dhow agrees. It's tricky getting the old boat close enough to the beach for us to clamber aboard, but we manage it and set out through a big swell.

What a perfect day — romantic, exotic, sailing in a dhow to places unknown! After a couple of minutes it registers that we're the only boat out and that the swell is very big, with white caps breaking all around. The boat is heavy and has only a small engine, and the spark plugs appear to be becoming affected by water because the motor periodically splutters and conks out, leaving us to drift at an alarming angle to the swell. We slide down into troughs, the skyline disappearing, then zoom up to hover momentarily on the peaks, just long enough to show us how far away from the island we still are. We pass battened-down container vessels and ocean-going ships, feeling dwarfed and vulnerable, and the crossing that would normally take 30 minutes stretches to an hour, then an hour and a quarter. Closer to the island we notice way over to our right that there are in fact a few other fearless day-trippers heading across, their boats bobbing, disappearing from view, but they all seem to be making better time than us and by the time we're near the island there are a number of others already there. Some have dropped off their passengers and are anchored, bailing out water, trying to keep upright and head-on to the wind. Others are hovering, waiting for the right moment to surf in close enough to the beach for their nervous cargo to disembark and wade ashore. On the third try our crew manages to manoeuvre close enough to shore for Neil and me to jump out the back between waves and we make the beach with soaked shorts but dry cameras.

The island is a bit of an anti-climax after the crossing, and even the sight of dozens of giant turtles can't distract us from the thought that we're going to have to do it all again on the return leg. The time arrives and our crew bring in their boat. It's tricky and wet but we get back on board. There's some initial difficulty in getting out into deep water, but once there we ride on the swell and the crest of the waves all the way back. At the landing beach we're greeted by a posse of tourists who, less brave than us to face the sea, clap and whistle as the old boat surfs ashore.

We fly back to Dar es Salaam and the Hotel Sea Cliff to make plans for the next week or two. Neil has a little crash in the Troopy when he reverses out of a carwash into a fancy sedan occupied by two smart young black women. After a few hysterics and shouted advice from onlookers, the girls agree not to call the police if Neil agrees to pay for the smash repairs. All three go in the Troopy in search of a panel beater and an ATM, and it's not long before they've got a quote and the cash, and Neil has learnt a lot about the girls' aspirations and dreams for a good education and a wealthy husband.

In the morning's paper there's a report of a fatal light-aircraft crash in the Selous. Five days after we flew out from a waterlogged airstrip, a chartered flight has crashed on landing and, according to the report, one passenger ‘succumbed to death'. It's a different airstrip and a different airline company to the one we flew with, but the story is a sobering reminder of our joy flight out of the park.

We've been looking forward to getting back to the bush, and Mikumi National Park is conveniently a half day's drive out of Dar on the TANZAM Highway, the main artery linking the port of Dar es Salaam with land-locked Zambia to the south-west. On arriving at Foxes Safari Camp we find that the manager is an Australian, a lady in love with Africa, and Tanzania in particular, and desperate to earn enough cash to be able to afford her own little piece of paradise. We are the only guests, and rather than the manager taking us on a game drive, we take her out in the Troopy. The tsetse flies here are ferocious and she'd not have been able to stop for any length of time in her open safari vehicle without being set upon, so to be able to sit and observe the parks goingson from the Troopy, windows up and air-con flowing, is a treat.

There are lots of elephants in the park, and most mornings they're on the road leading out of camp — probably because it's the only dry land around. One bull has charged us two days running and this time, after another such challenge, Neil thinks he'll do what people have been suggesting and charge the Troopy right back at him. Well, that big boy isn't fazed and just keeps on coming until he reaches the front bumper, where he pulls up just in time. He flaps his ears like a demented butterfly, tosses his massive head from side to side, and with one big front foot kicks dust over the bonnet of the Troopy. Pleased with himself, he moves off the road and lurks behind a bush, so Neil puts his foot down and we edge past. Out he surges onto the road again, bellowing, and chases us off. As we look back from the safety of distance he doesn't look so big or so fearsome, just a young bull throwing his weight around.

The day we leave the park we do a final drive past those waterholes and grasslands where we've had good sightings before. Park rangers have been excited by the first wildebeest calf of the season and when we come to a herd quite close to the road we can see wobbly little baby feet through the legs of a protective ring of females. Then we're told that a giant black python is out sunning himself so we make a beeline for his haunt by the hippo pool. No luck, we've missed him again.

We continue along the TANZAM Highway and make an overnight stop in Iringa, an important administrative centre for the region to locals, and for tourists it's a place to stop over on their way down the highway or into the Ruaha National Park, 100 kilometres to the west. The MR Hotel is in a back street, close to the bus terminal and opposite a shop selling music tapes and CDs, which are played at full blast. Although there are Muslims to be seen in the street, the town turns out to be predominantly Christian, and teetotal. When we ask where we can get a drink the hotel manager looks askance and in a low voice suggests a local bar over by the market. He is worried not, I suspect, because he thinks that it's too seedy for us but because he fears we'll return to our room drunk and disorderly.

We're in the petrol station the next morning, filling up on diesel, when a big fancy LandCruiser nudges past with a cheery face behind the wheel.
Our-oo! New South Wales! New South Wales Australia?
He scans the Troopy admiringly, slaps the side of his door.
Our-oo!
We wave and drive off, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in their convertible on the roads of Monte Carlo.

One thing Neil always does is talk to people. The waiter in a café, the maid cleaning our bathroom and the man filling the Troopy with diesel, Neil chats to them all. He starts with general pleasantries, moves on to enquiries about family and children, then more personal exchanges. He learns many things, but the main thing is this: whether they be in a village in Tanzania or our own street back home, people all desire the same things — food on the table, the opportunity to work for a fair wage, and access to a good education for their children. After just a few minutes Neil usually comes away with the number of children in order of age and who they are living with and why, whether the husband has many girlfriends (he always does), and always, always, which parent, brother or sister is dead. AIDS is sometimes mentioned but never straight away, and we've come to understand that this is not always through embarrassment or shame, but simply through incomprehension.

On the way to Ruaha National Park we pass through some unexpectedly beautiful scenery. At one point it could be mistaken for forested green English countyside, and further along an avenue of overhanging trees on the Never-ending Road (its real name) leads to a couple of little red bridges crossing a babbling stream.

What's even more surprising is the presence of people who look very like Maasai. There was no sign of them in or around Iringa but out this way you can't miss that there's quite a settled community of them. They seem to have diversified into farming, just a little, and we even see one out in a field hoeing. It doesn't look right. Herding cattle, loping across grasslands or just leaning one-legged on a spear we're used to seeing, but bent over a hoe,
shuka
and jewellery swinging, is a first.