Adventure is out there!

4/25/18 - 4/28/18

I had a wild adventure. Thursday was a national holiday, so no school. On Wednesday Janeth found me and mentioned that Paul wanted to talk when he came to pick up Myla. I spoke with him through the window of his car and he told me we were headed into Saadani National Park the next morning and that I should be ready at 10 am. It was quite sudden but I was very eager and ready.

The next morning I hopped into the safari truck with an aluminum boat strapped to the roof. The team was Paul, Alan, Alan’s fundi (technician) and me. We stopped to buy some tomatoes, onions and eggs. There we ran into a friend of Pauls and followed him to his new camping lodge. The friend is an older Tanzanian reggae man with slightly graying dreads, who is apparently never sober. His business partner is Crocodile Dundee, complete with the shark tooth necklace, intricately decorated leather hat and accompanying swagger. It was quite a pair to behold. They showed us around the place and we chatted a while. Alan and Paul are hopeful that this nearby tourist concentration will be a major exporter of clients for their safari drives. Alan has a property across the river from the park. He and Paul are building it up into a campground. This is where we were headed. Normally you can drive right in, but during rainy season everything is flooded. On top of that the ground is all black cotton soil, or, in other words, super sticky, mucky, clay-like earth. The only way in is by foot, barefoot, because the soil traps and coats any footwear.

We stopped in the last small village before entering the bush. There Alan’s fundi got out to grab something and, as I was on the side with the door, I also disembarked to wait for his return. The villagers were all glancing at me and I had a fruitful conversation with a little boy that came up and kept repeating “Mzungu” and giggling. Alan, who was listening to the villager’s chatter, translated for me. The woman with the ritual scars and traditional golden bracelets had just stated that I was the first white person she’d ever seen. That sure gave me something to think about.

We continued driving and suddenly we came over a hill and the road ended. Where the dirt track should have been was a river. After unloading the boat, Alan drove the car back to the village, we wouldn’t need it anymore. He paid the car watch woman in cassava. Some herdsman meandered by with their intricately branded cattle. A family of banded mongoose scampered across the road. I found a strange sign scratched into the mud, indicating the direction someone had traveled in. While Alan was gone I went to pee on the side of the road. That’s when the most unimaginable thing happened. A drone hummed overhead. No joke.

The boat was placed into the flooded roadway. We had to secure the motor with a piece of torn foam to prevent it from slowly boring holes through the hull. We waded into the water and began pulling the boat. When it deepened, we would all hop aboard and cruise until we ran aground on shallower sections, such as the submerged bridges built to let the water pass below. The irony was blaring. Finally we were able to motor from the road to the adjacent river.

We sat back and relaxed as the current took us. We rounded a bend on the easygoing ride to find a road block. A low railroad bridge hung across our path. Normally, I was told, the bridge is 10 meters above the river. Now we had maybe a meter of clearance. After much debate, we decided we could just squeeze by. As we neared the bridge everyone ducked into the boat and we watched the underside of the tracks skim past. Just as we came out from the far side there was a sudden jolt, a thud and we stopped fast. A metal bar suspended from above had caught on the motor between the engine and the clamp attaching it to the stern. We could see the strain on the motor as the current tried to pull the boat downstream while the bridge tugged fast in the opposite direction. Worried it would rip off, we hurriedly pulled ourselves upstream using the underside of the bridge. By this point two shocked park rangers had appeared on the bridge. Alan explained that no one had ever done this, floated down the river during its swollen state. Our predicament just added to their surprise and entertainment. Our only viable solution was to remove the motor and then replace it on the other side of the metal obstruction. Alan was about to dislodge it when we started worrying about the tension on the bar and what would happen if we suddenly released it. As we struggled to maneuver the boat to relieve the strain, a miracle occurred. The bar suddenly snapped off the bridge, and we were free. Disaster averted. We passed the valuable metal up to the rangers and Alan climbed onto the bridge to chat with them. Technically, the river is part of the park so we should have all paid an entrance fee. Alan clambered back aboard and told us to pass our friends half of the bananas and remaining cassava. Feeling blessed at having escaped the potential catastrophe so easily, we cruised onward. The next bend grated us a face to face encounter with a surprised family of hippos. It was a stunning moment. We also saw quite a few monkeys and baboons in the trees along the shore. Eventually, Alan steered us into a bank and announced our arrival. We dragged the boat half a kilometer through the inundated grasses and muck until we arrived at the bar. When the safari camp is up and running, visitors will be able to enjoy a drink there after a long day’s drive. Normally, it is far from the water’s edge. Alan and Paul, who thought we would have to carry the heavy aluminum hull, were thrilled at the ease of our journey.

We sat down to our supper of tomatoes, bread and onions. One of Alan’s groundskeepers tried to light a fire for us. I found the technique of lighting a plastic bag as the wood igniter, fascinating and sad. Unfortunately, the fire didn’t work, but it was a day of miracles. While we ate Alan suddenly stared over my shoulder. A bush fire had ignited nearby. We dragged our chairs over, grateful for the lucky campfire. I’m still skeptical about the origins of that fire, but I can’t explain it other than freak luck. It was a magical place. The next morning began with a walk around the property, or should I say wade? Everything was flooded. We were up to our necks at times. Of course, as with all the walking so far, we were barefoot. Having sliced open my pinky toe and adopted a couple thorns the previous night, I was cringing throughout. Luckily, everything was black cotton soil so the ground was like a wonderfully mushy foot massage every step, until you hit a branch or thorn. These were impossible to avoid as visibility through the golden water was zero. The only other obstacle was the elephant tracks scattered around. They didn’t hurt you, you just suddenly dropped into a giant sunken crater and tumbled into the water. Everywhere else was also perilously uneven, but those footsteps were clearly recognizable. Of course, the rare dry patch offered painful ant bites, so really the murky water was preferred. And when sprinting over the ant infested ground, thorns were not easily avoided. It was all a trade off.

We arrived at two beehives. They are home to miniature, non-sting bees with the worlds rarest, delicious honey. It can only be extracted by destroying the hive, as they refuse to make their home in artificial hives. Alan had heard that you can suck it out with a straw so we invented the honeybee challenge. The trees emerge from a very deep flooded section offering twisted branches above the potentially crocodile and hippo infested water. Alan warned me not to fall in. The challenge is to scramble onto the branches in the shallow part and travers across four trees to reach the hives, where, if you have a straw, you can suck some honey. We unfortunately didn’t have one, but those two are convinced guests will love it when the straws are fully stocked. We slowly worked our way across making sure the challenge was possible, although it is quite tricky. At one point I was stuck at the end of a trunk descending into the water at a gentle angle. The only viable path led across a meter of water onto a branch shooting straight up out of the depths. As I tried to maneuver across the gap Alan helpfully commented “I wouldn’t hang around down there too long, anything could come out of those waters”. He was serious, I jumped the distance and quickly scampered high up the branch.

On the clumsy return walk, Alan suddenly bent and pulled a fish out of the water. He has lines all over the property at the rivers edge. Carrying his prize, we continued onwards. We heard some crazy screeches and howls and watched a tree burst into a flurry of angry baboons. Then we were gifted the chance to watch them leap one at a time from high up in their tree to another much lower one four meters away. That is a long jump. I felt like I was watching Planet Earth; we were in the middle of jungle witnessing this impressive feat of primate athleticism. Once they vanished we walked over to judge the distance they had flown. The whole while Alan was emphasizing all his cool nature facts by enthusiastically gesturing with his dead fish. I would write about our meals, but they were all a combination of bread, tomatoes, onions and eggs, so it wouldn’t be too interesting. The one exception was our second dinner where we had the fish and some rice and beans. This was pure rice and beans, no spices, no salt, just their natural taste. Once used to the blandness, it was surprisingly tasty.

We took an evening boat ride up the river to explore a converging stream. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it far as tall grasses prevented us from continuing with the motor. We got to see a city of weaver bird nests swaying on their grass stilts above the water. The calm scene was interrupted by the nearby roar of a hippo. Alan explained it was just a warning call to let us know it was there. Traveling with those two was awesome. They know every single bird and animal and can explain almost any natural phenomenon in that park. We lazily floated back downstream stopping to scramble up a cliff normally unreachable from the low river. Almost everything we were doing on the flooded waters hadn’t been attempted before, according to Alan’s knowledge. We salvaged a large sturdy piece of wood. The spirit of exploration still blessing us, we were given one more glorious miracle. We had been loving floating so much we had drifted past Alan’s property, drinks in hand, enjoying the river. As we eventually motored back upstream we saw some 30 large white egret-like birds soaring low over the river. They spanned the water, three rows high, gliding swiftly towards us, skimming the ripples, on a perfect collision course. At the last second, three meters from our bow, they split perfectly in half and shot upwards at a steep angle passing over us to continue their glorious trip downriver on the other side. As Paul put it, it was basically a Disney movie.

The next morning we began the walk home. We left the boat at the camp. I wasn’t super excited for the barefoot walk with my cut, battered, thorny feet but at least the smooth mud soothed my unreal number of mosquito bites. I think it is difficult to have a literally uncountable number of bites, but there were actually too many overlapping spots to count. We waded out of camp with Alan’s groundskeeper pulling a beaten kayak through the flood. We reached a river and each took turns being ferried across in the kayak. It was a one person craft so the passenger had to balance perfectly on top of the rear to avoid sending both parties tumbling into the crocodile-y waters. I held my breath but luckily made it safely, as did everyone else. The groundskeeper headed home. We continued on the sunken road. I mentioned the uneven walking surface earlier but now it was ten times worse. It was manageable on Alan’s property, but wading in thigh deep water while wearing a heavy backpack for kilometer after kilometer became exhausting. Every stumble zapped a little more energy in the struggle to stay upright and we were soon trudging in silence. Of course the water was now flowing freely down the road, so on top of the added exhaustion of slugging through liquid, we were also fighting against the current. Luckily the soft road was easy on the feet. The novelty of the experience made it a blast!

We continued. Eventually the current was so strong we had to detour into the watery grasses. Alan veered to the side to rescue a baby duckling from drowning. When we arrived at a dry island containing a small village, Alan reunited the baby with its mother. We stopped to rest and drink soda then continued the trek. Now we came to a road that had been coated with gravel to prevent the sticky trap the black cotton soil set for any vehicle. Too bad it was all underwater so no wheels could touch it anyway. However, on naked feet, the rocks were torturous. I got a brief respite when we arrived at a small dugout canoe. It was our ferry across another deep river stretch. When we finally left behind the flooding, we had walked 10 km barefoot through the African bush. And we’d done the five hour journey with just an egg in our stomaches. What a trip, I wouldn’t change anything. As we drove away we halted to learn that the drone was mapping the historic flooding. Our final stop was at Mahaba, the lodge/campground we had rested at on the way in. The oddly matched business partners greeted us with drinks and lots of chatter. We brainstormed ideas for both budding businesses. We recounted our heroic journey and all laughed like old friends. It’s funny how people come together over the smallest things. I’ll say it again: what a trip. I think I have finally had a proper good old fashioned exploration. Complete with crocodile waters, rustic meals, quirky characters and glorious natural beauty. This is nirvana.