Traveling long distance on a train, especially through a land as wild and scenic as Africa, can be in itself a main part of any adventure.
On a train, you get the chance to breathe in and look at every dot between point A and point B.
You get to experience a proper journey, while slowly and tenaciously munching a landscape after the other.
It’s exquisitely cheap, relatively eco, charmingly old fashioned… and definitely quite audacious, for a white lady traveling solo.
For all of this reasons, when planning my trip from Zanzibar to Cape Town, I was very excited to learn that there is, in fact, a train running twice a week from Dar Es Salaam to Zambia across the best part of the Tanzanian country and it’s southern game reserves. About 1860 Km of African wilderness, to be watched in awe while lying on a first class mattress. It all sounded really cool to me…
The TAZARA – you can read about history and facts on Wikipedia – was built with monumental efforts in the early ’70, to facilitate tradings between the two countries and to eliminate landlocked Zambia’s economic dependence on white-ruled governments and territories. It wasn’t really planned to transport tourists or travelers. It was a free link between Zambia’s copper mines and the Indian Ocean.
That’s why the wondrous railway is ending abruptly by a town in the middle of nowhere, deep into Zambia’s Copperbelt region, a couple of hundreds kilometers north of Lusaka: Kapiri Mposhi.
Not exactly the kind of place any traveler would want to spend time in, but almost half way closer to Cape Town.
From Kapiri, I could have cached public transport – only affordable option – to the capital and then a quick and expensive flight to destination.
I obviously kept valuating alternative options…
Considering that most of Africa’s population will never be able to afford an international flight, I wasn’t surprised when a relatively easy and inexpensive bus trip quickly started to take shape.
Intercape is a well known and, from my experience, very reliable South African company, connecting all the southern African main centers through safe, comfy, affordable, endless bus rides.
I only had to juggle myself on less referenced kind of transport from the Copperbelt to Livingstone via Lusaka and then book only two more Intercape buses to get to Cape Town via Windhoek, avoiding Johannesburg’s bad reputation and taking the chance for visiting a dear friend who moved to the Namibian capital last year. Easy.
I decided I might as well take a few days holiday around Livingstone, Zambia’s closest town to the majestic Victoria Falls, where every year hundreds of thousands of travelers and tourists meet and set base while exploring the falls, the river and the surrounding wildlife sanctuaries.
Well before the end of my professional duties in Zanzibar, the decision was made and no flights were booked.
I loved being able to have extremely lose plans and no luggage restrictions. I loved everybody thinking that, to set myself for such a mission, I must be completely crazy, but also pretty fucking brave and adventurous. I loved the budget projections, according to which I was about to travel over 5000 Km across Africa spending less than 200 USD in transport.
I was ready to explore the rabbit hole again, right off my comfort zone. Traveling solo. Independent. Free. A bold little cosmonaut diving into a colorful, limitless African universe.
I was psychologically and emotionally prepared – mostly by the people around me – for all sort of inconvenient mistakes, frustrating delays and discouraging misjudgments. There was a chance I was gonna suffer all sort of discomforts. The train had been stuck in the middle of the vast and wild Selous Game Reserve for days, in a couple of occasions, and only very few times it managed to stick to the time table arriving with less than half a day delay. All sort of unpleasant encounters, experiences, feelings, sights, sounds and smells were coming into potential. Carrying all of my photographic equipment, I could have been robbed, in seconds, to say the least.
But as much as most people were trying to scare me off my agenda, I could only have a great feeling about it. The more potential hazards and fuck ups were suggested to me, the more I felt like saying:
Bring
it
On.
I’m so free, I can chose to sacrifice comfort and safety on the altar of Unusual Intense Experience. I’m so free, I can decide to take 10 days to get my ass to my next destination and enjoy the ride, however it goes.
The only deadline I was giving myself, was the party of the season in Cape Town, the Vortex, starting on the 7th of December. The perfect place and occasion for me to plunge full body into the city’s summer vibe and reconnect with my tribe all at once. Not too bad as deadline is it?
And so I confidently stormed away, but only after having carefully stashed a few pieces of my heart around Zanzibar island, as I do every time I leave. I left one in Clint’s left pocket; one is buried in the sand of Seasons Lodge, one lurks behind Coral Rock‘s curtains. There’s a couple squashed on Red Monkey‘s dance floor, a few in Cindy’s walk-in wardrobe and high hill shoes, a sprinkle all over Sabine’s desk.
I packed my tropical life in a store room and I walked out of a comfortable and safe world, at 6am on a friday morning, knowing I will be back to put all those pieces together again.
A sleek Kilimanjaro ferry floated me smoothly to Dar Es Salaam on a glassy calm Ocean.
The first person I saw in the mayhem outside the terminal was a taxi driver we use to call during business trips in Dar when I was with Clint, Juma. Happy to recognize a familiar face, I jumped in the car with him.
I didn’t know Dar Es Salaam has a very efficient UBER coverage, which would have definitely saved me quite a bit of money…
Juma, however, looked after me as no Uber driver would have done. And I did need a little help, when I got to the TAZARA station and learned that the train, supposed to leave that day at 4pm, was not gonna depart before the next day, same time. Technical problems, mechanics at work. Also, the first class was full, so I could only get a spot in second. First class cabin have 4 beds in them, second class have 6 “otherwise is same same” they told me.
One night in Dar then. Good start, I thought…
Thanks God I have friends all over. And I have to thank my friend John, popular Tanzanian DJ and wonderful human being, for hosting me and sharing his lovely girlfriend with me. That night, I also happened to bump into Carlo Taglia, an Italian writer and traveler, who roams continents and writes books about it for a living. His peculiarity: he doesn’t fly. I met him already at OZORA after hearing about him through a common friend. He is now on an African mission for his next book and he has been traveling from SA during the last couple of month. Tomorrow, he will board the same ferry I was on this morning, opposite direction, to Zanzibar. We had a couple of beers and spoke about incredible experiences, in the backpackers where John was playing a small gig. I love reconnecting with other travelers I already met before through the most unusual situations, it makes me feel I can spread my love and find my Tribe everywhere and anyways, that the world is not so big, we can own it and share it and we are all on the same mission…
The day after, I pitched up at the station again and had to wait another 3 hours before gaining access to the space that would have been my cruising home for the next 36 to 52 hours…
When they finally opened the gate, it was mayhem. Everybody pushed for his life to get on board.
I was sharing my second class cabin with other 5 women, a baby and two kids under 6. I climbed on one of the highest beds, settled my luggage and marched straight to the bar.
The common areas looked clean and proper. Beers were ice cold and ridiculously cheap.
There were only other 10 or 11 western travelers on the train.
When we finally started moving, it was already dark…
We crossed the border during the night. Meanwhile, I managed to upgrade from second to first class and was sleeping great when a couple of immigration officials knocked our door to stamp our passports. It was the smoothest and easiest African border crossing of my life.
By the afternoon of the second day, about 48 hours on the train, we realized we were starting to get very close to destination.
Now, arriving in Kapiri Mposhi well into the night is just the worse option: you cannot sleep on the train, which everyone has to leave quickly after arrival, no matter what; for safety reasons, public transport is forbidden in Zambia during the dark hours and for the same reasons is not recommended to hire a taxi either; with the first buses starting at 5am, it also doesn’t make much sense to mission towards finding accommodation in some sleazy Copperbelt lodge, for sleeping just a few hours – or at least that’s what we established, a bunch of other travelers and I, after asking information around the train station just before midnight…
So there we were, a sweet couple from Chile, a group of 5 Korean youngsters and I, making our little camp in the train station and waiting for dawn.
I slept much better than you think, curled up on top of my luggage and covered by my sleeping bag. There are some advantages in traveling with so much fine Italian clothing: it makes a great mattress.
It was still dark when the first driver ventured into the station and asked us if we needed transport to Lusaka. We were all still half asleep when we loaded ourselves in his crusty bus and started rolling again…
Lusaka bus station felt like the most unsafe and chaotic places I’ve ever been. I have no photographic record of it. I just quickly had to change money, find a toilet and another bus to Livingstone, hoping for the best. The ride was faster than I thought, with no remarkable landmarks.
It was only 3pm when I woke up in Livingstone and, soon after, I was checking in at the Jollyboys Backpackers: I had been there before, with the Tripping Africa crew, and it felt like going back home.
The place is pretty, clean, very eco friendly and reasonably cheap. I was so happy to be there. I had made it through the roughest part of the journey and could enjoy the majestic heart of Africa for a few days.
The Victoria Falls National Park is only a few km from Livingstone and it’s very easy to explore, but there’s also a whole universe of the most diverse activities you can keep yourself entertained with, while experiencing this wondrous area of the planet.
This is the “activities” page on Jollyboys website, where you can find any possible adventure the Vic falls and their surroundings have to offer, from helicopter panoramic rides, to multiple days rafting trips, from walking safaris to skydiving and bungee jumping over the gorge…
Finding myself there at the end of the dry seasons, I knew the falls – which are called in local language Mosi-o-tunya “the smoke that thunders” – were not going to be at their best and most powerful, with only little water roaring down the 108 m vertical drop.
There is, however, one great advantage of experiencing the falls this time of the year: you can get to Devil’s Pool.
On the way back from this incredible experience, we stopped for sunset drinks at the Royal Livingstone Hotel, one the most tasteful and better located resorts I’ve ever came across.
After that, I had another full day to spend in the area. I decided to go for a very touristy, although exceptional activity: a rhino walking safari into the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park.
With an area of only 23.4 km2 and 12 white rhinos living in it, the park enjoys the most dense population of this endangered species in the world. And with an even larger population of rangers and anti poaching units constantly watching and looking after the animals, it is basically impossible to walk around the park for more than 15 minutes without bumping into at least a couple of this gorgeous creatures…
It was almost too easy, but definitely an effective way to tick a rhino sighting off your list of dream wildlife encounters…
Fulfilled and recharged by the powerful energy of the Zambezi and its people, I was ready to start rolling again. Exactly one week after I left Zanzibar, a 21 hours Intercape bus ride was awaiting to take me into one of the most stunningly beautiful African countries, Namibia. The Vortex was now less than a week away and I still wanted to have a long stop over in Windhoek, visiting Laura.
I met Laura when I was living and raging around Indonesia, a few years ago. She is one of my favorite members of the big soul family I’m busy building for myself around this planet and she ended up moving from Lombok to Windhoek after falling in love, as we do.
It was great to step into her life and see her happy and well sorted, with an interesting job and a lovely home.
Unfortunately Windhoek is not the best place to hang around, for day trips into the beauty of Namibia, being quite far from the most interesting highlights of the country, but it definitely does enjoy those extreme landscapes and special desert vibe, so different from the one I left yesterday…
After this very cool swim in the desert, my Windhoek weekend ended up sliding into a fun Saturday night out and then a chilled Sunday with Laura. I couldn’t ask much more than having some quality time with my friend, I only wish I could have taken her with me to Cape Town!
I was almost there. One more day on a bus and Cape Town would have been mine, with its excited summer vibe and all those wonderful human beings.
South Africa gives me a perspective of what’s real and what’s not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn’t take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself. ~ Dave Matthews
Stay tuned for next exploration reports, I’m leaving today for a road trip to the Transkei…
Woderful Alice, just wonderful. Thank you.
Fantastic words and images Fierce and inviting journeys as always ! Hugs , G
Thank you so much buddy!!! xxx
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