Sisal
Dona, Ram and I headed south on the main highway from Same with Max, our driver and guide from Leopard Tours. We were headed for Mambo View Point, a place where Dona and I had stayed before up in the Usambara Mountains. Max had never been there, and we had a heck of a time finding and getting to the place before, but he said he had an idea where it was and off we went. We were supposed to get there in time for dinner...
Along the main highway we saw a number of commercial fields of Sisal. Max said the Sisal industry was doing a little better as people became more aware of the environmental impacts of plastics and started demanding more natural, bio-degradable products.
We also saw people carrying vegetation home to feed their animals. That's a daily chore for many who have no pasture for their animals. Between hauling feed and hauling water one can use up a lot of the day.
Getting to Mambo View Point is not easy. Fortunately, Dona had an email with directions. They went like this:
Lushoto roundabt — keep rt on
Magamba — go left along the Sekumo[sic] Uni
@Tee turn rt winding dust rd
over Mt pass to Lukozi (busy mkt)
In ctr Lukozi @ rndabt w/ big tree
turn left, follow dust rd 1 hr to signs
Lost — ask for Mtae (3 km past Mambo)
Max knew how to get to Lushoto; we kept right on and made Magamba, passing Sekomu University on our right as we went left. We came to the tee and turned right on a winding, dusty road, and it was clear "getting there for dinner" was not going to happen. But that's ok, it's all part of the adventure. From there to Lukozi took quite a while, and I lost all sense of direction. However, we eventually arrived at Lukozi, identifiable by the tree at the city center where we turned left. We did a fair bit of asking for Mtae after that, mostly just to assure ourselves we were still headed the right direction. The road was not only dusty, it was amazingly bad.
The first part of the road was excellent, built by the Germans for military use, paved and lined with wonderful big old trees.
The second half of the road was horrible in places. Somewhere along in there I started wondering about fuel, as we had been driving all day and hadn't stopped for fuel. I asked Max how much fuel the Land Cruiser carried, and he said it had two 40-liter tanks. That didn't sound like much for a vehicle like that — about 20 gallons total.
We saw some entertaining things along the way, which I unfortunately did not get a picture of. One of them was six(!) people riding on a motorbike — four kids on the back, a grown-up driver, and one more in front.
Eventually, we got up towards the top on the north side of the mountains, and we could get glimpses of the plains below us.
As we approached Mambo View Point, we were pretty disappointed. Since our last visit a significant amount of native forest had been destroyed and replaced with monocultures of introduced species which were now barren pine and eucalyptus plantations. There were few birds, few flowers, and not much of anything in the forests. Much of this had started when we were here before, but the damage seemed much more evident this time.
We were greeted warmly when we arrived, and the hotel staff carried our bags down to our "cottage" on the edge of the cliff.
We had a long day getting there, but the weather was nice and we enjoyed the scenery. Unfortunately, the nice weather didn't last.
We had arranged for a local bird guide to take us out the next day, and "Ally" met us the next morning. Max got the day off. Ally had a well-broken-in Toyota with no springs or shocks that we could notice, but it got us where we needed to be. We drove to a pocket of native forest, where we got out and went for a hike.
We saw some cool stuff in the forest, but it was difficult to get any pictures. Because the native forest is pretty dense, we mostly just caught glimpses of things. Among others, we saw an Usambara Double-collared Sunbird and a Hartlaub's Turaco. We also saw both Blue-banded and Green-banded Swallowtail butterflies; we spent a lot of time chasing them trying to get pictures... We also saw a Black and White Colobus Monkey, but s/he was pretty elusive.
While the butterflies and birds were elusive and difficult to get pictures of, Dona concentrated on things that held still a little better. Despite the dense vegetation in the forest, there were still wildflowers poking out here and there.
Unsurprisingly, we found dung beetles busy at work along the trails through the woods where we found animal poop. It does seem rather awkward, though, doing a hand-stand while pushing a huge ball with your feet.
On our way back we stopped at the market in Sunga. The market spreads across a hillside in what feels like the middle of town, with shops and streets lined with vendors leading up to it. It's always a treat to wander around open-air markets like this. The local economy the way it should be, with people interacting and things locally manufactured and grown being consumed locally. That, and they are so colorful!
We tried not to be too obnoxious; it's impossible to be inconspicuous as a white westerner. At one point the three of us were standing pretty close together and two women close by who seemed friendly were trying to inconspicuously get a good look at us, so I tapped one of them on the shoulder, showed her how to look through my camera at Ram, and had her take a picture. Then I showed it to her, and she got a big smile. So I had her friend do the same with Dona. So the photos below need to be credited to some nice women in Sunga.
I got a kick out of the way the young men decorated their motorbikes. They're pretty cool looking. You never see stuff like this in the U.S., or at least I don't. Maybe I hang out with the wrong people. Unfortunately the picture doesn't capture the whole saying on the mudflap on the one on the right, but the part you can see says something like "...hardness of life is a measure of manhood..."
Wherever we went we saw people walking to and from work, school, shopping, and every other daily activity. The women often had a big bundle of something on their heads, and often tools as well. It's hard to feel very sympathetic to kids in the U.S. complaining about having to walk someplace when you know how far people in other parts of the world routinely walk and think nothing of it.
We all did a little wash and draped our clothes on the railings outside the cliff house to dry. It was humid enough things didn't dry very well inside. Unfortunately, we were about ten minutes late getting down to rescue them when a storm blew in.
Like virtually every other place we have stayed on our trips for as long as I can remember, there weren't enough hooks in our room. The other surprise, particularly given the frequency of rain, was that we didn't have umbrellas in the room. It would have also been really nice to have a fireplace; it would provide a drier environment and cheer things up. Other than that it was quite comfortable.
In the afternoon Ally took us to a small patch of native habitat where we found sunbirds as well as a few others. We were delighted to find the birds, but disappointed there was so little native habitat where they could be found.
At one point I lay down in the grass to relax a bit. Unfortunately, my leatherman fell out of its holster and I didn't notice it until later.
The place we were observing the sunbirds was a small ravine where some springs emerged. There was a steady stream of women and children coming down to the springs to fill up containers for water.
The next day we were headed back to Arusha to meet the rest of our crew. The original plan was to hike down the mountain, birding along the way. It is a steep trail that follows a ridge down. With my impaired walking ability after falling off the roof and all the rain making things slippery, Dona and I decided prudence was in order so we decided not to do that. But Ram was still game. I loaned him one of my hiking poles and he and Ally started down in the morning after breakfast. Max, Dona and I took the long way around in the Land Cruiser. I was curious as to who would get to the appointed meeting place first.
We had to drive back the way we had come to Same, then back around to the north side and the small village of Mnazi. A lot of that was bad road, and all the hikers had to do was "tumble down the mountain." I think it was about a four hour trip, but I didn't write it down. We made it to Mnazi first, by about half an hour.
We said good-bye to Ally, who had a friend with a motor-bike to take him back up; we headed back to Arusha with Max. Max dropped us off at Kiota (Nest) Guesthouse; Sid, Dawn and Uri were waiting for us. We said good-bye to Max and thanked him for a great time.
That evening our guide for the rest of the trip, Douglas Duncan with Dorobo Safaris, gave us a briefing for the rest of the trip. Douglas was Dona and my guide on our first trip to Tanzania in 2014; he is a great friend. He picked us up the next morning after breakfast and we were off to the Ngoro Ngoro crater.
