Exit Africa, Hello India

Of course exiting Africa would be difficult...a fitting way to end a highly rewarding yet challenging continent. After jumping a plane from Zanzibar (on a South African airline called 1 Time...more like 1 Time Only) to Johannesburg and a quick one night layover at a backpackers (the website made it out to be city center accommodation yet it was a done up farm in the countryside) we headed to the airport for our flight to Asia. Round-the-world plane ticket rules and regulations can be tricky. Paper tickets are a rarity these days and difficult to manage. We have the double whammy of a paper round-the-world ticket. We showed up at check-in and received the now common look of frightened awe over the face of the airline representative as we produced our paper ticket vouchers. We were then told that Colleen was on the flight but that my ticket was no where to be found. To summarize, our next 4 flights were on Cathay Pacific and they had for some reason cancelled all of my tickets. They were not able to completely explain why but told me they would put me on standby for the flight to Hong Kong and the onward flight to Mumbai, India. We told them I had paid in full, confirmed by phone and email, had a receipt and that there was no way I was going to hang around two different airports hoping to get on standby. For some reason they did not understand why I would not wait behind and send my wife on ahead without me and when Colleen insisted she would not leave either, they were really confused. Luckily we had arrived to the airport early and after a couple hours of talking with management and some calls to headquarters in Hong Kong we had things straightened out. On to Mumbai...

Colleen had been prepping for India. After the challenges of Africa and a fair amount of my forewarning we hit the streets of Mumbai. Auto-rickshaws, people, dogs, taxis, cows, smells of curry and delicious food, burning throats from exhaust, strange looks and curious people everywhere. India was as I remembered it plus more. We spent two nights in Mumbai before heading south to Goa for some time on the beach.

Hello monsoon season....yeah so we did not plan that well. We arrived in India on June 1st, the official first day of the monsoon season, and were greeted by the rains just as we reached the beaches of Goa. We made the best of it and splurged on nicer than usual accommodation and actually had a pool to help pass some time. We met up with Linda and Kira, a traveling mother daughter combo from Denver and spent time comparing travel stories. Kira had recently graduated high school early and spent the past 5 month volunteering in India while Linda had spent time earlier in life volunteering in refugee camps in Thailand during the Cambodia genocide. We sampled much of the Indian cuisine we have been highly anticipating (Linda, thanks again for dinner!) and after 3 days headed further south.

We ended up in the town of Alleppey in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The region is known for easy going socialists (yep communists), beaches, coconut trees and fine cuisine. After a night in town we booked a houseboat to tour the backwaters for 3 days. The trip turned out to be a highlight thus far as we cruised the canals and waterways in our boat with our two man crew. The houseboat is essentially a flat bottomed barge/boat with a native wood and reed house for shelter. Our driver maneuvered us through tiny rural villages and our cook kept us full with splendid meals. When there were sights to see we pulled over to shore and made short hikes to markets and churches/temples (a petite 4 ft nun blessed us, our marriage, our families and our jobs...hopefully that carries over to our job search when we return). We spent the rest of the time on our private balcony atop the boat viewing the world as it passed by.

Changing continents and spending our first week in India had revitalized our spirits. Traveling for a full year is no doubt a challenge but the changes in scenery and culture have provided a much needed lift.

Africa Round Up

We have completed the Africa segment of our trip. 88 days and 9 countries. Countless memories and more stories than we will ever be able to tell. We have shared a small fraction of our experiences with this blog and have captured further sights with our pictures. Regardless, neither the blog or our pictures can holistically capture the experience we have had over the last three months. Words can't fully explain and most often cameras and pictures were not an acceptable thing with locals, so we will have the experiences in our mind to share with all of you when we meet again. We have put together the lists below as a summary of our experiences and we hope you enjoy!

Things We Learned
-Chad is an extremely hard name to pronounce for Africans, Colleen is rather easy (odd as there is an African country named Chad)
-Africans Love Enrique Eglesias (especially cab drivers), and Rihanna and Beyonce....a lot...other western pop music you will hardly hear but they love those three
-Rwandans in the capital of Kigali LOVE buffets
-If someone tells you to turn left you have a 50/50 chance of going the right direction (thank goodness for hand gestures)
-Che is idolized everywhere...he is currently pictured on a book cover in our hotel next to Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela
-African oranges are green
-Muzungu is everyone's favorite word (means whitey, and people reminded us we were white every chance they got)
-Just because you pay for a plane ticket, have a confirmation and receipt doesn't mean you actually have a ticket
-Your chances of surviving a Tanzanian bus trip are pretty low, they drive over 90 MPH and the busses look like something out of the Mad Max movies
-You can barter any clothes item if you run out of money
-If you are hungry enough lemons can be eaten as a meal
-Don't take a good pair of sandals for granted
-When there are no other options, your body and mind are able to overcome unthinkable situations
-Never underestimate the value of human kindness from complete strangers
-Never have more than 1 beer in a local bar (trust us, we learned)
-Only eat in restaurants that are crowded....high turnover means less chance of getting sick
-Word of mouth is HUGE in the travel circle in Africa, learn from other's mistakes...and try not to make them again yourself
-There is always room for one more on a Mozambique bus if they have money
-African babies don't cry. Our hypothesis is that they are conditioned to not receiving what they want.
-You don't need much to be happy in life...pretty much we were reassured this every day we met people

Top Africa Lists
Favorite Sight: Soussevlei (Sand Dunes), Namibia
Best Sunset: Addo Elephant Park, South Africa
Favorite Food: Zanzibar
Friendliest People: Lesotho
Best Beach: Kendwa Beach, Zanzibar
Favorite Big City: Cape Town, South Africa
Favorite Small City: Rhodes, South Africa (Chad enjoyed the small town fly fishing crowd more than Colleen)
Least Favorite Town: Nampula, Mozambique
Best Beer Selection: Mozambique...actually found something besides light lager there
Worst Touts: Nhkata Bay, Malawi & Tanzanian Bus Stations
Place We Wish We Had More Time In: Uganda
Place We Could Have Spent Less Time In: Malawi (that darn ferry)
First On Our List for Our Next Visit: Ethiopia
Cheapest Room: $4.22, Colleen's birthday night
Longest Bus Journey: 17 hours (honorable mention to the 58 hour ferry which does not qualify)
Number of times Colleen ate beef byproducts: 1 (damn beef gluten in South African jelly beans)
Countries we were awaken by the morning call to prayer: 9, every one!
Most Expensive Country: Botswana at $121.32 per day, this number is slightly skewed as we were only there 2 days and had the rental car and expensive lodging
Least Expensive Country: Mozambique at $60.58 per day, days are cheap when you cant find much food!
Current Average Cost Per Trip Day: $79.22, well below our $100 a day budget which is a relief

Currently we are in Goa, India and enjoying every minute of our first country in a new continent. Internet is more prevalent here than in Africa and we will be in touch.

-Chad& Colleen

Zanzibar - the True Beach Paradise

***In addition to this new post we also updated some older posts with additional pictures and uploaded numerous new albums with captions on our Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/TheKuehls

Enjoy!
Chad & Colleen

Zanzibar, we made it. After 3 months in Africa we have arrived at our final destination. From Kigali we caught a bus to the border with Tanzania, then bargained for a shared taxi to take us another 3 hours into Tanzania to the town of Kahama, the nearest town with a bus connection to Dar. After a night in small town Kahama we caught an early morning bus to Dar, arriving 13 hours later.

Sounds easy right? It would have gone relatively smooth if it wasn't for the horrible case of food poisoning I caught in Kigali. We ate at a buffet....first and last of the trip...enough said. Not the wisest decision and I paid for it over the next 4 days and eventually had to take a course of antibiotics to get rid of it. Colleen food sickness: 2, Chad (stomach of steel!): 0. We stayed in Dar for 3 nights, mainly so I could recover, and to be honest, there isn't much to do or see in Dar. It is the biggest city in Tanzania (although it is not the capital) and there wasn't even a supermarket bigger than the corner mini mart. It was a good place to recover though, and from Dar it is very easy to catch a ferry to Zanzibar. I said it was easy to take the ferry, unfortunately it was not easy to buy tickets. Tanzania is filled with touts, more than any other country we have seen so far. We were constantly telling people "no, we don't need your help. No we don't want to buy anything No you cannot carry our baggage. No, no, no". It is exhausting and buying transportation tickets of any kind is an experience as the touters jockey for position in order to claim a commission on your purchase (even if they did not help you to begin with).

After 3 nights in Dar, and I fully recovered, we fought our way through the touts dockside and onto the Zanzibar Ferry. We paid a premium to get on the high speed morning ferry and 2 hours later we were exiting on the shores of Zanzibar (had to get our passports stamped and go through immigration although they are technically part of Tanzania)...weaving through more touts on our way to a taxi. We checked into a guesthouse in historical Stonetown, the main town on Zanzibar. Stonetown is beautiful, with narrow winding alleyways and streets, you can get lost for hours there. The population on Zanzibar is mainly Muslim and the women fully covered their bodies and heads with beautiful materials, something we had not encountered since the small rural towns of Jordan. We spent 2 nights in Stonetown enjoying the old world feel before catching a mini bus out to what Zanzibar is famous for, the beach. There are many beaches to choose from in Zanzibar and one was recommended to us by a few people so we headed that way. We traveled by local minibus which meant exiting on the side of a road and hiking several kilometers with our packs down a marked dirt road to the beach side backpackers. We had a confirmed reservation at a recommended resort but upon arriving found that they had lost the reservation and their quoted prices were now inconsistent with what our reservation stated. We took it as a sign and headed out. Given the temperature and our heavy packs, we checked in just down the road for one night and spent the remainder of the morning doing a round robin of the neighboring resorts finding the best one suited for us and made a reservation there for the remaining 3 nights.

We chose to end our tour of Africa in Zanzibar because of a deal we found on airplane flights back to Johannesburg. It turns out the island was the perfect place to unwind and reminisce about the past several months of travel and prepare for the road ahead of us in Asia. The weather is perfect, not too hot and not too cold (think those warm San Francisco days we get a handful of each summer) with a light refreshing shower each afternoon. The beaches had the whitest sand either of us had ever seen and the turquoise blue waters were somewhat hypnotic as we spent afternoons gazing out on the Indian Ocean and the islands offshore. The nights were spent touring the local beachside restaurants sampling multiple curries, pastas and seafood for Chad. One particular night we gathered at a local open air beach pub to watch the Champions League soccer final between Manchester United and Barcelona. We arrived early and as game time grew nearer the crowd drew larger and larger. The bar owner had installed a new projection TV that day and was casting the game on an oversized (10+ ft) screen hanging from the rafters. As the bar was open air the crowd grew outside and it was a site to behold. There was a large group of Masai (the native people of Tanzania) decorated in their elaborate historical dress, in addition to locals ranging in age from the very young to adults, and of course the local touts and beachboys. It was a site to remember watching them sitting motionless and memorized on the beach in anticipation of the match. We did a bit of snorkeling on the last day on one of the many offshore islands and finished the night off with a glass of wine on the beach watching the sunset. Zanzibar is amazing.

We are in transit for the next few days, heading first to Johannesburg, then to Hong Kong before finally arriving in India. The flights will be long but after many hours on buses in Africa we are looking forward to the relative comfort of a plane.

The Pearl of Africa

Churchill coined Uganda the 'Pearl of Africa'. The small, somewhat circular shaped country is nestled nicely between Kenya, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Lake Victoria. The country is home to the highest mountain range in Africa, contains the source of the great Nile River and is home to the highest concentration of primates in the world. Essentially it is Africa condensed.

Our time in Uganda is short. Upon receiving an unexpected multiple entry visa into Tanzania we then had the opportunity for some side trips into neighboring countries. We decided to sidetrack into both Uganda and Rwanda by bus via Kenya. Both countries were mysterious to us and the lure of the unknown definitely swayed our decision. Prior to making our decision we did some research and talked to a couple other travelers and discovered that there was actually a lightly treaded 'backpackers' route through the two countries. We also found that both countries were actually extremely safe today following much violence and hardship the past couple decades.

We left Arusha, Tanzania (still never saw Mt Kilimanjaro completely through the clouds) on an afternoon bus. Our 20 hour overnight bus ride had a midnight connection in Nairobi, Kenya and then arrived in the Ugandan Capital of Kampala the following day. The bus ride was relatively comfortable and en route we were treated to a bridge crossing over the Nile River at its source, Lake Victoria. It was pretty amazing to imagine the thousands of miles northward the river winds before eventually empting into the Mediterranean. We arrived in Kampala around noon time and hopped on the back of two motorcycles who taxied us to our backpackers lodging on the edge of town. We decided to spend our first night outside of the town center while we oriented ourselves and did some homework on what we would be seeing and how we would be traveling over the next week.

Following a good nights sleep and some conversation over beers with other travelers we headed into the chaotic city center of Kampala. Kampala is a city of 1.2 million that is known for its crowded streets active nightlife. After exiting our taxi and trudging through the crowded streets we were able to find a centrally located hotel. From there we spent the next 3 days exploring the capital city. Since the war, unrest and strife that plagued the country in the 70s and 80s, Uganda has been on the rebound and is quite impressive. Kampala itself sports multiple universities in addition to primary and secondary schools (more than we have seen anywhere in Africa) as well as supermarkets, banks and many street side cafes. The streets are chaotic but remain safe and we wandered around freely discovering new sites as we went.

On our third day we took a side trip an hour outside of the city to the Uganda Wildlife Education Center. The center is a wildlife refuge for animals that have been recovered from poachers and traffickers. We were able to view native chimpanzees for the first time which was a huge treat and Colleen was able to get her animal fix.

From here we head south on a day long journey to Rwanda and the capital city of Kigali. Again, we are not sure what to expect but know most of our time there will be focused on memorials and sites relating to the 1994 genocide. Rwanda today extremely safe but there is the uneasiness that comes with visiting an area that experienced so much pain and emotion so recently.

One If By Land, Two If By Sea

We chose two...and we chose wrong.

The Ilala Ferry is a beast of a boat, some 170 ft of fun and enjoyment spread over 3 passenger levels . She was built by the colonial English in 1950 (although her wear and tear indicate an older age) and has been ferrying passengers north and south on Lake Malawi for the past half century. The guidebook indicated that this was an 'experience that was not to be missed' and was the 'highlight of many travelers visit to Malawi'.

Upon arriving at the dock a day early to buy our tickets, we were told to be to the boat an hour early of the 10AM departure and that we would be arriving at our final destination of Nhkata Bay at 1AM some 39 hours later. We took caution and booked 1st class tickets for the next day.

The next morning we arrived at the ferry just prior to 9AM and boarded soon after. We found the first class section (the top deck of the boat) to be entirely open air with the only coverage being a small canopy and some safety rails. The section was surprisingly empty except for a couple of locals plus the other 4 persons that would make up our small group on the journey. There was Dave and Hadi from Brooklyn as well as CJ and Sasha from England. Glad to be in good company with these four we anxiously awaited our departure and the adventure ahead. After and hour or so, more people started appearing up the stairwell heading directly to the small bar area at the front of the deck. Interestingly enough this bar was attached directly to the ferry wheelhouse. Soon thereafter we learned these additional persons were the boat crew and the ringleader with the bottle of gin was actually the boat captain! Six hours later (the crew needed 3 hours to drink and 3 hours to recover/nap) we left port. The first day went by quite smoothly. The customs agent on the boat had given me a couple of warm local beers as a gift (he was drinking too and not sure why he gave me his beer as I was reading my book) as he checked our passports for valid visas. We slept nicely the first night out under the stars right on the deck floor as the boat chugged from port to port.

Awaking on Day 2 we found ourselves some 12 hours behind schedule and getting a little restless. We had brought food and water from shore but were beginning to run a little short. We had ventured down to the lower portions of the boat only to find the kitchen inadequate and overpriced and the 2nd class deck to be overflowing with locals. You name it, they brought it aboard as cargo...couches, tires, scrap metal, tomatoes, chickens, cardboard, spare car engines, jerrycans (of course), peanuts and bicycles. Most of the ports we arrived at were too shallow to enter so the people and cargo were ferried out to the ferry (sometimes in row boats). We hit a new port every handful of hours and spent the subsequent handful of hours there...the crew continuing to drink throughout the trip. Early in the morning of our second night on the boat we awoke to the jeers and drunken yelling of some new passengers in 1st class. The night had already been a rough one as rats had decided to have their way running across our sleep sacks and chewing a hole in one of our bags. Turns out these locals who apparently come on board to drink and party and then just before the ferry leaves, they head back in to shore. A fun night out on the town for them, unfortunately that wasn't the case for us.

Now some 15 hours behind schedule, we trudged through the 3rd day, hungry, dirty (no showers) and tired, only to be told be would be arriving later and later. Don't worry though, the crew kept up the partying for the whole trip. Glad to see someone was having a good time. The one saving grace were the great people we had with us to weather the storm. It was nice to catch up with fellow travelers and I doubt any of us would have made it through the trip as easily with out the others. After 60 hours, we finally arrived at our destination to find mass chaos awaiting at the poorly lit port. Luckily we had pre-booked a place a few days before on advice from another traveler, and after 20 minutes of pushing and shoving, we exited the boat to find a man from our backpackers waiting for us. After a 10 minute boat ride(yep, we got back on a boat), we arrived at Mayoka Village, an oasis on the shores of Nhkata Bay. We unpacked in our beautiful chalet on a small cliff directly on the lake, grabbed dinner and had a few celebratory drinks with our fellow ferry friends. Our next 4 days went bay quickly as we snorkeled, ate local food, hiked and hung out in the small village. We had warm showers lit by fire each night and some enjoyable compost toilets as well.

Upon checkout from the village we were told that there was a mixup and our taxi to the bus stand had somehow left without us. As we discussed our next move we were approached by a middle aged man who asked about our final destination. His name was Rod and he was heading to Karonga (our final destination) and he offered to give us a lift the full way there. A break from crowded minivans and buses to ride in an aircon pickup truck was almost too good to be true. The day long drive was pleasant as we exchanged stories and spoke about the little news of the world that each of us knew. Turns out Rod was quite the character, a uranium miner from Australia working on a 2 year stint in Malawi. We took a quick detour to visit a mountaintop 19th century mission setup by the original European missionaries to the region and made it to Karonga by nightfall where we bid a much appreciated farewell to Rod. The stories of travelers helping travelers seem to be a constant on our journey.

The next morning we headed the remaining 40 km to the Malawi/Tanzania border. We found the Tanzanian immigration counter to be staffed by women and Colleen took the lead to get our visas issued. Standard issue for Americans at the border is a 90 day single entry visa but somehow Colleen ended up with 6 month multiple entry visas. Women in this part of the world definitely take to speaking with her and it has been an unexpected highlight of my trip to see her interact with them.

We spent one night in the boarder town of Mbeya before heading north on a 17 hour bus ride to the town of Moshi in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro and have been here now for a few days. Thus far the buses and food in Tanzania have been a relief as we are eating better and traveling more comfortably. No sight of the nearby mountain yet as the clouds have not parted but hopefully we will be rewarded soon. From here we head to the 'pearl of Africa'.

Beaches, Buses and Avocados - Our Introduction to Mozambique

We have run into relatively few Americans during our travels thus far. In Ireland and the UK they were no doubt present but there were very few to be found in Jordan and even less so once we arrived in Africa. Touring southern Africa in the rental car for a month lead to some encounters but probably less than we could count on two hands. Now that we have crossed the boarder into Mozambique and are solely relying on public transportation, encounters are even fewer. On our initial cross boarder bus from Johannesburg to the capital city of Maputo we had a handful of American foreign exchange students on Easter/Spring break heading north to the beaches of Mozambique. After two nights in Maputo we headed north to our first sample of the beaches and into the holiday crowds at the coastal town of Tofo. Easter break meant packed hotels and higher prices but it was nice to be around some larger crowds for the three days we spent there.

Since leaving Tofo 5 days ago we have spent nearly 20 total hours on 1 bus, 2 chappas (local taxi bus/mini van) and 1 boat (riding the bus here is a whole different post, think seats for 20 but 30+++ people on board). We have shared these vehicles with some 150+ people and we have been the only non-locals aboard. Yep, ebony and ivory, Chad and Colleen and the locals. We have been assured that the public transit is safe but the looks, or more so stares, that we receive are somewhat intriguing. Mostly they come from the young girls aboard the buses staring at Colleen with blank faces for minutes at a time.

The few Americans we have run into have had admirable actions that have brought them to this part of the world. We have run into multiple Peace Core volunteers who all seem to be working in neighboring Zambia. Then there was the girl from Vermont who was on break working at a startup non-profit in Kenya helping with women’s rights and the education of young girls. Then there was the chance run in with a girl from Washington DC who had left her job at a top financial firm on the east coast to work for one year in micro-financing in Tanzania. Then there was the guy who left his job in IT project management to work for 6 months in Namibia teaching technology to local high-schoolers. People in this part of the world love the USA for the New York Yankees and Hollywood (Jean Claude van Dam?) . But it is more than that. There are Americans here who have placed life on hold and selflessly left their high paying jobs and careers behind for a short while in the hopes of doing more. And for this reason Africans appreciate us as Americans. They respect us, love to speak the English they know (in Mozambique they speak Portuguese, and very little English the farer north we head), and have generally been very polite to us as guests in their country.

Today’s public transport via a 30 seater mini bus was particularly rough. No vehicle break downs as we had in previous days, but too many people for the actual space and we were positioned over a wheel well so we had our feet in the air with our knees to our chest for 11 hours. Add to that a missed alarm this morning and a 4AM sprint up a sand road to make the 4:30 bus. Besides that, the past week has been peaceful with 3 days in Tofo at the beach and 3 days in Vilankulo at the beach, and we were thrown back into the frenzy of Africa today. We are currently in Beira, the 2nd largest city in Mozambique, with the ultimate destination of Ilha de Mocambique in mind before cutting over to Malawi. Ilha is a whole 3 days of African transport away though, so I am sure we will have many more stories of bus rides ahead.

Our diets as of late have been rather simple. Meat is hard to come by and very expensive ($4 meat in a tube). When you do find meat it is then questionable where it came from and how it has been stored. I have therefore joined Colleen on the vegetarian train for the past 10 days and will probably remain so for much of the rest of Africa. Our typical daily run to the local market stalls supplies us with fresh bread, tomatoes, bananas, avocados (my saving grace), oranges, cookies, cheese (again rare and expensive and we rarely have it) and crackers. We also try to carry a jar of peanut butter with us when available. Usually our daily treat is a orange Fanta sold by the kids out of coolers on the side of the road. Restaurants tend to be pricey as well ($20 a meal for two) but we are getting by with our market visits for around $10 a day. Our stomachs are anxiously looking forward to the curries of India a couple months from now!

The bus rides are long and the meals not always optimal but the country of Mozambique continues to be an experience that we enjoy. The destinations, and the journeys in between, have been rewarding and observing the locals in their environment has been enlightening.