African Tour - Part One

I’m finally getting around to writing a blog about my holiday to Zambia and Malawi.  There is so much to write about that I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’ll let the pictures do the talking!

The first stage of our journey was the train from Dar-es-salaam in TZ to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.    It is a 1860 Km journey which should take 48 hours, winding southwest through Tanzania, crossing the border near Mbeya and continuing south through Zambia.  

Dar Es Salaam Train Station (Source: Wikipaedia)

We had booked a first class cabin to ourselves and bought tickets in advance , however that didn’t stop the almost inevitable confusion when we arrived as to which cabin we were actually supposed to be in.  However, after thirty minutes of toing and fro-ing, lots of conversations in kswahili, and me actually pointing out our names on the passenger manifest, we got our cabin!  Surprisingly, the train left exactly on time, and so our hope was restored!

Long Train!

The train journey was lovely, passing through some amazing scenery including the Selous Safari Park (although it was night time, so I didn’t see any wildlife), open plains, mountains and forests.  Although the train was a bit noisy and rickety it was good fun and relaxing.. there was even a bar on board!

 It was all going smoothly until we reached Mbeya, where we had a seven hour stop for “the engine to be serviced”… and then seemed to go very slowly after that all the way through the border and into Zambia.

Mbeya station.. we had some time to kill!

We finally arrived in kapiri mposhi around 12 hours later than scheduled, which meant arriving at the ungodly hour of 3am and turfed off the train into Zambia!  In times gone by, the train used to go all the way to Livingstone near Victoria falls, but now it sonly goes as far as Kapiri-Mposhi a town with few redeeming features apart from being at the end of the line.  We stayed long enough to find a taxi to Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia and on to our next leg of the adventure……….   

Louise, somewhere in Zambia