Day 53 – The continuing bus and taxi adventures of K&M!

Karonga (Malawi) to Mbeya (Tanzania) - Mt. Livingstone Hotel

Our arranged taxi did not arrive at 9am, after phoning for another one it finally turned up at 9.30 with the tout lying that we’d said 9:30! We almost ditched him there, but decided to take it to the border anyway where we battled through the black market money changers, piles of luggage, and a sudden downpour.

After the rain stopped we headed to the Tanzanian side, the money changers are unbelievably pushy. The signs say it is illegal but no one seems to try and stop them, one obviously tried to cheat us but we were awake to his tricks! More taxi wrangling on the Tanzania side and we made it to the mini bus for Mbeya, insisting we had seats before handing over the money. We were given two seats at the very back of the bus, but there were containers on the ground, so K could only perch her feet on top. The seats were so narrow and the woman next to M rather large so he ended up standing anyway and occasionally perching on the edge to avoid the giant bunch of bananas on the floor.

It didn’t end there though …. K discovered that one of the containers had no lid and vegetable oil was pouring onto her legs, over the floor and under M’s case! It took a bit of effort to convince the bus attendant that we had a problem. They eventually stopped the bus, M got out and moved the case, so now he was covered in the oil as well, all over his shirt, shorts, legs and sandals, as we continued on our way!

We arrived into Mbeya about 3.30pm and caught a taxi to the train station – we’ve had enough of buses and taxis for a while! We booked a 1^st class sleeper compartment to Dar Es Salaam for Saturday afternoon, a 26+ hour overnight journey. We had to book four seats so we had the compartment to ourselves, otherwise we would have had to go in separate ones as they are segregated between men and women.

It has now been four days since we have had hot water (and we were covered in cooking oil!) so the biggest priority in a hotel is just that. The Mt Livingstone Hotel insisted they did have hot water, so we could finally have a shower and wash some clothes!