Zambia to Malawi

The last couple of days have been surreal – a true African adventure. We went on a 7 hour bus trip from Livingstone to Lusaka, which left Livingstone at 6.30am. After arriving in Lusaka, we were deciding whether to wait a day to head on to Chipata when we found a bus was about to leave and was supposed to take 7 more hours. Although the locals were very vague about the time, some looking meaningful at the others and saying, no it won't arrive until 3am (this would later make more sense). The bus left at 2pm. I silently breathed a sigh of relief when at the last minute 2 massive young south backpackers we'd seen down in Livingstone previously were bundled into the back of the bus (its always good to have at least one other person who can't speak Bemba trying to get to a backpackers in the middle of the night).

The bus was absolutely hauling ass (trying to drive off after 5 minute stops instead of standard half hours, forcing crippled old passengers to hobble along the side of the bus and jump in as it roared on). At about 5pm the bus pulled over to the side of the road for no apparent reason and the conductor made quite a show of opening the engine bay and making disapproving faces. The bus then drove exactly as it had been ie. fast and without omnious sounds.

At about 7pm we pulled up in front of a brothel and bar, the conductor opened the engine bay and announced that the bus was irreparably broken down, at which point all of the bus crew disappeared (hmmmmm). We were informed that we would have to wait for someone from Lusaka to drive out and have a look at it. We had the privilege of sitting stationed outside the bright lights and blaring, repetitive, crap music of the brothel, while rain dripped on Renu from the leaking roof. It was LOUD!!!! it was bright, we were wet and tired.....good times!!!

It's amazing how uncomfortable situations can give you the ability to see into the future sometimes. As per our mental script, at about 1am the bus miraculously made a recovery, which coincided with closing time for the bar, hmmmm.

After we'd bundled up the last of the mostly cheery drunk people, we lurched out of the driveway with most of the people on the bus trying to fight each other, including the ‘alleged’ goal keeper for the Zambian soccer team. He assured us he was famous and had many fans in Zambia. He followed on to spill his entire beer over someones bag, at which point the bus conductor took his coat off and wanted to start a fight with him. As people were getting back on the bus, Nathan sat down for a second in someone elses seat. Luckily, the man who had been sitting there was drunk as a skunk and had wet his seat – Nathan was gagging at the stench of his pants for the rest of the trip.


The bus driver started driving about 1am and was swaying from side to side on the road "avoiding potholes". As the potholes were mostly invisible in nature and he often chose to drive with one wheel teetering on the edge of the embankment rather than on the clear smooth central tarred road we deduced that he was - COMPLETELY DRUNK!! Thankfully we think he was aware of this (if not at first, then certainly after we, the south africans and we think some locals in Bemba yelled out to inform him of the fact), accordingly he drove very slowly for the first two hours until he started to sober up. We were really nervous and thought we would drive off the edge of the embankment – the circumstances were not good given that it was pouring rain and we were really in the middle of nowhere – otherwise we would have considered getting off the bus.


We eventually made it to Chipata at about 7am in the pouring rain. We hopped off the bus and given we had the strength of numbers we decided to push on to Lilongwe. Besides we were feeling so fresh and revitalised after our luxury coach trips.

So off in a taxi at 130km/h in the pouring rain on the muddy road to the Zambia Immigration. We walked across the border to Malawi where we were quoted $80 USD to Lilongwe - too rich for our blood! So we, then jumped in another taxi to Mchinji for $8 USD. Getting there we were told by locals that there were no mini-buses going to Lilongwe because the bus drivers were on strike. With the help of our south african friends we negotiated a ride in the back of a truck to go the remaining 120km to Lilongwe the capital of Malawi, with about 100 other local people for $2USD. We were starving on the truck so one of the South African guys traded his hat for 5 donut things that we gobbled down quickly.

Amazingly this was probably the most comfortable, cheapest and spectacular road trips we'd done! We learnt some of the local language from the Malawians on the truck. Everyone was really friendly and thankfully we didn't get taken off the truck by the army guys at one of the border posts - It didn't seem too bad though, the Zambian guy who was taken off was given back without having to pay anything. I don't know what he was doing with the two american backpackers that we picked up but either it was something or the american was the most naturally nervous guy I've ever seen. He was absolutely crapping himself from the moment he jumped on and must have chain smoked about 50 cigarettes during the trip and was even looking warily at us? We finally made it to Lilongwe with pants that smelt of urine and empty stomachs. On arrival at the backpackers, we feasted on banana pancakes, milkshakes and omelette, mmmmm.


This is the second bus breakdown we’ve experienced so far, both in Zambia. The first time, we were left in a drainage ditch to wait at about 10pm at night whilst another bus arrived to pick us up. We were actually relieved to get off this bus because we had been in it for about 15 hours and it stunk of vomit, wee and rotting fruit – we had never seen so much rubbish in a bus before! The joys of bus travel in Africa….

We didn't mention that trip in our glowing report on visiting Heniric in Kawambwa - we didn't want to kill the mood :) In fact we even got to experience our first "hand is faster than the eye trick" when did finally get back into Lusaka that night.

Given the late hour and our need to get to the backpackers before it closed we made a dash in the pouring rain to the taxis while everyone else sat it out in the bus (it never did stop in the end).

After the rather young looking taxi driver put our bags in the boot of the only taxi there he disappeared to "get the key" what the?! Turns out he wasn't the driver at all which we thankfully deduced before he had a chance to lock our packs into the boot of the car. After wrestling the bags off him, we tried to find a taxi and were offered a clearly unofficial taxi. After chatting to some of the old guys in one of the open stalls we decided that we'd take the ride as it wasn't getting any safer at the bus depot and we knew the way. We adopted our standard positions in the back seat and as we were leaving the driver got his friend in the front seat (how comforting).

So when we get to our street he wants to drive past the entrance and demands you give me money now. Of course we insisted on parking at the gate where the guard would be. After creating a confusion in pronunciation about the agreed 15,000 versus 50,000, the driver switched the 20,000 we had handed him for a 1,000 handing it back and becoming very calm and relaxed with much improved pronunciation about the 15,000 fare. All we had to do was give him the other 14,000. We called a spade a spade to them, but given the late hour, darkness and aggression we decided to beat a retreat in awe of his quick hands and craftiness, handing over another 20,000 getting our 5,000 "change" and telling that it was all bullshit!

Suckers :(
But alive :)
After all it was only 5 bucks and we did get a long winded story out of it. Aren't you glad!

Rafting the Zambezi

The indemnity form had the following words/phrases 'Class 5 rapids - extremely difficult, pressure zones, violent...'. The guides explained that the highest 'navigable' class of rapids for white water rafting was Class 5. We checked again that this was suitable for beginners and then signed the indemnity forms, hoping we wouldn't die. We had heard of a few deaths during rafting, particlarly people getting sucked into whirl pools and drowning. The others at least consoled us that drowing was a peaceful way to die (??)


So we walked down to the boiling pot to start our adventure rafting the gorge 200m around the corner from the base of Victoria Falls with Zambia on one side and Zimbabwe on the other. We managed to keep the raft upright over the first rapid. Unfortunately the group in the raft behind us did not and afterwards one of the girls grinned at us from the boat revealing half a tooth - it had been chipped off by the paddle on the first rapid!! What had we got ourselves into!

We continued on through rapids with extremely disconcerting names such as "the devil's washing machine" and localised vortexes with unofficial names discussed between backpackers such as "whirlpool of death". Thankfully we all got out and walked around "commercial suicide", that is with the exception of two of the local guides who took it on for kicks and survived with some incredible footwork, moving from front to back and side to side in the raft.


I (Renu) was complaining we had not yet flipped over through a rapid (we had an amazing guide!). So after we had passed throught "the 3 ugly sisters" and climbed "the mother" our guide kindly forced us into a flip within the big washing machine rapid. We have excellent video footage of this. This was the stack of the day, thanks to Nathan's artistic fall. I was actually held underwater for quite a long time and was then stuck under the raft. Luckily I found the rope and came up coughing and spluttering... Nathan managed to hold on to the raft, then fly through the air still holding on to the raft and paddle, as you can see in the following photos....

Next photo in sequence is at top of page :)

This is one of the most amazing experiences we have ever had!! Incidentally the scenery through the gorge was awesome and besides the risks of injury this is definitely the best way to see it.

Ethiopia Fun (I thought Haile Selassie was a runner!)

Ethiopia was awesome. We had such a blast even though we could only stay a week and really only saw Addis Ababa. We will definitely be back.

A cynic might describe our trip as no more than a very expensive geography lesson. Expensive as it may be though, it is nonetheless much more effective than watching endless documentaries on Wildebeest migrations, which my high school geography department seemed fixated with.

Flying to Addis Ababa from Dubai during the day with a window seat was a real treat. Unfortunately I was too transfixed on the scenery flying over Saudi Arabia and Yemen to take any photos until we had just crossed the Red Sea near the gulf of Aden and continued west over (presumably) Djibouti. This one below is of a very pretty lake/beach (looking north). Can anyone tell us what it is called? Unfortunately our mini atlas doesn't have the required detail. The first person to correctly answer can buy us a beer.

The scenery flying over the Ethiopian highlands was beautiful from the window but I'll save the photos and descriptions for my upcoming "Idiot's compendium of mis-titled geographic features from a grubby economy class window". Btw if anyone has a snappier title be sure to let me know.
Addis was not what we expected. It exceeded our expectations but that's hardly surprising since our preconception consisted of a barren dust bowl strewn with bloated belly babies and maybe the odd exceptional middle and long distance runner loping by. Once again I blame my high school geography department's obsession with nature documentaries and the efficacity of World Vision's marketing department. I of course am blameless for my global ignorance.

We had a surprisingly easy time getting visas at the airport and as we emerged to the outside world there was a tangible calm which had a somewhat sedating effect, (maybe it was the altitude). Either way it was a pleasant change to the frenetic chaos of north African arivals and we had the sense that even if we hadn't been lucky enough to have Neeti Didi meet us at the airport we might have been able to make it into town without (m)any (mis)adventures.

We had an AWESOME time with Neeti Didi in Addis Ababa. It was a miracle that we managed to venture out from her coocoon of hospitality. It is so great to spend time relaxing (when Neeti finally stopped working at night:) ) and chatting with family after normally being invited into people's houses only to be sold carpets.

Neeti's place is beautiful and so relaxing - we really really hope to be back there again soon! And anyone who hasn't yet visited Neeti and Shejo in Addis Ababa should really go!!!!

Awesome place...

Relaxing at Neeti and Shejo's place, reading the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency with a St. George beer-so good!

Addis has fantastic museums. Here is a photo of our cousin Lucy:


Lucy, our cousin

For the geeks and aspiring geeks out there here is an interesting explanation of how family trees within the animal kingdom can be deduced:

Addis also has excellent restaurants and Ethiopian food is delicious. We went out for a night of Injera, Tej wine (home-made honey wine), Ethiopian music and shoulder click-dancing (see video below) with Neeti Didi, Tigz and Neeti's friends at Yod Abyssinia which is a must see if you're in Addis. Tej is pretty good but there's never a reliable estimate of how strong it is. Sometimes it's like a port but at other times it's said to be strong enough to power a spacecraft. We were lucky enough to have the type that doesn't leave you on the dark side of the moon.

Injera and St George Beer at Yod Abyssinia ................................................Tej wine

The Shoulder Dance

While at the University in what was Haile Selassie's Palace we were fortunate to run into a friend of Neeti's who teaches there. She aksed if we were there to attend the Rastafarian lecture that evening. "What Rastafarian lecture? and yes" we said. Well it was quite an experience. There were 3 Rastafarians who made presentations in the interest of broadening the larger community's understanding and acceptance of them as a part of modern Ethiopia.


The oldest, bare footed one mainly presented with the aid of his striking white Fender stratocaster wandering as far as his electric lead would allow him. He was very charismatic.

The tall one presented as in a wartime presidential address from behind a large desk, with mounting fervour and frequent scripture quotations.

The Austrian one mainly presented anecdotes from her life in a whimsical manner. She had discovered that she had to wear skirts to allow positive energy to enter from the ground into her body. Equally important to her was covering her hair so that the postive energy remained trapped in her brain and didn't escape into the atmosphere.

They were all adamant that Haile Selassie was the second coming of Jesus Christ and believed strongly in the power of Reggae music. They had migrated to Ethiopia (which they considered their holy land) from Jamaica, England and Austria respectively.

I have to say they came across as very positive, likeable people. They were basically lucid and generally seemed to want people to just be happy and nice to one another.....oh and also to relax and let them smoke dope in peace.

The room full of Ethiopians (plus Renu, me and a couple of possible Spanish exchange students or itinerant travellers [young, smelly people, with outrageous hair and a smirky air of erudition]) found the Haile Selassie thing a bit of a revelation. This was especially true for the Ethiopians, many of whom had lived through part of the Emperor's reign. It prompted them to ask, if he represented the second coming, "Are we now in Heaven?" It was obvious from Rasta 1's expression during his guitar solos that he at least believed so.

When challenged over whether the Emperor could truly be considered divine given his all too human fallibility, the trio were steadfast in their claims that he had not made one mistake in his life. As members of the audience began to proffer examples, the auditorium fell victim to some sort of cosmic interference and their words didn't seem to be able to carry the 10m to the Rasta trio. The trio just kept repeating the challenge "Name one mistake" like some sort of mantra (and perhaps it was?).

However apart from the typical grating "I'm right, your wrong, he really wore a red hat and liked to be called Joe" conceit that most denominations seem to rejoice in, it was pretty hard to take issue with them and their be good/nice/happy theology.

In fact they might have had two new recruits if it weren't for two things they had in common with all religions:

1. The worthwhile portion of their doctrine comprised platitudes being largely axiomatic and already universally acknowledged, ie "it's good to be nice" and vice versa.

2. The exclusive portion of their doctrine required one to atest to something seemingly so far fetched that you would risk being consigned to the loony bin by any contemporary rationale.

So given that you didn't need to subscribe to their religion to practice what they preached, there didn't seem to be anything new and their defining quality was craziness with a capital CRAZY, we thought we'd give it a miss.

They seemed like great people to do anything except donate money to or argue with. I like them a lot. They are by far my favourite religious zealots. Oh, we also were invited to the staff caffeteria which is home of the tastiest macchiato we've had (except maybe for the island of Djerba in Tunisia). One of the few positives of fascist Italian occupation. For anyone in Addis the museum at the University (Ethnological museum) is well worth the visit. It's the old palace and they've made a bit of a shrine out of Haile Selassie's bedroom. You can even see the bullet damage to his dressing table mirror allegedly from the time of the Derg's take over. Haile was an old fashioned guy; his bathroom is completely blue and his wife's adjoining one pink. He may well have been a jealous exhibitionist too as his bathroom has conspicuously low transparent glass windows overlooking the grounds, whilst his wife's windows are opaque.

Continuing with the religous theme, we went up to Ntoto Church. Ethiopia has had a large orthodox Christian following since the year dot. It's very interesting, I won't crap on about it here but we did pass some women carrying enormous loads on their backs going up the hill:

I will never complain about my heavy pack again

Renu and I marvelled at these feats of strength and endurance by woman of all ages (none of whom seemed to be on an athletes diet). Our healthy male driver told us the loads were deceptively light. I don't think he'd ever carried one.

Apparently people go to Ntoto to try to be cured of AIDS, mental problems and other ailments. Some of these people leave their families to live here as they cannot face telling their families about their sickness. There is a belief that holy water from a nearby water body will cure them. The image outside Ntoto church was unforgettable - there were people sprawled over the large grounds generally sitting or lying down, not talking to one another.

We got to have a tour of a church up the road which has very impressive murals. Due to the power being off, we used foot long bees wax candles to light our way. It was very atmospheric and a little deflating towards the end when the electricity came on. I suppose the rest of town prefered the electricity though:):

Photo on left: Haile Selassie, a previous Emperor, painted on the right. Did everyone know that Haile Selassie is the second coming of God in the eyes of Rastafarians (Ras=King, Tafari=Haile Selassie's pre coronation name)

Orthodox Ethiopians afford Haile Selassie the status of king who became an emperor (as such he is depicted in the painting above) as opposed to the earthly incarnation of the almighty. I generally like to be anti-establishment but my money is with the orthodoxy in this case.

Did we mention Ethiopia has great food:

Dinner at The Cottage.....................................................Unjera - the delicious national staple

A hot tip from Neeti Didi sent us to Kuriftu Resort for the day. It's south of Addis and is now my favourite resort. The people were very friendly, the food was great and amazingly they had a delicous bottle of Italian Sove at a very reasonable price. They didn't mind that we had just crashed to enjoy the place for the day and given the quality of the place it wasn't very expensive to stay (about the same price as spending the night in someone's vacuum cleaner in central London).

Lunch at Kuriftu Resort - YUM.....................................Great furniture at the resort

As you can see we didn't really do anything worthy in Ethiopia. In fact we generally lived it up and had a ball in a country whose Western stereotype personifies poverty. I would come to sit in a seedy Zambian's urine later in the trip. If this was karmic retribution, then it was worth it. Ethiopia was fantastic!

Ethiopia a land of beauty and bad scaffolding:

Andorra Climbing

We headed off on our turbo adventure south from France to meet up with Bern, Paul and Isabel in Spain. Our route took us through the Pyrenees towards Barcelona, absolutely stunning country.

Sometimes it's hard to get climbing in when you are moving quickly across a lot of ground. What you really need is for someone to build a gigantic climbing pinnacle right on the side of the highway in spectacular settings. Of course it needs to be open to the public (or the sign's need to be able to be interpreted that way:)

Thank you ANDORRA!!!!

As we drove through Andorra, we stumbled upon this huge man-made pinnacle, set up for climbing – yayyy! Mum and Dad Steggles watched on as Nathan led one of the hardest climbs we have ever done. It was made slightly harder due to some of the holds being a little loose (the anchors all looked good though) And he didn’t fall off! I found the climb super hard to do on top rope. We were exhausted after just one climb but very satisfied that we managed to do a climb in yet another country – yayyy! p.s. Andorra is stunning! And tax free!!

Grenoble Expedition

After our rockin' time in Lyon part 1, Wales and Lyon part 2 (posts hopefully to be added) we ventured up to see Agnes, Pierre Louis and the kids (ditto on post). From here we headed down to Grenoble where we ran into Tim Hellyer on the corner of the street. He told us to wait there but never came back. Thankfully we remembered how forgetful he is and moved on to a stunning Chateau guest house in the Verdon.

After a wonderful night of feasting on the owners variety of home-made wines and liquers, beef roast over their open fire, a host of other home grown delicacies, topped off with fresh berries and cream from garden and cow respectively, we continued south.

Although we had mentioned how wonderful the walking in the area was and bought a map of the area together, I think Dad was planning on skipping the treking sector of the trip (based upon his selection of black leather dress shoes for the day- nice try Dad!!!!:)

We looked at our map, spotted a nice route and away we went. After driving through the ski lodge area we arrived at around 1500m altitude and started our scenic stroll…. 2 hours later, we found ourselves at the foot of a steep track leading up to the top of this gigantic mountain.

To Mum and Dad's credit and our astonishment they decided to push on rather than walk back on the relatively flat path. This was a serious mountain hike and we remain astounded at Mum and Dad's effort. Most of the time we were walking along a path only about a foot wide! Well done to Mum and Dad who survived the walk and the altitude!! As often happens we found that the tracks, signs and map were at various stages of disrepair, innacuracy/disagreement. After about 5 hours of walking it was starting to get late and we'd seen the most spectacular part of the walk already (that's our story and we're sticking to it :) ).

Lucky we had Mountain Goat Nathan to run/bound back down the mountain and get the car, run 5 km, open some gates and bring the car up the fire trails, while we waited for him as the sun was setting…. Of course we were excellently prepared for the walk with exactly just one bottle of water between us (why carry excess rate) and no food (why eat when you can walk?)– well done Team Adventure Steggles! Perhaps we’ll try Everest next hey Mum and Dad?

If we get faster internet we'll try to add some more photos as with all the blogs:)

Climbing a Volcano

We found a really nice camp site near Rocher de Costaros. The owners were super friendly and had a great bar set up. They baked us hot chocie croissants and made fresh espresso in the morning. The bohemians had created a great atmosphere but they were pretty relaxed in all things, especially the cleanliness of the bathrooms....eeewwwww. I didn't think our leg strengthening exercises for africa and beyond would start this early. We had a great time chatting to them about travel and things. They were serious travellers......when we said we'd taken 9 months off from work as a big pre-children adventure, the owner earnestly frowned and lamented, "Yeah, we only get 6 months off a year....." What the?!?!? I think we need to become camping ground owners. Especially now that I know you don't really have to clean the bathrooms:)

They helped us with directions to the climbing nearby where we climbed the inside of an old volcano (after navigating around some road blocks and a nice walk to the cliff)- see below...

This place was stunning and the walk in was a little scary, given we had to scale the sides of the volcano to reach the climbs! We hope to return here one day to do some nice multi-pitch climbs (anyone interested?).

We didn't have any topo but met some really nice locals who lent us their's. Continuing to blast the myth of rude French people. However this proved to be the northern most point in France in which people were happy and able to converse with us in French. North of here it seems people's ears are more finely tuned/impatient.

The French guys were an inspiration. The better one was about 75 years old the other guy about 60. They blasted up multi pitch routes harder than our single pitch (Monsieur senior on lead) and then calmly came back down and had a sip of heart starter of some description with their pipe tobacco. I want to be like that when I'm 75:)

Magnificent Millau

The Viaduc of Millau - an amazing engineering feat!!
Millau was a cute little town and is now visited by tourists because of the Viaduc. We had a little walk along the water and picnic of some type of roquefort foie gras - mmmm.... We felt like our hearts may stop beating - it was about 80% fat, but oh did it taste good.