Backpacking in the Usambaras

Let me start off by saying that this was honestly one of my favorite trips that I have ever done. Laura, Tacy and I took the bus to Lushoto (the central town in the Usambara Mountain range) on last Sunday and organized a three day hike through the mountains. We basically had no idea what to expect, but it definitely ended up being better than I copuld have even imagined.

DAY ONE: Lushoto to Lukozi

We left Lushoto first thing in the morning and walked stright up the mountain behind town so that we got a great view overlooking the downtown and surrounding areas. After a little while, we all of the sudden entered an actual rainforest. There wasn't even really an existing trail through half of it, we were just kind of trudging through the rainforest, which was awesome. We saw a bizarre red squirrel with a bright yellow tail and a two horned chameleon (which we got to hold). There were also a lot of colibus monkeys in the forest, but the forest was too dense and we could only hear them most of the time. About halfway through our walk in the rainforest it actually started pouring rain, but it almost made the forest even more exciting to be in. I guess we wouldn't have felt that way if we all didn't have nice rainjackets, but it worked out fine for us. When we finally came out of the forest, we stopped to have lunch right next to someone's house, so the kids all came out and ate lunch with us.

After lunch, we walked past the main university in the area (which was pretty tiny) and then through a beautiful valley. At the end of the valley we came to a village where they were making the traditional beer of the area, which is made from sugar cane. We didn't try any but we did get to see them crushing the sugar cane to make it, which was a very weird/cool process. After that, our guide gave us the option of taking the bus the next part of the way or walking the last two hours of the trip... we had already been walking for about six hours and hadn't slept at all the night before (Laura had been up all night getting sick) so we opted for taking the bus. I know, we took the lazy route, but it was definitely a good call at the time because we were all dying a little bit haha.

When we got to Lukozi, we brought our stuff to the hotel (if you could even call it a hotel...) and then went back to town to explore the market a bit. Lukozi is a much smaller town that Lushoto, but it's very busy because it has a big downtown market with a lot of fresh fruit. The fruit here in Tanzania is so so so much better at home to begin with, but it was even more fun up there because they have fruits that we don't get in Dar (like peachs, pears, apples, and berries). Unfortunately, I got very sick to my stomach that night and didn't really get to sleep at all, which was probably a result of some of that delicious fruit that I guess I didn't wash quite well enough. I was fine by the morning though, so I kept going with the trip and it wasn't a huge problem.

DAY TWO: Lukozi to Rangwi

Started off immediately uphill and again climbed the mountain right beside town. Then, followed the back side of the mountain down, through a small village (where the kids followed us the whole way) and then back up the mountain on the other side of the village. We actually met a group of three women carrying buckets on their head who were also walking to Rangwi, so we all started off the walk together. They, however, lost us fairly quickly since we kept stopping to take pictures of the beautiful view of the mountains around us! We then went on to climb to the top of the higher mountain beside the one we had just finished, which ended up having an even more amazing view. At few points, the trail that we were on would end up on a small cliff and have only about ten feet in either direction, so you could look out to both sides and see the wonderful view of endless valleys and mountains. The mountains are all covered by terrace farming as well as little villages and homes. I asked our tour guide if this was the longer/more scenic route to Rangwi since it seemed pretty out of the way, but he said that it is actually the only walking path there is between the two towns and is the fastest route.

After reaching the top of the third mountain (which was a bit painful), we finally started the downhill section of the day. We walked down the back of the mountain and then started through the farmlands. We were literally walking right throuhg peoples' crops and their backyards. We picked pears directly from the trees to eat while we walked, kids would run after us, adults would stop farming to talk to us; it was wonderful. The walk from the bottowm of the mountain to Rangwi took another 2 hours or so, but it felt so much shorter because there were so many people and it was so exciting to walk through. We finally arrived in Rangwi around 3pm, but we never actually went to the town of Ragwi (which I'm not sure really exists). We stayed at a beautiful nunnery in the middle of nowhere where the nuns farm for a living and keep a guest house for anyone passing through. They made us a wonderful home-cooked meal and even heated up water for us to use to bathe (the first hot shower I've had in a month)! It was a great place to spend the rest of the afternoon/night relaxing.

DAY THREE: Rangwi to Mtae

After leaving the nunnery we walked again through some villages and farmlands before reaching a HUGE man-made pinew forest. The forest had been planted by the Germans for timber when it was their colony, and is still running as a lumber business today. The pine forests are beautiful, but look extremely unnatural next to the rest of the countryside because of their extreme uniformity. We walked through the pine forests for an hour or two and even got to see some men cutting down the wood for lumber. Because they obviously don't have big machines here, the men had made a contraption to hold the giant logs up, and then two of them at a time were using a saw the size of my body to cut apart the logs. It was pretty amazing, but a job that definitely never want to have!

After leaving the pine forest, we walked along a main road for a little while and through a few small towns. We stopped in one of the villages to buy pottery from an old lady who makes it to sell in the market. We literally showed up at her house and she just spread out her stuff all around her backyard... it was some pretty beautiful pottery. After leaving her house and walking further along the main road though, I was starting to think that the third day maybe hadn't been worth it and we should have just done two days (because my back hurt from my backpack and I didn't think we would get to see anymore). Right as I was thinking that though, we randomly turned a corner and all of a sudden came upon the most spectacular view we had yet to see. We had reached the end of the Usambara Mountains and they suddenly fell off into plains for as far as we could see. We could also see a large lake to one side (which I can't remember the name of), which separates the Usambaras from the Parre mountains which are the next range. We stopped to eat lunch with that view in front of us, and then continued along that main road the rest of the way to Mtae, which was on a cliff at the end of the last mountain.

Coming into Mtae, the road was like the mountaintop had been the day before where you could see out in both directions, excpet this time it was even more gorgeous. Our hotel was this little shack right in town (which was just one tiny strip of stores) and looked out over the rest of the town and the plains in the distance. We hung out at the hotel for a little and rested, and then walked through town to do some looking around for a while. It is a beautiful quaint little town with even more amazing views... I could definitely move there! Our guide then took us to a secret little lookout behind the town dispensary where we watched the sun set over the end of the mounatins and the plains in the distance. I can't even begin to describe how spectacular it was, we never wanted to leave!

After the sun set we went to dinner in town and then right back to the hotel to go to bed at around 8:30pm. We hadn't really realized it at the beginning of the trip, but it turned out that there were no buses that leave from Mtae in the afternoon and they only leave first thing in the morning. The buses that start in Mtae are the same daily buses that run from Lushoto to Arusha or to Dar each day, so they have to be in Lushoto to pick up their passengers by 7:00 am. The problem with that is that Mtae is about 3 hours from Lushoto.... so we had to get on the bus at 4am in order to get to Lushoto, where we had just enough time to get breakfast before gtting on our bus home to Dar. It was a bit unnerving being on the bus at 4am and driving along frighteningly twisty mountainside roads in the pitch black, but it was an experience nonetheless.

On the whole, the trip was so amazing because it was so far from being a touristy trip. We were walking through villages on roads that the locals use and taking all sorts of back routes... it never felt like we were just there to be tourists and we always felt welcome. The culture and the views were both simply wonderful. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Anyways, sorry for this being so long but I thought the details were necessary... I am actually in Zanzibar right now so back to the beach for me! I'll write about Zanzibar too when I get home in a few days. Miss you all

Love,
Lisa