And apparently we are all wizards. Well that's according to the crazy lady we met in Stonetown, the capital of Zanzibar. She seemed quite harmless and, to be honest, her confusion didn't seem that out of place in Stonetown - the hectic mix of Islamic, Indian and Africa cultures means that it has a somewhat confused identity (and apparently some of residents are a little confused about religion too).
Zanzibar and it's amazing white sandy beaches.
So, crazy ladies aside, we had finally arrived in Stonetown in preparation for New years. Our journey here had an epic feel to it, even in comparison with the other monumental transit we'd done previously on this trip. I've mentioned before that travel takes time here, and one thing we've learnt about this is that it's best not to delay the travel or try to break it up. Push on through is the motto. Adding a rest day just makes things longer and you still feel wrung out at the end.
With this in mind we set out at 7:00am Christmas Eve from Chitemba on the sures of Lake Malawi with an audacious plan - we would aim to be Mbeya in southern Tanzania by 2:45pm in order to catch the twice weekly train to Dar Es Salaam. This gave us a total of 7 hours 45 minutes to make our way to the north of Malawi, negotiate the border, then on to Mbeya. A total distance of around 400km.
What ensued was something straight out of the Amazing Race with James, Wookie (Father / son), Nick and I (dating goths) barging our way across the country, running for busses, arguing with money changers and bus drivers and finally remembering an extremely inconvenient time zone change which we'd forgotten about (hence one our less to make the journey). The final push occurred when we arrived at the train station at 2:43 with train waiting at the platform. James and nick sprinted for the ticket offices while Wookie and Igot the bags ready to load onto the train, we'd made it...
Or had we? A distressed look from James and Wookie and a quick conversation confirmed our worst fears, the train was booked out. Christmas was ruined. We'd have to spend Chistmas in a hotel in Mbeya, or on a bus - boring.
But wait, at the last minute our shining star arrived, the station master, who nonchalantly wandered over and informed us, actually yes, there was a 1 first class cabin (4 berth) available and we could now by a ticket. After this he was dubbed the station master who saved christmas (we also had a taxi driver that saved christmas and later the swiss girl who saved Christmas, but that’s another story).
A merry Christmas message from Nick coutesy of his amazing light writing skills
Christmas was saved and we celebrated with some serious amazing race style high fives once we got into the cabin.
One last chapter the story: out train broke down for 18hours at one point. So what do you do? Frisbee that's what.
