Robert Munro - Western Tanzania

Tanzania - West

Western Tanzania in July-August 2006.

My favourite food here is skewers of meat - little road-side stands serve up goat or sometimes beef or chicken and the freshness is guaranteed as the meat is cut straight off the carcass hanging above the grill. I liked this one in particular as they were using old bicycle spokes as skewers.

Around bustling Manyovu - the last photo is Peter in the middle of some tough negoiations with a restaurant owner over the price of chapatis.

A remote hut in the mountains before our descent into Kigoma.

I've never broken a spoke before but on this trip I've broken 5 and counting. They're easy to replace except if they are cog-side rear spokes, and 4 of the ones I broke have been. A special tool is required to remove the cogs to correctly replace these spokes and we hadn't been able to find one in any bike shop in 5 countries until a bike repair guy in Kigoma who didn't even have a shop - just a spot beneath a tree - produced one from his tool-box. We bought it from him at a generous price and everyone was happy.

Kigoma is primarily a port on Lake Tanganyika - many shops are converted shipping containers. On the right is the ticket office that we had to visit just 4 times before they gave us tickets for the ferry down the lake to Zambia.

The ferry was called MV Liemba and had been cruising the lake for almost a century. Every couple of hours day and night it would stop off the shore of a small village so that people could come out in small boats and load/off-load people and produce.

Our cabin on board - some of the nicest accomodation we've had so far.

The primary cargo was massive bags of sardines and the people working the boat fancied themselves as rastas, so between the boat, crew and cargo the whole trip reeked of diesel, dope and dried fish. There wasn't much to do except lie around all day in the sun - there are worse ways to spend a few days I guess. We arrived in Mpulungu, Zambia on the afternoon of the third day.