I’ll let you guess what road we ended up on.
World birders rarely have the time to dedicate to exploring new territories, but fortunately for us, time was one of the few things we did have on this slower-paced, 10-month long trip. Too bad the car trouble got in the way! But let me start at the beginning because, trust me, it gets better. Southern Tanzania was a bit of a disaster.
We were ahead of schedule because we saved a few days in Zimbabwe and Malawi so we decided to continue on with our theme of going where few birders have gone before and head into southern Tanzania. We wanted to do a bit of exploring and southern Tanzania is not on the birding circuit. There are no tours that go to southern TZ and there’s hardly anyone outside of a select few Tanzanian residents who even consider visiting the southern forests to look for birds. There’s really no reason to when Tanzania’s north has so many birds to find and so many other parts of Africa are endowed with incredible wildlife! We didn’t have much in the form of information, but a few places peaked our interest including the highlands of Kitulo National Park, the miombo forest near Songea (which Ross found by scouring satellite imagry), and of course, the Rondo Plateau near the coast. We decided we’d enter the country from the south and eventually make our way up to Dar Es Salaam for our flight to Ghana. Doing a loop through the south sounds like a good plan, right?
Kitulo was supposed to be a beautiful highland habitat similar to Nyika National Park in Malawi. And it was. The wildflower fields were colorful and full of sunbirds. The mountain habitat was quite picturesque. Unfortunately a few unexpected events resulted in us spending the few days we had budgeted for Kitulo at a car mechanic shop instead of in the forest. It would have been a very enjoyable time standing in a field of wildflowers while watching Malachite Sunbird, Forest Double-collared Sunbird and boatloads of the common Yellow-browed Seedeater for hours on end if I hadn’t noticed that our left rear tire was dangerously close to hitting the body of the car. The fact that there was hardly any room (~1 in/2.5cm) between the tire and the mud flap had us concerned. We texted a photo to our mechanic friend in Malawi who informed us that it looked like our center bolt had snapped and we could “only limp a bit further” with the car in this condition. A center bolt holds the car’s suspension in place, by the way. We went straight to a mechanic in the town of Mbeya and spent SIX HOURS in the shop getting it repaired. There is a crater lake nearby that we were forced to skip out on visiting.
We left the mechanic and drove into a remote area to search for Kipengere’s Seedeater only to realize that the tire was back in the wrong place. The road to get up the mountain to search for our target seedeater was no joke. We wondered if our center bolt broke again (in which case we had a bigger issue on our hands if it was going to break that fast.) We were stupid and hadn’t checked the tire until we got back down so who knows if it was already bad before we went up or if the bad road caused the problem, but by the time we checked, we were almost to the town of Songea, about as far from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania’s largest city) as we possibly could be. We legitimately considered driving back towards civilization and forgetting about our southern loop because the fastest way to Dar was actually to go back the way we had come. A few guys from the village (bush mechanics as they are often called) scooted our tire forward so we could continue but as soon as we drove away the tire was back.
Our only option was to get to another mechanic. Because of these issues, we had to skip out on birding the beautiful miombo forest on either side of the road, but the forest we drove through did look really nice and probably would have resulted in a nice number of birds for our Tanzania list. The town of Songea is much smaller and the mechanic we visited didn’t have a very large shop but his guys identified the problem – the first mechanics (the ones who spent 6 hours in Mbeya) had put our center bolt in the wrong hole! UGH! What a waste of time and money. But at least now it was fixed correctly. The small team of mechanics stayed past dark to get it done so we could leave early the next morning.
So far we were striking out with birds because of these stupid car problems! Last on our agenda was the Rondo Plateau. But don’t be fooled into thinking these places were even remotely close to one another, we had hours upon hours upon hours of driving to get from point A to point B. Leaving Songea at 3AM would have us arriving at the Rondo Plateau by midafternoon so we could still get some birding in. It was 450km (280mi) on a paved road and then only 30km (17mi) off the main road. How bad could it be to get there? After all most of the road was paved! Well, to put it bluntly, VERY BAD.
The paved road was alright, but once we hit that turn to go just 30km further, things took a turn for the worse. It started raining just as we hit our turn and the dirt road we were on became a stream. About 15km in on an intense 4WD journey, we wondered if we could even make it another 15km to our destination. We might have turned around had it not been for the fact that the road was narrow and we had already successfully crossed over a dangerously bad section that we didn’t want to have to drive over again. As we continued onward we arrived at another dangerously bad section. And by “dangerously bad” I mean, not passable in its current condition. It looked as if part of the road had caved away. The road literally was falling apart and if your tire fell off the edge, you were definitely getting stuck. We got out to examine things but there wasn’t a way through without going off the edge. And going close to the edge resulted in more dirt falling away, I know because I nearly slid off the side just standing there! One of the advantages to there being people everywhere in Africa is that you will always have a recovery crew at the ready and willing to help.
We enlisted the assistance of a few locals and together piled logs and rocks with the plan to improve the road enough to make this section passable. It was a very fine line to navigate across. Too fine of a line actually. The tire fell off the edge anyway and our Hilux was stuck. Really, really stuck. The only good thing that happened that afternoon is that Samson arrived in his Land Cruiser just before we got stuck. He works with the forestry department in Rondo and was unaware of the condition of the road. Apparently it had only caved in the last few days due to the heavy rains. Samson spoke English so having him there was a God-send. He decided that he was no longer going to go down the mountain this way and would be turning around but he stuck around to help us out of our current situation. The recovery crew went to work and we got to test out the recovery gear we had brought along. There is good reason to have a high-lift jack, rubber traction mats, a shovel, and a snatch strap in your possession at all times in Africa. The high-lift jack came in handy to lift the side of the vehicle up so we could put more rocks under the tire and our traction mats allowed for some extra grip. The shovel, thank God for the shovel, helped dig out the dirt under the truck so that the “diff” wasn’t bottomed out anymore and allowed us to flatten out the road enough to make it passable. It was a lot of hard work making the road “good” again.
After TWO HOURS of digging, maneuvering a bit, staying stuck, digging again, gathering more locals to help push, digging some more and trying again, all through intermittent rains, our Hilux was free! But let me just tell you, watching Ross drive through was a nightmare. There were at least 8 men pushing and as the Hilux got going, the one tire went up into the air! I swear the vehicle was about to flip over onto its side! It was definitely the closest that vehicle has come to flipping, that’s for sure!! Take a close look a the photo above, apparently three-wheel drive is all you need?!
We were finding out that our vehicle is capable of handling even the worst of situations. After this I might recommend everyone interested in a truck purchase a Toyota Hilux. Too bad you can’t buy these bad boys in the states! (Eventually I will upload a video compilation to our BUDGETBIRDERS Instagram about African roads! The ‘almost flip’ was ‘almost’ caught on video – you’ll have to watch it to see what I mean!)
I had to laugh though because Samson didn’t let us know exactly how bad the road was ahead. He had come from that direction so we knew it was passable but we weren’t completely out of the woods yet and had to continue to navigate a crazy road. Yes, we ended up stuck again and that snatch strap was put to work. Seriously, if Samson hadn’t come I am not sure what we would have done. He and his Land Cruiser had to pull us out of another ditch. Literally ALL of our recovery gear was used on one road. But in the end we made it to the forest and our Hilux wasn’t any worse for wear. Thank God that centerbolt was fixed properly! All for a SUB-species of a batis!!
To be continued…
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