Mushroom Farm was our first port of call in Malawi and what a way to begin our time in this beautiful lake-side country. Turning off at Chitimba on the main road, we headed the 10km up on a winding, rough 4×4 road up to Mushroom Farm. Do not even begin to attempt the road on a 2WD car as we spent most of our time with Helga in low range, but boy was it worth it. As we pulled into the strange looking car park, we weren’t sure what to expect. We were greeted by the lovely Dulcie, one half of a lovely English couple managing the Mushroom Farm for the owner for 6 months. We were taken down the winding path, filled with crackled dry leaves and the feint almost Australian-like scent of bush and led to a quaint bar/restaurant area, perched on the side of the hill. That was not the only thing that was perched on the side of the hill. Dulcie and her boyfriend Nat then showed us the pick of the camp sites, and given we were the only people staying there at the time, we were free to set up shop. It was completely and utterly breathtaking… we were perched above a 200m cliff drop where the side of the mountain dropped away to a magnificent gully that we later found out glowed in the evening with the dull embers of fires of villagers scattered throughout. In the distance was Lake Malawi and on the clear mornings we could see Tanzania on the other side.

We spent four nights at Mushroom Farm after only intending to spend one or two. Our camp site was two metres away from the edge of the cliff, but given neither of us are sleepwalkers, nor did we get drunk in our time there, it really didn’t matter. We sat on traditional Malawian chief’s chairs (we’ll be purchasing some of these in the not too distant future), huddled around our own private camp fire, cooked ourselves evening meals on our little stove and drank yummy gin and tonics. During the evening you can join the owner/managers for dinner and for only around 900 kwacha you get amazing, home cooked vegetarian fare coupled with amazing company. We were lucky to have both Jan and Trevor and another traveler we’d met on the way (albeit ANOTHER Landrover owner) Thomas, join us for the evening we decided to take up the home cooked evening meal. We ate lunch made by the lovely chefs on each of the days and the food – from vegetarian Asian style-noodle soup, to vegetarian pancakes, to stir-fry and more – was incredible: freshly made, with local ingredients. A lot of the ingredients also came from the Mushroom Farm garden (NB: the Mushroom Farm doesn’t actually grow mushrooms!!).

If you add the amazing food, the amazing position and the amazing silence to the splendidly placed hammock, gently rocking you over the edge of the cliff face; the lovely two hour walk up into the village of Livingstonia, so quaint that it still looks like an old English colony, and the eco toilets and showers that have you sitting in what seems to be a grand room overlooking the bush, to see others, but remain unseen, then you have the most quintessential Mushroom Farm experience that has us wanting to come back for more.

If in doubt, don’t and take yourself up to the Mushroom Farm. If you don’t have your own car, you can wait at the sign in Chitimba at the bottom of the hill and ring for a lift. And in season when the owner Mick is around (although he was back in his, and our native Aus when we visited) you can canyon swing and abseil the Manchewe waterfalls to your hearts content. What a great start to Malawi!

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Our voyage over the border between Tanzania and Malawi at the Kasumulu/Songwe post was painless. We had no problems, other than a lack of kwacha (Malawian currency) which is very hard to find ANYWHERE in Tanzania and in fact outside the country at all. The lack of kwacha meant that when we were faced with the TIP costs on the Malawian side, we were stumped.

These you can only pay for in kwacha, and so we had to swap $US10 with a random man in the customs queue with us to make sure we could get Helga into the country. Once we had been stamped by immigration and given our free visa to the country, we had to show health officials our ‘yellow card’ to prove we’d had immunisation against yellow fever. Once this had been finalised, and we’d sorted out the TIP, we had to swap some of our US dollars for kwacha with some of the moneychangers lingering on the other side (technically not permitted but we’d been instructed to do so by customs officials…. go figure) and headed off for Livingstonia.

Having had a gorgeous ‘family holiday’ on the Zanizibar islands, we left the stunning waters of Maikadi Beach on the Tanzanian coast behind, loaded up our tent and camp gear into Helga and took off. We were enroute to Mbeya, where we had heard on the travellers grapevine that there was a reliable workshop located in the town who would be able to help us out with replacing an inner tube (of one of Helga’s spares) and sort us out with a handful of spare fuel and oil filters before we head into Malawi. But the drive from Dar es Salaam is long, and especially traveling in the old Cruiser meant that we didn’t stand a chance at making it in any less than three days.

Now for the record the Tanzanian speed limits are 80kms an hour either way and traveling through towns means a slowing to 60, sometimes 50kms an hour. In Helga, keeping in true old Toyota form (incredibly reliable but… slow!) we take it easy and even overestimating the days distances we were caught up in heavy roadworks and rolled on into Riverside camp, about 70kms out of Mbeya, after dark. Driving the often dirt highways at night with trucks screaming past, heavily laden with goods from Zambia and Malawi isn’t something we recommend trying on an empty stomach. We have quickly become accustomed to aggressive driving through battling cities such as Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam but always during the daylight. At night it is absolutely pitch black; no streetlights outside of the centre of major cities, no house lights to throw any luminance of the roads and the biggest issue that plagues the continent is the mass of people that utilise the roads as walkways after dark. Thankfully we haven’t had accidents but the same cannot be said for individuals we have seen on the side of the roads, one motorbike rider carrying a loadful of straw and another bicycle rider were not lucky enough to make it after having accidents with oncoming traffic. Bottom line: avoid night driving at all costs.

Struggling with directions, especially in the dark, we were lucky enough to be guided into Riverside camp by Jan and Trevor, who had left Dar es Salaam that same morning. The four of us camped out the night by the river, listening to the crackling of a not-so-distant bushfire that we swore was getting closer to the river by the minute, but come morning, the fire that turned out to be burning off had subsided. Cruising into Mbeya we found our mechanic, promptly repaired our inner tube and picked up a few spare filters for the Crusier, before scooting 8kms north of the town towards an exclusive coffee plantation that was rumoured to accomodate self driving campers.

Driving up over a the mountain crest we set our came across the coffee plantation accommodation. Tennis court, squash courts, swimming pool, and outdoor cinema set the tone and the price on this small oasis in the middle of Mbeya region, normally known as the transport hub between Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, and not a luxurious resort for coffee lovers! Settling on the US$10 per night, per person camping fee we drove down next to a couple in crisp white Lacoste polo tops playing tennis and pitched our tent on the Helipad.

After 4 months traveling through Eastern Africa in a simple setup we are far from the fancy 5-star travelers, covered in dirt head to toe, and constantly playing with the vehicle to check and fill fluids and regrease metal parts. But we took advantage of our winfall with the ‘resort’ and spent two days playing in the pool, watching Babel on the outdoor screen, and taking a great tour of the huge coffee plantations that surround the helipad, learning all about the growing, drying, and production processes of the Tanzanian coffee. These guys used to supply coffee to Starbucks, which we shouldn’t hold against them, and although their beans weren’t the best we have sipped, the tour was incredible and the pool even more so!

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Leaving the vehicles behind at Mikadi Beach in Dar es Salaam, we joined the Danbys, and Jan and Trevor for a ‘holiday’ over on Zanzibar. It was to be a dive and no-drive holiday, sort of like a family vacation now that we had travelled together and shared so many similar experiences. We all bordered the ferry and after enjoying the onboard Christian/Nigerian soap opera repeats for about two hours we arrived at Stone Town, received our passport stamp from immigration (did you know that Zanzibar and Tanzania are separate entities, joined as a federation? Great for building up the visas in your passport!) before making our way to our quaint little accommodation run by a just as quaint man called Jimmy.

If you have heard of the spice tours of Zanzibar you have probably heard of the famous Mr. Mitu. The man behind the magic in most of the country’s spice tour trade. The following day saw us boarding the minibus enroute to a spice farm just south of Stone Town and it was here, in the following three hours, that we learnt the origins, history, and plantations of  nutmeg, vanilla bean, cardamom, cinnamon, pineapple, chillies, peppercorns, jack fruit, custard apple, and an array of other mouth watering spices and fruits. I had no idea that cinnamon was bark peeled directly from a tree. Or that pineapples grew one-a-piece from a bush!

The tour took us through several farming areas around the island and finally to one of the most significant landmarks in Zanzibar; the slave cave. Set just back from a secluded beach on the South Western coast, the cave sits around 15m from the surface and stretches over 3kms inland, to where over 900 slaves would sleep and rest  prior to their secret transportation off to the Americas and beyond. From inside the cave you look west and see the secret passages that led to the cliffs on the sea and marked the start of a horrid life of slavery for the unfortunate chosen ones.

We made it back to the capital, Stone Town, before dark and set about meandering through the back streets, through the Arabic and Colonial blend of architecture that towered above us. If you make it to Stone Town then you have to wander down to the fish market stalls at sunset. Overlooking the magic of a crimson setting sun you can immerse yourself in dozens of seafood stalls and opentop kitchens, selecting the freshest and best looking crayfish, prawns, kingfish kebabs, garlic naans, and endless calamari pieces and then having it cooked in front of you on the burning coals. All for a few dollars.

As enticing as it was to stay in Stone Town, the purpose of our Zanzibar family holiday was to dive the reefs. We piled into a minibus the following day and made tracks up to Nungwi, in the island’s North West. The ride cost around Tsh60000 (less than $60 Australian for all 8 of us) for the 1.5 hour ride which was a steal.

The next five days were easily filled. After speaking with Carlos from East Africa Divers on the Northern end of the Nungwi beaches we planned out four dives each and Katie took the chance to complete her Advanced Open Water certification in preparation for our upcoming weeks in Mozambique. The diving is great. Our first two dives where completed around Shane’s Reef and Home Reef (once the tide is right). Rolling back into the blue from our sailing dhow we were hit with a plethora of nudibranchs, butterfly fish, grey morays, stonefish, puffers, and blue spotted stingrays that lined the ocean floor. We have never seen so much fish life on any other of our dives, albeit our experience has been limited to the sub-temperate waters of Tasmania! Even though the sea life seems abundant, locals told us that there is a severe problem with overfishing told us stories of giant groupers and sharks who used to frequent the waters but due to the lack of fishing control they have all but disappeared.

After relaxing on the beach the next day and snorkeling Home Reef at low tide we sprinted off to the famed Mnemba Atoll on East Africa’s speedboat. Katie had snapped up Carlos on these dives to complete here narced session (deep water dive) and the remainder of her advanced licence while we were joined by an Israeli instructor for our swim around the atoll. The visibility wasn’t crash hot, peaking at just over 10m, but we caught a glimpse of a few loggerhead turtles, giant rays, loads more nudis, paperfish, lionfish (firefish if you are a native South African!) and glowing yellow trumpet fish. Both dives were great, although we still haven’t had our ‘blown away’ African diving experience yet. Maybe our expectations are a little high, or maybe we need to try a different time of year to grab the stellar vis. We still have Mozambique and South Africa on the dive list, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Arriving in Arusha after our ‘interesting’ experience Serengeti experience with the heavily corrugated gravel roads wreaking havoc on our car, we pulled up stumps at Masai Camp. Located just a few kilometers south of the clock tower along Old Moshi road Masai Camp is a pleasant feeling camp ground with good facilities, hot water on occasion, and cold beers waiting by the snooker table. One of the downsides of course is the mass migration of overland tour trucks. We aren’t big fans of the traveling convoys and spent our time sharing stories and breakfast omelets with a Kenyan driver and guide, while their travelers were off climbing Mt Kilimanjaro.

We used our three days in Arusha to stock up on supplies and fresh vegetables from Shoprite just on the main road coming into the city and Ben finally found a metal coffee percolator, hidden away at the back of a dodgy multipurpose shop just next door. Bring on the smooth coffee flavours and bean sensations of every country in Southern Africa. Although not an attractive or interesting city by any means, with Arusha’s main purpose serving as the hub for Serengeti tours, we took advantage of the open courts of the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda) and listened intently as the Yugoslavian and fellow judges listened on as the courtroom lawyers grilled a witness on the stand. Although we cannot recall the name of the defendant, he was standing trial for his part in authorizing and participating in the murder and violent acts against the Hutus back in 1994. It was definitely an eye opener to be able to witness the proceedings.

Apart from witnessing a thief rob an old lady through her car window and run off with her mobile phone, our few days in Arusha drew to an end quite uneventfully and loaded up Helga with our fresh supplies and headed for Dar es Salaam driving past a mist covered Mt Kilimanjaro and through what appeared to be a secret military base located amidst vast aloe plantations, stretching as far as the eye could see. Mikadi Beach camp was our goal and after a stellar night stopover in Pangani at Tinga-Tinga we arrived, sweat drenched and tired from navigating the manic streets and highways in the city of Dar. If you make your way to Pangani, check out Tinga-Tinga and make sure you haggle a cheaper camping rate with James, especially if the place isn’t overflowing with campers.

The sweet arrival on the beachside of Mikadi Beach was topped off by running into our now true old friends, Trevor and Jan and their extremely pimped out Landrover, Sully. The next few days were spent lolling on the beachside, gorging ourselves on Boris, the barracuda, and leaving the gorgeous 4×4s sitting idle next to each other while the four of us, joined by Dicky and Claire, and their little girls Tash and Sonia boarded the ferry enroute to Zanzibar for a week of tropical SCUBA diving and spice tours through picturesque Stone Town…