Journey to Gombe

As Scott cut up a pineapple on the shore of Lake Taganyika, I thought about the last time we had been by a lake – just the day before we had waited in a big bus on the beach of Lake Victoria.

It had been early morning. We had boarded the bus before 6 am so I was in and out of sleep. Scott was outside the bus on the phone using up credit and across the aisle, out the right side window was a grey Lake Victoria. It was drizzling. The first leg of our trip was between Arusha and Mwanza and day two was supposed to bring us to Kibondo, but here we were on a big bus on the beach of Lake Victoria. I turned to the woman next to me and used broken Swahili and hand gestures to ask, “When is the bus leaving?” She spoke and pointed at the large ferry that was, at the time, unloading cars and people. It dawned on me only then that we were waiting to get on a ferry. I pulled out the Lonely Planet and confirmed that, indeed, a sliver of Lake Victoria interrupted the road from Mwanza to Kibondo.

In Kibondo we immediately jumped on a dalla to Kigoma, the access town to Gombe National Park. After realizing that it may take us seven hours to get to Kigoma, we decided to get off and spend the night in Kasulu, a thriving western town halfway between Kibondo and Kigoma.

In this part of the country, blacktop roads are rare and the dirt is hard-packed red soil, the kind of soil that gets everywhere and turns everything a burnt orange-red color. The roads are rough and endlessly potholed, so the dalla ride this morning from Kasulu to Kigoma was more than hair-raising; it was downright scary. To think that a dalla ride may bring us great injury is nothing new for me – I have that thought on almost every dalla we ride on. But this morning as the dalla was being driven seemingly recklessly on these pot-holed red dirt roads, even Scott was nervous, and that says a lot.

After reaching Kigoma at 9:30 this morning, we took a short taxi ride to where large, wooden water taxis were waiting to take passengers and goods to destinations around Lake Tanganyika as far off as Burundi. We boarded the water taxi a little after 12 and secured seats along the side of the deep boat. For the next hour, we watched as load after load of goods were brought on – 25-kg bags of detergent, sheet metal, a mattress, suitcases, plastic chairs, tires, children.

Aboard a water taxi on Lake Tanganyika.

 

It took us a total of three days of traveling but we finally made it to Gombe National Park, one of the western-most parts of Tanzania and home to chimpanzees. After out last failed attempt back in August, it almost surprises me to be here.