Uluguru Perambulations

We’re starting to count down the weekends til we leave Tanzania for good, so it was very satisfying to have finally got back to Morogoro for the walking in the Uluguru mountains that we had planned since our early days here. Having bought the guide book, and obtained an ancient (1970) ordinance survey type map (things haven’t changed that much), I was determined to get there! We were almost thwarted yet again when we stopped to change drivers on the side of the highway outside Chalinze and the battery seemed to be stone dead…we were resigned to spending the afternoon doing boring car stuff and then heading back to Dar.  But, thank heavens for the ingenuity of passers by! The first guys to arrive on the scene spotted a loose, dirty connection to the battery, and after requesting a little “maji” (water) cleaned it and had us on our way in minutes.

Maji = magic to me!

 

On Sunday morning we were on our way by 7:30 am. We were dropped part way up the mountain on the “road”, and started walking with our guide Hamis – a lovely guy who unfortunately spoke no English. We made do with our broken Swahili, but I gave up trying to identify the wildflowers using my book when he insisted on picking every one I showed interest in!

We were heading up to Morningside, the remnants of a German colonial farm, built ¾ of the way up the mountain. Goodness knows how the occupants got up there! But they didn’t get to enjoy it for long – it was built in 1911 and then handed over to the British in 1919. Today the mountainside is quite intensively farmed and the slopes are dotted with farmsteads and a patchwork of fields of everything from carrots to leeks to strawberries. After about an hour, the road ended, and we were winding through fields and patches of wild banana.

We passed this restaurant on the way up – obviously closed on Sundays.

Sokoine University of Agriculture owns Morningside now, and uses it for some experimental crop planting. They have plans to refurbish the house to make it suitable for overnight stays for hikers and others – what an amazing spot it could be!

Among other things, we saw a "celaenorrhinus uluguru" - a beautiful yellow, red and black butterfly which is only found in the Uluguru mountains (not pictured below). We also tasted a new fruit for me - zambarau which turns out to be damsons - somewhat like a small plum, but much more purple. They were falling from the trees, and we met a man carrying a bucket load down the mountain.

All you Nordic walkers – I brought my poles all the way here, and this was the first time I used them. No one laughed out loud at me (except Lars) and I figure we look so outlandish to the local people anyway, what’s a few extra weirdnesses? As it turns out, they were very useful, especially coming down the steep bits, and I am now debating whether to take them to India where I just might scale a mountain or two. 

It got very hot on our way down, and it was lovely to return to the Morogoro Hotel (an intriguing example of 1970’s government hotel architecture) where we had a swim and lunch (that is not me going in the pool).

On the way we passed this little “English” church – another relic of colonial days.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend, and I am a bit relieved that it is probably our last long drive on the Tanzam highway – that long road from hell that stretches from Dar all the way to the Zambian border. The scenery is beautiful, but I will not miss the nail-biting, near death experiences that have me rigidly hanging on to the door and not appreciating any of it! Lars will not miss my gasps of horror every two minutes.