Day One
Lushoto → Lukozi Village
Uphill into the
Magamba Rainforest
Take an uphill walk out of Lushoto through the valley the German settlers named the Jaegstal. Along the way your guide talks you into the culture and traditional life of the Wasambaa, the people who have farmed and forested these ridges for centuries. Higher up you enter the camphor forest, where the vegetation closes over the path and the birdlife and butterflies are extraordinary. Keep an eye on the canopy for colobus monkeys — they are here, though sightings are never guaranteed. A picnic lunch is taken along the way before the trail continues on to Lukozi Village, where you spend the night at the Bushbaby Homestay.
Day Two
Lukozi → Rangwi
Ridgelines, farms
& the Sisters' Convent
The walk continues towards Rangwi, and this is the day the Usambaras open up. The trail threads between villages on beautiful footpaths, passing through farming fields where you will learn how these steep slopes are terraced and worked — maize, beans, cardamom, vegetables for the markets down on the plains. The views across the villages and the surrounding peaks are magnificent nearly the whole way. You climb to around two thousand metres and stop for a picnic lunch at the top before dropping back down across villages and farmland to Rangwi, where the night is spent at the Sisters' Convent.
Day Three
Rangwi → Sunga → Magumba → Lushoto
Pottery, pine forest
& the Magumba Viewpoint
After breakfast the walk continues from the Sisters' Convent towards Mambo Village — the last day is the one that combines everything, crossing villages, mountain peaks and stretches of forest in a single morning. It begins with an uphill push to a scenic viewpoint that repays every step, then carries on through pine forest to the village of Sunga.
Lunch is taken with a local family. Afterwards you visit a pottery project run by a group of village women, who show you how the traditional clay pots are shaped, finished and fired entirely by hand. From there the trail leads to the Magumba Viewpoint, roughly 1,900 metres above sea level, where the whole of the Western Usambaras falls away beneath you and, on a clear day, Mount Kilimanjaro appears on the far horizon. When you have had your fill of it, your vehicle is waiting for the drive back down to Lushoto — the end of your Usambara adventure.