11. Rwanda to Uganda - Gorillas Nearly Missed!

The road back to Kigali was mostly new tar, what a pleasure.

We decided not to go back to the African “Madams” camp site but to stay in one of the overlanders hotels to see if we could pick up more information about the situation further north. The Dream Inn Motel was right in the centre of Kigali and not the most sophisticated of places but recommended as “value for money”. We jammed the L/R into the alley down the side of the hotel for some degree of security. The restaurant was sort of African Italian, all chrome and glass with one television booming out rap music and the other a local version of Big Brother which seems to be very popular and plays all day. On the wall was yet another Arsenal shirt and scarf in a glass case. The staff were pleasant enough but we felt like fish out of water and there were no other travellers to talk to.

The Rwandan Wildlife office confirmed that the permits were sold out until September and showed us the waiting list for cancellations. The only option was to go there and turn up each morning at 07;00 and hope for a “no show”. To cap it all we would be there on the weekend when they hold the annual Gorilla naming ceremony. Baby naming is an important occasion in Rwandan custom and they have extended this to the Gorillas. The ceremony is called Kwita Izina which means “every name tells a story”. I was convinced that we would be wasting our time even going there and that we should take the main tarred road north and try our luck in Uganda. The next morning Jean still wanted to try and we agreed that if there was nothing available at the local office we would drive on to the Ugandan border that evening. We arrived in Ruhengiri (Gorilla town) by lunch time and went to the office. Justin tried hard but couldn’t come up with anything except the name of a local tour operator Greg who, surprisingly, said he might be able to get one permit and to phone him at 15:00. We now didn’t have enough time to get to Uganda so moved into a community project “hotel” which just happened to be opposite the hive of activity that was to be the site of Kwita Izina. We discussed what to do if Greg managed to get only one and decided we would turn it down and go to Uganda the following day. At 3pm we phoned Greg and shouting above the “testing, testing one two……” started to explain that one was no good. “No, no” he shouted back I’ve got two! Get down here quickly and pay before they go to someone else. Just for the record everyone had told us that we could only pay in US$ but we wanted to keep our few for changing in the Sudan where there are no ATMs and sterling is not accepted. Greg was happy to accept Rwandan francs too. We rushed down to the bank and sure enough the only ATM was out of action. We then embarked on a 90 minute journey through most of the different bank departments with a growing sheaf of paperwork to get cash with visa card and passport, phoning Greg all the time. It eventually cost us $76 to get $1000 worth of francs but we had our permits even though we now had Italian names! Apparently these people had booked three days of trekking and had had enough after one. We were so excited it was difficult to sleep and the “testing, testing one two……” which went on most of the night didn’t help.

(Smiths:- please don’t read on from here.)

We met at the Wildlife offices at 07:00 sharp next morning with 54 other people who had booked months ago and, because of Kwita Izina, we were presented with a display of tribal dancing and demonstrations of other local customs. The street was already packed and people were queuing everywhere to get into the grounds, apparently the president was coming  and there would be free food and “pop” but the gates closed at 08:00 and the ceremony started at 09:30.

There are seven groups of habituated Gorillas in Rwanda and one group of eight people are allowed to visit them once each day for a maximum of one hour. Some groups are relatively easy to walk to and some can take up to four hours to reach and four hours back. The guides carefully and surreptitiously moved amongst us and decided who would go to which group. For the first time we saw a small advantage in Jean’s asthma (I like to think it wasn’t my pot belly). We were chosen for Sabinyo group which is the closest and one of the best as it has two silverbacks. An hours drive up some dreadful tracks (which broke another gearbox mounting) brought us to the edge of the forest. Compared to trekking chimps this was easy and we were able to enjoy the magnificent diversity of the rain forest. Our guide was preceded by an escort with a rifle as there are both elephant and buffalo in these forests, the evidence was everywhere. Another hour brought us to the area where the Gorillas were yesterday and we had our last briefing – keep close together, no eating or drinking, no closer that 7 metres, talk quietly, if you have to sneeze use a hankie (disease transfer prevention), if they approach you don’t run (unless I do!) oh and don’t point – they don’t like it. We left our rucksacks and sticks (they don’t like those either) and set off.

Ten minutes later we passed, literally, under our first Gorilla who was sitting in a nest up in the top of the bamboo eating the leaves. It was big daddy - the dominant male silverback at fifteen years old and, and as Steven would say, awesome! 

We were about seven metres away and he barely acknowledged our arrival. A two year old soon made an appearance in the top of the bamboo learning to plait a nest and we moved over to where there was a younger blackback digging for roots in the soft earth. The air around us reverberated with the results of a totally vegetarian diet and the low grumbling noise that the Gorillas make and the trackers copy to confirm “all is well”. There were two other trackers who were searching for the rest of the group and they soon found a mother with her two youngsters aged two and four involved in mutual grooming, the terrain meant we were only three or four meters away (another “awesome”). Then we found another youngster who was playing really cool and eating flowers, eventually he leant too far over and casually fell out of the tree! The final group was the other silverback with a mother and a 10 month old baby cheekily jumping all over him, one of the babies that would get a name that day. It was difficult not to point.

The cars were surrounded by local people with every sort of Gorilla memorabilia including many children with immature paintings which they wanted to sell to “pay for school”. We drove slowly and silently back down the tracks to a chorus of “Muzungu”, “gimme money” and “owareyou” from the local small children that stand at the side of the track and stare in awe at such opulence as a red Land Rover and enough money to track Gorillas.

Last year there were 18,600 permits sold (30% USA, 15% UK, 7% Australian) which forms the majority of Rwanda’s tourist income. This is the only source of income that is available to save the habitat of this endangered species.

We were back in town just after lunch and, at the ceremony, the prime minister was still holding forth (the president couldn’t make it). We watched him on the big screen on top of a lorry. We squeezed into the car park of our ‘hotel’ and were quickly parked in by the prime ministers entourage, we didn’t dare take photos when he nodded to us and climbed into his new Mercedes 4x4 and drove away. We were parked next to the Bishop of Rwanda, John and his wife, who chatted for a while and offered to help if we ever decided to buy a piece of land in Rwanda – maybe not as strange as it sounds!

Eventually they started to hand out the pop. The piles of boxes were surrounded by security men with sticks and others threw the plastic bottles into the crowd. Chaos ensued as the crowd surged back and forth. Youngsters fell into the drainage ditches and others fell on top of them. Legs were smacked as they surged towards the pile of boxes. It went on for half an hour and we were amazed no one appeared to get hurt as happy kids left clutching cheap fizzy drinks. Some of the older ones had managed to snatch full boxes but the gun toting Rwandan Army took their boxes and gave them to the little ones who had none.

The next morning the site was littered with hundreds of ripped boxes and burst plastic bottles. We packed up and set off for Uganda, a short distance over decent roads to Kisoro and from there to a community camp site outside the gates of the Ugandan Mgahinga National Park. It was good to camp again and we were the only people on the site except for three Swedish youngsters who were sharing a “Banda” and volunteering at the local schools for a month. They were good company at the potato and vegetable sauce dinner that night provided by the project “restaurant”. Their enthusiasm for Africa and earnest concern for the wellbeing of the children means that they too are hooked on this continent. It is surprisingly cold so high up but only one degree from the equator. We slept well to the sounds of the bush and next morning took a short guided walk in the reserve ending at a high platform from which we could view the three extinct volcanoes which form the border between Rwanda, Congo and Uganda and on the other side of which we’d had our Gorilla experience.

We are camped at the moment at Lake Bunyonyi which is apparently the deepest lake in Uganda. Beautiful scenery and apparently a place where otters are commonly viewd playing in the water. We wait and watch and in the meantime have spotted and identified several superb, colourful birds.

We plan to travel north from here and visit some of Uganda’s other National Parks before crossing the Equator and onward to Kenya.

(25/06/11, 13;00hrs - We have just crossed the equator at Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda but will now have to travel south again to Nairobi before turning left and travelling north again.)

10. Rwanda - Monkey Business.

After spending a couple of days in Kigali at two very different campsites, the first in the middle of town ‘One Love’ is run by a Rwandan and his Japanese wife as a means of raising funds for their charity of the same name which is all about physical rehabilitation for the victims of the ’94 genocide. Only afterwards did we realise that most of the staff there moved in a somewhat laborious way possibly due to their tendons having been slashed during the genocide. The next site, Juru park overlooked the city from the hills above and was owned and run by a Rwandan woman who spoke Kinyarwanda and French. The good old schoolboy French soon comes back (It never ceases to amaze me how little of it they understand!!) And so we tried to negotiate where we should camp, ablute and eat whilst she punctuated every misunderstanding either way with cries of ‘Mon Dieu’! We ate some of what we had ordered and some that we hadn’t, slept where we had arranged in the tent but, next morning the washing facilities remained locked and the toilets had no water supply. Fortunately we had found a great café in the middle of town so we headed off there to eat wash and use the internet. TI after all A!

On a much more sombre note we visited the main Genocide Museum in Kigali, it was a chilling reminder of the horrific news that we all witnessed in 1994, it is presented with great dignity and, reminded us of our visit to the Peace Museum in Caen some years ago, which reports the past and manages to focus on a positive future too.  At a smaller genocide memorial site, in fact a church, the pews were piled with the clothes, toys and personal effects of  the 10000 people who lost their lives there.  At the back there were wooden tracks with many of their skulls and other human bones. 

The stories that the guides told us were chilling even more so when we realised that many of the killings were as painful and humiliating as possible. Among the names of  some of the victims inscribed on a stone, were two that have stuck in our minds, they were ‘Happy’ and ‘Innocent’. The genocide lives on in peoples memories and there is a sense of huge sadness, yet the Rwandans are justifiably proud of their well organised and absolutely beautiful country as well as looking forward to greater economic wealth in the land. It’s strange to think that every adult you shake hands with was either perpetrator, victim or collaborator. 

We drove on to the Nyungwe forest where we booked to trek Chimpanzees on Monday, stayed in 2 different small local lodges (lovely, clean and good simple food) on each side of this tract of remaining rain forest. Whilst driving through the forest we came upon a group of about 15 Hoest’s Mountain monkeys, black and white, with a dark brown back, swinging through the trees and completely ignoring our parked LR whilst they searched for food. The trees are mammoth and the undergrowth consists of a mixture of overgrown impatiens, begonia, lupin and red hot poker type plants with monsteria (sp?) like you’ve never seen before, thrown in.

Chimp trekking was awesome. We had to be ready to leave the lodge at 4.30am, then we followed a safari driver with his 2 passengers and our guide, Isaiah, for about 1½ hours past numerous small villages where the locals were already setting off to work on the tea plantations that surround the rain forest or their own fields. We have already waxed lyrical about bad roads, but trying to keep up on bad roads in the dark and to avoid the locals and their livestock was another story. We reached our destination, took a porter to carry our, not heavy at all, small rucksack, wondering whether this would be necessary or not. Initially we strode along wide, well maintained tracks, where we saw more Hoest’s monkeys (apparently chimps like to kill and eat them on occasion) and realised that there were a group of trackers in contact with Isaiah, letting him know which tracks to take to where the chimps were.

We found a group of pretty black and white Mona monkeys (who make a noise similar to a cow) who apparently are friends of and often found close to the chimps, so things were looking up.

  

We learned that the chimps eat a varied diet usually of seeds, fruits and leaves and that they remain in the canopy where they are most visible until about 9am when they move down to the forest floor and are much more difficult to see. After about 2 hours easy walking at a fair pace we had to leave the path and the porters and guide cut our way through dense undergrowth across and up and down almost vertical slopes. I was quite scared and needed Isaiah to support me some of the time as the way was often slippery. After what felt like a lifetime, but was actually less than an hour we saw the chimps eating in a huge tree about 40 metres away from us. They were a group of 7, the big male was greying and becoming a bit bald, and they went about their business of foraging among the branches of the tree, climbing up and down with ease. Our best photos were taken when they were at the eye level with us but sometimes they climbed to the very top when we were craning our necks to see them catching, glimpses of their movement. They moved down to the forest floor in search of a different type of food and so after reflecting on the experience we scrambled on down through the forest, leaving the trackers to find them again for us. The terrain was just as challenging but seemed easier after the sighting. We found the main track again and after about another 30 minutes the trackers called Isaiah to let him know that they had crossed the road at the top of the hill! The others raced ahead, but unfortunately did not see them again. The whole experience was a once in a lifetime thing for us and well worth every penny, and the effort, even though we only actually saw them for about 15 minutes in total!

We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the small lodge, Gitarama guesthouse where we had stayed the previous night. The manager is a young Rwandan, Oliver, who has lived in Burundisince he was 4 and has won a government scholarship to study in Le Havre for 3 years, he wants to watch Man U play so may well visit us en route to that!

Our next destination was Lake Kivu, the 60km route we took alongside the lake was among the most beautiful that we have ever driven. It took us from altitudes of almost 2000 metres down to 1200 metres about 6 times during the journey along a gravel road with some pretty hair-raising bends through endless villages where we were greeted by the inevitable waves and broad grins of many of the people we passed. Kibuye (on the lake) is a sleepy town, no camping again, so we stayed in a hotel, with wifi on the lakeshore and caught up with ourselves. The hotel, Bethanie, is owned and run by the Presbyterian church and there was a conference of clerics from all over Africa happening, the colourful clothing along with beautiful singing in harmony added to our enjoyment of the place.

Tomorrow we plan to drive back to Kigali to see if we can get permits to track Gorillas. It is a vain hope as we have already been told that they are all booked until September. Maybe this is a good thing as they are US$500 per person and the Smiths have threatened to never talk to us again if we go!

9. Tanzania on to Rwanda - A spot of constipation!

We camped on a beach campsite just south of Dar es Salaam, under the palms and next to the sea, where we met up with our first overland company (In Focus Africa) truck. It was an old UK registered lorry converted to carry 16 passengers in a comfortable looking vehicle with only an Aussie woman and a retired English couple plus the crew of 3 on board! The driver (Will- whose appetite for bumming around Africa was apparently insatiable) gave us advice re places where they stay further north.

The next morning we crossed on the ferry to Dar. It was packed with about 50 cars and probably 500 foot passengers carrying anything and everything to market. The lovely thing about this was that our fellow passengers were as interested in us in our red LR as we were in them. Dar is now a modern city with some high rise buildings, compared with when we were there with Pete and Jakki in ’75. Despite Dar’s modern appearance the traffic was as chaotic, but thankfully this time we had nothing stolen. For those who don’t know the story Pete and Jakki’s stolen travellers cheques were cashed somewhere in Asia within 48 hours of being stolen!  

For old times sake we decided to revisit Bagamoyo (“Here I lay down my heart”—ascribed to the slave trade). Last time we camped here one of the Frelimo freedom fighters (terrorists?) from the training camp next door stole some of our clothes from our LR whilst we were asleep inside. This time, we camped at the more upmarket Traveller’s Rest Lodge, and although we were the only diners the night watchman carried a Kalashnikov and everyone we spoke to remembers the Frelimo camp. The next morning we revisited the Livingstone tower (this is where Livingstone’s body finally left Africa for Westminster Abbey!) and the remains of the monastery which is now head office of a teacher training NGO. It was really strange to walk on the same ground as nigh on 40 years ago.

The road from Bagamoyo was as bad as any we have travelled but although they are a trial to drive, the details for the readers must be becoming a bore. 3 hours to cover 60kms but nothing broken!

Will had told us about a beautiful mountain range, the Usumbaras between Dar and Arusha, so we decided to deviate from the main drag to have a look. We spent 2 nights there, the first camping at a shabby chic hotel, The Lawns, with emphasis on the shabby, which in its hey day in colonial times must have been the bees knees. Bizarre but the owner, a semi retired Greek Cypriot is the president of a newly established Rotary club in the town, Lushoto. Terry duly presented Anton with a Howden RC banner. We moved on the next day to an eco tourism project called Irente Farm where we walked to a superb viewpoint overlooking the vast Maasai steppe below. There was a vast amount of information about the biodiversity programme that they have introduced, making jams from local berries, butter, cheese and quark from the dairy herd at the farm, plus info about the wildlife to be found. The much cooler temperatures were a welcome relief from the heat and humidity of the coast.

We travelled on up to Arusha which is the centre of Tanzania’s safari business, where almost every vehicle is a safari truck taking passengers into the famous Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater national parks. Halfway through the morning we were overtaken by a fast Isuzu Trooper which promptly lost control and rolled four or five times up the road ending in an end over end flip onto the grass. We screeched to a halt through the glass and plastic and remains of roof rack. Jean stayed in the car and I ran back, convinced that any occupants would be in pieces. The roof was completely flat at the front but I could see in through the back windows and the driver was alone and hanging from his seat belt between the two flattened front seats. Remarkably he started to mumble but I couldn’t reach and he couldn’t find the release. I ran back to our car and got a knife. By now half the village (500m away) were arriving on the scene (including Maasai in full regalia, 2 to a bike!) and the driver was shouting to get out in case the car caught fire. I climbed halfway in through the back window and cut the belt and within seconds he was out of the car. His head and arms were covered in blood but apparently nothing broken! The locals rolled the wreck back onto its wheels and we left – somewhat shaken.

We had already decided not to go into Tanzanian parks as the costs are prohibitive and geared to discourage independent travellers. Twenty four hours costs $US 50 each and $150 for the L/R (over 2000kg – they have a weigh bridge at the entrance!) plus $30 each to camp. This may be fine if you want to see the big five in a couple of days but if you want to spend some time watching animals it can be very expensive. Plus of course you find the animals here by the size of the group of safari trucks jostling around them for position.

The cover zip for the roof tent was playing up and there was a Safari Exhibition in town so we blagged our way into the tented village and found a local tent maker who could fix it the next day. To save time we went to look for the factory that evening. Suddenly there was a loud bang, we both ducked thinking we had been shot at but the din from the exhaust told us that the silencer had blown itself to pieces! We had been a bit worried about the poor old land rover which had seemed to struggle more and run hotter each day. Suddenly it felt like a new, if somewhat noisy, truck. It had power again and I roared past several overloaded Toyota’s, just as a test you understand. That night we discovered that the fibre glass in the new silencer, which we fitted just before we left the UK last year, had slowly melted and blocked all the outlet holes. Eventually the pressure of gasses trying to escape from the engine had split the silencer apart. Constipation is a terrible thing! We tied the box back together with bits of wire and camped at a pretty spot called Lake Duluti on the Sunday evening. This was owned by a Tanzanian who went out of his way to be welcoming and helpful. His 3yr old son was called Obama because he was born on the day that Barack was elected.

The next morning clattered off for the Patels (the tent makers). They couldn’t have been more helpful and soon fitted a new zip but were much more interested in importing the same tents from our suppliers in China to sell in Tanzania. We swapped our contacts for the zip and over saw an 18 inch weld to our silencer which now looks like a panel beaters nightmare. It has a much louder purr but pulls like a train.  The Patels are invited to Howden and may well accept as the son wants to investigate importing cars from the UK.

We left the Patels at about lunchtime, didn’t want to stay in Arusha so we drove about 130kms to camp on the outskirts of a smaller game park, called Tangarire. The next morning we succumbed and went in. Being smaller there was no weighbridge so they let the L/R in for $40. We were amazed at the density of the game- without any exaggeration we saw about 500 elephant in groups of up to 50, 2000 zebra, 500 wildebeest  and a couple of Thompsons gazelle which we haven’t since seen the 70s, then to cap it all we saw a cheetah and 5 hunting (or wild or painted) dog. Well worth the money!

Our route into Rwanda is not well trodden by tourists and there are no campsites and in addition one or two people had suggested that there are still occasional bandit attacks. We decided to get it over and done with and drive two long days and stop over at a small hotel in a small transit town called Kahama. When we got there the town was bustling and obviously growing exponentially. Apparently gold had been discovered there recently and the first mine opened four years ago with more to follow. We left early next morning after breakfasting on “Cornflux” at least that’s what the menu said.

We were at the Rwanda border by lunchtime. Our Tanzanian visa, issued in the UK, meant that if we entered within 90 days we could stay another 90. The immigration lady didn’t agree and didn’t want to let us out of Tanzania as the first 90 days had expired! We tried to explain how it should work but this was seen as telling her how to do her job. Tempers were getting a bit frayed. Once again the day was saved by football. She was a Liverpool supporter and her colleague Man U, it was enough to break the ice and she agreed to look at the spare application form that we had brought. She let us go and promised to check it out before the next Mzungus arrived.

The road into Rwanda was good but slow as there seem to be people everywhere. It is very hilly and brilliant green with cultivated terraces on every slope. Bananas, paw paws, avocados and many different vegetables with rice and fish farms in the valley bottoms.  We were surprised by how clean and tidy everything was. Kigali the capital proved to be equally as organised and clean. Once again we struggled to find anywhere to camp and ended up at a grotty site in the middle of town where we met our first independent overlanders this trip. The young German couple had been on the road seven months in their 1968 truck. Much good information was exchanged.

Tomorrow we plan to go into the offices of the Parks Board to talk about Chimp and Gorilla trekking.

8. Mozambique into Tanzania

We arrived at Pemba and after initial disappointment because our expectations of Northern Mozambique were based on the fabulous places we stayed last year, further south and the Bradt guide had correctly described the Northern Moz coast to be more of the same but  remote. We were surprised at the lack of lovely lodges and camping facilities but then realised that there are not many tourists except for a few backpackers and we don’t quite fit into that scene any more! However, we found a great place on the beach about 5 kms out of town.  We stayed for 3 nights, doing inevitable running repairs to the LR.

As ever we met lovely people, a couple of Dutch doctors with their 14 month old baby taking 3 months out to travel again in Africa (they drove overland 5 years ago),they gave us lots of advice about places to go in Tanzania. Plus a group of young medics from UK taking 2 weeks out from their charity project called ‘On Call Africa’ in Zambia. They have all put their UK careers on hold to help communities out in the bush. I’m sure more info is available on Google if anyone is interested as they are looking for ways to continue financing the project. Also, the 6 degrees of separation concept applied again as Terry met a chap who had worked at the same Barlows factory as he had in the 70s in SA, small world isn’t it. We managed to buy fresh Sea Bream which we simply put on the braai for a couple of minutes –delicious. We also bought a few small Barracuda from the local fishermen for the next day.

The further north we travelled the more adventurous we felt. There were no accommodation facilities (that we would stay in) and even the rural villages were few and far between. We debated whether to ask to ask a local chief if we could camp in his village, but decided that we wouldn’t feel comfortable with the large audience that tends to gather in that situation so we had our first night wild camping. We waited until dusk, pulled off the road, to wait for darkness. Unfortunately, within 15 minutes a motor bike sped towards us, stopped and 2 burly Mozambicans with AK47s strapped to their chest approached us. The Portuguese/English conversation that followed established that they were border guards, despite one of them wearing an ‘England’ football shirt and Bermuda shorts, they assured us that we would be safe wished us Goodnight ---- and left us to worry!!!  After pan fried Barracuda and rice we decided that an early night was necessary so that we wouldn’t attract attention to ourselves so we were in bed by 6.30pm. We realised that we work well as a team especially under duress as one of us was awake every 15 minutes throughout the night.

Needless to say we were up before dawn and away by 6.30am to tackle the last stretch of terrible road to the border. We arrived at the Peace/Unity Bridge by 8.30am where we met a Tanzanian from Dar es Salaam in brand new BM 4x4. He works for Vodacom in Johannesburg, now on his way home for a holiday and incredibly his journey had only taken 4 days. 

The border took a while on the Tanzanian side as the immigration officer was a staunch Liverpool supporter, who insisted on discussing the venue for the next World Cup with us and that Mr Blatter had short changed England in their bid!  He did say that we were some of the first Musungus (white people) to cross. The Chinese constructed the bridge and there are 300 metres of beautiful tar on either end each connected to about 150kms of extremely rough track!!! TIA.

Incidentally we discovered that the other two border crossings on the Ruvuma River have now closed to vehicles as the ferries have sunk and there are no plans to reinvest as the bridge is there even if it is 250kms upstream.

Being a Sunday and a remote crossing there was no Insurance available so we decided to try the following morning.

The rest of that day we did very well, and reached Kilwa on the Tanzanian coast as dusk fell. This is another ancient Omani town, established as a trading centre long before on the coast, we stayed there for a couple of nights right on the beach again, under coconut palms, watching the dhows, dugout canoes, some with home made sails, which look like windsurfers from a distance, fishing in the bay.

The first night at Michaels place. He is a 70 year old pensioner from Sheffield with a new Tanzanian wife. The second with Pieter from Denmark who is profoundly deaf and is following his dream to develop a business on the beautiful Indian Ocean. His place was quite isolated, a few kms outside Kilwa directly on the Indian Ocean and was much more welcoming. We had a Maasai night watchman here, complete with spear, so felt especially safe.

We tried to get temporary insurance here but there is no office so the Chief of the Regional Tax Office wrote us a letter to the police in case we were stopped. Whilst we were waiting we were impressed at the formal politeness the showed to us and each other and the ultra smart dress adopted by all the officials.

The next part of the journey took us up to Dar es Salaam, we had been warned that there was a 60km stretch of the main road that has been being resurfaced for 4 years! So a temporary road has been graded alongside. This, plus the fact that the end of the rainy season has not quite arrived, made for a very tortuous journey, taking about 3 hours to travel the 60kms. The road crosses low lying land, so we were driving through long stretches of deep mud, reminiscent of the Okavango Swamps last year, with sections where the road has been washed away completely, but this is the main road so there was lots of traffic. Sometimes the track was only wide enough for 1 vehicle at a time, and we had a couple of hairy moments when trying to negotiate our way past oncoming traffic or having to reverse as a bus slowly slid sideways across our path.  Plus there were several breakdowns where drivers and passengers were sitting waiting on the road as the traffic forced a path past them, some had obviously been there for days!

Thankfully the new road was completed at the Rufiji River and so we were able to rattle on to Dar.

The plan is to restock, get insurance and push on out of town as fast as possible. Memories of 1975 and Pete and Jackie’s L/R being broken into here were foremost in out minds.