We couldn’t believe how quick the scenery changed as soon as we had entered Tanzania. Not even a kilometer away from the border the villages were full of small restaurants with chairs in front of. Motorbikes, cars and tuk-tuks everywhere and the hills were large areas of plantations. The people were not waving any more but rather shouting “Money, money” or “No picture!” We kept on driving all the way to Mbeya and parked at the campsite (or better called parking area) in front of the mission-run place Karibuni Centre. Described as “recommended place” in the lonely planet we were more than chocked about the bad facilities. In these moments we really miss our bathroom at home. But it was too late and dark to change the location. We gave the restaurant a try, where we were the only guests and could only choose between “chicken with fries” and “egg with fries”. We chose the chicken as we didn´t want to get sick of eggs, which could have been too old. Beside that the chicken was more than well done fried, it was ok until the point we just finished eating when I saw a huge rat running along the wall towards the kitchen. Yuk! We took a big sip of Wodka and went to bed.
Next morning we tried to find a supermarket without any success, as it didn´t really exist one in Mbeya. A petrol station had a few more products than the tiny little shops, but it was expensive and not very satisfying. We went to a garage outside town that is owned of the mission as well, but run by a guy from Switzerland. We tried to explain our problem with the wobbling and showed the pictures of the bad condition of our vacuum pump. It turned out that they had an old Land Rover engine standing around and it only took a few hours to get that used vacuum pump mounted into our Land Rover. The bad thing was that the owner discussed the price afterwards and said barefaced smiling: “You are in a bad position to bargain, aren´t you? You need the part and you will not get another one right now and you want to continue your journey. So that is my price.” Not a nice way to treat customers. Maybe we should have prayed in the garages own chapel first… We paid more than a 100 € and decided to stay another night around, as it already was late in the afternoon. We tried the Utengule Coffee Farm outside of town. The price was far too high for the “camp” next to the tennis court, but the view was at least better than at Karibuni. Next day, Friday the 1st of May, we had to try different bank machines as only one of 5 was working properly. Finally we had a bundle of money (the biggest Tanzanian Shilling notes are the 10.000 TS notes, only worth 5 € each) and changed our route. Instead of going along the Tanganyika Lake we headed towards Dar es Salaam at the east coast, to visit the Swedish embassy to sort out if its possible to get a visa for Ethiopia or a second passport.
We couldn´t drive the 930 km to Dar in one go and found a spot on the map called “Kimani Falls” and to put up our camp in the nature. We passed a village and surprisingly after the village the hilly landscape was full of abandoned huts. We didn´t drive all the way to the falls but found a nice quiet spot along the Kimani River.
Next morning, while having breakfast, a Land Rover arrived. Four guys jumped out and explained that we are in a Nature Reserve where it is not allowed to camp, so we have to pay a fine. We discussed and one of the guys gave up and said we should follow them to their headquarter: The ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism – only 60 km away from here – to explain to his manager. I asked him to give us the address, we will come as soon as we have packed, but he said: “No problem, we will wait until you are finished, even if this will take 2 hours.” They were sweating beside their car for about an hour until we were ready to follow. They wanted us to drive first – as if we could drive away. Luckily the headquarter was in the right direction towards Dar es Salaam. On the way we got stopped of the police. We have already passed quite many police checkpoints since crossing the Tanzanian border and all tried to get money out of us Mzungus (foreigners). This time the polis lady criticized not having a LHD (left hand drive) sticker on the car. Alexander asked her to show him this demand in her catalogue. While she sat down on a wooden bench and searched the catalogue, Alexander kneeled in front of her. Suddenly she shouted “Stand up! Stand up! You are a man! Stand up!” She showed him the fine regulations which didn´t clearly say what we should have done or not. So Alexander questioned this number in her catalogue. She called her office and got told that another number in the regulations is applicable. Still not obvious for us, we denied paying. Finally one of the police officers indicated her to let us go. And so we did, towards the next penalty discussion. We arrived at the head quarter of Tourism and were friendly welcomed of the manager. Then he started explaining that he can treat us as poachers, which means court or jail or we could pay a fine for wild camping in a National Park. When it was our tour to explain, Alexander asked for a peace of paper and drew a map where we parked the car, where the borderline to the park is (concerning to our map on Tracks4Africa), what we saw when we arrived late in the evening. The manager changed his mind to ask for the park entrance fee instead. We didn´t want to pay that either, didn´t gave up arguing and at the end the manager asked us how he should know whether we are “Bad” or “Good” guys. We nearly started laughing and when Alexander answered: ”I can show you the pictures of my daughters!” he relented. Alexander couldn’t resist of giving him the advice to put up new signs for the National Park 🙂 He followed us out to the Land Rover and asked if he could take a picture of her.
Back on the road it took only 15 minutes when the next police stopped us and asked for the driving license. Notable that the police guy welcomed first Alexander, the driver, with a handshake and then me with: “Hi Sister”. No problems this time, next police control wanted to see the fire extinguisher. No problem either. Anyway we were happy to reach the lovely campsite “Old farmhouse Kisolanza” (www.kisolanza.com) where we stayed an extra night to be able to enjoy their good food from the farm, served in the old Mud Ruins Restaurant. We had a look at all these fantastic natural buildings and their own beauty farm. We looked into some huts to find out what they look like from the inside when we all of a sudden saw in one hut laying a guy in the bed. Ups J The farm is located on 1750m so it got cold in the evenings and having the long way to Dar still in front of us, we wanted to go on. As the Isimila historical Stone Age Site appeared along the road, we took a break to walk in a canyon caused by water erosion, characterized by strangely formed sandy pillars. These amazing formations reminded us of Cappadocia in Turkey.
The tarred road to the east side is full of fast driving trucks, mopeds, tuk-tuks and cyclists.
Luckily the trucks went on a strike that day, so we had the road nearly on our own and could safely and slowly drive down the serpentines to reach the Tan-Swiss Camp in the evening. Back in the lowlands with the warmth the rain arrived and the mosquitos as well, so we had to cover our skin and had to sweat. Next morning we crossed the Mikumi Nationalpark and were surprised that this is possible: a tarred road, where trucks drive like idiots, divides a national park into two parts while the monkeys were sitting on the road, giraffes and zebras starred at us grazing nearby the road and every km there was a sign that told us how much the fine is for hitting an animal. Most expensive was probably the giraffe. 80 km before Dar es Salaam the traffic started growing so we decided to take a tiny little road around the city. The scenery was fantastic, the people off the main track friendly and the road conditions challenging for the Landy and the driver and we avoided the trucks. The only disadvantage was that it took more than 3 hours to reach the city and the situation there on the road was still the same if not worth as it already was dark. With bad view we managed to reach the ferry to come to the southern part of Dar where the recommended campsite Kipepeo Beach is situated. It took another 3 hours to get on the ferry, to cross the water and to find the camp. What a nice surprise to meet Marianne & Albrecht Oberhauser again! We had a late night beer together, exchanged our stories with the authorities (they had to pay a fine as Albrecht was wearing the wrong pair of shoes according to the police), put up the roof tent and went to bed with the sound of the ocean in our ears.
Series 2 Africa 