From the campsite Kipepeo Beach, which is located south of the city centre of Dar es Salaam, we decided to take a minibus, instead of using our own car, to visit the Swedish embassy. Unfortunately the employees at the Embassy couldn’t help with an Ethiopian visa and to get a second passport would have taken two weeks. So we just had a Swedish chat with Lars Johansson from Vårgårda who is working for the embassy. On the way to the Vodacom shop where we got a new SIM card we passed a KSB agency. Of course I had to say hello to a “colleague”, who just started working in January. It didn’t work out very well with the SIM card, after two and a half hours in the Vodacom shop I still was not able to use the Internet. They closed the shop and told us that tomorrow it will work. I just had to wait a couple of hours to get the settings send to my device. In the meantime it had started raining heavily and didn’t look like it will stop. So we walked back to the ferry and got thoroughly wet. From the ferry terminal we decided to take a Tuk-Tuk back to the campsite. While listening to extremely high volume music – constantly the same song – the guy drove us through the tight traffic, tipped us nearly into a ditch, stalled the engine and finally drove us through many puddles back to the camp. The next days, the rain season – for this year quite late – let us get stuck in Dar. We checked the weather forecast but it didn’t seem to be better anywhere else. Of course the SIM card didn’t work as promised so after two very lazy days we had to go back to the shop. We took again a Tuk-Tuk together with Marianne and found the city center flooded. Some “business men” tried to earn some money by providing a ladder for pedestrians to cross some water sections. The “real” business men with their shiny shoes were glad and paid. The Vodacom manager finally found out that my contract was not related to my new telephone number, so after another hour the problem was solved. We did some expensive shopping and went back to the camp. Next day the sun came out for a couple of hours so we took the opportunity to dry and wash everything and walked along the beach. The wooden fisher boats fascinated us anew. After we had spent more than one week at the rainy beach we decided to move on, said farewell to Marianne & Albrecht and had a last swim in the surprisingly warm Indian Ocean. Of course we didn’t leave the town before buying some Land Rover spare parts. The traffic was chaotic again and it took some hours to reach the dealer. At least we got some new parts and while waiting in the car I watched a guy who plied with gas bottles. When I asked him if he could fill our gas bottle it was no problem at all. We never would have found that filling station – an insignificant door towards the street. Late in the afternoon we tried to find our way out of town. We had a big discussion with the police again who didn’t want us to turn right – towards the north. They forced us to turn left and that was another hour standing in the traffic jam until we reached the next junction. Same here – the police lady put herself in front of the Land Rover and didn’t let us turn. We were so upset that we didn’t accept that and Alexander kept on going. It ended that she took Alexander’s driving license and said we can either pay a fine or we will meet in front of the court. We didn’t accept this either so after one hour discussion we got the drivers license back without paying and even stood in the right direction, finally. But it was nearly dark and it took another hour to leave this huge traffic chaos behind us. We found a campsite somewhere at the beach. Next morning we discussed about the price, as 5$ per person for a campsite that doesn’t really exist any more was not justified. The roof of the ablution blocks had disappeared so the toilets and showers were flooded, the beach was more than dirty and the whole place shabby. The university runs the site and it is a shame that no one is investing. We kept on towards Bagamoyo, which was the capital of German East Africa up to 1891. We explored some old colonial buildings, walked along the beach where we met busy fishermen and had a look at the Holy Ghost Catholic Mission. We spent the night at the Travellers lodge, before we drove up along the east coast and stranded south of Tanga at Peponis Beach Lodge (www.peponiresort.com).
Series 2 Africa 