Day 71 – Working & chilling still at Peponi Beach resort. Peponi Beach Resort 72 – Went to see Sally & Geoffs house. Very nice place set on an 8 acre beach plot. Then drove to Bahari Baobab lodge south of Pangani, just south of Usongo near Beach Crab resort. It was closed but they opened for us and we had a lovely beach safari tent. The resident...
Day 71 – Marangu Walk to Waterfall, visit Mama Salma & pop to Moshi for tea and pick up a Tanzanite bracelet. 4. Leave Marangu feeling quite ill from probable mild Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Drive round Kili at Josh’s request. Quite long and a bit dull. Quite close to Kenyan border, we pull over & discuss option of crossing over and visiting...
Day 64 – Tarangire National Park The next morning we woke early to leave at 9am for a full-day game drive. Due to the dust being kicked up by road improvements on the NP access road, our driver took us on a diversion through Maasai villages: they now live in permanent settlements with access to schools and healthcare. The car park at the entry gate was rammed...
Day 57 – A night in Bagamoyo We left Morogoro to start our month-long journey around Northern Tanzania, looking forward to seeing beaches, mountains and the world-famous national parks. We headed towards Bagamoyo as there were meant to be nice beaches there. We did a day trip to the ruins there some years ago. The place didnt impress me much then, so i thought...
Day 50 & 51 – a messy night in Dar I headed to Dar Es Salaam on the friday night, using the new high speed train. It is awesome. 2 hours of relaxing in comfort, versus the 5 or 6 hour crazy drive with endless traffic stops, speed limits and slow trucks. The time went pretty quickly as I chatted to a tractor salesman from Dodoma who was sitting next to me. I...
Days 43-49 We left our friends at Lake Shore Lodge after a couple of very relaxing days, and began our journey to Morogoro. Suma needed to fly out of Dar on 17th July to head back to the UK to fetch our 2 kids, returning on 20th July. A bit of a hectic turnaround but circumstances were as they were. The drive from Kipili to Mbeya was long – it took all day and...
Day 36 – North Luangwa shortcut We had 3 options to get to Tanzania, in order to avoid the 3 day very boring tar road back via Lusaka. 1. The hard but short way: From SL there is the notorious ‘05’ road which leads up to the Great North Road. It has a tricky river crossing at the start (only recently rebuilt and made navigable) followed by a difficult ascent...
Day 29 – Wedding anniversary We tried (and failed) to meet Suma’s brother Gwmaka. He was just over the border in Zimbabwe. The visa costs for us to cross over into Zimbabwe for 2 hours were too high. We then had a long drive ahead of us as we wanted to get as close as possible to the Lower Zambezi National Park. It took us the rest of the day to get to Gwabi...
Day 22 – Khwai back to Maun The lack of hot showers at Magoltho and recent fairly long stint in the bush prompted us to head down to Maun for a bit of R&R and to get some overdue chores done (work emails, car oil change and clothes washing). We would then head back up to Khwai. The drive there was down a really badly-maintained gravel road, with patches of...
Day 15 Chill out in camp in Etosha as we both needed a break from the constant driving. Minor checks and repairs to car, some work emails etc View from the tower at the repurposed old German Fortress at Namutoni Campsite Spectacular sunsets in Namutoni, 360 degree views of the pan and surrounding flat terrain Day 16 Big driving day from Etosha eastern gate to Ngepi...