The best value for money for an overlander going on safari… Camping and park access fees vary hugely between different countries. Does paying more give you a better experience? At the top end of the price spectrum is a self-drive visit to the Ngorongoro Crater in Northern Tanzania. It is astronomical. In fact all national parks in Tanzania are expensive to...
Day 76 – Peponi Beach Resort The day was spent working on emails & relaxing at Peponi Beach resort. The kids loved the pool. The owner of the Capricorn Cottages next door stopped for a chat with us, and invited us for food and drinks with her husband and some other ex-pats who meet there every friday afternoon. We met up with them round 4pm and spent a...
Day 71 – Marangu Iddy took us for a walk to a nearby waterfall, we visited Mama Salma in the afternoon & popped into Moshi for tea and pick up a Tanzanite bracelet. Mama Salma’s place Day 72 – Leaving Marangu We left Marangu, both Suma and me feeling quite ill from probable mild Carbon Monoxide poisoning from the a partially blocked flue on the...
Day 65 – 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 58 – 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 didn’t impress me much then, so I...
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 police 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...
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 In order to avoid the 3 day boring tar road via Lusaka, we had 3 options to get to Tanzania: 1. The hard but short way: From SL there is the notorious ‘05’ road which leads directly 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 to Maun was down a really badly-maintained gravel road, with patches...