We slept well, or Gray did, he was competing with a spotted eagle owl to see who could make the most noise. It took me a while to get to sleep with this cacophony of snoring in my left ear and owl hooting in my right. I guess it still beats the snoring and hooting of cars on William Nicol back home.
If we want to put a decent meal together we need to go shopping. We have lots of tinned and dry stuff, so we wouldn’t starve but we are short of fresh produce. Although Mbeya is a huge town, we wouldn’t know where to start trying to find things without a guide. This is all just an excellent excuse to eat all our meals in the restaurant. In effect, we are pretty much hotel guests here, swanning at the pool with waiters bringing us drinks and snacks.
Gray is concerned that the little stint with the brake pads has scored the brake discs. We could push onto Dar but the manager at Utengule referred him to a place Mbeya. So begins another of our car sagas; first stop was the local car repair shop down the drag, this shop is run by a missionary and has a Chapel in the middle of the workshop. They were unable to help and referred him to the official Land Rover agent in town. They too, were unable to help and referred him to another spare shop. The ‘local Landy agent’ went with Gray to a little, Indian run, parts stall. There were parts for Africa there, of every description and for every vehicle. The little old Indian lady behind the counter sent some young helper into the bowels of the shop for the part. They then returned to the shop, only to discover the part didn’t fit. By now our car was in pieces, so they borrowed a police Land Rover, in for repairs, to return the part. The little old lady was unable to find the part but was not giving up, she phoned their Dar branch and the parts will arrive tomorrow afternoon. It appears that the problem with getting parts is that our vehicle is too ‘new’ – the joke is it is a 2002 model. Gray says they went out their way to help him and were so friendly – they may not have all the fancy equipment and coffee in the waiting room but for service they beat Sandton Land Rover hands down.
Gray got to the see the myriad of back streets and alleys in Mbeya, it really is an amazing place. Nobody was begging and or asking for handouts, even though he was one of the few mazungus in town. Gray loves going off and playing bush mechanic, I can see he actually gets a thrill of this car maintenance.
So, you may ask, where was I this morning? I was sitting around the pool sorting out the blog. We have discovered that Vodacom operates in Tanzania; so we have a pay-as-you-go set up in an old phone, with plenty of air time (which takes hours to put in as they come in such small denominations). Trying to figure out how to use a pay as you go was another experience, I recommend contract any day. The phone is linked into the laptop and so I was able to post all my backlog of blogs and photos. Hopefully, we can use this facility for the rest of the trip and then I can send daily updates and not volumes at one time. Isn’t technology amazing?
There are a number of local beers in Tanzania, this gives Gray a good excuse to systematically try each one. He moved on from Killy, to Tusker to Serengetti and is still not sure of his preference yet. The good thing about us being here, is that later in the evening, after the beer tasting and wine with dinner – round about the time he starts speaking Swahili – he is now understood, as this is the local language here.
Even better than the beer is the coffee, we are drinking the plantation’s coffee and it is the best we have ever tasted. I am not a coffee lover by any means but this coffee I could become addicted to and Gray is drinking it by the bodum full.
The local brews
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