Gray and I were woken by Gareth at 5:45, immediately we knew something was wrong, he never gets up voluntarily before 11:00, and had been moaning that we were going to wake him at 7:00 for our 8:00 start. The African stomach bug had attacked him, he had been up most of the night and looked green. After medicating him, he promptly threw that lot up. – looked like our projected 7 hour trip was going to be fun.
Clearly they work on Africa time at Tulia and it was 9:00 before they had managed to sort out our bill and payment. During this time, Gareth had managed to keep down some coke and we spent some time chatting to Kirsty, the turtle lady, about using some of her materials for the Paw Print Club.
After leaving the ocean behind, we travelled along a winding and badly potholed road through local villages and sisal plantations to the ferry crossing on the Pangani River. Only the driver was allowed to cross in the vehicle, so the kids and I joined the locals and their luggage on deck. It was a fairly painless exercise and a short river crossing. The town of Pangani is pretty shabby and we had to stop at the Tanzanian Revenue authority office in order to extend our road tax papers. They are only valid for a month before they have to be renewed – I can’t believe we have in Tanzania for a month already. This process took longer than expected and cost us US$25, with the official putting US$10 of the change in is pocket. After waiting around for an hour to get this done, we were not going to fight this.
The next 30 km were along the most horrendous roads, through some poor villages. It’s pretty scary to think, this is the access road to a main beach destination. If this was a beach access road in S.A., the beaches at Ballito Bay would be totally empty. From the potholes to the trucks on the main tarred road. Our route took us south to Charlinze, where we linked up with the dreaded Tan Zam highway and travelled through Morogoro to Mikumi. Not a bad day on this road, we only saw two major truck accidents. The kids eyes were really opened as to how the people drive in Tanzania.
We arrived at Tan Swiss, where we had spent a couple of days on our way up north, making plans for the road ahead – it seems like a life time ago and yet only yesterday. We have seen and experienced so much in between.
This is also our first night back camping, since the Serengeti and the first night of camping for the kids on this trip - we were all looking forward to it. Gray and I had a pretty good routine going and now we have a 3x3m tent to set up, sleeping bags, pillows and extra bags to unpack and sort out – we also have an extra 3 pairs of hands to help. The sense of humour of the kids (mainly toilet humour) keeps us all amused (we really are bad parents) and the chores don’t seem like chores, as we giggle our way through them.
There are no supermarkets around, so we will be eating at the camp site restaurants till we can source fresh supplies. We all opted for the Swiss menu tonight – Gareth managing to eat his first meal of the day.
The girl's tent
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