Tanzania Part I (by/por J)

The entrance into Tanzania was through the new bridge. Customs was easy and we headed into Lindi and forgot for the next month about 3rd party insurance for the car. In Lindi, we had a standard fish/chicken late lunch and failed to get a room in the place we wanted due to Miss Lindi competition. We also failed to get a room or campsite in many other places and finally camped on the parking lot of an iffy hotel. Next morning we had our first Chiapati, which is something indian, similar to a wheat  Masokoa, arrived late, set up camp  and started cleaning the mess of our new companion, Tino. A mouse that managed to get into the back of our truck in the other sub-standard place we stayed at before leaving Mozambique. The name Tino is the short form of Clandestino, as we did not declared him in immigration. Our first night in Kilwa Masoko ended with a dinner with a Dutch couple we met in the camp: Inge and Evo. We had an interesting long conversation accompanied by good drinks. Next morning we headed towards Selous to try and pass a mud bottleneck 100 km north. We failed and had to come back to the same camp to find not only the dutch but the Swiss family (Fancisca, Peter and the girls Hanna, Leoni and Malu). This time he dinner was livelier with a few more drinks. It was very interesting t hear, compare and learn from other ways of travel. The next morning the 3 families took  dhow and headed to an island in-front of Kilwa Kisiwani. One of these islands that part of the Omani Sultanate with Portuguese taking over later. Mosques, churches, and palaces from different centuries were all there. The following day we said our goodbyes to the dutch and headed north to Selous following the swiss until the detour. The bottleneck was gone. Arriving to Selous was no big deal road wise. We camped outside in a small place in front of the river. Changed a flat, had a sundowner and dinner. The sounds during the night and the following morning were beautiful, the best ones of the trip so far and probably the best ones to come. The Selous Game Reserve felt big probably due to the lack of tourism. We drove for the whole day and sw probably 3 or 4 other cars. We had a siesta in front of  hippo lake and pushed the 4x4 to the limits in non-existing road sections. We left the reserve a bit later than planned due to the decreasing road conditions. We were lucky enough to find the guy in charge of  new place 20 km outside the north gate and stayed there. It was in the top of a hill with serious night climbing on low speed 4x4. The views next morning were amazing and we started heading to Dar es Salam. The road form he park and to the main tar road was the worst in the whole trip. The views were nice though. We made it to DAR a few hours before sunset, had dinner in an ethiopian place and next morning headed out to Zanzibar on the ferry. We decided to stay in stone town which is a melting pot of cultures. The hotel we chose used to be the house were slaves were freed and our room with windows with no glass at the top was flanked by a mosque, a hindi temple and a church, therefore the early mornings on the sunday we woke up there were far from quiet, but very religious. With our faith renovated, we rented a vespa and headed to the beach. Avoiding getting run over by the dala-dala’s was our adrenaline rush for the month.  The beach (Pangwe) was very nice and very alone. We enjoyed that. We came back, did some haggling with the sellers and had dinner sitting in the floor and listening to typical Zanzibari music. Our time there was short and we headed back to Dar next morning. Our next stop was Peponi, in which we got stuck on a ditch in rain and sticky mud. We arrived at night due to n accident on the road outside Dar. Peponi was rainy but beautiful. We did some brais (BBQ’s) and did some maintenance on the truck and found out that our companion Tino had been quite hungry in Dar when we left the car parked for a few days and had to resort to eating our halls pills which maybe left not only his throat smooth and numb, but maybe the whole of his tiny body. Tino decided to leave this mode of transport and abandoned ship in northern tanzania or probbly in Rwanda. Bck to our trip, we headed a few days later towards the Serengeti. On the way there we found the Dutch and ended up watching the 1st Mexico game, dinning and camping with them. We also met  a couple from South Africa (Mike and Tracy) and had more than one drink with them We got some advice as to how and were to ‘do’ the following parks, so we headed to a place just outside Ngorongoro to spend the night there and ‘attack’ the park the following morning. Ngorongoro is one of the biggest calderas (collapsed volcano) in the world. In this part of the world, it means an interesting mix of vistas and high concentrations of animals. To reach it, one first needs to drive up the rim through thick fog with the occasional buffalo crossing with not much notice and then down into the crater. As one descends from the clouds the appreciation of the whole crater with its features becomes clear. After a half day driving around the crater and watching the fauna we headed to Serengeti NP to camp in the middle of the park. Campsites in Tanzania are non-gated, therefore very close encounters with animals are usual.  We only heard the lions and hyenas close by during the night. Serengetis vast plains dotted with granite kopjes (little rock islands) is a contrast to previous parks we had been into. It resembles the Namib desert, however with plenty animals on the move for food. We had two unexpected encounters with elephants and cheetahs. We saw the sunrise with a vast plain with giraffes, hyenas and jackals on the plains and we drove in different parts of the park until arriving to the wildebeest and zebra migration that takes place in the grumeti river before heading into the Masai in Kenya. We exited the Serengeti and headed to Lake Victoria rounding it from the bottom and crossing an inlet of water using a ferry and drove towards Biharamulo were we camped in an old german fort and shared stories, gin&tonics, music and movies with the Mr.&Mrs. Smith (british though). James and Pols (he ex-UK army she ex intellience) were heading in the opposite direction as we were so we exchanged as well tips. Next day we went into Rwanda via the Rusumu falls.