Jambo from the foothills of Kilimanjaro,

Here we are on Kilimanjaro (although the legend is completely invisible, covered in thick marshmallow clouds) enjoying some relaxation time in the lush tropical Tanzanian forest. We won’t be doing the ascension, partly because it’s expensive and also because it’s really expensive… $2500 for two seems a bit steep (!) for a mountain climb!

Our last few days in Mozambique since we last wrote were great, as we headed north it got more and more remote and we barely saw any other tourists at all. Of course, remote goes hand in hand with bad roads though and as we approached the border post to Tanzania, driving on a very narrow sandy bush track, we came face to face with a rusty old chapa (ute taxi) piled high with at least 500kg of cement mix and 25 people perched on top of bags on the back. Big Mama managed to stop but the beat-up old ute was far too over loaded to be able to stop and we’re not even sure if the driver saw us because his windscreen was cracked even before he hit us. The front right of the ute hit straight into Big Mama’s bull bar. Luckily it wasn’t a serious impact, more like a big bump, but his car was such a wreck with no front bumper that it was enough to embed the fan in the radiator and he wasn’t going anywhere. Big Mama got a scratched sticker on her bull bar… The border police were called to inspect the accident and much discussion in Portuguese/Spanish/ pidgin English followed, but to cut the story short, we ended up having to pay for the damage. Not only because we were the only ones with insurance, nor because we were the only ones with a road-worthy car, but because we were the only ones with any money and that seems to be the prevailing rule over any other more logical ones you might want to try. It was just a matter of how much. Our mistake was to take our time and not agree instantly to pay the amount they were asking, we slept the night at the border post and got a regional traffic policeman involved the day after thinking that someone more senior would be fair about the situation but that was a big mistake. It seems that the more policemen involved, the more you have to pay. In the end though we lost a bit of money but we were very lucky as nobody was injured and our car is fine - it could have been a lot worse.
We could stop here, leaving you with a story of police corruption and bribery that some might have expected to hear, but if we told you that story we also have to tell you about the policeman in Botswana who got us on his radar at 66kmh in a 60/kmh zone. He pulled us over and told us the fine was 300 pula ($90). We were of course disappointed, but you can’t argue that much with an electronic radar so we went to get the money to pay. When we came back prepared to pay, the policeman told us it was just a warning and he wouldn’t take our money. The actual fine should have been $30 but he just wanted to scare us into following the road signs! And then there’s the story about the man at the border in Mozambique who wanted to give us some of his own money so we could just pay the policemen and leave…

We’ve had 5 days in Dar Es Salaam at the most stunning beach campsite under the coconut palms and we refilled our stock of food in the first supermarket we’d seen in a month. Our visit to Agnes our sponsored child was fantastic – she is such a sweet little shy girl that was so happy to see us and to show us off to her friends at school. Flo even left the village with a chicken given to him by Agnes’ Mum that we later marinated with peri peri… Pippa used the visit to improve here kiSwahili. Tanzania is still a poor country, but in comparison to what we’ve seen in the previous countries this feels like the first world. From the moment we arrived and the immigration officers actually supplied pens to fill the forms it seemed so much richer! There are houses, shops, restaurants, toilets & showers and the camping grounds are pretty well-equipped.

In the next few days we will cross into Kenya, to catch up with the wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara. The Serengeti is apparently empty at the moment as all the animals head north, and aside from that it’s $400/day to visit so we’ve chosen to visit the Kenyan parks instead which are more reasonably priced.

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