WEATHER: Bus today – but hot outside, I’m on a window so get to work on the truckers tan
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Finally making it to camp
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Sitting in Dar traffic – it was the pits and a snail could move faster
BUYS OF THE DAY: Popcorn from a shopping centre stop for 1.50AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: Are we there yet?
IRISH WORD OF THE DAY: Spare - sky
CAMP SITE RANKING: Awesome – located right on the beach, Wi-Fi, cold showers and flushing toilets
5 out of 5 stars
Okay so today is one of the longer drives we have on this leg. We have 560km to travel which is expected to take us 10-12 hours. That does include the lunch stop and a few other random stops, so actual truck time will probably be around the 8-10 hours. It’s still a long time to be sitting on the truck. You could fly from Brisbane to Singapore in that time or to New Zealand nearly 3 times!!! But it is an overland journey, so these days are expected and you just need to make sure that all the gadgets are charged and that you have plenty of schnacks.
With a long drive comes an early morning. Wake up was at 5.15am, for a 6am breakfast and a 6.30am departure. It rained for most of the night, so the tents were packed up wet and a little muddy this morning. The landscape was pretty amazing this morning with lots of hills and palm trees and with sunrise fast approaching we were able to get some great photos as Ben hurtled through the countryside. After stopping on the side of the road to make some local calls we pretty much just headed straight to our lunch stop at 12.30pm at a local restaurant where we were served a buffet meal for lunch. It looked like what a road house looks like back home with a lot of the tour companies stopping here. Lunch was pretty much a mirror image from yesterday and I think I am becoming a fan of the pilaf. Nom nom nom…… We saw a Gap Adventures truck parked out front, and it look similar to ours, with the exception of their windows are pretty crap compared to ours. Theirs open on the side, and not all the way, giving them about a 40cm open window per seat. Our windows open from the top and slide down half way, so we get a good 1m wide by .5m high of a gap. It’s good to know this when selling the differences between the 2 companies.
So a lot more driving ahead of us. The windows are down, as the day has warmed up, which I love having them down, besides getting air into the truck, it gives you a chance to stick your head out the window, literally, and watch the world pass you by. It is a great way to people watch and I just love the feeling of the wind blowing through my hair. It feels liberating for some reason. I am sure it isn’t good for the hair, as it always finishes in a mass knot fluff ball and dirty as hell from the dust, but my care factor is zero and I just love it. I find that we aren’t seeing as many kids on this section, so the waving to children has been kept to a minimum, but we are getting a lot of waves from adult males and if they are too cool for the wave you will either get a kind of salute gesture or a secret nod. I’m not one to instigate a wave, I need to see a wave first for me to respond, so I am glad, even if they aren’t children, that I still get to wave, as I love to do it and I hope that they get a buzz out of it like I do.
We stopped at a shopping center while Simon got some things done. It was a poshy one this time, with cinema’s, electrical shop, and clothes shops etc…….. We went in search of a USB stick for Lisa, which we found, but they were way too expensive, so I bought some popcorn from a cafe and we hit the internet for 15 minutes before having to be back at the truck. The downside was the guys could get on and I couldn’t for the whole time, so my .50c I paid for half an hour was wasted, but when it is only that much I couldn’t really complain.
Back on the road again at 4.30pm for our final stretch to Dar es Salaam aka Dar. It was only another 89km, but it is the traffic that will be the time consuming thing, as apparently George said it is quite busy and congested. Well he wasn’t kidding. Once we got into the city, it took us like 1 hour to move 400m. It was crazy. Where we got stuck was right next to the fish market, so besides the smell, it was a pretty good place to be stuck as we got to people watch and they in turn watch us. We are still getting a lot of stares, but the truck is massive, so it is pretty hard to not have a gawk at it. We had sellers following us trying to sell us sunglasses, tissues and ice-cream. There was a few funny instances where people were taking pictures of us, we were in their defence hanging out the windows, so I shook my fingers at them and said no pictures, no pictures unless you have money money, just like they do to us, and you could see in their faces they didn’t know what to do, I guess it is just a reflection back of the way we look when it is done to us. But then I would smile and we would strike a pose and we all got a good laugh. It helped kill some time as well. So we crawled along here in the truck for another 40 minutes till we got to the port where we caught the ferry to take us the 10 minute ride across the bay. You can drive, but based on the traffic and how long it takes to move 100m, Intrepid use the ferry to get us to the same point in a quarter of the time. We only had to wait 15 minutes and we boarded the car/passenger ferry with all the locals, cars, trucks and bikes. It is like a mass movement of people on and then after arriving at the other side a mass movement off. Ben didn’t get the truck onto our ferry; he was to come on the next one, so we sidled into a local bar to have a cold beer while we waited. George has never done that with a group before, but it was pretty cool to pay a local price for the beer firstly, but to hear African tunes playing and to see people chillaxing was pretty awesome. We ended up sitting on the beach watching some young children drive a boat and the sun set over Dar. The sand is amazing here and would rival the beaches back home; it is so fine and really white. I guess it gives me a good insight into what the Seychelles beaches will look like and I am excited!
So one last time in the truck for the day. By this time the sun has gone, so we put the tents up in the dark again. But we are directly on the beach, well with a picket fence between us and the water, but the tents are literally on the sand, so we can’t complain. While we waited for Simon and the choppers to get food ready, it was time for a beer and to try out the free Wi-Fi at the camp. There were 2 other Intrepid trucks in at the same time and 2 Safari Co trucks so it was a busy little camp. They had a great big bar area and outside restaurant, which is where you could get on the Wi-Fi, but every man and it’s dog was on the bloody thing, so I couldn’t even get on, so I had my beer and then we headed back for dinner.
So a massive 12.5 hour day. We have a few more like that coming up, and I believe in 3 day’s time we have a 5am departure from camp. Maybe it won’t be worth even going to bed that night?
So off to Zanzibar tomorrow for a bit of sun, surf and relaxation. Going from what the beach looks like here in Dar, I think it is going to be just beautiful when we get to the island.
It was nice to fall asleep to the sound of the ocean tonight.
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