HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Finally saying good-bye to Paps (that one is for you buddy)
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Saying good-bye to Preswick – it’s a sad sad day
BUYS OF THE DAY: A bottle of vodka for 5AUD – rocket fuel maybe?
WORD OF THE DAY: Welcome to Tanzania
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Goats and donkeys – travel day
CAMP SITE RANKING: 40 minutes from Arusha – cold showers, flushing toilets - 4 out of 5 stars
Welcome to the next 44 days of my African journey. New crew, new family and a new truck. I also have a new roomie / tentie which is Lisa from the last tour, so it couldn’t have fallen into place any better. We know each other and we have a ball together, so it is a match made in heaven. Lucky as we will be travelling the next 44 days together as she is also going all the way through to Cape Town!
Last night I was able to condense my bags down to 5 (instead of 7), got some internet time and finally fell into bed at 1am. Our truck left at 7am, and as we are now ‘experienced’ overland travellers, we knew which lockers we wanted, which seat we wanted and to get onto the truck before everyone else, so we could be all packed away to let them fend for themselves for the first time of ‘truck’. Poor bastards, but we were there 2 weeks ago, so we try and help where we can, as we are old hands now!
The departing ‘gorilla’ people were leaving the same time as us, so their truck (our old one) was parked right next to us and we pulled out of Nairobi at the same time. This will be marked as our second good-bye, as we did say good-bye to them last night in case we missed them this morning. There maybe a chance that we catch up in the Serengeti, but we’re not sure, so we will have to see how that pans out.
I’d like to introduce our new crew and our new home for the next 44 days. George is our new guide, Ben is our new driver and Simon is our new cook. These guys have been working together for the last 2 years, doing the same trip up and back from Cape Town to Nairobi. George actually trained Jools, so I think he’s going to be okay. Our new home is still the same size in regards to the truck itself, but the seats are closer together, back to the Contiki squishiness, BUT less room on the seats has been made up at the back, where there is a small table on one side, where an esky can also fit and on the other side is space (an additional esky and fridge are located here) and also plenty of room to stand and room to take photos from this vantage point as well. There are also curtains, which will come in handy the days that the sun is on your side. The guys on the last truck got really hot as the sun really pounds through during the middle of the day – I was lucky I was on the other side, and when we returned it was overcast, so I really didn’t get too much sun time which was good. There are also 15 power outlets, so that’s 10 more than the last truck, so I don’t think I am going to have too many problems getting all my gadgets charged on this trip, which is awesome. The lockers on the truck are a little smaller, they aren’t as long, but they are a smidge wider. So we had a panic moment when we put all our gear in for the first time, thinking that they were going to be the same size, but after a slight shuffle and some more stuff put in the overheads (which is also smaller) I was able to get everything in. I do have some things to post home, so I will get a chance to do this in Vic Falls in 3 weeks’ time, which will give me some additional room. There is also a safe on board, that only George has access to. We have a secret code for it though, so if there are ‘people’ around they don’t know what we are really talking about. So if you need something from the safe, you want something from the ‘pub’. So we have a counter word if we really want something from the real pub which will be pub pub. Confused? Well we know what we are talking about anyway, so I have locked my ‘vodka and coke’ away for safe keeping till needed again.
So as we wave goodbye to Jo, Lil, Louise, Emma S, Mikey and Julia, we leave Nairobi, Kenya and head for the boarder and into Tanzania this afternoon. We hit the boarder at 10.15am and the process to getting checked out of Kenya for the last time and obtaining a visa into Tanzania for 50USD only took about an hour, so we have been pretty lucky with boarders so far. As we were waiting to leave, there was a guy jumping up and down at my window in my peripheral and I turned on the second tap and it was Chris from the other truck!!!! It was so weird to see a face I knew standing outside when we were all packed up and ready to go! So after waving madly and a few air kisses we left without seeing the others and entered Tanzania where we will be for the next 13 days.
So welcome to Tanzania. The first thing I notice was the roads. It is actually, well a road! It is smooth and lined and not bumpy and awesome!!! We stopped for lunch in a flat stretch of land which looked quite nice, till we got off the truck and it was really windy, which normally this would be welcomed, but it was really dry, which in turn meant it was really dusty and I swear there was dust flying around like snow in a snow storm. You couldn’t open your eyes or mouth without getting some form of dust in it. This was a massive problem for Simon, trying to keep all the food covered but we managed to serve up and I swear, eating my sandwich, I could see dust on my bread as I ate it! Just imagine what my plate looked like after finishing my whole lunch! I could write my name on the plate and you could see it through the dust that had landed on it in 15 minutes! So can you imagine the fiasco, when it came to flapping dry the dishes and pots!!! It was fruitless as they worked out getting dirtier than when they started, so they were washed and put in the box wet, as this was the only solution. Not a great introduction for the newbies, but as Intrepid would say it was a ‘real life experience’. We did attract a few locals that watched the whole proceedings and some of the newbies learnt the hard way that you just cannot take photos without asking. Someone took a photo and was asked for money, which was paid begrudgingly and then a truck was driving along a dusty road that ran parallel to where we were ‘dining’ and was kicking up a bucket load of dust (it was impressive) and some people were taking photos and I could see the driver and passengers shaking their hands in a ‘no’ fashion and stopped at us to have a go, which George had to give them some food to say sorry. I guess they will learn.
So all packed up and back on the road we drive for another hour getting into Arusha at 2.10pm. We were given 1.5 hours here, as Simon had to stock up the food, so it was time to get some Tanzania shillings, which works out to be 1500 for 1AUD, so will need to now brush up on my 15 times tables! I also went to the supermarket to stock up on some snacks and ran into Dave, who is from Ireland. So we also decided to get some alcohol, of the vodka variety, and share in 4L of blackcurrant juice. So all up it was only 6 for the vodka and the mix. I am loving Africa!!! We still had some time to kill, so we found a little bar right near the truck and we had a cold Killi beer till it was time to head to the truck. I have found my first new friend on tour and it feels good.
Heading out of Arusha at 3.30pm, it is becoming obvious that it is a very dry country. Besides having lunch in a dust bowl, just as we are driving through the countryside, it is all dry, dry, dry. George has also warned us that heading out to the Serengeti tomorrow for 2 nights, that this is nothing to what you will get out there, so to pack light coloured clothes, because they will get covered in dust and we will as well from head to toe. Hard to imagine, but forewarned is forearmed right!
With the roads being in better condition, it makes for a different environment on the truck. George doesn’t mind if you walk around, and as there is the additional room at the back of the truck, there is room for people to stand around and chat. The windows are all down, people are sticking their heads out, enjoying the wind in the hair (myself included – it was awesome) and cameras are also out and snapping, mostly scenery shots, so it is okay. Where we couldn’t do any of that on the last trip as the roads were so bad, you could have fallen over and broken something. It makes a nice change.
We arrived into camp around 4pm and it looks great. It reminds me of what you would expect of a caravan park back home, but without the caravans of course! Lots of leafy trees, paths, sections of grass (or carpet as George now calls camp sites with grass), a pool and gender share showers and male and female toilets. This is the first time that the tents are set up for the newbies. The ‘veterans’ get theirs up in record time, and then we went and helped our neighbors. George gave them a demonstration but it does get confusing the first time. The tents we have on this trip look brand new, so the s clips that hook onto the poles are a little stiff, and no tent pegs are required, which is what I used to get the bloody things off in the morning, so I will have to get something else, as it really hurts your fingers trying to get them off. But I do have to say, it is nice to have a clean tent, due to the weather on the last couple of days, the other ones were starting to get a little muddy and dirty.
So with everything set up we headed for some of the shops on the side of the road from the camp. George recommended we get a Masai blanket for the Serengeti which we got for 10,000 shillings (6.66AUD) and without even planning to I bought an oil painting of Masai men and women for 13AUD, and it is a pretty cool picture with a lot of vivid colours, not that I have a home to put it yet, but I liked it and I am sure I will find somewhere. So leaving the newbies to re-sort their bags, and getting it all to fit and getting their own systems in place, we went to help Simon with dinner, as the roster has yet to be put into action, with tonight and the next 2 nights out in the Serengeti it would be hard to implement it, so the next 3 nights will solely be relied upon by volunteers, and as we know what we are doing it was only fitting that we went and helped. Dinner was great, and there was hardly any difference between Liz and Simon, it was a great fare of soup and spaghetti which was delicious. All the lunch dishes had to be rewashed and then we welcomed everyone to the world of flapping.
With dinner done, we launched into our PFT (plan for tomorrow) with George. We are heading to Ngorororo Crater for the morning and then into the Serengeti for 2 nights and 2 days of game driving. We are leaving the Intrepid truck here and heading out in four 4x4’s. So we had to pack day bags for the next 2 nights. He warned there may or may not be showers, as the water has to be trucked in so if the truck hasn’t been then there will be now showers and there was going to be a flushing toilet. It is bush camping, so we are out in the wilds of the national park. So there is a good chance that lions and hyenas mostly will make an appearance at camp once we have gone to bed. He went through some animal calls of what we could hear at night, but to me all I need to hear is any kind of animal noise and I won’t be leaving the tent. Toilet stops at night always had to have your tentie with you, and to minimize disruption if you had to do a no.1, otherwise known as a domestic call you did that behind your own tent, and if you needed to do a no.2, otherwise known as an international call, this required a tentie and a bathroom. Only after you had unzipped and checked that there were no eyes shining back at you from your torch. This is camping after all isn’t it!!! The tents, mattresses and Simons cooking gear were to come in the pack truck and we just had to bring what we needed for the next 3 days. With a warning of make sure all your camera’s were charged, no light coloured clothes the meeting was concluded and we headed to a local pub across the road for one beer (2500 shilling 1.80AUD) and then back to camp for bed. It had been a long day.
So the next section of Africa begins. There are now 7 of us travelling all the way through to Cape Town. Lisa, Sean, Pam, Meyoukey, Manu, Dave and myself. The other 10 kids hop off at Victoria Falls in 23 day’s time and then we pick up 5 new people and have a final number of 12 for the last section. Each group is different and I am now looking forward to meeting them and hopefully they we will all gel okay to have a great trip. So far the signs are all positive, but no-one will ever take the place of our last group. That was a freak of travel nature, as those groups don’t come along often. By the end of the day I had received 4 text messages from the last group and yes we miss you guys as well.
Definitely better to be a highlight than a bummer...
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