Took a trip on Sunday that turned out to be rather interesting. A road trip in Tanzania is not the same as one back home in the good old South of Africa. The drive to a place called Morogorro was a short 200km that took close to four hours. The main highway going East is a simple 2 lane road, jam packed with trucks and busses. To make matters more interesting, road speed is controlled through speed humps on the road at every village. There are many, many villages on this highway and so most time is spent on the lookout for unmarked humps and riding the rollercoaster when you don’t see them.
Many of the well maintained vehicles sharing the road, stop in order to effect basic repairs like changing a piston or replace a gearbox. There is no verge and so their stop is on the road. In order to prevent repairs to the rear of their vehicles, a high tech solution has been devised to warn other road users. Branches are broken off trees and placed in the road. It is then very simple, when you find yourself ploughing through a forest on the road, either swerve and take your chances with oncoming traffic or prepare to inspect the bugs on your windscreen a little more closely!
We made it through the mayhem of the highway and arrived in Morogorro. From there we headed further east for a further 60km towards the Mikhani National Park. In true African style, the highway goes right through the middle of this national park. There are no fancy gates or fences, you just drive on through and if lucky get to spot a whole heap of game. We were not lucky and instead discovered that a fire had ravaged a great portion of the place. We turned right to do a bit of our own exploring and were pleasantly surprised by a herd of elephant, hippo and a suckling baby giraffe. At a peaceful waterhole we fished out our special lunch of tuna and crackers. None of the wild beasts seemed remotely interested.
On leaving the park, our car developed amnesia and forgot how to work any of its gauges. We thought that pretty strange and pushed on home regardless. We made good progress until we were about 100km away from home. The car lost all of its power and so like good men we debated the merits of turbo engines. We then debated the merits of stopping at a garage and like good men decided to take our chances on making it home. The car decided otherwise, spluttered, wheezed and died at the garage exit. I got to push it back onto the garage forecourt and there it stood for the next couple of hours soaking up the Chillensi darkness.
Our eventful day trip, which some would consider a prolonged streak of madness, took an interesting turn as we cooled our heels in a Nyama Choma (translated as bits of meat – which is the local delicacy), drinking Bitter Lemon. We tried our hand at applying our advanced mechanical skills to resolve the cars health issues. Unfortunately our revival efforts failed dismally car and we resorted to reading by overhead light pollution. Surprisingly the mechanic showed up and ruined our chances of a free night’s accommodation curled up in the front seat! A simple battery switch and we were back on the road again, all the way back to out hotel. The next morning the car was as dead as my USA presidential campaign, again!
A sore butt, the memory of ten hours of driving, and a few cracker photographs were all we had to show for our day out. Just another day in Africa!
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