Day 22 Mikumi Campsite

Lovely breakfast watching the waves – the wind had eased so the ocean was much calmer and there were lots of dhou dotted on the horizon.  Left The Tides at 8ish having picked up the damp laundry, and headed back to Pangani to catch the ferry.  Long, long drive along the Tanga to Dar-es-Salaam road – loads of lorries but it is the bus drivers that are really scary overtaking “any time, any place, anywhere!!”.  Decided to buy some fruit from the road side and found the entire cab was filled with packs of oranges and cashew nuts – managed to escape having just bought one big bag of oranges.  Further down the road we tried again but this time to get charcoal – not sure we should be buying charcoal from an environmental perspective but not sure the wood alternative is a lot better.

Reached Morogoro at about 4pm and really needed to find a supermarket but failed miserably and wasted a good hour in the process going round in circles. If we had wanted motorcycle parts, petrol, sofas or bricks we would have been fine but no-one seems to eat.  By now we were concerned that we still had miles to go and had no clue where the campsite was.  With the road going straight through the middle of Mikumi National Park, 40 mph speed restrictions were in place all the way through the park section and for once everyone was sticking rigidly to them. We think it was the fear of the penalties that could be imposed for running over a wild animal – $450 for a baboon but $15,000 for an elephant.  As a result we were still driving through the park in the dark (scary when the lorry coming the other has no lights on!!). Driving at night is a very big no no and we missed the signs for the campsite.  Rather than turn back, we chose to keep going on with the hope that we would find somewhere to stay once we got outside the park.  Luckily the strategy worked and we ended up spending the night at a campsite a joining the Tan Swiss lodge (with Bar – don’t you just love it when a plan comes together!!).  It had taken us over ten and a half hours driving to get from Tides to here so the last thing we felt like doing was cooking. We spent a surreal evening having dinner (peppered steak and Tanzania equivalent of Biryani) in the bar surrounding by pictures of Switzerland with Richard Hammond on the TV – weird.