Morning spent getting money and groceries in Arusha –
managed to spend a staggering three quarters of a million Tanzania Shillings! Packing everything into Thomson was a bit of
a struggle but eventually we were sorted and started the journey south to
Tarangire. The drive out of Arusha took
us through the town and past a fascinating array of bed shops. But the scenery
soon changed from the lush agricultural land surrounding Arusha to the more
classic dry savannah. We also entered
the Masai homelands with village after village, and numerous colourful
gatherings. Tanzania is apparently the
land of the sleeping policemen – they seemed to appear every few hundred yards
and were so enormous that they severely happen your progress and often forced you
almost to a stop to get over them. We did get stopped by one real policeman but
he was friendlier than his sleeping counterparts.
Biggest issue of the day was the alarming rate we were
getting through fuel so by the time we reached the Tarangire gate we were
seriously worried as the park has no fuel.
We were advised that we might be able to get someone to sell us some so
we went in, having paid the exorbitant park fees - $540 for 4 days! We meandered our way down to the lodge –
starting slowly and stopping to watch the wildlife before we realised that we
actually needed to get a shift on or we would miss the park curfew of 6pm. We finally made it to the tented camp at 5.50
having negotiated some tough road conditions and swarms of tetse flies (for
once we were forced to shut the windows and turn on the aircon).
The lodge is amazing with our
tent on the top of the kopjie (huge rock) overlooking the Lake Burungi and we
watched the sunset over the lake before dinner.
Luckily during dinner we were assured by the manager that we would be
able to get some diesel from the lodge drivers the next day.
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