Day 27 Bongo campsite

After the long drive yesterday we decided to have a leisurely start so for once we didn’t get up at dawn and also had a proper cooked breakfast.  Finally set off at 10.15 for at least another 5 hour journey.  Scenery was a bit dull for the first part but the villages were fascinating – they seemed more affluent than further North judged by the fact that the majority of houses had electricity and there were less individual brick kilns.  Life still revolves around getting water though but with more bikes and motorbikes the transit of large numbers of water containers was much easier.  Street side vegetable stalls changed too with no sign of the onion and tomato stalls from further North, now there were loads of potato plus beans and cabbages.  The Tanzam highway was as busy as previous days even though it is a Sunday.  We came though a weighbridge at one point and the queues of lorries in both directions were horrendous – luckily we just went straight through.  We did come to a complete stop a little later – a policeman kindly informed us that we would have to wait a few minutes – half an hour later we got going again still no the wiser for the hold up.  

Close to Bongo campsite we went back into the hills and the agriculture changed completely with loads of small holdings everywhere.  The campsite is lovely and for once we feel that we are in the real Tanzania, the local children spent the evening playing football on the campsite in front of us and everyone walking past stopped to have a chat – shame our Swahili is still pretty non-existent. We have had meat fest for tea – we have had large amounts of steak plus potatoes and sweetcorn for our tea but that used less than half the beef so we have also cooked steak in red wine which hopefully we will get across the border and it will still be edible for tomorrow night’s tea.