Wake up early, first because of the prayer calls, then from the hustle in the camp. I think it’s unfair that the prayer call is a recording, I think that if the deal is to have it at 05:00 that it should be LIVE!
Anyways, whatever. Wake up, make breakfast and as we are enjoying our cold milk with cereal we hear a blunt sounding *thud* *thud* *thud thud thud* sound. I kind of sounded like the noon gun in Cape Town, not unlike canons being fired. After each *thud* we can hear a loud cheering sound. Then we realise it’s not cheering but something else. At any rate, a general excitement. More *thuds* follow at random intervals. We postulate that it may be a parade or something, since we think we say a old busted battleship in the harbour. More *thuds*, more noise from a large crown, this carries on for at least 10 minutes. What is a bit concerning is that the Maasai guards are a little unsure and alert to any apparent danger.
So we finish packing up and get going at about 08:00, hang a right at the camp gate and as we approach the dock we see quite a few fire trucks. The road ahead is charred black and army personnel are turning back traffic. We make a U-turn and I spy the source of the *thuds*: an entire shop and storage cage packed to the rafters with gas canisters exploded! They must have just gotten the fire under control, because everything was smouldering still, shards of canister strewn everywhere. Now I’m no expert, but I reckon somebody messed up.
We are re-directed around the block and stand dead still in traffic. Marietta asks a local man what happened and he mentions that at least one person died and many are injured (this is just one man’s account though. But if you Google gas explosion in Tanzania or Dar Es Salaam, it may have made news somewhere)
We decide that this is going nowhere and take the long way around, adding another 45 minutes slice to the days already long drive. More bad roads and crappy traffic and we hit it all in peak. As I mentioned before, the traffic lights here generally indicate not so much that it’s your turn to drive but more like when you can start pushing in. So we do. Balls of steel man.
The next few days we need to cover about 2500 km’s to get all the way to Zimbabwe for the Lake Kariba boat trip. This is new on the schedule, btw. Remember that we where gonna do Mozambique? Yeah, that’s not happening anymore, too much uncertainty and doubt with regards to the ferries and so on. So we’re skipping the whole country and organised the house boat. It’s 4 days of more sitting on our arses and being served by chefs. Sounds like fun.
I notice that the brake fluid light comes on and stays on. Stop at a garage to buy some more and later on found it to be quite low. Weird. Will need to monitor it. Once we clear the city the rest of the road is quite uneventful. In between all of this we get an SMS from Fanie, reports that his “timing chain has broken” and if we can buy a new one in Iringa. They’ll tow the Colt to the next town which is Mbeya. We don’t hear anything more from them and no one replies to our sms’s...
We eventually reach Riverside Camp just as our low fuel light flares up. Mattie filled in at a station a few KMs before, but the pumps are so slow here we opted to head on and find another one, but where surprised to find that we had already reached our destination! That was a quick days driving, or it felt like it.
The camp isn’t bad, lots of 18 year olds on some kind of mission mission. There is a Kiswahili school here too, teaching young and old alike Swahili. We setup camp and make some chow, tuna pasta and I bake some bread. We’re still on rations or whatever we had left before we went to Zanzibar so we’re making the best of it. There aren’t any shops for a good couple of days, so we’ll stretch best we can. We won’t stave, heavens no! But we have our standards, damnit.
Highlights: Well gee, I’d say NOT being blown to bits while queuing up in the road to board a ferry, wouldn’t you??
The tuna pasta was marvellous, just fantastic. One could even say... DELICIOUS!
[G & A], out
With my mind of my money and my money on my mind
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