Days 3-6 (Tuesday 11th - Friday 14th)

We spent most of the day on Tuesday in Dodoma, trying to sort out our roof rack. Finally managed to leave at about 2, heading in the direction of Morogoro, an agricultural town some 500km inland from Dar es Salaam that lies encircled by the Uluguru Mountains. The drive down to Morogoro was stunning - we followed the distant line of the Rubelo Mountains on our right and then broke through into the Makata plains which liead into Morogoro. On the advice of our guidebook, which we have now learnt to distrust somewhat, we chose to drive the apparently ‘easy drive’ up into the Uluguru Mountains to the small village of Bunduki. We started the ascent at about 5:30 and did not reach our campsite until 8:30. Every time we came round a bend thinking we’d find the campsite we only found more of the precarious, stretch of road which wound itself round the very edge of the mountains…Lottie would have hated it…very similar to some of the driving in Ithaca except worse because it was dark. Robert was driving and drove very splendidly…never once did we feel unsafe so all credit to him. We finally found our campsite and the Janitor who seemed to materialize out of nowhere and we set up our tents in the dark, cooked very good pasta and sauce, washed it down with hot chocolate and then went to bed. The Uluguru’s are an incredible contrast between intense agricultural activities and wilderness. Our campsite was right next to the rapids of one of the small tributary rivers that runs down through the mountains and joins the Great Ruaha which runs through the Selous National Park. The mountains are inhabitated by many tiny communities of people who make their living from growing potatoes. From 6 in the morning onwards groups of men were running down the small track next to our campsite which leads up to another village, with huge sacks of potatoes balanced on their back, taking the goods down to lower villages from where they are transported for sale in Morogoro. We spent a nice morning walking in the mountains and swimming. Sadly we had leave earlier than expected because it turned out we needed some sort of permit to be there. We were called up to meet the Chief of the Village, as well as the Minister for Education and the District Commisioner, who informed us very pleasantly of this fact. They didn’t even want to be bribed because if the government come and find out they’ve had visitors who didn’t have permits then they get in trouble. All the people here seem to be very friendly and corruption hardly seems to be present at all.
After the meeting we had a quick brunch and then hit the road heading towards Mikumi National Park, which borders the Selous (we plan to visit the Selous on the way back). We found a campsite that looked like it hadn’t been used in about 30 years and once again pitched our tents. Supper was a bit more classy that night…baked beans on baked potatoes with pancakes and stewed apples for pudding.
Yesterday we packed up early from our campsite and spent the whole day in Mikumi National Park. At 3230km2 it is the fourth largest National Park in Tanzania. We were interested to see how the atmosphere would compare to that of Kenyan Parks. The landscape was very flat with little vegetation and no particularly outstanding physical features, in fact there seemed to be no central point to the park at all. There was no river and although there was a manmade dam, it was a sorry affair. Still it was interesting to visit the sight and to get a different idea on national Parks. The animals were quite few in number as most go over to the Selous as the two parks share a border. We did see a mother elephant with her baby who was completely relaxed with us. We also came across the bodies of two bull-elephants who could quite possibly have been poached. Their faces had been sliced off, trunks lying nearby and both had large gashes in their sides. Vultures were all over the place tearing out meat and brains where they could. It was a horrific site but an interesting one nonetheless…and probably the most exciting thing we saw in that park. From Mikumi we drove along the road that leads towards Irringa. The first part of the drive was spectacular as we drove alongside the Udzungwa National Park and the Lukose River. It reminded me very strongly of the scenery filmed in New Zealand for Lord of the Rings when they row the Fellowship of the Ring travel by river in small boats they were given by the elves…really stunning. We stopped 13km from Irringa in a really great campsite called the Riverside Camp. It is set on the banks of the Little Ruaha. It has lovely showers and plenty of warm water so we managed to get really clean which was lovely. We’ve also done all our washing this morning and had a very satisfying full English Breakfast. This campsite seems to be full of American Missionaries learning Swahili and about Tanzanian Culture, but they are all staying in the pre-pitched tents so we have a large area to ourselves. After breakfast this morning we waded up the river to some really cool rockpools (there is a waterfall futher up which we didn’t quite reach) and we all swam (even Seren after much complaining about the water temperature).
So far, mercifully, we’ve only had the one problem of the roof rack. It pretty much broke on the first day and we tried to get it fixed in Dodoma but this only made the problem worse. From there we had it tied into the car doors with ropes. However, the mechanics at the campsite have been extremely kind and fixed it (via some subtle drilling) so hopefully we won’t have any more problems with that…moreover they only charged us around 5 pounds in English money, incredible. It’s very nice to be spending the day here and not having to move on. Tomorrow we plan to drive to Ruaha national park and spend the day there and then find somewhere to camp. The guidebook is not very encouraging about cheap campsites so in James’s words we might end up doing our first spot of ‘Bundu bashing’ but we’ll see. The guidebook has been rather misleading thus far so if it’s been wrong before it could be wrong again.
We’ve only made a few friends at this point in the trip. We met a very sweet Tanzanian man called Hevron in Dodoma at a bar who bought us a round of ‘Safari Beer’ and then gave us a lecture about the difference between truth and reality and declared loudly to the general public that he found Seren very peculiar but was so happy to have met him all the same. He also invited us to his house for lunch but sadly we had other stuff to do. Apart from him we’ve actually seen almost nobody because we’ve not been following the typical overlanders route so that means almost no tourists and therefore almost nobody who speaks English but after once we get down to Mbeya that could change.

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