Blogs from Centre, Tanzania, Africa - page 18

So...the last week I spent at the Selous Mbega Camp (www.selous-mbega-camp.com) about 250km south-west of Dar es Salaam. Selous Game Reserve is the largest reserve in Tanzania, and also a World Heritage Site (as decided by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Being located in the south it is off the beaten path of the tourist track (everybody goes north to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater) which was a huge part of its appeal to me, and it is also one of the only reserves in which you can do a boat safari on the river. Which was the main selling feature as I was mostly in search of hippos. Yes, hippos. I make no apology, it was hippos I wanted and hippos, happily, I found. I had phoned down to the camp and ... read more

According to one of Jessica’s colleagues, you can just show up at Ubungo bus station and hop on any number of buses heading in the Iringa direction- easy, no problem. Following this advice, we made it to the crazy chaos that is Ubungo just after 7:30am. Now being accosted by the aggressive touts is no fun on any given day, but becomes especially unpleasant when they haul you around to the various bus counters and in the end, you have nothing to show for it. After close to half an hour of bouncing from counter to counter, we were rapidly losing hope of finding any vehicle even remotely heading towards Iringa when we come across a random guy sitting around who showed us to the minibus that was leaving for Iringa sasa hizi (immediately). After haggling ... read more