Blogs from West, Tanzania, Africa

The bus ride to Mbeya was uneventful once we got going. Having eventually been put on the correct bus, our seats were occupied and the man sat there refused to move. The conductor remonstrated with him but to no avail. Instead we were put in the row in front of our stubborn friend, hoping than nobody wanted to oust us from our new-found seats. We nearly got off the bus on the outskirts of Mbeya because a fellow passenger told Trish we had arrived. The journey from there to the central bus station took another 25 minutes through heavy traffic. Getting off the bus we were charged to get our luggage back. Then we managed to negotiate a reasonable taxi fare to get to our hotel. We opted to stay in the Desderia Hotel because it ... read more

Today has been one of the best of my life, I've been lucky and privileged to have seen around 25 wild chimps in the wild and was with them for 2.5 hours. I walked out of the jungle a hot, sweaty mess with twigs in my hair and covered in dirt, but totally exhilarated. Just amazing. Breakfast was at 7.30 and was a bit odd: some savoury pancakes, bread and fried egg that came after we'd eaten the rest as Duma had forgotten them. Ahadi, our chimp guide met us just after 8am and off we went. He had just the clothes he wore and a small bottle of water in his hand - no backpack, no first aid kit, no namby-pamby tourist health and safety shit, this was the real deal. He had warned us ... read more

If a place is only accessible by boat and the people at the town of the port are staring, you know you've managed to get away from most other tourists, which is awesome, but who will my hubby moan about in his blogs? We are at the edge of Lake Tanganyika, in the Gombe Nature Park in East Tanzania and we practically have the place to ourselves, except for a few staff and many potentially thieving baboons. It took some getting to and we started at 4.30am, in Dar Es Salaam. My first thought of the day was no one can helped but be wowed by an all-in-one shower and squat loo, how eco is that?!! AND not only does the loo act as the drain for shower water, you can also take a dump whilst ... read more

KARUCO Needs Water! Educate Tanzania is working feverishly to provide a water harvesting system so that KARUCO will have enough water to open in October 2016. Here is what we know: 1. KARUCO needs 5 (200,000 liter) water storage tanks. 2. These 5 tanks will store enough water for KARUCO to open in October 2016. 3. These 5 tanks must be built by September, 2015 in order to capture enough rain. 4. We must start NOW to construct the tanks and the water harvesting system. 5. ETI donors have funded 4 of the 5 tanks! (The 5th Annual Fundraiser raised $42,000. for this purpose!) 6. Tank 5 will be funded by Tanzanian and European Partners. 7. Water harvest will begin in September, 2015. 8. With the water harvesting system, KARUCO will have enough water to open ... read more

The road to the Tanzanian border was a rutted, hilly affair, filled as in the rest of Burundi with locals carrying produce or pushing laden bicycles. The Tanzanian border post seemed organised and well resourced compared to the Burundi one, but unfortunately, despite the assurances of the officials at the Kenya/Tanzania border, our $50 visa didn’t cover re-entry into the country. There was no swaying them, so after waiting around for a while pretending we didn’t have the money, we begrudgingly forked out another $50 each for entry into a country we had only left a couple of days before. We had better luck at customs, where we managed to talk our way out of paying the various customs charges again. That night we had planned to stop at Kigoma, so after a trip to an ... read more