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Published: July 17th 2018
My trip to the south coast and to Masasi, Tunduru and Songea.
Arrival There was standing room only on the
daladala the battered mini and not so mini buses that criss-cross Dar es Salaam ferrying commuters all over town. The tout cum conductor had shuffled me to a place behind the driver on the choka-blok minibus and helpfully positioned my cabin-sized wheeled case out of the way of the crush of people, and then charged me 400 TZS (around 14p) for the journey.
I was hot and sticky even though it was only just gone 6am I dreaded every traffic light and traffic jam, because when the bus stopped so did the cooling draft from the open window.
I’d arrived at Dar es Salaam airport with Turkish airlines after 3 in the morning but really I wasn’t that bothered about the early arrival and I was not that keen to leave the airport as at that time of day I would have had to get an expensive taxi into town and If I’d arrived predawn at a hotel I would have had to pay for that night’s hotel room, so for the sake
of an hour or two I decided to kill some time and save on both taxi and a hotel room and wait for sun-up and then catch a
daladala into town.
Waiting for a visa to be processed conveniently killed over an hour of that time what with filling in a form then queuing to place your hands on that machine that is supposed to read your fingerprints and then handing over your passport and $50 to the Tanzanian immigration officials behind the glass. After some time waiting for the workers behind the glass to do their magic with a stamp and biro a uniformed official was handed a stack of travel documents and called out the names in the passports.
“McEwen. Oh yes that is you.” As he checked the photo and handed over the passport to Ms McEwen. He went on, “Martinez, Jones”
With a valid visa now in my possession I grabbed my bag which by that time had been removed from the carousel, a brief pause while some young chappie had a quick x-ray of my luggage and I was out into the dated concrete surroundings of the airport forecourt.
I changed
Dar Hotel
The view from my hotel windowa small amount of money at one of three FOREX bureaus (and got a decent rate) that were open at that time of morning and went straight to the in airport fast food joint “Tasty Life” that thankfully is also open at daft o’clock in the morning. I bought an airport priced coffee and then left with a cold bottle of water and sat back down on the seats near the arrival gate. I re-jigged some things in my bag, used the surprisingly clean toilet and before I knew it the sky was lightening. I walked the short distance to the road where I boarded one of the frequent Gerezani bound daladalas to the centre of town.
The trip into town took about an hour in the “rush hour” traffic in which the bus driver on more than one occasion turned the engine off as waiting at junctions were that long. The daladala terminated at the newish and pretty well organised Gerezani stendi that combines the Mwendo kasi Rapid Transit bus stage as well as the
daladala stand for various destinations around town. From there I zigzagged my way through the
streets dragging my wheeled bag to Flex restaurant near Kariakoo market. I love this place, an unfussy no messing cafe that serves up some great local food throughout the day. At this time of the morning there was a huge aluminium
sufuria on a charcoal stove near the door and it was brimful of steaming hot
mtumbo, what we would call tripe in the UK. I settled for a
chai and chapatti for ‘breakfast’ before I walked around the corner to arrive at Al Uruba hotel at around 8am and got a room with a ceiling fan for 20,000 Tanzania shillings. I showered and slept till after 11.
Dar es Salaam After waking I tried my phone; my halotel sim card had a signal but it refused to send an SMS so the young chappie selling airtime underneath his Halotel brolly in front of the hotel suggested I top up my phone for just 2,000 TZS and that did the trick. I could SMS the folks back home that I’d arrived safely.
Phone sorted I walked to Mchafukoge and entered the Kili Bar. This is a nice place for a day time drink or two. At lunchtime
the place is full of office workers in the area coming into eat but about 2 ish the regular daytime drinkers take over the bar with the full mix of the peoples of this part of town. My table was typical of this mix, with an Arab, a Swahili, an Indian guy and me a slightly over weight Welsh bloke all supping beer and talking bullshit in a mixture of English and my broken Swahili. The Kili bar itself was once owned by an Indian guy when this place was called the Goan bar. The food is well popular here but me being a veggie I’m left with little choice other than chipsi maiai, the universally available light meal in Tanzania which is basically a chip omelette quite often served up with chilli sauce and if you are lucky a little bit of salad. I settled on a liquid lunch of 4 Pilsners before heading back to chill at my hotel.
The Al Uruba is a well organised little budget hotel but it is not ideal if you like a drink as the owner who to me has always appeared to be a really nice bloke but
apparently takes his Islam quite seriously. Staggering back to my room smelling of beer is probably not such a good idea so I checked out another hotel around the corner and I promised to the receptionist to shift there in the morning. I chanced one more beer and walked back to my room with a take-away
chipsi maiai of dubious quality and then crashed on my bed and caught up on some of those lost hours of sleep due to travelling.
I did shift hotels in the morning and well settled into my 25,000 room with a fan. I celebrated my move by eating a meal at Flex where I ate mchicha and a couple of chapattis. The
mchicha are green leaves that are cooked with coconut milk and is mildly spiced, I pepped it up a bit more with the scotch bonnet chillies amongst the condiments on the table.
I did visit Kili bar again that afternoon but it was quiet so left after one beer for the Manyangwe hotel bar back in Kariakoo and then had another at the DDC social hall. I spent the next few days between these 3 watering holes and
Dhosa
My dhosa at the excellent Rasoi pure veg' restaurant eating lunch at Flex or the excellent Rasoi Indian restaurant in Kisutu. I also had the odd
chipsi maiai and what with staying near Kariakoo market I couldn’t resist the various types of excellent value avocados being sold there and I’m pretty sure I almost overdosed on them. Being here in the month of March the street snack food of this season was boiled ground nuts and I found it hard to pass one of the hawkers wheeling round their trolleys full of nuts and not buy a cup-full; boiled and salted ground nuts go well with a cold beer I’ll have you know.
Beer TZ There is supposedly a law in Tanzania that prohibits the sale of alcohol in bars before 4pm on a weekday (unless it is a pubic holiday when you can buy a beer anytime of day), but this is a law that is almost always ignored, in some bars they openly sell beer well before 4pm. In one bar I can think of I have on more than one occasion had a 9am curer, yet in other bars I’ve only been allowed a sneaky beer as long as I’m drinking out of sight
and have been asked to tuck myself away inside a dark corner of a bar instead of outside on a street side terrace; and even on one occasion on a scorching hot day I was asked to drink my bottle of Balimi in a store room that smelt of cat piss. Bizarrely, the few places that seem to ignore this law seem to be very close to a police station. Maybe it’s because the bar owners are well aware that the local Tanzanian old bill will never cause a problem in their own watering holes! I’ve been led to believe that if caught drinking out of ours by the gendarmes it is the drinker that would be fined and not the bar owner.
Legally or otherwise Balimi is my current favourite brew in TZ, it is also one of the cheapest brews on the market and maybe because of this it may well be looked down on by some bar owners who don’t stock it. I was told that Balimi is a beer local to Mwanza and only recently been available countrywide. Pilsner is my 2
nd favourite tipple and is also one of the cheapest beers in Tanzania.
If I struggle to get hold of a Balimi or Pilsner I’ll plump for a Serengeti. Serengeti which is brewed in accordance to Germany’s strict purity reinheitsgebot laws; is not a bad replacement. Safari was the first beer I tried, and at the time I thought it a half decent beer but nowadays I find it too sweet. Safari along with Kilimanjaro is probably the most popular bottled beer in Tanzania.
My Rough guide to Tanzania mentions that the town of Babati probably has more bars per person than anywhere else in the country and they are completely spot with this as when I’d visited on a previous trip I found almost every other building to be an outlet for booze. In the centre of Dar es Salaam bars are surprisingly thin on the ground compared to the rest of the country and the ones that are dotted about are not so obvious.
On previous visits to TZ, if I wanted a shot of spirit I would buy from a bar a sachet of “London” Gin (made locally of course not in London) but this year I was disappointed to find out that the president of Tanzania Magafuli
was not a fan of them and has now outlawed them as they have been over the northern border in Kenya and I know the outlawing of alcohol packaged in sachets is being discussed in Uganda as well. I don’t know if Magafuli is a drinker or not but his middle name is pombe the Swahili word for beer.
Several spirits claim to be either gin, vodka or whiskey as well as Tanzania’s own
Konyagi a spirit made from sugar cane, are now only available in bottles.
As well as bottled beers and spirits local brews such as
bege the beer made by the Chaga people from the Moshi area can be found and not just in the northern highlands. When I’ve asked what goes into making
bege I’ve heard all sorts of various ingredients and nobody seems to agree exactly but what everybody does agree on is that it involves banana and some kind of grain either maize or sorghum, and taste and quality can vary a lot. There is some
bege I’ve drunk that goes down OK but can leave me rushing to the loo the next day and others I’ve drunk and not
had “stomach” problem at all.
Dar I like Dar Es Salaam, I really do. From what I’ve read in guide books and on travel forums a lot of visitors to Tanzania after arriving in Dar will head straight out of town to the mountains or over to Zanzibar. But me I can’t get enough of Tanzania’s biggest city.
When in town I stay in the Kariakoo area of the city centre, this is the busy market area of town where every street come mid morning resembles a market stall as traders display their wares on a tarpaulin placed on the tarmac and the tarp’ is pulled back every now and again to let a vehicle pass. A lot of the buildings here are recently built high-rise blocks for housing and hotels and with some of the streets being unpaved it reminds me at times more of somewhere in the middle-east and with large number of traditionally dressed Muslim population you could easily believe that you are in the back streets of Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.
I like the people here in Kariakoo, maybe on the seafront or on Samora avenue you might get the odd person
trying to sell you trinkets or some other tourist hassle but on the streets of Kariakoo nobody gives a toss about the white bloke walking from his hotel to the bar and when spoken to its usually a genuine greeting. Talking of which one of my favourite watering holes in Tanzania is in Kariakoo; the DDC which is hardly a bar more a huge beer hall cum restaurant cum music venue all under a strange shaped asbestos roof; and if you want to experience Dar at its funniest go here when the top two football teams in country are playing each other. I had tears rolling down my cheeks with laughter at the antics of the fans when I happened to turn up here just before the local derby between Simba and Yanga. I managed to squeeze into a space near the bar, and like I say this place is huge but not a seat was spare for the big game on the double-sided TV screen hanging over the hall. Even if this place is quiet I like to be near the counter, there are plenty of waitresses and all seem ready for a laugh but it is a lot
easier asking for a beer as I push my money through the caged-off counter to whoever is working behind the bar.
Temeke I was well in need of doing some exercise after several days of drinking and eating well I also intended to head down the south coast so combining the two I decided to walk to Temeke from where the south coast buses head from.
Breakfast was included in my hotel but this was nothing to jump out of bed for as it consisted of a slice of water melon, tea, two slices of bread and a couple of fried eggs so after breakfast I headed off with water bottle in hand. I had a rough idea of where to go and had a small photocopied map.
After an hour of walking I was in Changombe and saw Temeke bound
daldalas passing me so realised I was going the right way. I paused at an Mgahawa for a coffee and a chapatti before reaching a gaggle of bus offices all advertising bus destinations. I didn’t have a chance to choose a bus company before a couple of young lads crossed the road shouting across to
me
“Where are you going Lindi or Mtwara?”
Just to be mischievous I said “Kilwa”
“If I was to go to Lindi how much is the fare?” I asked.
“Lets go” He said.
So I followed this guy to the ‘Buti la Zungu’ booking office and eventually booked a
“kawaida” seat for 23,000TZS, the VIP seat would have cost 29,500. I left with my ticket and walked the 100metres to the bus stand to see where I would catch the 10 o’clock bus to Lindi tomorrow. On the other side of the road was the daladala stand and a
daladala pulled up with the tout shouting “Kariakoo” so I jumped on board and 20 minutes later I was back in town.
Lindi I arrived In Lindi late afternoon after a 6 hour 45 minute ride from Dar which included a short break halfway at Nagurukuru just before the turn off to Kilwa. I celebrated my arrival with a not so cold beer and asked around for a guest house near the ocean. An old bloke that was keen to chat with me pointed me in the right direction so on his
recommendation I walked to “Coast Guest House”. I could have got a lift on a
bajaj (the local name for a tuktuk) or boda but decided to walk and take the place in.
Ah, laid back Lindi. Bugger all here really apart from the ocean, the beach, a couple of half decent bars and nice people. I did some serious relaxing in Lindi on the beach and in a few of the towns pubs. After being spoilt for choice for places to eat out in Dar I quickly had to get used to the few restaurants or hotelis that Lindi had to offer. Consistently good though was the White Hotel which is named not after the colour of the hoteli’s walls which is a sort of beige but after the light skinned owner who’s known by everyone as “Whitey”! It is a well known place in town but don’t look for a sign as there isn’t one. Neither is there a sign outside The Gymkhana my favourite bar which is almost opposite White Hotel.
Masasi The transport I took all the way to Masasi was one of the frequent coasters that
run constantly through the day and it left pretty much straight away I thought I was on for a quick trip but the minibus took forever. The bus seemed to stop at every over mango tree. When I had entered the mini bus at the bus park in Lindi there was only one other person aboard and there was a continuous stream of people boarding and alighting along the whole route and at times was completely full so much so that the passengers were physically unable to squeeze aboard. Some passengers were only onboard for a matter of a few kilometres but the original passenger and I were the only people to suffer the whole 3 hours 55 minutes of the entire journey to the final stage, the main bus park in Masasi.
The main bus park is at the western end of the main drag in Masasi an 2 minutes walk back along the road I greeted a gaggle of men playing mbao and asked these blokes where I could stay nearby for around 15,000.
“
Twende” one of them said and showed me the Frontline a place that was just behind them and I hadn’t noticed that
it was a guest house. Happy with the self-contained room with fan, table and chair and a big bed with a net for 15k, I left it behind and went for a beer.
I’d seen a few bars along the main drag as we came through town and I’d seen a sign for “Kibo pub” pointing just north of this road so went to search this place out. And I liked it.
Its a big place that looked more like a night club with a stage at one end and a kitchen the other and to the side more sitting areas with two separate bars. I was served straight away by one of the many glamorous barmaids. I’d not eaten all day and didn’t fancy anything on the menu here (it all looked very meat orientated) so left for a place near by for ugali beans and mchicha, all right for 1k. The best meal I’d have in Masasi was a place behind Frontline Guest House where a couple of women set up their charcoal stoves under a piece of tarpaulin and cook the simplest of meals of boiled jugu mawe (round white beans) and chapati
for breakfast all washed down with sweet tea.
Out of the places I’d been to in Tanzania this place is the worst I’ve been to for electricity. Many towns struggle for a constant supply of umeme during the daytime but come evening the power usually kicks in. In Masasi we were getting an hour or so’s worth of electricity and that would be it. Because of the iffy power supply it was a rarity to get an ice-cold beer. Any half decent establishment would have a generator though that would kick in as the sun want down.
Mtwara Don’t catch a coaster to Mtwara from Masasi they take forever. If you can’t catch a direct bus (not a coaster) It’s better to get up early and jump on one of the Dar bound buses and alight at the junction at Mnazi Mmoja not far from Lindi and from there jump on daladala there will more than likely be one waiting.
Mtwara is like a polo mint “the town with a hole in the middle” for some reason there is a large area of waste ground smack in the middle of town. The
power supply here was just a tad better than Masasi. I struggled to find a place to stay for 15k or less and the place I stayed near the bus stand had a very relaxed attitude to security. As you returned to the guest house you had to help yourself to your key (or any of the others by that matter) that were just left in a pile on the counter! It was a also a poor town for a drink, I struggled to find anywhere other than makeshift bars in alleyways. I’m not a fan of Mtwara. Saying that, I did have a lovely meal of pilau mboga mboga at Dubai hotel.
Music There really is some dreadful modern music in Tanzania, and sadly it can be well hard to avoid. Long distance buses tend to have video screens that can show films but quite often show local music that they call Bongo Flava. The music videos tend follow the same theme of some young bloke wearing white jeans (rips at the knees appear to be optional) is dancing in front of an expensive car which never moves while singing and occasionally grabbing his crotch.
It’s strange for a country that has criminalised homosexuality that in the Tanzanian music scene they seem to like videos that in the west we would think of as overtly homoerotic.
Tunduru Selous express it said on the side of the bus at 6 in the morning at Masasi bus stand and it was fairly nippy. The Kisumapai bus left at 6 and the Selous bus half an hour later I wasn’t bothered that I wasn’t on the 1
st bus as the transport I was on looked in better nick than the Kisumapai operated vehicle.
I arrived at the dusty town of Tunduru, I alighted the bus and ate a couple of chapattis and a chai at a place called the Comforty Pub in the bus park before finding some accommodation, and pretty much across the road from the bus park I was shown a room for 15k at Mgungo guest house with a great bed, good net and a TV in the self contained room by the helpful guy on reception.
Tunduru has the usual gaggle of market shops, local government buildings and bars as well as brightly coloured buildings that advertise that
they buy gem stones. These places are quite often owned by Sri Lankans who come to Tunduru during the peak mining season buy some gems and take them back to Sri Lanka to get them cut. I was told by one sri lankan guy that “it’s a sellers market” and the sale of gems is all strictly controlled by the government. But sit down long enough in any of the local bars and someone is likely to plonk a ruby in your hand thinking you have come to town to buy gems because why else would a mzungu come to a dusty one-horse town like Tundudru? Why indeed well possibly because it is a thoroughly pleasant town with some really friendly people, well apart maybe from the genuinely annoying drunk bloke I met one evening in the New Amazon club who turned out to be the baby eating Bishop of Tunduru and Masasi. When he wasn’t spilling his beer he was ranting about Al Shabab. This inebriated god-botherer was pissing me off so much I couldn’t even be bothered waiting for my change for my second beer so swerved the dog-collared drunk, bought a exceptionally good chipsi maiai
and retired to my room and watched some French football on the TV.
As well as gems this area is big for korosho cashew nuts. I met some bloke who was on his way to his shamba where he was growing cashew and mbazi. He said he couldn’t speak Swahili properly and only properly spoke Kileno but he did tell me he was getting bei kubwa (a big price) for his cashew nuts.
Songea I left on the 5:30 bus from Tunduru to Songea, I’d booked my seat the day before. The immaculate road of brand new tarmac hardly had a straight flat stretch the whole way, it was the kind of road I dream of cycling along, and after 4 hours going up and down small hillocks and around sweeping bends the coach pulled into one of Songea’s three bus parks inconveniently about 6k from the town centre. I know this cause I looked over the shoulder of the boda driver to clock his speedo.
I’d asked him if he knew a guest house in the town centre that cost around 15k, he did and dropped me off at Kigesu guest
house that was full but they pointed me in the direction of the building behind that housed the Safari Lodge where I got a room for 15k. The woman here was a great help; she spoke no English but to me she spoke slow simple Swahili.
I showered and went for a walk and ended up getting my bearings all wrong around one part of town where a lot of trucks were being repaired. It was not exactly lunchtime but I was ravenous so stopped at a restaurant that was sandwiched between the truck carcases and asked what food was ready. The giggling ladies rushed around opening pots showing me the contents.
“Rice is ready and there is liver and we have Njegere” I was told.
I gave the liver a miss and with the piping hot rice I ate the njegere which I was pleased find was peas cooked in a garlic loaded tomato sauce; this was one of the best meals I’d have in TZ on this visit not just in Songea. I enjoyed it so much I went back the next day much to the amusement of the ladies who worked there,
“Mzungu amerudi” (the white man has returned) I heard them saying through their giggles.
Inevitably I ended up at a boozer, Deluxe II pub on Deluxe road! It was only mid day so not yet 4pm and the legal drinking time but punters here were drinking. I was thirsty so bought a big bottle of water along with my Pilsner. Tired I left for my guest house and noticed that this far south newspapers only arrive mid afternoon so bought a Guardian which I read while Al Jazeera was on in my guest house room.
Next morning, I was surprised to learn breakfast was included with the room, it was only eggs and a slice with flask of tea but welcome it was.
I then had an interesting morning with the alphabet soup of Tanzanian banks NMB CRDB NBC.
The askari of the NMB bank led me to ask where I was told I could change money.
“Fill form.” I was told by an unsmiling bank worker. This seemed a complete ball ache so left and crossed the road to CRDB bank to use their ATM. “Request declined” it informed me. NBC bank was
near-by so I tried there. Staff here were unfeasibly helpful and when I was told I needed my passport which I told them it was at my guest house I got the impression they weren’t that fussed. I was only staying round the corner so 10 minutes later I was back at the bank filling in the various forms then another problem.
“Our machine wont except the new £10 notes” the pleasant cashier told me, so only changes the few £20 notes I had!
I needed a drink after all that but dipped into the bakers or as it was written outside “SONGEA BEKARY”, where I found them selling slices from a huge veg pizza. I bought 2 slices it was excellent, the filling was so thick more like a tart than a pizza. Thoroughly fuelled so headed to Deluxe II and sunk a few Pilsners, one of which I knocked off my table and smashed, the owner waved my offers to pay for the broken bottle away and even bought me a replacement. Lovely people here in Deluxe II as they were at Yapanda miti bar across the road where I had a couple more scoops. Feeling
‘tired and emotional’ I wobbled back to my gaff buying a chipsi maiai which I hardly touched before crashing out.
I was a tad hung-over this morning as I tottered down the hill to the bus stand and into the shipping container that was masquerading as the Kisumapai “booking office”. 13’000TZS bought me a ticket back to Tunduru, which was slightly more expensive than the ticket from Tunduru to Songea (I can’t work that one out either)! I also couldn’t work out why the young lads at bus stand kept shouting “Chuck Norris” in my direction. For some reason the boda boda riders in Lindi also called me Chuck Norris.
I was hoping a beer would put me right so I popped into the huge makuti roofed pub I’d passed several times.
“Karibu Serengeti” I was welcomedinside by a big guy sat at a table the other side of the boozer who then kept calling me over. I drank my beer alone telling him I was hungover which amused him but I told him I’d be back later to watch the football on the big screen, not expecting him to be there in over 5
hours time.
5 hours later he was still there!
Today was derby day. The two big Dar es Salaam teams were playing each other. Serengeti bar completely empty mid morning was now full to overflowing and every chair had been taken but my new bar buddy (bless him) had actually kept a chair free for me. A white bloke in a massive boozer full of Africans tends to stick out a bit so as soon as I entered I was spotted and my mate called me over. He was a Simba fan and because where I stay In Kariokoo is only 5 minutes away from Simba’s H.Q. in Dar I’d adopted the Msimbazi reds as my team in T.Z.
The game was poor and it looked like a draw from the start. The highlight of the cagey 1 - 1 draw was the celebrations in the Serengeti bar after each goal.
Tunduru (the return to) Sunday morning and no power in this part of town so packed my bag in the half-light left Safari lodge then walked down the road to Kisumapai’s office for 6:40am.
I knew the bus I
was about to catch originates from Mbinga so I had a sneaking suspicion that it would not be exactly on time. After sometime someone shouted “Tunduru Masasi” and I and the assembled gaggle of passengers followed the shouter a short distance up the street opposite a petrol station where our bus pulled up with number plate matching the one on my ticket and at 7:37 we departed.
The bus made two more stops in Songea at bus parks one north of town and the one I’d arrived at a few days earlier to the east.
At 12:30 we actually reached Tunduru, I sunk a welcome Pilsner at Comforty Pub and was warmly welcomed back into Guest House Magungo.
The restaurant I’d enjoyed the most here previously was Sukumaland but found it closed but the place next door happily opened on a Sunday and I stuffed my face with some greens and rice and an excellenet glass of Mtindi.
I went straight back to the bus stand but had trouble buying a ticket to Lindi for the following day I guessed the touts wanted to sell a ticket all the way to Dar rather than a good
few hours down the road. Eventually I bought a ticket with Super Feo bus company and crossed the road to sink a few cold ones at Amazon bar. And there I could see some guy showing off a gemstone to a barmaid who had an impressive beard (yes the barmaid), the geezer looked towards me and before long he came over to my table and popped the raspberry red stone in my hand. All very pretty but it could have been a piece of coloured glass for all I knew.
“Mawe ni mawe.” A stone is a stone I told him. He laughed and left me alone and I went around the corner to the 2
nd hand football shirt stall where I was happy to come away a rather nice ‘Al Hilal’ shirt for 6,000TZS.
Lindi Next morning I breakfasted in Tunduru near my guest house eating a crisp chapatti and a cardamom loaded chai, it was quite possibly the best 700TZS I’d spent on the trip.
At 9:55am at the bus stand there was some confusion after I’d shown my ticket. I was given a new ticket and 2k and shuffled
onto a Selous bus bound for Mtwara and I was told to alight at Mnazi Mmoja just a few kilometres shy of Lindi where there is a junction and you head north to Lindi or south to Mtwara. I was well glad of the bus change as bang on 10 the bus left the bus park, the lovely ladies from the Comforty pub waved me off, bless em.
I may have mentioned before that this is a really nice road but fuckin’ hell Selous Express is quick. We had a very brief stop for a nature break in the middle of nowhere that is famous for being a wildlife corridor, but nobody hung around to see wildlife; they pointed Percy at the undergrowth and scrabbled back onboard as the blokes mubbled something about simbas. No time either to get off at Masasi but hey, we reached the weigh station at Mnazi Mmoja at 2pm. I crossed the road to the waiting dala dala paid my 1,000TZS and soon arrived at Lindi.
So straight into Gymkhana pub where it was empty bar the bar-staff and the two young lads were taking the mick out of Hamina the
young waitress and her lack of English.
“What’s the time?” they asked her
“Eighty pasty o’clock” she answered and the rest of us fell about laughing. Well it was a slow day at the end of the month and they had been buying themselves a few drinks, I quickly caught up and would have got even messier but I’d not long got off the bus so I was in the boozer with my bag and thought it best I get a bed for the night.
I bought chipsi kavu to take away and a newspaper and caught a piki to take me to Coast Guest House. I dropped my bag and although a tad pissed and with the light fading I went for a swim in the ocean. Ace!
Two apres swim beers followed at the Prison officers club and I left with a big bottle of water and with the sound of the waves gently lapping at the beach I slept like a piece of drift wood.
Next day having had too much trouble with my Tigo sim card I went to the Vodacom office where it took an age to get
Prakash Hair Cutting
One of many good barbers in Kisutu. a new sim but the two girls in the shop were lovely, really helpful and after all I’d only splashed out 1k (a whole 30ps worth) on a Voda sim card.
I tried the internet café at the post office 3 times today. The first couplke of times there was no-one there on my third visit I’d only sat down for 5 minutes when the power went and typically when I got to the guest house power had returned to town, well at least I could get a cold beer now.
The next few days were spent doing pretty much the same thing, walking on the beach then having an early morning swim in the calm blue waters of the Indian Ocean, breakfasting late on beans and chai. Relaxing after a shower then wandering to the market buying a paper and spent afternoon and evenings in the Gymkhana and the Prison officers club.
Dar I was back on the Buti La Zungu bus the following Saturday morning but feeling a bit disappointed that the supposed VIP seat I’d bought a ticket for was one of two seats in a row
either side of the isle. Previously when I’d travelled on Buti La Zungu the VIP seats would have one seat one side and two the other all nicely spaced out. I was even more disappointed when the fattest bloke on the bus had the seat next to mine. Luckily after the first few clicks down the road I’d nodded off.
The whole time down south the weather had been fine but approaching Dar it became very wet. I jumped down from the Buti bus and pretty much straight on to a Gerezani bound dala at Temeke, and from Gerezani I wheeled my bag through Dar’s rain sodden streets.
The bus had left Lindi at 7:47 and I entered Palace hotel reception bang on 2pm. Then followed a very boozy afternoon and evening in the Clinton bar and I have vague memories of being dragged up to dance to Koffi Olomide on the excellent juke box by one of the barmaids!
I may well have not felt too clever the next day but at least a haircut and shave for 16k from the young chappie at Prakash’s barbers did its best to make me look less hung-over.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Way down south
Sounds like a pub crawl through the towns of Tanzania. You tried all beers except Tusker...or is Tusker only sold in Kenya?