Another slow start out of Mikadi Beach campsite at Dar es Salaam. I was doing some extra cooking to store in the fridge. If I cook when I have power and store it in the fridge, its much cheaper, I don’t use any gas. I also had to check Clancy underneath, check for loose suspension bolts etc.
I thought about taking the ferry across the harbour, but too many unknowns, and I had driven the road in, so how hard could it be? Well returning to the centre of Dar was much harder the other way. The roadworks were routed differently, and it took be at least an extra half an hour to negotiate all the detours. I headed to the Dar city centre, because I wanted to get some small denomination USD for the Zambian border. There was several money exchanges in the centre of town I had seen the previous day. So because of all the one way streets in the city centre I had to follow a tortuous route with the GPS. When I got close I realised my target was wrong and I had to circle around again, all very slowly. I went in a second time, and by chance someone waved a parking spot to me. This was some sort of parking scam with the parking inspector. I gave the guy 1000Tsh (about $0.65), and it seemed to work. I tried the money exchange, but they didn’t have small denomination notes, so it was all a bit useless, and I headed back to Clancy.
Then I headed north to shoppers plaza, with the shoppers supermarket. I loaded up with more supplies. I paid another 1,000Tsh (about $0.65) for a car guard with a double barreled shotgun to guard Clancy, which I thought was very good value. Then I was finally ready to leave Dar es Salaam at 1pm in the afternoon.
I had a target of 290km in the GPS, but I had two sub targets thinking I would never get 290km. I got near Bagamoyo, about 80km north of Dar. The camping ground looked very nice, but I have to get moving. I have 4,500km to do to get back to Joberg. So I pushed on. At 5pm I passed the next target another 100km on, and I decided I would push on and find a wild camp before the next target which was the original another 116k further on. It got closer to dark, it was 6:30pm, and I could not find any camp. So breaking my African rules again I drove into the night figuring I would make the wild camp at 290km out of Dar. Of course it was horrible, but so many other people drive in the night in Africa. I went through two police stops that pulled me over with their torches. Its crazy for these police to be standing in the middle of the road in the dark. About 7:30pm I came to an intersection with two servos, one a Puma, one an Engen. I tried the Puma to see if they would take a credit card (Puma usually do), but not this time. Try the Engen they said. So off to the Engen. Yes they would take a credit card but they had run out of diesel.
So I slowly drove on the last 8km, doing about 50kmh, and made it to the wild camp along a powerline at 8pm.
Next morning I was up having breakfast at 6:30am, because I wanted to get going and cover the 240km to Misho, the nearest town to Mount Kilimanjaro. The road was good. A couple of police stops along the way, include a surprise one where he wanted to see my passport. So after a lunch stop I decided to make for a wild camp east of Kafuri. So I am camped by the river which the locals tell me has crocodiles and hippos
