Tanzania: en route to Tabora.

Wednesday 24th June: Tanzania (somewhere in the middle of nowhere to Tabora)

It was quiet outside for a while and then I awoke to the sound of a car in the middle of the night. John later told us that he observed someone trying to rob the place. A really stupid act, considering the chief of police owns it. The car arriving was actually someone coming to catch the burglar & John’s last sight was of someone jumping over the wall, with another person in pursuit. I just knew he’d get the best seat.

After that, it was back to sleep, imaginary creepy crawlies biting away at me. We had a long drive ahead of us again tomorrow so sleep was paramount. I awoke, still in darkness, to find it was 6.10am. We’d slept in! I quickly got dressed with the intention of beating any queue to use the single facility available to us all.  I got my bucket of boiling water from the fire outside & freshened up a little bit although there were so many dead bugs floating on the top of the water, it wasn't very pleasant.

By 7am we were on the road, after a push start, aided by Vincent, our young policeman friend. We stopped after 2.5 hours, had our breakfast and clean up and continued our journey to Tabora, still a couple of hundred kilometres away. Our aim was to get there by 3pm, which we did. It took 8 hours to cover 225 kms. The road was absolutely awful, corrugated a lot of the way and it felt like we were coming apart at the seams.

Dusty has just passed the 250,000 km mark today so it’s bearing up really well, considering the punishment it’s getting. Our trip since February has already racked up over 14000 kms. Once we arrived in town, we went in search of the Orion Tabora hotel. This town was the biggest town in German East Africa and a junction for the train line crisscrossing Tanzania and beyond, often necessitating a night stop in transit. It’s still a big town but there’s only one decent place to stay and that is at the Orion Tabora, an old German hunting lodge. We got our rooms, luxury indeed. We had a couple of welcome beers, a rest before dinner and a lovely curry. There was one suite and one small room, so John had the suite with my blessing. It was huge. We had a nightcap in John’s suite & then it was off to bed at a reasonable hour, ready for our cross country push tomorrow.