Iringa, Pangani & Marangu - Tanzania

We estimated it would take us two maybe three days to reach the border with Kenya, the plan after Ruaha was to return to Iringa, check email, shop, refuel then carry on towards Dar es Salaam on the East coast.

Being new to Tanzania we hadn't a clue where we would stay that night but thought we were bound to find somewhere as we got closer to Dar.  Our route would take us to a place called Chalinze which is about 100kms West of Dar, here we would turn towards Northern Tanzania and the border with Kenya. 

We left camp at 8am, which should have given us plenty of time to get to Iringa before midday, however Rupert had other plans. As we drove to the park gate we suddenly heard the same grating noise we had heard two days before. My heart sank, as I lifted the bonnet and saw the new drive belt we had fitted just two days ago was once again beginning to shred along one edge.  

Clearly the park fundi's theory that the tensioner pulley was reversed was not the answer, however we couldn't risk going on without checking this again with the guys at the park headquarters, so we turned back and drove to their garage.

Once again when compared with the park's Landrovers we couldn't see anything amiss with Rupert's pulleys. At a loss for an answer the mechanics slowly started to drift away leaving us to our own devices. We had no choice we couldn't stay here indefinitely, we would just have to take it easy and go on but as a last resort I replaced the badly shredded new belt for an old one which had worked unscathed for months.

On the way to Iringa we stopped regularly to check the belt and were relieved to see it was still ok. I was starting to think our problem was connected to particular belts as I had noticed all the new belts had smoother and narrower grooves when compared to the old one and my feeling was they were slowly slipping over on the pulleys. The problem was all the new belts were the same and I could not remember where we had picked up this old belt to get a backup if something happened to that.

The weather as we got closer to Iringa grew quite stormy, with heavy rain clouds and sure enough an hour from Iringa the Heavens opened and we were drove the rest of the way in a very heavy thunderstorm, the first rain we had seen for months, it looked like the short rains had well and truly arrived.

It was late afternoon when we eventually reached Iringa, far too late to carry on so we would have to find a place to stay and do all our shopping tomorrow. Luckily we have the freedom to do this as we very rarely need to be at a certain place by a certain date.

We heard that a place called Riverside Camp lay somewhere near Iringa but in the belief this was just a camp site and the rain was still coming down we decided to check if there was a drier alternative first.  In the town itself we couldn't see anywhere other than the local truckers stops and flop houses, however a sign outside of town pointed to a place called the Country Side Hotel which sounded ok so we were disappointed when it turned out to be a local guesthouse next to a factory,  Riverside it was then!

Riverside lies a few kilometres off the main road to Dar es Salaam, about 10km outside Iringa proper. It is run by Will & Amanda, Will grew up in Tanzania but Amanda to our surprise turned out to be a Brit and a Scouser to boot, so small world.

To Sue's relief apart from the campsite they also had wooden Banda's plus permanent Meru tents both set up with beds, power etc. Will first showed us the nicest Banda which we could park right alongside (always a critical requirement for us), inside was a double bed, shower, flush loo, small kitchen with cooker, fridge and kettle plus a TV and Video Player.

He then showed us one of the Meru's, where we couldn't park outside and whilst it had a double bed, mains power and lamps, it had no cooking facilities and used a shared separate shower and loo. The camping area was nearby, here you just put up your tent and used the same loos as the people in the Meru's.

The Banda was 15,000 Tshs per person, (approx  £7) the Meru's 7,500 Tshs each and camping 5,000 Tshs each, it took us less than 10 seconds to decide! 

Next morning the weather was much better and with Riverside being strangely on the banks of a river the place was full of birdsong. After breakfast we headed into town to shop and do internet, it's amazing in Africa how much time this takes,   although we had planned to stay just one night by the time we had finished it was mid afternoon and we just couldn't be bothered rushing off so we booked in for another night.

Iringa like Mbeya does not have such things as supermarkets, all the shopping is done at Dukas, small roadside stalls where you order over a counter. Most are Asian owned, some are reasonably well stocked, others not so, it is very much a question of knowing where to go, which is where Will and Amanda where a help. However, we could not find any fresh or frozen meat, Amanda admitted they mostly buy whole chickens which they pluck and cut up to store, she said she could let us have some breasts and they could get some beef from Will's parents farm.  

Will being a Landy buff came over to take a look at the drive belt, he said he had once experienced a similar problem which he found was caused by the guard belt on the alternator being bent slightly and catching on the belt as it went round.  Although the gap between guard and belt is very small anyway on Rupert it looked ok, so that theory was out, still it was worth a try.

We had spent a fruitless hour looking around town for a new belt, Tanzania was certainly the hardest place we had experienced so far to try and get stuff, still the Internet cafe at the post office was good value at 1,000 Tshs per hour (less than 50p).

Next morning after breccy we restarted our journey to Chalinze, true to her word Amanda had packed us some chicken breasts and some nice pieces of fillet beef and had even frozen it so it went straight into our freezer, fantastic and all for about £12.

It is only once you leave Iringa that you realise how high you have been, as we drove East the road dropped in a succession of hair pin bends through the mountains. Luckily the surface is on decent tar but even so we saw evidence of quite a few wrecks where people had lost control and gone over into the ravines.

The heavy trucks are a real danger as the owners don't maintain them very well, we passed quite a few going at a snails pace with a look of abject terror on the drivers faces - these poor buggers daily take their lives in their hands for very little.

However it is the large intercity buses & coaches which are the biggest danger as they rush to keep to a schedule careering around the bends at totally reckless speeds - as they head towards you leaning over on their axles all you can do is pray the lunatic driver stays in control; on occasion you hear of one who doesn't, taking out everyone on the bus plus any poor sod who happens to be coming the other way!

Once you have safely negotiated the mountain stage the road then takes you through a national park called Mikumi, you don't go though any barriers but they have put down sleeping policemen every mile or so to slow down the traffic as Elephants and other game can be crossing, especially at night. This section has a serious reputation for road kills, why they routed the main East-West highway through here is beyond us, but there it is.

Because of the speed bumps it took about an hour to get through, there were turnoffs to the park headquarters and to some lodges but we didn't linger as we knew we had a hell of a long drive ahead, however little did we know then just how long! The road continued through the Uluguru mountains towards a biggish town called Morogoro which we reached at 2.30pm, here once again we tried unsuccessfully to find a new drive belt losing another hour in the process.

We took the opportunity to re fuel, a golden rule in Africa is refuel as often as you can, especially when you don't know the road ahead, as supplies can suddenly dry up. To give you an idea of what a trip like this costs 55 litres of diesel here cost us 63,000 Tshs (about £27), when full we carry about 220 litres of fuel and a journey like today's would probably use up at least half that, probably more.

An hour after leaving Morogoro we suddenly heard a single loud hiss from the engine and I felt the power drop, shit what now? I pulled over and lifted the bonnet and found the air hose had come off the turbo. As I was head first inside the bonnet a car pulled up behind and a middle aged American got out to see if we needed help, luckily the jubilee retaining clip was still attached to the hose so it was just a case of fixing it back on, the only problem was avoiding burning your hands on the red hot engine.

As we chatted a local guy suddenly appeared and clearly seeing this as an opportunity to earn some cash dived in and tried to force the hose back on. Apart from him getting third degree burns from the engine, I was worried he would only make matters worse, however he didn't speak much English so cocked a deaf un to my shouts to keep his hands out. The American spoke reasonable Kiswahili and he found out the guy claimed to be a mechanic which was probably true to some extent but the trouble is as soon as any local sees a Masungu (white man) in any kind of fix they see $ signs and will claim they can perform miracles when in fact they quite often bugger it up.

Still it was proving quite hard to get the hose back on properly and tighten the clip up so a second pair of hands came in useful especially as just after we stopped it started to rain again, Tanzania was certainly putting us through our paces!

At 4.30 we finally reached Chalinze the bustling crossroads where North, South, East and West converge. Approximately 100kms straight ahead to the East lay Dar es Salaam, the most sophisticated city in Tanzania, to the left the open road to the North passing through mostly open countryside with just the odd village here and there.

For a moment we were very tempted to go onto Dar, especially   as it didn't look like there was anywhere to stay on the way North until we reached the top end. However going to Dar would take us way off our planned route so we decided to crack on and trust to luck, if it became too late then we would try and bush camp somewhere, ok in places like Botswana but not ideal here.

At least the rain had stopped and what was left of the days sun was peeping through the heavy cloudy making the startling green of the bush look very atmospheric. We were soon back in the Tanzanian countryside with just the odd village here and there and less and less traffic. As we drove we suddenly came across an old man dragging a rope attached to which was a dead dog! We were so taken aback it didn't really register for a second what might have happened, Africa is certainly a riddle within a puzzle.

The night was quite pleasant but was to be short lived when at 6pm the heavens opened yet again and it rained non stop for the next hour. Darkness falls very swiftly in Africa and by 7am it is virtually pitch black and even major roads like the one we were on have no lighting whatsoever, the only cats eyes you will see here belong to the four legged kind so it's imperative that as well as the normal headlights you have good driving spotlights, we use Hella spots.

Pitch dark or not it doesn't stop people and assorted domestic and wild animals wandering down the road so consequently it is extremely dangerous driving at night, if you can avoid it don't, unfortunately we couldn't .

We had decided to head for Peponi camp at Pangani on the East coast just below the Kenyan border. The nearest town is Tanga and we reached there at 8.15pm, from here we had to ask for directions as the road to Pangani is just a tiny back road running along the coastline.

The guys at a petrol station gave us directions on how to find the road but conveniently failed to mention that the first mile or so was closed due to roadwork's therefore in the dark we suddenly found the road blocked by a huge mound of earth, no diversion signs nothing, shit, this was just what we needed after the day we had had.

As we were trying to see where to go a young lad on a bike stopped to ask if we needed help? When we asked how to get to Pangani he told us to follow him and proceeded to lead us on his bike through a maze of back streets until we came back out on the road a mile or so further on, we had taken him way off where we has going but he didn't seem to worry one bit, typical of the happy go lucky generosity we had experienced by local people throughout our trip. 

The last few miles to Peponi turned out to be a nightmare, as we drove in pitch darkness down the narrow track with all the rain it was quickly becoming a mud bath. Thankfully at 9.15pm we reached our home for the night and were met by the owner Dennis who showed us where to camp, unfortunately to both our dismay there were no rooms available tonight!

We were totally knackered but thankful we had arrived in one piece, especially when just as we pulled up on our site all of   Rupert's lights went off and remained completely dead - if this had happened just 10 minutes earlier we would have been in big trouble.

The camp spot had an open sided reed shelter with a table and benches and mains power so at least we could put our portable AC lamp on and cook in the dry. We put up the roof tent, had a cuppa soup and a mug of tea and at around 11pm collapsed exhausted into bed, somewhere close by we could hear the Indian Ocean but as yet we couldn't see it.

At 6am we woke to the sound of heavy rain on the tent, after months of dry weather we were now getting our first introduction to the East African rainy season. Although still very tired we forced ourselves up at around 8.30, the rain had stopped but the sky remained overcast. We looked out and realised we were just a stones throw from the Ocean, if it had been sunny it would have been idyllic but sadly with the cloud it  wasn't at it's best.

We needed to look at the lights problem plus we needed to dry out before carrying on so we decided to stay here today. The day alternated between sunny spells and heavy downpours, luckily the reed shelter served us well in that regard.

Investigating the total loss of lights on Rupert I discovered that the 12v power to the main light switch had somehow been broken, all the fuses checked ok so the problem was obviously a break in the wiring somewhere in the cable loom. To trace where exactly the break was would be a major task so in order to get the lights back on I spliced across to another live wire, not ideal but it would do for now.

Our campsite faced right onto the beach so once Rupert was functional again we went for a walk to explore. The coastline around here is almost totally deserted , in fact the only people we saw were the crews on the odd local Dhows as they cruised past on their way to Mombasa, Kenya.

Earlier in the day a shed load of German tourists had sauntered past our camp on their way to the beach, staring at Rupert they completely ignored us, arrogant to the last, now we knew why there were no rooms left. They were off for to do some snorkelling, however as the tide was out they had to walk quite someway to reach the water and the Dhow, which as they were all shapes, sizes and ages took sometime but eventually they disappeared out of view.

The day remained quite overcast and around 3pm the sky became very cloudy and the ocean quite choppy, it would have been quite depressing except just then the small Dhow carrying the Germans hoved back into view. Because the ocean was quite choppy but relatively shallow it was probably going to be  difficult to get the Dhow close into the shoreline, so we were interested to see how the Germans would get back to shore?

Sure enough the Dhow had to anchor some way offshore  necessitating the Germans having to disembark into waist high choppy seas...mmm things were looking up! As we sipped our G&Ts we watched as one by one they dropped into the water holding aloft their personal belongings, the waves were really starting to whip up and through our bino's we could see they were being splashed all over, then just when you thought it couldn't get any worse (for them) the heavens suddenly opened and down came torrential rain, so there is a God after all!

Next morning by 6.30am we were on the road again to Marangu, although sunny there were threatening clouds on the horizon and it was already very hot and humid. The first step of our journey was to retrace our route back to Tanga to pick up the main tar road to Marangu and the Kenyan border. We would be on the dirt road we came down two nights previous which although muddy should be straightforward in the daylight.

It was important we made good time today as we still had quite a way to go and we didn't want a repeat performance of arriving again in the dark. All went well for the first few miles then suddenly as we rounded a bend we found the road completely blocked by a bus and truck.

The truck had slid partly off the track into the ditch and was now clearly stuck, the bus although not yet stuck was struggling to get around the truck without themselves sliding into the ditch. If this happened then we were all buggered as the only way out  would then be to go back the other way and pick up another road much further south, which would mean we would struggle to reach Marangu in the daylight.

We watched in horror as the bus edged forward and then started to slide sideways towards the stricken truck and ditch, desperately the passengers who had disembarked fought to hold it back and manhandle the bus back on the road.    

Somehow or other they managed to avoid disaster but it was another forty minutes before we were able to get the bus out of the way and get going again, time we could hardly afford to lose. Eventually we reached Tanga which now looked quite different in daylight, there was even a Landrover garage, where we got an auto electrician to check out the lights problem, he  confirmed our diagnosis of a broken wire and just re-enforced the splicing I had done yesterday.

However, the major good news was we found a small Indian owned shop which was a veritable Aladdin's cave of Landy spare parts. Here we managed to not only get a new drive belt but also a new bearing for the tensioner that broke down in Katavi, who would have thought it in such a small place as Tanga.

By 12.30pm we had reached Segira where we had turned East to Tanga two nights ago, from here it was 285 Kms to Moshi the nearest town to Marangu, the road now was all on good tar as it skirted the Pare Mountains and the border with Kenya.

The weather now was glorious and with it our spirits rose greatly, it was a relief to be away from the coast with it's murky weather. The drive along the border from Segira to Marangu is absolutely stunning in places, as you have the Usambera and Pare mountains on your right with plains and distant mountains on your left interspersed with field after field of Pineapple plantations.

There is also far less traffic here as most of the big trucks have taken the coastal route to Dar and Mombasa, Rupert was running well and we had on our favourite music as we drove along in high spirits.

At 3.15 after leaving the small town of Same we suddenly turned a bend in the road and to our great surprise and delight in front of us as clear as anything lay the snow capped peak of Mt Kilimanjaro. It looked stunning in the afternoon light, just like the photo's you see in the travel books, this was one of those moments when all the hassles slip away and you are reminded just why you love the freedom of travel in such a wonderful continent.

At 4.15 we finally arrived at the Marangu Hotel, our stop for the night. The hotel had been recommended to us by Francis the manager at Utengule in Mbeya as a good place to stay, little did we realise as we pulled in that it was to become one of our regular stopovers on our trips back and forwards from Kenya to South Africa and that we would make some lasting friendships here.

Normally our first choice is to camp wherever we can as staying in hotels too often can very quickly bust your budget. However, if it's late or raining or both then we will probably take a room, at Marangu it was neither but when we saw the view from the room we were offered then we just couldn't say no even though it was costing $100 per night as against $5 to camp, mind you the room came with breakfast and dinner so it wasn't too bad and later an overland truck arrived on the campsite so we definitely made the right choice!

The Marangu Hotel is an old colonial style hotel, owned by the Bryce-Bennett family for two generations, currently it is run by brothers and sister Desmond, Shamus & Fionnuala. The gardens which some of the rooms look onto are delightful with large trees and flowing shrubs, made all the better with the view of Kili in the background. 

After the trials and tribulations of the trip from Mbeya we were very happy to relax here for a day or two. Kilimanjaro was so photogenic that we could not stop taking photo's, the weather was lovely as we sat in the garden with a beer snapping away, the beer of course being a can of Kilimanjaro, what else.

As we sat suddenly a huge black cloud appeared out of nowhere heading swiftly towards the mountain, it was very atmospheric but within minutes Kili was lost in dense clouds, not to be seen again for two days! Such is the unpredictability of the weather here, imagine what it must have been like for those climbing the mountain that day.

We have stayed at Marangu on about three or four occasions since then but have never experienced such stunning views of Kili as we did that day, it was almost like she was welcoming us. Fionnuala who has become a good friend and who has lived most of her life here told us the vast majority of the time the mountain is hidden in thick cloud so we feel privileged to have experienced it that afternoon.

The vast majority of people staying at Marangu are there to climb the mountain, the hotel has been organising climbs for more than 50 years and is considered one of the best if not the best operators to go with. It's very important to use an operator who knows what their doing as Kili although very beautiful is a killer, recently four climbers were killed on one route by rock falls and currently a Chinese climber has been missing on the mountain for a month!

We have not climbed it but we have met many who have, on our second night over dinner we chatted to a couple, Mother & Son who had just returned from their five days on the mountain. They looked a bit shell shocked to say the least by the experience, what many don't realise is that you start climbing on the final day at around 11pm - midnight of the penultimate day, so you are in complete darkness and bear in mind you have only had a few hours rest from that days climb as well.

It has to be like this in order to reach the summit at dawn and then get off the mountain before nightfall, couple this with the altitude and that most people are feeling extremely nauseous and you get an idea of how tough it can be.

Picture it then this aged Mother and middle aged Son doing this last bit when they realised they did not have enough water, their porters thought they had brought their own water and they thought the porters had brought water for them. Only one answer to eat the snow as they went along which was ok until it started to get light enough to see when the son took another handful and recoiled in horror that mixed in it was human faeces!

Not totally unexpected when you think about how many climb the mountain that some must get caught short, suffice to say this was the final nail in the coffin of me ever convincing Sue to climb!

We had planned to leave the next day but we were enjoying Marangu so much we decided to stay another night and such is fate as it was on this last day that we met Fionnuala for the first time and began our dear friendship. Her brothers Desmond and Shamus being married with young children tend to get off home by early evening whereas Fionnuala with her kids all flown the nest likes to stay on and have a drink in the bar with friends and by a strange co-incidence this is also something we are partial to!

As we chatted we told Fionnuala we were on our way to Kenya to visit as many of the game parks as we could. She suggested instead of trekking all the way to Nairobi we should enter via the border gate close to Marangu at Taveta and from there we could go straight into Tsavo West.

The only problem was we needed to get a Smart Card which Kenya has introduced as the only way to pay to enter and camp in virtually all of their national parks and you can only get this and load it with money at certain points of issue and sale and guess what Tsavo West isn't one of them so if we wanted to do this we would have to travel miles past to Voi to get one!

"Not a problem" said Fionnuala "you can borrow my Smart Card which I'm sure has enough money on it to allow you to at least go into Tsavo West then you can reload it once we you get to Nairobi and return it when you eventually pass through on the way back South". We were amazed here was someone whom we had met only that day who was willing to give us a card loaded with US Dollars & Kenyan Shillings which was effectively as good as giving us the cash when she had no idea as to when or even if we would return to Marangu! 

I know we have said this a number of times before but the African's both black and white, especially the one's we in the west derogatively term as 'Old Colonials' are exceedingly generous and helpful. We don't care what anyone says there is no way in Europe or North America we would get the same sort of gesture even from people we have known for years.

As the drinks flowed Fionnuala went one step further and began to get quite enthusiastic about showing us the way to the border via a remote lake called Chala which sits almost on the border but is so hard to find that very few tourists or even residents get to see it. Trudy who was drinking with us with Roger her husband had never even seen Lake Chala and she is a born and bred Tanzanian from Marangu!

Fionnuala used to go there for picnic's as a child but hadn't been there for quite sometime, still she was sure she could  find it, even if it meant asking for directions from the local villagers on the way.

So the plan was hatched that bright and early we would follow Fionnuala and Trudy to Lake Chala then we would go onto the border gate while they returned to Marangu in time to pick up Trudy's kids from school.  By midnight it was looking distinctly as if a sess was on the cards so we decided to call it a night and get some sleep, leaving Fionnuala and the rest still going hard at it in the bar - would they remember and recover enough to join us in the morning, we doubted it but it had been a great night all the same.