TANZANIA & ZANZIBAR DIARY Dates: 24th June 2009 to 6th August 2009 43 Days Tanzania miles = 3016 miles (4826 km) Trip miles = 12835 miles (20536 km) Day 136 - Wednesday 24th June CONTINUED Zambia to Tanzania First stop at the Tunduma border was the Tanzanian immigration: fill out the entry forms and hand over with passports to one official; then hand over US$50 each for visas to another official and then waited and waited. Judi stayed on whist I went to the customs desk to get the carnet stamped up; ‘anything to declare?’ He gave me a funny look when I said no but he accepted it. Apart from exiting South Africa in March, nobody has even seen the vehicle let alone look at it or inspect it. Next stop, road fund licence, US$20, and fuel levy, US$5: closed, gone to lunch. And this is the only commercial international border crossing between Zambia and East Africa! Back to the vehicle where an insurance certificate and windscreen sticker had been prepared for us for another US$70 for three months; my advisor assured me it would have been US$70 for just one day. I believed him as he was my trusty personal advisor! Against all advice we decided to change some pounds for Tanzanian shillings as we probably couldn’t do this at a bank; we knew the rate would be poor but I left Judi to it. I was still waiting for the office to open when I heard a familiar car alarm go off. I wandered back to the vehicle to find Judi, who had locked the doors on the fob rather than door button, inside but had moved to get some water as it was hot and set the alarm off! She was a bit upset as she thought she had been diddled on the exchange rate by a factor of 10. I went and got my advisor and told him to sort it and, to be fair, he phoned the money dealer and got him to return. He had short changed us but not by the factor of 10 as believed. He had given us Tsh1400 to the Pound but had written down 1040 and Judi had handed over £100 and in return we should have got Tsh140,000 but he had given her Tsh104,000. In the heat and all the zeros Judi had got her maths a bit wrong, not like her, but the changer took back the Tsh4,000 and gave us Tsh40,000. We shook hands and agreed everyone had been a bit confused. But, please, never ever trust a money changer and always double check and make sure you are the last one to handle the money once you have counted it! As it happens the exchange was indeed extortionate as £100 should have got us just over Tsh200,000. Trip rule; work out exchange rates in advance of a crossing! Eventually the Road Fund official returned and opened up after lunch. He was a typical expressionless official who didn’t do conversation or humour. To be fair, most of the other ones at all the other crossings had been very friendly. I handed over the dollars and took my two certificates and departed. Back to the vehicle to follow my advisor down to the exit gate for, hopefully, the final formalities. Someone tried to charge me a parking fee but I summoned my advisor back and he told him to clear off, I think. Down to the gate and park up. Into a small booth one side of the gate and handed over all the documents and passport to a lady who transcribed them in longhand into a register. Once completed I was ushered across to the booth on the other side and here, once again, handed over my documents to the official; again all the details were hand written into a register. I’m sure there must be a purpose to all of this, but for the life of me I cannot readily think of one! Finally we were all done and I handed my advisor US$10 + US$5 to pay off car minders and anybody else who had assisted me without my knowledge. He pointed out the correct road to take out of Tunduma, the Tanzanian border town, and we finally pushed ourselves through the incoming traffic and we were off. The time now was 1 14.30 as Tanzania is one hour forward of Zambia (+3 GMT (+2 BST)) so we had got through in about two hours in real time, even though it felt like days! I find border crossings extremely stressful. Probably, being a Brit, we’re not too used to it all but whilst the self-allocated advisors are pushy and out to make as much money as they can, the reality is, if it is your first time through that particular crossing, they are a necessity if just to know where the various officials are hiding. We headed the 130 km for the first large town into Tanzania, Mbeya, where we intended camping. We eventually found the place but were not impressed about setting up camp in the small car park of an institution we think was a training centre so we decided to carry on and find somewhere else. However, we were struggling to find anything in Tracks4africa or in the two guide books. The Garmin Nuvi, despite being told it covered Tanzania, only had the main roads on without detail. The nearest campsite we knew of, and had been recommended to us, was The Old Farm House near Ifunda, some 50 km before Iringa on the Tanzam Highway connecting Dar es Salaam with Zambia. This road had been a joint venture funded by the two countries when apartheid cut off land-locked Zambia from the southern ports in the 70’s. The campsite we were heading for was about 350 km further on and by now we had about 1½ hours of day light left and a 4½ hour journey. Despite our self-imposed rule of ‘no night driving’ we decided to go for it as the road was in good repair with very few animals wandering around loose. We topped up with fuel and were horrified to find that it was nearly a pound a litre going by the money changer’s rate (it was in actual fact £0.68). That took half of our shillings straight away. We made steady progress and stuck to around 80 kph (50 to 55 mph), most of the way but stuck to the 50 kph (31 mph), limit through the towns; 30 kph, (19 mph), in some town centres. The limits started way out of town and everybody else seemed to disregard it but I resisted the temptation to ‘pinch a few’ to make up time. At one village a lorry I had overtaken previously, overtook me. I was actually saying to Judi, ‘Am I the only one complying with the speed limits?’ when the lorry braked. There in the middle of the road was a police woman holding a speed gun. He was pulled over. The lady was showing him the speed on the device, while I was waved through. I felt slightly smug and exonerated and now considered myself as having returned to the status of upright citizen, having passed through Zambia without transgression, ignoring the slight oversight with the road fund licence! The sun set at 6.30 p.m. and a whole new driving experience unfolded. On the fairly narrow road, overloaded lorries struggled up the hills but then flew down the other side. It was a hilly road and by the time we were at the campsite we had climbed in places to over 2000 metres, 6500 feet, high. The roadside was busy with the usual pedestrians and cyclists, none of whom had lights or bright clothing. The only saving grace was that the mad buses were not allowed to drive at night. I was able to make steady progress when nothing was coming towards me as, with all the lights full on the ‘top spots’ actually picked up the roadside hazards in good time; it was only when I had to dip them that things became a bit hairy. What I did do was to swivel the two top work lights so they shone down towards the nearside verge and, being on a separate circuit, I could operate these when an oncoming vehicle blinded me; at least this way I could pick up hazards, albeit at the last second! Like Zambians, Tanzanian drivers insist in indicating right for approaching vehicles to show they are there, or how wide they are and they will often do so when it isn’t safe to overtake. Conversely, they will sometimes indicate left to show it is clear, which does tend to confuse the issue. I did find that a blast of my lights; two headlamps, two huge driving lights and two top spots, did alert the lorry drivers and made them give me enough room to get by. We watched one brave, or mad, lorry driver go for an overtake on another lorry who wouldn’t pull right over and we were sure the two hit side to side as he struggled past. We dropped right back to let them fight it out. The overtaking lorry just about managed to pull in 2 front of the other and as he did so we realised he had just missed a stationary lorry, without lights, on the other side. The drive itself was challenging but, perversely, I quite enjoyed it, even when one pedestrian decided to dash across the road behind a lorry that was in front of me.