A chnage of culture.

"Look!! I’ve just seen an elephant. Or maybe it was a giraffe! Or a man in grey trousers".

It is difficult for an untrained eye to spot animals in a safari park. For our farewell tour with Corrie we stayed in a luxury tented safari camp inside Mikumi Nature Reserve. Luxury as each of the large tents are within a wooden shelter (tented bandas) , and have beds, electricity, showers and toilets. And there is excellent, western food. This was all part of preparing Corrie for her return to western culture

Although inside the park, and not allowed to walk outside on our own, we were well away from any large animals and had panoramic views over the Mikumi plains. It was absolutely quiet except the occasional sound of an animal or bird.

Although we failed to see any leopards (who are mainly nocturnal animals) we did see the only surviving hartebeest living in Mikumi and a fresh lion kill. Corrie also managed to see 5 birds she had never seen before. Unfortunately she also attracted a number of tse-tse flies and acquired a number of painful stings

After two nights there we moved on to Iringa.

Travelling between towns in Tanzania is fairly convenient as there are many private coach companies. Conductors make money by taking on extra passengers between bus stations, and pocketing the fares. Our experiences included:

- the police check-point which forced 2 passengers without seats to get off the bus, only to be picked up again 200 yards down the road, in sight of the check-point, to the cheers of other passengers
- as we got on a coach, as arranged, outside Mikumi, being offered the alternative of paying £6 each without a ticket or £9 with a ticket. Having said ‘£9 with ticket’ later being told by the conductor we could pick up the ticket next day in Iringa – some chance!!! We didn’t argue as we wanted his help getting off before the bus station. Later found that the correct fare was £6.
- Waiting 2 hours at the side of the road for the 10 am bus to pick us up – which it did at 11.30 am
- 8 hour bus journey back to Dodoma accompanied by very loud Tanzanian soap operas, comedy shows and a Jet Li film

We stayed for 4 nights at a ‘not so luxury’ but excellent camp site outside Iringa (tented bandas and shared toilets but excellent food). This was all part of Corries adjustment back to western culture – BBC World news on TV, cooked breakfasts, cappuccino coffee, cold weather (Iringa is in the southern mountains) and being surrounded by Mzungus. She also added 17 to her new bird sightings.

We visited a couple of tourist attractions. South of Iringa is one of Tanzania’s few historical sites. A few years ago the clearance of a former silted river revealed a horde of stone age artefacts – stone knives, axes, tools etc. Within 100 yards is a second gorge with remarkable sand-stone pillars formed by an old river which washed away the surrounding stone but left pillars where there was a large, impervious boulder at the top. A mini Cheddar Gorge.

Despite the spectacular settings, and the fact that Tanzania has very little alternative built history, we were the only visitors there. A problem in Tanzania is that so often things aren’t done just right. Money had been invested in building a very smart, modern museum and large car park. However the access track from the main trunk road was a narrow, bumpy 400 yard mud track impossible to use without a 4 wheel drive car. Impassable for coaches. The other oddity was that although there are comparably few electricity lines in Tanzania, the decision had been taken to erect large pylons over the site – equivalent to erecting pylons over Stonehenge!!!!

On Friday we went our separate ways – Corrie to Dar es Salaam for her flight to Manchester and us back to Mvumi. She is a good friend and we will miss her.

Next week – back to work and start to prepare for our return to England.