A late-ish rise for a 9am trip to the local's spice market (not the tourist one). Helen and I went off to the main post office to send our bao game home. The man at the parcel desk spoke both fluent Swahili and gesture. The only words he spoke to us were "Saddam Hussein." On the other hand, by gesturing (mostly with his knife!) we helped him turn our rotten, broken cardboard box into a sticky tape and brown paper masterpiece. I think we made a fatal mistake in our hurry -- the customs slip is an ancient bit of paper taped to the brown paper outside of the new box. It and the brown paper are the only places with any address on them. Let's hope it's not too roughly handled.
Back to the spice market on one of the local buses. A refreshing experience. Cramped, fumey, fast. We weren't going to buy any spices (there's only so much you can caryy and 2kg of turmeric isn't part of it) so we followed Georgie through to the curio market. We found an Internet cafe and tested things. 200 junk emails for me in the last four weeks. We had a hugely expensive ice cream for lunch, each tiny scoop was Tsh700 and melted almost immediately.
A quick mention of the Coca-Cola sponsored road signs. A 50cm square Coke advert over small letters bearing the road name. I've even seen a Coke sponsored town name.
Back on the ferry to Dar. A little rougher this time, a few more sick bags tossed over the side. Even one guy who was out of it (drugs?) was dropped by four others in the passageway and left for the rest of the journey. At least he stopped maoning when we set off. (Thanks to little Heiko for reminding me!)
I had a good chit chat with Paul on the bus on the way back to Silver Sands about the state of African game reserves. Generally the choice of economy with peoples ability to implement it means economies are up the swanny. All you're left with is to screw tourists for US$. [Paul can be pretty forthright.]
Back at Silver Sands we were now one of five or six trucks which made camping a bit tight. So tight a truck almost reversed over out tent. Thanks! A final dive into the Indian Ocean (from Africa) and tried wave gymnastics -- body surf on a wave until it's quite shallow then forward roll and handstand or a full roll and stand up. A good laugh other than the salt water that embeds itself in your nose. The post swim shower was quite slow -- the on/off drip drip shower took half an hour to get the sand off!
An own expense meal which was slightly disasterous -- the order wasn't quite fulfilled correctly which had Paul exclaiming that he wouldn't eat there again. Amongst other problems, eleven people ordered steak, there were only five in the kitchen. The upstairs bar had satellite TV and we left the other guys watching a Sean Connery movie.
Silver Sands S6.65482 E39.21271 Elev. 24m.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.