What a chilly night! I was cold in my sleeping bag with my bag liner and woke on numerous occasions. Ian had woken me at 23:00 with a cup of truck water to instruct me to take my anti-malarial pill. Yum. The water was a bit musty but at least it was dark so we couldn't see the colour of it. Ian assures me that I was cold due to the change in temperature in the transition from daytime to nighttime. I think the altitude may play a part in it too as we reached 2000 metres above sea level during our journey to the camp.
We had a tiny little frog hiding beneath our tent when we packed up. He had a bright red underbelly. Lovely!
Today we make the 500 kilometres drive to Dar Es Salaam where we camp for the night in preperation to leave for Zanzibar tomorrow morning by ferry. We drove through Mikumi National Game Reserve whereby we had sightings of buffalo, saddlebill stork, zebras, impala and giraffes.
Beyond the reserve the condition of the roads declined and we found ourselves being thrown about the truck like in the final stint of the journey to Chitimba Camp, only on a much larger scale. It is quite unnerving when your whole body loses contact with the seat and your feet no longer touches the floor!
We arrive at Silver Sands Camp on the beach in Bagamoyo, 25 kilometres out from Dar Es Salaam. The Indian Ocean looks rather inviting and the sand is actually sparkling silver... The tent is less inviting as when we packed it up this morning it was covered in dew, so it now smells of cat pee! There was also a small scorpion lurking at the entrance which received a quick and sudden death by a guard whose attention we had attracted by shrieking 'hey everyone, scorpion!' I didn't want to share the tent with it but I would have liked to have had a closer look at it and possibly a photograph of it before it was slaughtered...
Tanzanian roads are infected with road humps to allegedly slow down the TCBs - Tanzanian Crazy Buses. At every bridge we reach there are at least three speed humps which the truck rallies over. Paul declares that there isn't one bridge that doesn't have a gap in it's barrier that some crazy bus has ploughed through.
I feel like I'm about to embark on a short holiday as we leave for Zanzibar tomorrow morning. I've often fancied going there so I'm rather looking forward to it. We will also be making our first shipment of goodies home to our parents.
As we sat down for supper my head was throbbing again. My eyesight was a little disturbed. I collected some paramol in preparation for what I felt was ahead. Within minutes I couldn't recognise the words that I was hearing. I knew they should be familiar to me but I couldn't visualise them or recognise their context. This frightened me enormously and it only became acceptable when I gained pins and needles in both of my arms and face again and I knew it must be another migraine. After a word with Deb, one of our Canadian doctor companions, who said the migraines could have been caused by the excessive jerking around in the truck, Ian tucked me into my sleeping bag where I soon fell asleep for the night until dawn. Two migraines in one week is certainly my record!
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.