Day 26

Taking it nice and easy in the morning and getting our gear all packed in the car. The car is not of the larger kind, so to speak, so Simon has to share his backseat with a bunch of bags. They all fit perfectly. Driving around town a bit to fill up gas and change some money and all seems fine. Until we try to start the car after the last stop. It won’t start. Andy sees a friend’s car and gets him and some jumper cables hooked up. The starter engine begins to smoke. OK, so this is clearly not working so we try to push start it. It works! We are on the road again!

Andy's packing the car for departure to the  forest!

Next stop is not by choice. Andy gets pulled over for speeding. The cop even writes a receipt so it is a very official fine of 30000 schillings. Next stop is still not by choice. This time it’s a registration check. After fiddling around with all the papers and explaining that the reason we don’t have a sticker in the front window, as required, is that the sticker is at the “office”. They are fine with that and we are off again.

We finally reach the town where we head off from to the forest. First we have to pick up our cook and a guy from TFCG. Our cook turns up and it’s Betty. Betty was the cook at my first visit to Tanzania in 2007 when I together with Simon came here for three weeks. She recognize us and it’s great fun to see her again. Our TFCG guy is a no-show though. Betty knows where it is we are going so we head off without him.

After some time in the local village explaining our visit we head off for our camp site. We are now four people in our previously crowded car with me and Betty sharing Simon’s former seat. We go to pick up the forest guard that will show us to a good camp site. We then are five in the car with Simon sharing his front seat with the forest guard. Our vehicle is now a proper overcrowded African transport.

The evening begins and no calls of any kind. Are we in a place totally devoid of life? As the evening passes we start to hear our animals though. We might not have to shift forest after all!