Day forty (continued)

The Whale was waiting at the airport when we touched down after our flight from Zanzibar. We headed out of town with our next major destination being Malawi about 2 days away travelling south.

We drove through a national park usually stocked up with elephants but we didn't see much game around at all. We bushcamped at a campsite off the road which had a shelter for cooking in and an open air longdrop. Charming.

Justine and Vanessa were on cooking and rustled up some Kingfish, pasta and curried cabbage. It was not bad at all.

Day forty one

It was a pretty cold start to the morning and I had to get in my sleeping bag to have a snooze on the "beach" while we drove along. One thing about being on a truck safari is that there is a bit of dead time getting between interesting destinations. Sure, the scenery is interesting for the first few hours but after a while you get a bit tired of seeing the same scenery mile after mile. In Africa it can take days before the landscape changes noticeably.

To pass the time on a truck safari, you will need a pack of cards (this can be difficult when driving on bumpy roads), a book or two, (some truck tours have a library on board), a diary, and shitloads of cassettes to listen to. When you are on a 9 week tour like this one tapes will get thrashed, so the more the better. I used to like the Black Crowes until I went on this tour.

Most trucks will have a buzzer in the back for toilet stops or in case of emergency. Smokers have to sit at the back of the truck as an act of courtesy. Our truck had the beach, which was great when you were crawling along up hills as you could sit up the top and get a suntan and get a great 360 degree view of everything. When we raced along it wasn't so good as it could get quite cold which was the situation on this day.

We had lunch at a place near Mbeya, then arrived at the Malawi Border around 5.30pm. Click here for Malawi.